Will NFTs Recapture Mindshare from Memecoins? | Geebz, TylerD, and DeeZe

22 Mar 2024 · 1:17:10

Empire host Jason Yanowitz talks with geebz, TylerD, and DeeZe about whether NFTs can reclaim attention from memecoins after a cycle dominated by token speculation. They discuss the potential for gaming NFTs and Bitcoin ordinals, ongoing experimentation around NFT utility, and the competition among marketplaces including Magic Eden, Blur, and OpenSea.

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I think uh a lot of the founders don't know what they're getting into and they're just trying to make the price go up and they make a whole bunch of promises they can't keep with ideas that are half baked or quarter baked and they just get lambasted for it I'm personally not buying any nft project for the utility they had no idea what they were doing they got in nfts in 2021 2022 to make some money because they saw everyone else doing it and now they're stuck with this community of 10,000 or or more some of these have 30,000 Plus nfts in them with holders they need to uh make happy and I don't want any part of that if you are an Empire listener hopefully you've played around on chain and if you have done that you know that transferring assets across different chains is a pain to put it nicely that

is why we are incredibly excited to have the Wormhole Foundation as a partner of the Empire podcast stewards of the Wormhole protocol supporting over 30 different blockchains and six different run times stay tuned later in the show we have a cool thing that you can claim which is a wormhole nft just for Empire listener this episode is brought to you by moned which has not only the highest performance evm L1 architecture ever built but also the wildest and craziest community in crypto mad's internal devet is live and public testet comes out soon so make sure you join the monad community today at discord.gg slad m o n a d monad this episode is brought to you by shardo an

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check it out thanks Supra for sponsoring Empire all right everybody uh we got some new new faces to Empire um santi's on on the road so we can't join us we have three guests today we have uh jebs uh principal at a large crypto asset manager we've got Tyler d uh nft lead at lucky Trader um I think probably one of the smartest folks uh in in the nft world right now and then we've got de who de I honestly don't know what what to call you except for a professional [ __ ] coiner and nft extraordinaire my friend so um and that I I mean that in the best way so yeah jebs D is Tyler welcome to the show guys thanks for having usce be here thanks for having me very excited let's do it so um basically

this uh I wanted to have the three of you on because you three are the in my mind the three smartest people in the the nft world and I had this bet a while ago that I've expressed many times on Empire which is uh if you believe an asset is going up or you are exposed to an ecosystem and you think that ecosystem is going to do well in the cycle nfts are the best way to get exposure to that and so far I've been proven slightly right but there is a much better trade that has been put on which is mem coins right so if you are along salana uh yeah sure madlads did decently well and maybe they were a nice levered bet but actually buying whiff was much better than that um and sure maybe Pudgies or you know same thing with Bonk

right and you know Avalanche same thing like yeah maybe you thought Avalanche was going up sure there were some nfts that did even better than Avalanche or avac but actually like Tech and Coq did much much better than any of those so jebs I would love to actually just kind of pass this to you like can you just share with me like how you are feeling about nfts in general and and it in the light of almost meme coins taking attention away and also in the light of like how you contextualize that compared to the last cycle very broad open-ended question here yeah and feels like a great place to start too I mean if you just like look back at the 2021 2022 nft bull cycle like I think if anyone

remembers that time things got just really out of hand um and it was like anyone would launch any small project instant sellout you'd go into open SE instant run up in price and this was kind of like pre- blurred days and so floors would just escalate really quickly and then they'd come down pretty sharply and it was all an attention game and it reminds me like you're saying so much right now what we're seeing within sort of like the memec coin land and what's going on with salana but back then you know it was gas prices were incredibly High um projects would like like I said sell out really quickly just zoom right up and so it was purely an attention game and it feels like almost the same exact thing is playing out right now on salana with meme coins but it's just speedr running it almost zero

transaction fee you look at tokens like today we're looking at boom over the past day and a half I mean it's been absolutely unreal and during that period with nfts I feel like you would see the same thing happen over and over again where project runs up and then it's just like cascading down but there would be multiple of them a day and then you go to deck screener today and you see the same exact thing playing out over and over again so it just feels like um feels like almost a speedrun version of it now and all attention seems to be specifically in that salana memco ecosystem and eth nft is like even though the narrative isn't there right now you know if you look at some of the data from last fall we pretty much

bottomed out in like the October time frame and since then it it has been like a pretty steady come up but when you comp it against the meme coins it's it's just not even close de what is your I feel like you um you you you sent this tweet I'm pretty sure this was you that you said you were maybe late to meme coins or you You' been ignoring them a little bit and now based on your uh my timeline and seeing you tweet it feels like you're all in so how are you thinking about this re the re you know most recent couple weeks like nfts relative to meme coins and just what you're paying attention to yeah uh from a financial perspective I'm definitely not all in um from an attention perspective I'm probably like 95% all in I think um you know I put out

a couple tweets earlier in the year about having a plan for this bull run and a lot of my plan was like you know I don't want more than 5% of my liquid portfolio in meme coins because like I'm not good at them and if you fast forward like three months after I put that tweet out I'm still probably not much higher than like 10% of my liquid portfolio and meem coins after a couple big wins um I'm still pretty much like trying to not you know drink all the cool-aid and go all in on this stuff but I think when you're um looking at meme coins they remind me a lot of nfts in 2021 where it's like this oh I can turn 0.05 eth into OnePlus eth in this casino type Vibe and I think a lot of the class of 2021 nft people

who stuck around are kind of just following the herd because they're trying to make that Lotto type win um and salana is kind of the first time where you can onboard somebody with $100 and let them actually gamble without losing so much of their uh fees or so much of their Capital to fees um so like I'm super bearish on eth L1 meme coins I'm only buying uh salana meme coins and L2 memes because I think the marginal buyer being able to buy with like small chunks is such a important part of why this works um so yeah I mean I'm I'm ready to buy some nfts at some point but I'm waiting for the hot ball of money to

rotate like I was early to ordinals in late December early January I'm holding some of those still um but I'm just right now focusing on where the hot ball money is which is the main coins Tyler do you have any data on this yeah so I preparing for this I was just thinking like how big is the order of magnitude difference on just basic trading volume and looking yesterday so ethereum did two and a half billion dollars nonchain uh coin trading volume yesterday Soul did 1.7 billion in onchain trading volume uh for coins and nfts it's like 25 million and 8 million so we're talking about 100x to 200x the the size

of just pure dollars flowing through tokens and meme coins versus nfts right now and it's too big to ignore uh for anyone who is here just trying to to focus on entities I think they have to understand like what is you know happening right now I think very much je said this enties are an attention game they're also a fomo game and there is no fomo right now in the nft market sadly the fomo is all in the mcoin streets and everyone chasing those crazy 10x 20x returns like we did in the last cycle it feels like you know there is a scenario where meme coins are the the nfts of this cycle and they do command Lion Share of attention for a while but I am

