Bankless - 2 - Zeneca_33 | Overpriced JPEGs

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Zeneca_33 is an NFT influencer, thought leader, and community member (whatever your preferred term is). After playing poker professionally, Zeneca fell down the NFT rabbit hole in early 2021 and has quickly amassed a huge following. His takes are often sobering and always even-keeled, which is incredibly valuable in this emotional and chaotic market. We knew Zeneca had to be one of the first guests on the show. His wisdom and knowledge are reality checks for any type of market, and we go through his approach to the space, how he picks projects, and his own project - ZenAcademy. ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://jpegs.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overpriced-jpegs/id1591954323  SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/5G2HSDneVg8mZUQ3zUIoLX?si=6d57ee1f89184974  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 👀 ZERION | YOUR NFT PORTFOLIO https://bankless.cc/Zerion  💸 ONJUNO | YOUR CRYPTO PAYCHECK https://bankless.cc/OnJuno  🌊 INDEX COOP | METAVERSE INDEX https://bankless.cc/MVI  🦄 BLOCK::BLOCK | METAVERSE IP https://bankless.cc/blockblock  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 3:00 Zeneca_33 8:08 Distaste for Roadmap 11:12 How Zeneca Picks Projects 16:11 Approaching the Market 25:07 How to Flip NFTs 30:08 Art Blocks 39:30 Veblen Goods 44:44 ZenAcademy 56:59 Network Effects 1:01:11 Advice to the Community 1:07:40 Culture & Ethos 1:13:09 Closing ------ Resources: Zeneca_33 https://twitter.com/Zeneca_33?s=20  ZenAcademy  https://zenacademy.io/  Studio by Hatch Coding https://www.hatch.art/for-ages-9-17  Blitmap https://www.blitmap.com/  Top Dog Beach Club https://topdogbeachclub.com/  Curious Addy’s Trading Club https://www.curiousaddys.com/  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Hello, welcome to another episode of overpriced JPEGs. I'm Carly Riley. And today on the show, we have Zeneca 33, the NFT influencer, best known, I should say, as Venica 33 online. Zeneca's fantastic. He was one of the first people that I reached out to for an interview. I've followed him for a while. He's just a wealth of information and wisdom when it comes to NFTs and this space in

general. I think he's a really good person for beginners in particular to turn to. But I also think if you've been in this space for a while, he's just a great person for those reminders that we all need to hear sometimes, those like truisms that we can forget when we get too deep down the NFT rabbit hole. So he's delivering a bunch of those in today's episodes. He's going to talk about what he looks for in an NFT project. He's also going to tell us what he doesn't care about when it comes to an NFT project. And some of those might surprise you because he doesn't care about things that I think sometimes we're told we're supposed to care about. And we're also going to break down some specific projects like art blocks. If you've been wanting to understand art

blocks better, Zeneca breaks it down for us. He also recently launched his own NFT project. So at the time that he and I recorded this, the project hadn't launched yet. Subsequently now, it has launched so you can go check that out. I will put a link to it here. Anyways, enjoy the show. Enjoy Zeneca. I so enjoyed this conversation. But before we get right into it, here's a word from our sponsors. Everyone is talking about the Metaverse these days, and we're all still trying to figure out what it actually is, because everyone is looking for how to get exposure to it.

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Hello. Welcome, Roy, who people probably know much better as Zeneca 33. I am so incredibly excited to have you on the show. I'm really excited to have you early on this show because I think what you do so well on social media, on your substack, in your podcast, in your podcast, podcast is really just share kind of broad wisdom about the NFT space and how people should think about it. You're really honest about what it can be like being deep in the NFT space. So I think you're a great way to kick off this show in general and for anybody who's coming at it a little bit new or is a few months old in this space. I just think you're a vessel of wisdom. So thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be part of this for sure. Love it. So I want to start off easy. here with your background. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into NFTs? Sure. So before NFTs, I'll start there. I was a professional poker player for 15 odd years. So I basically went from high school and into poker. So obviously, that's an unconventional career. And it has its whole stories and ups and downs. But it sort of made the transition from

my life as a professional poker player into crypto and NFTs, a little more. more seamless than most because I didn't have like a traditional job. I had to quit. I just started becoming more interested in the space. You just started gambling with with JPEGs instead of cards. So I sort of got into crypto a bit in 2016, 2017 at like a lot of people. And then when that big bear market hit, it just, you know, you lose interest. Number isn't going up anymore. And I didn't really have that conviction and attachment to the tech and like the underlying, you know, revolutionary stuff going on. So I went back to poker. And then start of this year, 2021, again, prices were going up again and people started getting more interested in crypto. And so yeah, so did I. And I had a couple of

friends who were, they'd sort of been in the space, you know, for the last five, five years. And they were telling me about, you know, hash masks and NFTs and, you know, thousands of dollars these JPEGs, Cryptopunks. And obviously I'm sitting here thinking, you know, they're getting scam. They're in some Ponzi scheme. This is all ludicrous. What are they doing? And, you know, I sort of dismissed it as I think a lot of people do. immediately when you hear about, you know, millions of dollars for a crypto punk or, you know, even thousands of dollars for anything. Yeah, 67 million dollar people or whatever. Yeah, exactly. That was those sicker shock. I think that had a lot of people that broke into the mainstream.

It was like, yeah, yeah, that was a big one. Yeah, but, but eventually, like, they kept talking about it. And I was like, hang on, these are really smart people. I know that. They've had very, they've had a lot success in life. I shouldn't just dismiss it. And at first, I was genuinely concerned that they were getting scammed. But like, are they actually, you know, because you have friends or people that get into like cults or like Muslim level marketing schemes and all sorts of stuff. And smart people can get into that. But yeah, I was like, hang on, these are really smart, you know, critical thinkers and let me just do some research. And that sort of was the turning point where I think I read an article by Paki McCormack on his substack, not boring, called Power to the Person. And it was all about like the creator economy

and what NFTs can unlock for artists for. coders for game designers for everyone really and that really was the turning point for me and ever since then it's sort of been yeah just last eight months all nfts uh i went from you know being an outside looker and then getting into the trading aspect buying and selling flipping and then i started creating content with my newsletter and my podcast and just all of it and um yeah now i know i have my own entity coming out in the in a couple of weeks and i'm sort of transitioning more towards the building side and the flipping per se. But yeah, I mean, I just, I love NFTs and I'm really invested in the space, not just financially, but like in terms of the conviction I have in the longevity of it and

the revolution it is creating in the world and it's going to keep creating for many, many people. And yeah, I'm all about NFTs, I guess. So with the creator economy piece, that's where the click moment happened for you with NFTs was once you realized how creators could own their work in new ways. Is that is that a fair way to say? Yeah. So it was that was a huge part of it. And it was also just the idea of a true digital ownership and how I mean that sort of the creative economy is born from the fact that we can now own assets in the digital space in a way that we never could before. And it's sort of maybe understand, hey, okay, so maybe these crypto punks that have been around for years were the first real like generative big project. I can understand now why

they may be valuable because, you know, in 10, 20, 50 years from now, if millions of people are billions of people, rather, are like investing in digital assets, these very first ones that this all sort of like stemmed from or grew from, they could really be worth a ton in a way that many may not be able to see right now. One thing you've written about that I think is interesting is you've shared, for lack of a better term, a certain distaste for roadmaps, I would say, which is really common in FD project, pretty much every project that drops has a roadmap usually says something like at 25% of the project, we'll do a giveaway and at 50% we'll do a charity giveaway, et cetera, et cetera.

Talk to me about why you're sometimes skeptical about roadmaps or how would you phrase that? Yeah. So I definitely don't like most roadmaps. I think most projects, like we have dozens of NFT projects launching a day, maybe hundreds a week now, which is already ludicrous. But the thing is that Most of them, they're just sort of jumping on the bandwagon and trying to copy the success of previous projects. And they're effectively copying their roadmaps and are not really innovating. And I think that's one issue I have. Like if a project says their roadmap is just sort of what you're saying, 20% would giveaway, 50%, you know, community wallet will be funded. 75%.