aligned with d where I do think there will be a point where it rotates back and this is in my think this is because of the digital Flex at aspect of this like it's it's G it's not cool to to to flex your coin bag and say like oh I have you know 8 800,000 with like that that's not as cool of a thing to do as just rep you know a crypto punk as your pfp or a madlads or perhaps the the best uh Bitcoin nft in the ordinals ecosystem that's starting to to come alive so I don't think that idea or concept is going away but the can might be kicked down the curve a little bit yeah how do you guys think about meme coins in light this um this nft money flow so batsu posted this um this kind of what is it

maso's hierarchy of nfts basically where um for anyone watching on YouTube you can actually see see this chart so it's Collectibles at the top punks Apes Etc then there's the generative art and then at the very bottom it's one of one how do you think about meme coins in light of this whole nft money flow chart I think m coins would be at the top um with Collectibles or maybe a layer even above Collectibles I think they are the the lowest barrier to entry and the uh least amount of like brain power needed to to AP into yeah I feel like one thing that's missing here too would be like the attention like you see like there's money on the left side put attention on the other side with attenion arrow going

upward and like d said meme coins would fit right there up top and it's just from an attention standpoint it feels like you can hop on Twitter get in a telegram it feels like honestly like old nft days when You' pop the Discord and be like what's the vibe here like what's going on how can I check the memes like what is what are people posting about this and that energy it feels like is a Snowball Effect continually it really is I think my only like concern is I I agree like the me coins are at the top of this pyramid but I feel like what's not on here is like the crypto majors and I do think there's a huge cohort of folks who are trading mem coins to get to accumulate more salana more ethereum and more Bitcoin that that may not flow into one of one

art or or generative art or or even pfps so I think that's another aspect of this to to try to consider it is going to be interesting to see how the the bin diagram of these coin Traders and nft holders perhaps starts to overlap more in the near future it's a good point like what's what's next potentially and like how does this flow because T memec coins typically are like end of cycle type activity right and so we're sort of seeing it in like what I'm considering to be the beginning of like a much larger run happen and so the question becomes like where do where do all these winds flow into like it's clear that there's just millionaires sprouting up on a daily basis or people posting ridiculous pnls on a daily basis so you

have to wonder like where's the next bit of alpha going to go to or I mean is is there a world too then where it just stays within meme coins like this just continues to go on for for a long period of time what's what's your take on that jibs because it does right there's there's this idea I feel like from the last cycle where okay you buy the spot you buy some salana then you rotate it into maybe the apps or whatever or excuse me you buy some like Bitcoin and eth go up uh Bitcoin and E go up the majors go up then it kind of rotates into like the alt l1s or whatever and then it kind of rotates into I don't know the nfts and then it rotates or the apps whatever you want to call it and then it rotates into meme coins and

you're basically and that's what we saw last cycle which is these kind of four stages of rotations and you're each time you do that you're pushing further and further out on the wrist Spectrum um and I think that's what a lot of folks expected to happen here and we've skipped all the way to the last step right we went straight from Bitcoin and eth and salana going up to mem coins going up so I'd be curious maybe D I could throw this one to you like how you think about skipping those you know set stages two and three and going straight to meme coins here and like how long is this is this just like this is how the Cycle's going to look or yeah how do you think about this yeah it's tough I think um over the last year with the Pepe launch

and the hype that we got from that late April early May 2023 meme coin cycle it really started to shift how I I view meme coins and it made me think um a little bit differently about just ignoring them completely till the end of the cycle like I think we have this culture of we want to get rich quick um that isn't going anywhere and I've seen a couple good articles on Financial nihilism lately that I I tend to find myself agreeing with and it just you need exposure to this stuff um I don't know when it'll die down and when it'll pick back up but I I do think it is now like its own section of crypto that you

need exposure to even if it's only one or two or three or five% of your portfolio because uh the the attention this gets and the gains that you can have are just like there's nothing else like it in crypto unless you're able to like be on the seed deals of some of the biggest uh upcoming l1s or l2s before before everyone else can jibs from the fun perspective right you guys have decisions to make around allocations like how do you think about this whole thesis that again if you're watching on YouTube you can see this it's like phase one Bitcoin phase two ethereum maybe at ad Salon there phase three kind of large caps and phase four All Season how do you think about this from you know kind of the the allocator

seat yeah I mean this is the traditional model right that a lot of people abide by when it comes to the general flows of things I I personally believe in like this is going to be how this cycle pans out and we're still just heavily in that first phase at this point in time but at the same time as people are just you know effectively printing more money they want to go to find a place that's Casino like or has you know High beta and that's why I think someplace in here now like you kind of need to add meme coins and it's clear where exactly it goes in this process right now it looks like it's someplace in that phase one phase two yeah I mean I think what's happening here's my take on this is um there are so many people who thought that the

market would go this way right there are so so this is the first cycle where there's been a lot of like crypto rich I would say so you know if you if you go from the first uh I don't know cycle number three to cycle four or what like from the 2017 cycle to 2020 uh 2020 and 2021 like there wasn't that many people going into 2021 who had a massive amount of capital now there are you know millions of people who have a lot of crypto um and there are so many people who kind of understand the chart as it exists like this so basically what happened is you know for you and for me and Tyler and de and everyone on this call I feel like we basically said all right if if eventually we're all rotating into Al season why not rotate

into Old season to just begin with why why go through this why not front run the narrative if it's going to look like this Tyler be curious to get your your thoughts on all this yeah it's almost like it's almost like the the all mem coins are on their own vertical here and they have their own tiers like you you have your new Majors right like you have like the existing Majors like Doge and she you know which got both got into the top 10 recently and then now like Pepe and whiff and Bon emerging across eth and salana and now they're they're in the top 60 top 70 crypto tokens by market cap and they're starting to really creep up like what we're seeing is Pepe has its leg up or Bon has its leg up like that's the major meme coin mover and then we're starting to see it

trickle down like okay then the next tier starts to run and then it goes down to like the micro caps and the Nano caps it similar to how like the nft like weekend Cycles played out in 2021 like that that summer like fenzza would run on Thursday Friday and ringers and then it would go down to like the next tier of generative art and like they would run on Saturday and then Sunday it would be like the lowest tier and then everyone would reset and it would happen again it's almost like we're kind of speed running through these cycles and it it is you know interesting to watch and of course it's it's interesting to think about from from you know everyone has an opportunity cost decision an investment decision to make do you want to play with this hot ball money is or do you want to play in nfts and there's