We'll donate to charity. That's great. I love that aspect. But it's just like, it's nothing new. It's nothing revolutionary. And, yeah, I just, it doesn't excite me. I see a roadmap like that, but to take a step back, sort of from a bigger picture perspective, even if the roadmap is exciting and innovative and appealing, it's sort of, my issue is that

the NFT space moves at hyper speed, cryptospace moves at hyper speed, but things are changing and evolving so much that I would rather have the creators of a project, the developers, the whoever are behind it, a bit more leeway to shape and adjust to what is happening in the market, what new tech is being created, whatever new thing is being discovered, and shape the roadmap, sort of as make it up as they go along. And the fact that a lot of people in the community want a roadmap and want to know what the project is going to do, and then it's sort of written there, like people buy into the projects saying, hey, this is their roadmap. The creators are then obligated, rightfully so, I think, to deliver on these things. And it may be that some of them

take several months to do. And by the time it's ready to be launched, no one really cares about that anymore. It's like that was the hot thing three months ago. And it's like, I think we saw that with companions, like the board apes had their kennel club companions and the punks had me bits. And that was like a really cool thing to do. And now every project has copied that. And it's just, it's not really that exciting or amazing or innovative anymore. But because they had it in their roadmap, they feel obligated to do it. They spend so much time and energy fulfilling these things that they said they're going to do because everyone seemed to want them. But they weren't really innovating.

They weren't really pushing the boundaries. And that, yeah, I would rather just have like a description of what, what they want to do, like their vision. Like, you know, how they're going to approach. Yeah, exactly high level. And I think, yeah, roadmaps can work, especially if they're, you know, they are innovative. And there is a good team behind it. But 99% of them, I think, I'm not a fan of.

So you've written about how you pick projects. And I thought it was a really awesome piece. on Substack, we'll link to it. What do you look for when you're evaluating a project or when you're getting into a project? So the number one thing I always look for is the people. I look at the people behind the project. So that's the team, the developers, the artists, the managers, anyone involved in the creation of the project, I want to know who they are, I want to know what they've worked on before. I want to know what they're like. Are they good people? Are they smart? Are they thoughtful? you know, do they have the ability to take the amount of money that they're raising,

which is usually quite significant, and use it for good, for the good of the community, for the good of not just their specific community, but the wider NFT community, and just be smart and make good decisions. And so that's the most important thing, first and foremost. It's always about the community. I don't really look at the art that much first off. I obviously don't really look or care about the roadmap, any of that stuff. And then the second thing is, again, the people, but I want to look at,

the community rather than the team behind the project. So, you know, so many of these NFT projects, their success is like lives and dies based on the people that are invested and buying into these NFTs. And so I want to like join their discord and see who else is interested in this project. Why are they interested in this? What are they talking about? And you can sort of tell projects that are sort of built on a house of sand are when the community and even the team sometimes, they're all focused on the price. They just want NOMB to go up. they want people to sweep the floor and delist. And it's just sort of this.

It's not really creating any value of substance. It's just there's nothing there. And those are the sort of like Ponzi NFT projects that are going to crash in. Yeah, exactly. Where it's just about the existing users going, getting new users. Yes, exactly. You get new buyers. And you're like, yeah, yeah.