also like there's such differences between the three primary nft ecosystems right now with salana ethereum and Bitcoin and ethereum feels like so established and especially that the pfp aspect of it like a lot of those have had their initial trajectories and it's harder for a new entr to try to come in and buy a board a that's already had the run from one to 150 and now all the way back down over on salana you know you've got like half dozen dozen interesting projects but it feels like it's still somewhat in its infancy with respect to really interesting projects and then now you've got this well I'll call is still a pretty brand new nft ecosystem in ordinals on bitcoin and that feels like to me where

perhaps the most opportunity will be in this cycle and it's not being there is no farmer overhang with you know Marketplace incentives just yet like we're seeing with with blur on eth or like we're seeing uh with tinser and now magic Eden on salana which has kind of which has certainly impacted those ecosystems and how the assets are traded it's a little bit cleaner right now on bitcoin but also if folks remember that 2021 cycle on eth it was great for January and February and then it was very slow March April May and crypto had its time in the sun and it feels like we might see a very similar scenario play out right now where it is crypto meme

coins you know time to run the foreseeable next few months and then perhaps one or all these ecosystems uh from an N perspective will start to to see their demand but I'm not sure it's going to be really even across all three yeah de maybe you could share a bit about um your story almost as it relates to and and how you're thinking because you you you've you've run up twice right you you made went all in in crypto 2017 made a bit Lost It All by the end of 2018 I think is how I understand the story right pandemic hits start buying a bunch of kind of altcoins and nfts and things like that make a whole bunch of money lose a decent chunk of it um as I understand it maybe and then you know

now now you're on kind of cycle three here like how do those um yeah how does that experience inform like when are you actually going to sell these me coins like when do you sell these nfts would love to hear that yeah I grew up um loving roller coasters I went to Cedar Point every summer and um I'm very good at holding things all the way up and then all the way back down um this time I'm sure I I will take a little bit more profit than I did last time but um it's tough you need a delusional mentality to hold through some of these multiples like it's I mean I'll just use bone as an example I woke up yesterday I saw the 10 soul I put into the pre-sale is where 30 grand and I'm like oh I immediately

need to sell half of this and like that's like my scarred bare PTSD like hey dude you just turned 10 Soul into 30 grand like take some money off the table and you almost need this delusional optimism to be able to hold this thing another like 10 plus X from from there and with that delusional optimism comes the um poor selling timing because like if you're just delusionally optimistic and you think all your things can go to heaven um eventually you'll hold them from from Heaven back down to Hell so I try to have a a plan of just like when I feel in my gut that I'm overallocated I need to sell some uh if I'm sending screenshots I'll I'll trim 10% of the position like I actually did that with

bone I I tweeted it and was like Wow uh this is worth $250,000 and then after that um in the group chat I'm in I was like yeah I think I should actually sell some here because I normally when I look at it like this I'm normally upset the next day when I don't sell some so I I'm trying to you know I I hold a lot of my net worth in um salana and eath like just straight simple Stak salana and E not even um supplying it and leveraging it or doing anything crazy and I think that helps me really ride a lot of these waves without um I mean I'm obviously a person just like everyone else and when you turn a little bit into a lot you want to take some off the table but I'm I'm really good at just trusting the

plan trusting the process and um you know seeing what the [ __ ] happens like it happened with punks and squiggles and a few other things I've been early to and um yeah I I think a lot of the times when you buy things um without the the primary reason being like a high Roi you'll actually make more money than when you're just looking for things that are a high Roi um that's been it's kind of this Paradox of like you don't want to try too hard to make as much money as possible because you actually won't make as much money possible that way yeah I want to move us away from mem coins and maybe into like future of nft world would love to get your guys' take on

this jebs you sent over the um the nft price floor website with the different categories right you've got pfps and avatars historical nfts art gaming utility nfts and metaverse what is your like idea on how nfts end up playing out in this cycle and I'll go around I want to do the rounds like Tyler and dies I'd love to get your take on just like how this nft Market will will play out this cycle and how it looks the same as the last one if maybe just bigger and then how it looks different yeah for sure I mean the one that keeps getting talked about the most and I think has like a high level of uh probability of success in the long run is probably going to be around gaming and it's one of the ones that we just

haven't seen a ton of traction move around to I mean parallels had some great news over the past day but that's one of those areas where 2024 seems to be the year and that's kind of the narrative around like will things spin up here what games are going to get traction what games are going to reach you know a million two million 10 million users at some point and it it does feel inevitable so that's one that I'm watching the most just from like a high beta standpoint for the other categories I feel like naturally you know the nft Market's going to start coming back once the punk spot is like non-stop just selling punks like punks are continually going those are that's probably going to be one of my first like initial signals and like Tyler mentioned I'm going to be looking at ordinals like I'm looking at you know

some projects over in that ecosystem especially ones that are within sort of that historical art-based category and I want to see how those perform initially over time I think once you start seeing traction there there's it just becomes a magnet within that those ecosystems I think there's some areas that you know have been struggling like the art category the Gen art category the the one1 art category they've just had you know some tough periods of time here recently so you know from the artist standpoint I think that's another area that as the whole ecosystem Rises you naturally start to see money flow into those specific areas and then like I said that'll roll into art that'll roll into pfps that rolls into Collectibles the the whole pfp side of the house I think we've seen it evolve over the past

year we've seen it go from more or less like a a Vibes based approach to something more like a brand and you're seeing folks like like Luca build out actual Brands Within these specific nft ecosystems so this cycle it'll be interesting to see if sort of the Lindy pfp comes back the sort of no promises it is what it is this is the group that you're sort of belonging to or if you end up seeing really more of the you know there's a sort of single individual entrepreneur he's they're running a brand they have marketing initiatives they have products they're holding events they're garnering attention within the space there's also room for an entirely new narrative to spin up I think as we've seen in the nft space

it's it's kind of like watching a kid soccer game right like one kid kicks the ball everyone runs to the ball like one kid kicks the ball right everyone runs to it and I I think that's similar in mcoin space and then nft space it's kind of like the general crypto nft attention space right like it's just it's all about attention and as the whole group runs to it they kind of leave whatever kids were left you know in the last spot JS maybe one thing I I'll jump in on I've got a few thoughts so you know we mentioned like you mentioned in gaming like this is kind of the Year where like it needs to happen and we need to start seeing some results I feel the same way with some of the the utility or the the pfp projects which are really trying to you know expand the

brand via top of funnel and I'm not saying like in three or six months but you know the argument for pudgy Penguins right is that pudgy toys are kind of top of funnel it's going to bring more eyes into the ecosystem at some point they convert to users I think of course the other aspect is is another ongoing Revenue stream or you don't have to extract money from the collective base which I think that is super important um but also like if we get to the end of 2025 the end of a two-year cycle here and if we're not really seeing much conversion on on that then like did did the idea work I mean it's still like the revenue can't be discounted but I think that whole concept is is certainly going to come under a little bit more scrutiny

perhaps in the next couple years then of course we've got Gary ve some the other big news it kind of got buried this week in all of mean corn Mania but he's teamed up with the Coco melon the team behind Coco melon to launch a V series children's show and that that's about the biggest partnership you can land but then it had zero impact on the on the price of vends which I thought was very interesting because back in in 2021 of course if Gary ve just showed up if he just got in a Project's Discord that was enough to to pump a project 2x so it kind of shows where things have gone so I think we're coming to a head a bit in that area it's gonna be interesting to see how it plays out for for sure yeah I think one of like the

counter indicators for me recently was when that alien sold and we really didn't see a ton of punk traction Punk movement you know if that would have H to your point like there were certain activities that would happen in 2021 2022 that would just cause absolutely parabolic effects like G ve popping in or someone coming in you know he he kind of started a number of different movements including like the purple hat movement Within punks and gaining a lot of traction within that group um do you think it's a mistake for these some of these nft collections to actually try to like bring utility absolutely I think for most of them it's a mistake I think a lot of the founders don't know what they're getting into and they're just trying to make the price go up and they make a whole bunch of promises they can't keep with ideas

that are half baked or quarter baked and they just get lambasted for it um I'm personally not buying any nft project for the utility um it's just I hold a couple that I've held for a while like um just say like forgotten runes and pandas and Pudgies and that but I'm not speculating on nfts for future utility because I feel like that is the um easiest way to get burnt as a Speculator I think 90% plus of the uh project founders of nfts are just completely fullish they had no idea what they were doing they got in nfts in 2021 2022 to make some money because they saw everyone else doing it now they're stuck with this community of 10,000 or or more some of these have 30,000 Plus nfts in

them with holders they need to uh make happy and I don't want any part of that yeah I mean we saw what happened with Kevin rose right seems like he's walking away from Moon Birds what what do you guys think of that not surprising um as somebody who uh traded Moon Birds very early on and did well and then bag held one all the way down to the end I am not surprised in the slightest I think there was never really that grand of a vision it was just much more of a hey this is a really opportunistic thing uh to do at this period in time and we already have some success with the art side of things from what we were doing before so yeah like let's get you know I'm Kevin Rose I got a eight fig nft collection this is gonna

go great and uh yeah now now we're now we are where we are you nailed it was so funny about how like more I think more information is starting to come out now is just making it a little bit the picture is becoming more clear clear and these actually I I roundt tripped five Moon Birds held them all the way up to the 40 eth floor $100,000 and didn't sell for a long long time so still a little painful um but like project highrise was this big Vision like at one point that was like the whole Vision a core part of the utility of the proof and moon Bird's ecosystem and now it's kind of coming out that there that wasn't even a real project like they had an artist do a couple renderings and there was never even like a real Tech Team working on it it wasn't even like

being seriously worked on with resources beh behind the scenes and I think it just goes to to show that he never really was as serious about it as perhaps we thought or led to believe and I think you could if you really read the tea leaves I think you could have picked it up but I think a lot of us just had the hopium that no there there's got to be something more going on to this and the reality was uh just there wasn't the was in the same boat Ryan Carson was the only signal you needed um if you remember early Moon birds and Ryan Carson it was very clear it's like did did they even I I'm actually surprised that you guys kind of like fell into this moonbird moonbird trap and not to say like you know Monday morning quarterbacking but like it does feel

like there's a stark difference between what I would call the crypto native nfts and the nfts that are built by Outsiders um and I don't know like I when I'm when I'm looking at like like if I I mean I'm probably talking my own book here but like the nfts that I own right it's like madlads torans like Pudgies uh bad kids like the reason I like these so much is like people who are actually deeply crypto native own these and like there's a lot of respect I would say for them and then there's a whole another bucket where it's like board Apes moonbird auki like I don't want to bad talk you know a bunch of nft collections but like where it's kind of a bunch of Outsiders who came in in like 2022 and then they're just like you know

hosting crazy parties in Miami but none of them are actually like real crypto people what do you guys think about that dichotomy I think for Moon Birds the trade was that you're going to exit on 30 to 50y old white dudes with too much money for their own good like the trade was hey this just minted for two e they're trading for 8 to 10 eth I think these idiots are going to run it up let's get on the ground floor and dump on them hopefully soon um and it kind of worked because they went to 4 eth um but then we had this era of like well maybe Kevin does know what he's doing um so that's why I held because it was like okay if he knows what he's doing I've booked hundred plus thousand in profits whatever I'll hold this one and free roll it it's a shame

honestly like that whole the whole project there was I think I want to say that's like top 10 most hyped up nft projects of all time um and it was there was just so much attention on it at that point you know when we go back to it's all about attention everyone was focused on the moon Birds launch um I meic hyped garbage too I mean we had uh Mecha verse we had yeah ha ha Prime um we had invisible friends like we had multiple pre-reveal nfts from Outsiders that most of which I had never heard of trading at 10 e um it was just a really stupid time yeah but the goal is it's the goal has never

changed I think for the Traders which is I'm gonna buy here and I'm gonna sell this for 10x and that's just kind of how it's going to work that was honestly I knew a lot of people buying Moon birds at that time was the plan it was like we're going to get on ground floor and honestly they ran up I think most people at one point in time were in like heavy profits it's just I think when they came when they came down they came it was like it was pretty pretty violent I think they they were up to 40 so uh 40 E floor at one point like it was a $100,000 pfp it's crazy Tyler go ahead yeah I mean it wasn't so a couple thoughts it wasn't even like a 40th FL like it was it was a liquid 40th FL like

the sales bot was 36 36 38 like we had never really seen at that point in time that kind of liquidity and it just like one one of the lessons was like it comes back to the core point you know that was a two two and a half e mint right it was very expensive it was a huge raise people will pay it if they think there is a return on on the table it's the same core concept with ethereum gas fees eth gas fees are are very expensive people will pay it if uh they think that the trade they're entering is going to offer enough Roi to to to offset that now I think the other aspect of this is I think I'm hoping we are a little bit more wey of nine figure nft raises for teams that aren't established or non

or haven't built that trust up yet um I mean we're actually seeing a huge raise today with O and their orange eyes expansion man of course DK shark is has been in space for a bit now but it's starting to happen and on bitcoin I think when we're starting to see more and more uh 10 figure raises that that might be a point in time to say okay where are we at ccle yeah um all right so enough to talk about Moon Birds um how Tyler how do you think about just allocation to nfts right now and you know this uh this kind of pyramid of nfts that we talked about before there's kind of these one of ones there's the pfps and there's this kind of gen art I don't know if those are kind of the three categories that you think about but yeah I just be curious how how you

think about like allocating and how you think about investing right now in in nfts they are and I'm much more of a a momentum Trader so I I like to to trade on attention and the reality is there there is no attention on Art right now and I think one of the one of my bigger surprises I think there was an idea that perhaps pfps would go away after this last cycle that you know there's only 20,000 of us left we have hundreds of thousands of pfps we don't need anymore I think what we're seeing is that the communities that rally around a 10,000 supply pfp project uh is a very important aspect um that you don't get in other types of nft Collections and it's a reason why they succeed is

because you've got this built-in marketing arm and folks consistently on the timeline talking about projects um so so for me like where I've been mostly focused is p collections on bitcoin I think that's the most interesting ecosystem from an investment standpoint to to be taking a look at right now of course January and February were very hot my initial thoughts were that the runes coming in April was going to be a boom for the Bitcoin nfts and I wanted to front run that now starting to think I'm reconsidering that that position based on what we're seeing with meme coins on salana and are we going to have a liquidity rotation into fungible tokens on bitcoin and is that going to

cause a temporary bare Market in the Bitcoin nft system so I'm I'm very actively kind of thinking through that investment strategy here of course across the next few months but with that being said I think pfps will be the the early winner you know we've seen it with node monkeys we've seen it with OMB Bitcoin puppets one of de's favorites there will be an art cycle on bitcoin as well I'm 100% sure of it I think it will come later uh I honestly think there are so many similarities to the 2021 Ethan N Cycle setup to what's happening with in Bitcoin on 2024 I think it very well could play out and that means perhaps an art run later this summer um so I will be position

positioning for that and i' I've been starting to look at some art collections already and accumulating some for me more on the generative side so middle of the pyramid have not gone down to like the one ofone side yet we'll see what that portion of the market really looks like but that's how I'm starting to think about it position jibs what do you think no I think Tyler spot on right like with the whole Bitcoin like uh transition narrative like there's clear that there's interest there it's clear that there's demand for ordinals um and so like the natural rotation into runes right there was an entire brc2 movement um folks you know speculated there they then speculated on ordinals runes naturally seems to be the next category

so the question becomes are people going to migrate from their salana wind over into into this ecosystem because there's you know there's higher upside maybe there's more fair launches maybe it feel feels like a little bit more distributed uh or do they kind of remain within that that salana ecosystem you know yesterday was talking to a team they're building uh defi within the Doge ecosystem so like you know do g20s uh doal are an entirely new category of nft that are spinning up unlike the Doge ecosystem as well so I think as you start to see like these utxo based uh liquid tokens and then nfts Sprout up more there's just more ecosystems I think that people are

naturally going naturally going to want to like build this technology within um but the Bitcoin ecosystem does feel like there's at least some momentum gaining there like the Snowballs brewing and runes might be that Catalyst of like okay I'm gonna kick the snowball down the hill now yeah let's say I am not a traditor so de de it's interesting talking to you and I guess Tyler you you you like both you guys are very actively trading um let's say I'm not a Trader let's say I've just got let's say I've got I don't know bunch of eth or a bunch of soul I don't know it's called 100K or something and I just want to buy and sit on some nfts for this cycle could be art could be 101s could be pfps walk me through how you guys I guess I I throw

this question to all you guys because I want to hear this like how what what is your investment thesis here if you're just if you're just buying nfts I mean I think you have to be honest with yourself with what you're buying and tell yourself am I buying something to support artists or people I love or am I buying something for more of uh you know monetary gain even though I just want to buy it and hold it uh I think most people probably are trying to make a monetary gain they're they're not in the first Camp um for me right now I would look at the blue chips on ordinals um which to me are like no monkeys puppets uh Quantum cat I don't really understand the Maxi Biz as much but I

think you could throw them in there as well that might be a little upper on um the price but I think those are some of the safer bets I think the ordinal ecosystem has less competition and it's more nent and I think these winners are going to I think these winners are more likely to ACR value than um some of the bigger names on eth for example so I guess on the flip side I would say if you want to support artists get into collecting oneone art there is a super vibrant ecosystem with a bunch of artists that you can very easily connect with through Twitter mentions or DMS or what ever way you like to talk to them whether it's going into a telegram or Discord or whatever um but I think some

of those pieces might have the biggest upside it's just the most risky thing to invest in um you know there the people who bought X copies work for $200 and then sold it for millions of dollars the next cycle they weren't buying that artwork because they wanted to make millions of dollars like they were buying that because they saw something in the artist at that time um I think right now for me one of the more interesting corners of the Art Market is the AI Art Market as we constantly see AI Tech get better and better um we're able to see the progression of that field just grow right before our eyes and I think some stuff that might be looked at as historical uh that isn't currently looked at as historical is like a a decent bet um I don't want to

shill any of of my AI art bags I'll just name the the most obvious one which is BTO or to me it's the most obvious one which is BTO um I bought a b 101 last month with some profits I had from mean coins because um to me it is kind of the most unique AI entity it's not really a person per se it is more of a uh Dow or AI art you know ecosystem in which the the holders vote on the outputs and everything but I think there's a lot of breath that you could uh dive into and you really have to you know figure out what type of collector or investor you are if you're someone who just wants to buy a blue chip and you know the most lendy ecosystem that has the most wealth

in the space like maybe look at some ordinals if you're somebody who really wants to connect with an artist or the art community on a deeper level this is like the best time to be buying art because no one cares um and there will be a point in time I think where people do care about art again um I think back of the 2021 cycle we had the Y threads really cementing this overall um kind of cryptoart theme that really took off and sent x copy Hackle coldie and a bunch of the quote unquote supero GS to to new heights I think that'll happen again at the end of the cycle when people are like collect some culture to to show off that you know I'm

a a Savvy person who just isn't here to make as much money as possible Tyler what do you think yeah D make some some really good points and I'm very aligned with like the concept the betting on winners in in Bull markets and in the Art Market it's for me of course you've got the you got the top names right you've got x copy you've got Venza if you've got that kind of a bank roll the other aspect of of the Art Market to be you know very conscious of is dilution and how much art has been created across the last three years because of the this Renaissance that happened in 2020 and 2021 where I'm going with that is Providence is another

fact to to really start considering right when making any investment decisions so like when when de is talking about AI art some of the very earliest AI art nft Collections and one of ones are a way to approach investing in that sector I think for generative art it's the same right like squiggles is the clear like Providence uh index play on generative art and I don't think those plays are ever going to go away of course you know we've seen downturns and whatnot but that's that's how I'm thinking about that sector and it's it's similar approaching the the nft market as well like I'm very aligned with these I think ordinals are the play and it's betting on winners like I'm not in the camp of you know trying to find the Undiscovered gym because it is quite the

opposite of the ethereum in Salon inft ecosystems there there is no delution right now there's really only five or six projects you know that that have any meaningful Foundation uh and communities behind them so you can effectively pick and you can kind of do your research and find out which ones have more Providence than others and I think that's going to be a core driving factor in the market action that we see this year on ethereum it's much trickier and in a more established Market I think one of de's rules is he doesn't like to to overpay uh you know more than like five 10 e for pfps and it's going more Downstream that makes it tougher to buy some of the top end ones um I think you know one collection I'm actually okay to

name drop I don't own a ton of assets in this ecosystem is I think mem land is a very interesting one with what they just rolled out with Stak land and effectively turning holders and meme coin holders into um miniature VCS like and having this project Launchpad that they're going to launch with stakan and provide that access to Holders as a potential flywheel so I think that's an interesting one that that's an area where I would pay attention to because it unlocks more than just nft investment it unlocks different aspects of crypto that might be able to get exposure to depending like where you're at in the market like you may not have access to those type of deals like these are these are tokens that are going to launch on B binance market made with some of nine

gags uh you know colleagues and friends so you know that they will have some some Firepower behind them so that's how I'm thinking about it jebs are you buying any of the kind of classic nfts right now that I'd call them the the ones that are popular on crypto Twitter I don't have a ton to add there on that one other than like step one is just knowing what your risk tolerance is because each of these different categories comes with I think different risk tolerances eth is the clear I think winner when it comes to like holding a majority of the sort of nft pfp value at a high level but when it comes down to it like there even have to think like deeper than that so we're in this massive uh experimentation phase where you're seeing stuff like Pudgies stuff

like pandas um some of these other projects Mand you know for example that are gaining traction by building out the brand trying to figure out like what does having an nft brand and larger Community where you're actually building some type of IP some type of user rights some type of a company around all this some type of a true ecosystem around sort of this this Collective belief in the larger project and I think we continue to see experimentation you know we've seen a bunch of Fortune 500 companies come in make attempts at experimenting uh I would say not many successes there so far but that there's still opportunities for them to come in and figure out how can they actually provide these scarce digital objects to their fans to their customers Etc in

either like meaningful ways where I think you see some wanting to sell pieces for like sort of high value or in the sort of low value high volume ways which is like let me provide you a badge or reward for some type of an activity that you've done uh something you've accomplished something you've purchased authenticity of a good Etc so like on that side of the experimentation H side of the house like I think there's only a handful of projects and so so if you want to go bet there I think that they you know you can sort of evaluate each one see which one resonates with you the most then there's sort of the other side of it on the pfp front where it's like no promises like maybe you end up in a Turkish bath house in New York City at 2 am like it it's hard to say right and so

that's going to be like you know your dick butts your toads your even sort of like your punks Etc where it's more like Community Driven around there's no promises from the project this is Grassroots but maybe it's kind of Lindy if you own one of these or if it's your pfp and someone else in that Community might recognize it a little bit everyone wanted to give a big shout out to today's sponsor Wormhole Foundation stewards of the Wormhole protocol if you are like Santi and I and you play around on chain you know how bad the cross chain experience is today well Wormhole has set out to solve that powering cross chain transfers for over 200 different multi-chain teams including some of the best like Unis

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about on Twitter like becoming like building a micro strategy like company to just continuously acquire Doge as a bet on on this in the scenario where that plays out it's not that far-fetched to to think that there could be an ordinals like ecosystem built on Doge like doal I think is the is the term there's some that already exist right Doge rocks I actually have a few friends who own Doge rocks uh exactly the same concept as Bitcoin rocks ethereum rocks um it's not that far fresh to feel like there could be like a a small nft ecosystem happening on on Doge and is that going to be one of the surprise

Trends you know that comes out of the this Eco je I'm curious if you know any more uh about kind of what's happening or what's being built hop off mute check this out so this is doggy market so I actually went and bought my first doal last night you can see here like there's so there's a handful of these collections right so doal mini dogs doal dogs I think doal dogs right they're the ones with the highest value but these are going for like nearly $3,000 uh you know 1,800 Doge or so and so I I just started I I realized last night like after talking to this team that's building in the Doge ecosystem I was like all right I need to like go get my feet wet of course Dogecoin punks the natural uh first project that makes its

way over to Graffiti you know another blockchain here but I realized I had to get my feet wet with this so I started like diving into it a bit Tyler I'm totally aligned with you you know we're were talking about this yesterday a bit but like at some point Doge I think spikes this cycle and there's a lot of sort of Fringe Niche ways in which it can happen at this point in time but like I think there's reasons for that people are betting on this ecosystem it sort of is like the mecca of memes and you know even when you go and look I was looking at top meme coins yesterday just to see like where does Pepe where does whiff all these different tokens you know line up with them like how big do you think I just say what percentage of Doge do you think you know Pepe is take

a wild guess it's like 15 to 20% it's even less than that it's crazy it's like it's probably like close to 10% here let me share my screen quick and so like it's insane how much Doge and shib have advantages over these other meme coins at this point in time but you know I wouldn't be surprised to see some of these eventually move up a bit the one thing I'll say here too is like Doge if you start to look at a bunch of these doge is really the only one too that supports its own layer one so in my eyes it's it's kind of like a pure meme coin it has its own layer it's starting to get its own infrastructure built on top of it and so if you can build out you know Doge defi Doge nfts

Doge culture uh further than it already exists like I I actually do see a world where that becomes a really interesting ecosystem guys let's uh let's move away from the trading side of things into kind of the the market structure of nfts so openc obviously was the was the king of the last cycle um and then we've seen a bunch of upst kind of eat into that market share over time right magic Eden ate a lot of the market share magic Eden's now dominating on bitcoin with ordinals uh T tenser obviously dominated on salana kind of ate a lot of that market share away from Magic Eden we saw blur come onto the scene as this kind of like Pro platform uh Dez uh maybe I'll throw this one to you like what do you

think the who who who are you impressed by here and like what do you think the kind of Market structure for nfts is going to look like in maybe you know let's call it 12 24 months yeah I mean uh I guess full disclosure I'm a angel investor in blur U that's the platform I I probably use the most um I I really just go to wherever the liquidity is with the best user experience like I'm pretty much a mercenary when it comes to marketplaces I don't really um you know particularly like love magic Eden for example but it's the only place I can go trade ordinals so I'm I'm fine using it um um and on the salana side I I end up using tensor over magic Eden

because it reminds me more of blur and I like having more of those um like charts and data analytics uh rather than just like bigger pictures so I'm unsure I think the the marketplace Wars could get more interesting I think we're starting to see a bunch of the retroactive rewards trying to pull people in we had the magic Eden um whatever diamonds or whatever the [ __ ] they're called like rewarding eth Traders back to 2017 U which I thought was an interesting thing to try to get you know people to use their platform I'm sure we're gonna probably have more of that we have this tensor airdrop coming out I think soon they announc that um and yeah I mean for me as a a collector I'm just

very thankful that we have so many different options where we get rewarded for using the options I think um as a collector you want to try every option possible to figure out what's best you don't really there there's nothing there's no reason to be loyal or to pledge allegiance to any Marketplace um it's really about trying to go where you have the best user experience and pay the lowest amount in fees uh so I don't know how that's going to change over the year I'd like to see open see do something it just seems like they're going to lay on their back and [ __ ] die um which is impressive but also sad other than that I'm sure uh there will be some other stuff I can't even guess that will happen as people try to viy for the volume especially if nfts

come back like if we see nft and flows go back to what they were in 2021 um I think you're going to see more marketplaces trying to get a chunk of that volume yeah what do you guys do you think that there will be one platform that kind of ends up dominating across a bunch of chains or will it be like all right you know magic Eden is like the platform for ordinals um blur is the platform for eth tensor's the platform for salana what do you think that maybe jebs i' throw this to you yeah I mean like d said before I think it's a very transactional business like I'm bringing NF I'm trying to buy nfts I'm trying to sell nfts and so incentives drive a majority of human behavior and so when it comes down to earning points or using a protocol

that's going to reward you versus one that's not going to I think most people are going to opt into the one that is choosing to reward them for using that product bringing their volume there Etc so I I don't have a clear thought on like who the winner is I know I I know Tyler had some tweets on using like the magic Eden wallet andh how how how seamless it is you know across all the different chains and different protocols and stuff so I'd be curious you know your thoughts on that Tyler the magic Eden come up here has probably been one of my biggest surprises of 2024 so like in in s-day volume just to share some numbers right now magic Eden is number one by all marketplaces with 39% 195 million blur is number two with 28% market share Open

Seas in third with 9% okx uh basically with their stringle hold on the Eastern Market uh 8% tsers fifth at seven 7.7% um this was shocking to me when I first found this txo dashboard and started really diving in to this so a couple things that have surprised me so one ensor came out and they just started dominating Salon I think they ran up to about a 70 to 75% market share they've lost it they've lost it back to magic magic has now regained market share on salana and I I think I can objectively say like that tinor has a better

technical Marketplace product it it is a better suweet to trade nfts than what magic Eden is offering I think my takeaway there is just tokens and incentives Trump everything else uh and it's it's playing out before our eyes um I think it's going to be very interesting interesting to see like when all the incentives are gone the tokens are all out on the table like which Marketplace is going to win I think for me if blur was cross chain they would they would likely be the winner I think they've got the best trading experience doesn't seem to me that they're they're trying to do that um so I think we're probably going to be operating in a fragmented World Magic Eden has a leg up right now in a fragmented ecosystem because of that wallet and being able to

Bridge and swap currency across the three Majors so and Bitcoin uh all within one wallet and never have to leave their Marketplace that that is saving serious steps and if they're able to kind of work out some of the Kinks and get the tech working and fluid uh that can be a pretty big Edge so if I have to bet on one of these marketplaces to still be the winner in three months I think I'm still betting on Magic Eden in nine months or 12 months uh I'm not as sure I think we will'll have to see how how it plays out yeah I think um not to get in any specifics but just a lot of other marketplaces that aren't magic Eden are looking at what magic Eden has done with

ordinals and being the first mover and I I don't think that they're all just going to let magic Eden uh eat that whole cake for themselves so I'm definitely expecting um more competition in the the ordinal space in particular for sure I mean feels like they caught Magic a bottle on that one just like the perfect timing the perfect kind of wall the perfect narrative upswing and then that the diamonds program I mean that is in some ways you know the meme was like that's the Open Sea airdrop like like they went back and effectively like vampire attacked all those users and uh it'll be interesting to see how they continue to build out that Suite this was not on my bingo card either Tyler like I I was incredibly

surprised by this one and it's it's actually been you know it's an incredibly pleasant experience using it so I'm excited to see where they go with that it's good it's bad like that so like the users will win with more competition perhaps in the short term but we've seen how these farming incentives can wreck nft ecosystems and I feel like Bitcoin in ordinal is like so pure right now and so clean I'm actually quite terrified uh for what incentives will do and the unintended consequences it might have in that Eco but you Buck if if you guys were open C what's the way to what's the way toh Save open C because yeah looking at this one month volume you've got blur who is you know dominating on eth Magic Eden so 60% Bitcoin 30% salana tenser

100% salana okx Bitcoin and then open C is down at fifth what's the what's the way to solve open C if you're open C token to token right like other than token I think the only other option is is is owning the cross chain experience somehow and like you you got to support Bitcoin salana and E and You' got to be able to make the swaps happen behind the scenes and it's going to have to be the best user experience I'm not even sure if that is enough but I think that's the first step yeah I think it's tough I think a lot of people expected a token I think their fees are the highest um could could lower those they already they made

a stand and then they backtracked on their stand and then they made a stand again uh yeah I don't know maybe maybe take uh some of the they raised and give it to Holders like I really don't know I feel like vibrationally ever since that uh I know they didn't raise 13 billion but I think they raised out of 13 billion valuation they feel like it's been downhill from there I just feel like they're so quiet I'm like what do you got like say something they fired half their team not but a lot of people fired half a lot of people fired half their team quietly um open seat there was just like firing half your team in the bare markets honestly everybody did that um so that's not I think the problem the problem is like like what are you doing I just haven't

heard a single thing from open C I'm like say say something like who's running that place right now the the signal that I've gotten and I think that everyone here is resonating with is like complacency they this is going to go down potentially as like a classic textbook example in in web 3 where like if you're complacent people are going to come and hunt and like come eat your lunch and so you really need to remain competitive you need to be constantly copy trading like there was that period of time do you remember when blur and Open Sea were kind of going back and forth on royalties and I mean they got into that whole battle with that and and blur ended up really winning winning out out of that competition and so you know now we're seeing magic Eden come up and

bring bring a little bit more diversity and its in its uh chains and holdings and providing that out to traders to to me if I'm if I'm you know open see I'm looking at the competition and going like what can I be doing to be competing with with these other chains why are they attracting so much attention why are customers coming here Etc and and you have to be agile and Nimble you know in the space yeah do you guys have any excitement around some of these companies doing remember at the kind of Pico top There Was You Know Reddit uh Starbucks Disney you know a lot of these folks kind of getting into nfts some some of them have actually kind of lasted right Disney's doing their Disney Pinnacle I think it's called and

Starbucks kept doing their thing but do like these kind of Enterprise you know digital Commerce nfts make that world better like does that bring you guys any excitement or or no I can I can pop in here first uh just talking about Pinnacle and some of these other apps going back to like when choosing you know which direction to go into that falls heavily into the experimentation phase and that's specifically like corporate experimentation with nfts with Collectibles Etc the Disney Pinnacle app is interesting right that that's run by Dapper and Disney together Disney fans right if you go to a Disney park park at Disney Cruise they have the pin shops where you can go in you purchase pins you can trade pins there's old ones there's rare ones there's common ones

Etc that that attract higher value or maybe lower value and so they effectively recreated that whole program through Disney Pinnacle but it's purely digital so you go through you can buy what looks like a loot box and each loot box is themed so it might be Star Wars Rogue one it might be Disney villains Etc uh you purchase it for $7 there's maybe like five different pins and then four tiers of each pin that have Associated Rarity and from there like it's unclear where this goes to right imagine the next step would be to have a marketplace where people can buy sell trade these I think if you're Bob Iger and Disney you have to consider how can you build out experiences with these like if I go to the Disney park and I have these digital these digital assets

what what does that open up to me at the parks um and then how can I also trade these with other people um I think there's a really big opportunity for that to become something that adds value to the larger brand and experiences that you have with yourself your family Etc as opposed to just becoming like digit de I'm assuming you you don't get too excited about this Tyler uh any any excitement around these or yeah I'm in this similar Camp I think initially when he started rolling out I had like the same kind of pie in the sky top of the funnel like this this will convert a a% percentage of users into the broader ecosystem I don't really know that we've

seen that pan out yet and it's still pretty early I think where it potentially gets interesting is if some of these projects do kind of tie in the financial aspect and I think that if that's not really ever plugged in if any of the the Disney Collectibles or the the OG star starboard star Starbucks stamps they don't have the monetary value if they don't have a few splashy sales I don't really know how it converts folks into the the the nft trading environment uh that we that we know about and have been talking about so far on the show so I think we're still waiting for it to happen we saw bits and we saw glimpses with Reddit right like when some of those low serial some of the rare Reddit avatars started

selling I think that caught a lot of folks attentions so I'm I'm not ruling it out um but for me it's it's got to be something more like that we have to see some demand for rare Collectibles for to to really start uh Garner up more attention in chatar yeah um de maybe I'll throw this question to you how do you think about buying uh a collection like let's say you find a pfb collection so I saw I think you were buying node monkeys the other day like do you buy I just be curious how how you actually buy it like do you sweep the floor do you try to find a Grail do you just do it by a trait that you like and you think is cool yeah like two years ago I was on a mushroom trip and this quote came to me

that is uh floors are for Flippers and ceilings are for fans and I think that is the best way to describe how I buy you know 95% plus of the time I'm a flipper I'm not a fan and I'm just trying to buy the cheapest of the collection so that I can sell it for the cheapest amount later on and I don't get caught up in oh dude it has like you know it's top 2.5% Rarity I mean this combo a traits there's only two of them with the 3D glasses and this hat like that's just a recipe to burn yourself uh for node monkeys in particular I have one node monkey that's a hoodie node monkey that I bought the first night and

I bought that one because I'm like I'm a fan of this collection I need a hoodie I need to show off that like I'm not just trying to flip this one and then every other node I bought was a floor um very similar with the puppets I bought one MOG glasses that was a little premium over the floor because I wanted a MOG glasses but then every other note I bought was just or I mean every other puppet I bought was just me on the floor um I think 90 plus percent of the time buying the floor is the better move especially if you're mostly buying for uh financial reasons it's just I've seen it too many times where you can 10x the floor and if you would have bought the rare you would be lucky to five exit and you could have just bought 10 floors for

the price of the rare and you would have had an easier job executing to get out and you would have made more money so I think just most of the time you you have to go with floors unless you're a massive fan of the collection in which that's when you buy the Grail cool awesome guys um anything else you guys wanted to cover yeah know I have a question for you as as like an nft founder with with permes around blockworks how do you approach sort of creating an nft cultivating a group Etc like and your experiences as being sort of a owning an nft collection that has you know Associated value brand value uh value Etc um yeah it's a really uh yes so we

so we launch permes for contacts for people so we have this conference that we do with bank list and uh we launched these nfts called permes and instead of this like classic 10,000 pfp collection we launched 555 and the reason for that is um the permes basically existed to be the VIP ticket for the first ever permissionless right if you owned a permy it got you uh uh a VIP ticket for permissionless um and everything that came with that we did that permes night the night before the event it was amazing um and then it also has a lifetime pass for the conference right so if you know that you're going to come to permission list for a few years owning a peria actually will ultimately save you money where we it was it was really good and really bad I would say

um maybe not really bad but like there were some big learnings from launching that and I've talked about it on Empire a little bit before but um I don't think the business I don't think when when you have especially when you have a 555 collection and JS we've talked a little bit about this like we thought about it as like a way to make money right and it's definitely not that especially with royalties going away like I don't think that these collections are just like it's not a big enough line item for Block Works to be a big Revenue generator that we should be paying attention to where I do think it's really beneficial is um where I do think it's really beneficial is like this kind of cult following and community that it ends up generating so we've kind of shifted in the last probably three

months to think about perm is less of like hey this is a you know something a revenue generating opportunity for us that's going to make a boatload of money and more of like hey we now have 555 like real true fans of blockworks like these people like there's a permes telegram chat these people like they will review our Pro like they are they're just DieHard blockwork stands I would say they'll come to every event that we do they'll fly across the country to come to permission list they'll review our products before they're live they give us feedback on podcasts like they are just stands and so we want to basically we're actually kind of like figuring out permes 2.0 right now and I think you know you guys will probably see something around permes 2.0 and what I want to do is kind of make it this like yeah make it this

kind of access pass for like permissionless and Empire and different things like that but not not treat it as like um yeah how we were before which is like oh we can use permes to go make a whole buch bunch more money it's more like hey we can leverage this community where they can get all these things that blockworks offers um but block what blockworks can get is like this diard community so yeah I don't know that's that's how we're treating it nice yeah glad you're think glad you're thinking deeply about it we are we are um I don't know I've been very impressed by like I mean I said the nfts that I own but it's like I've just seen what madlads has done with um I

mean they've built a whole business right with back back off of madlads uh tensor I'm not sure tensor would be in the place they they were without torans like they have a DieHard community of these Toran holders um yeah if you look in the say ecosystem there's like we bump who created um I think it was lighthouse yeah kind of symbolic play like building that infrastructure in the ecosystem yeah so I don't know we're excited right on for dealing with my Wi-Fi yeah yeah no I was just going to add like the wicked crinian anecdote and like this idea of like cult fandom um it is probably one of the most core in foundational use cases like there there's still a group of wicked Cranium holders like this this archaic project

from 2021 that had a short stit in the sun um basically went to zero but like the they're still like going to concerts they're still like actively utilizing the utility of that project is still a Vibrant Community and it's cool to see um and I think that that aspects community building and and then you know Founders getting benefiting from that as well as the community finding ways for them to benefit is going to be a continued use case that we see through this next cycle so it's cool to see and excited about peries 100% cool guys D's appreciate it jebs Tyler appreciate you guys this is fun pod thanks Jason thank you so much for having us man thank you hey everyone Thanks for tuning in to today's episode don't forget to claim

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