That's where like these are the projects that when the real bear market hits, they're just going to go crashing down. And, you know, it's a concern. And I worry for people that get into the space that are new. and maybe just get excited and caught up in all of that and invest good money into these projects, not necessarily having the long-term conviction in it or not having a team behind it that's there for the long term. So yeah, I mean, that's sort of a red flag. I don't want to invest in those projects. But if you join the Discord and you chat to people who are interested and they're like,

hey, I really like what this team is doing, the teams there answering questions, they're building something for the future. They have really cool ideas that they want to execute on. and they're listening to community feedback and people are really excited for where the project is going to be in two months, three months a year and they're not really, you know, bothered by the price too much,

then that's just a really good sign. So it really just comes down to the people. And then after that, like, yes, the art is important. Like I prefer if I like it, but you know, art is so subjective that if I don't like it, other people might and if I love it, maybe no else. It's like that is something

that isn't a huge factor. I guess specifically in these big like 10,000 generative projects we're talking about. If I'm buying like one-of-one art or art blocks, then obviously the art is a much more determining factor. But yeah, they're two separate kind of collections. Are there any projects you want to shout out that you think like, hey, that's a great example of you go into their discord, you go into their community, their team is super strong.

They don't care about floor price. What are you on these days that you think are doing that? Well, the one that just immediately comes to mind because they made an announcement like an hour ago is blitmap. And so their founder is, his name's Dom. He was a co-founder of the Vine app, if you remember that, the 15-second videos or whatever. Yeah. He has been in the crypto space for a long time. He's like a true builder, innovator. He really does create awesome products. And yeah, I mean, so that's just one project where no one really cares about the price in there, even though it's on gangbusters.

It's difficult to shout it out because I think the floor price is really high right now to get in, but it wasn't for a long time. I'll shout out Top Dog Beach Club because that's a project that's been around for a few months. Their price hasn't really done anything crazy. I mean, I think at time of recording, it's probably like 0.15th, and they minted at 0.08. So obviously, you know, almost doubling in a few months. That's by many metrics, a smashing success.

But in the NFT space, when people are used to, like 10x, 100x, and they look at that and be like, oh, it's kind of struggling. This space has ruined investing for anybody who's a part of it for all time. I was like looking at something outside of sort of outside of crypto that was like a 20% return, like nearly guaranteed, you know, and I was like, that is such a great return by any normal standard, like hedge funds that have like a 20% return or like on top of the world. And I'm like, oh, God.

Like my $2,000 investment is $100k right now. Why would I ever waste my time? Exactly. 20% is so. It's warped everything. I would love to get your thoughts on the market broadly. You talked about PFP projects versus art projects and how you approach that differently from an investment perspective. Do you have like mental models in your head? This is something I've been trying to build up of like different categories of projects and therefore you kind of think about them differently or price them differently or hey, there's PFP and then there's art and then there's utility. Like what are

those categories to you if you have them? Yeah, I've never really consciously sat down and thought about them, but there's definitely a different approach to the profile big to projects, to the art, especially the one of one art, gaming projects. It would be another big category and then sort of like the utility or membership aspect. And I would say by and large, like the gaming, the utility projects are sort of much more designed to provide value of a longer term. A lot of the gaming projects, they're like obviously takes time and money and work to create a successful game and a lot of playtesting and back and forth. So if they're launching now, but the game may not be released until next year, obviously you need to have a long-term vision,

but I do think gaming NFTs are going to pop off and be huge. And so the approach for investing into gaming NFTs is, again, for a much longer term vision, whereas with these profile picture projects. A lot of them are running on hype and FOMO and short-term basis. And it's much riskier to invest in them because, A, there's just an oversaturation of them in the market. There's just tons of them popping up every single day. And there's just not enough. Like, despite the space growing at warp speeds, there's still just not enough people, enough money coming in to support most of them being successful. So most of them will fail. And yeah, I guess with the profile picture projects, just understanding that it's higher risk.

yes, because of that, you can probably find 10x, 100x gains occasionally, but many projects are just going to crash 99%. Yeah. So I would approach them with a higher risk and the other things with a bit more lower risk. Would you describe yourself as more of a long-term investor or more of a flipper or a combination of the two? Definitely a combination. So maybe like six, eight months ago when I was first getting in, it was more of the flipping side just because I didn't have much of a bankroll. If I put 0.1 or 0.1, really into a project and then it went up to 0.2 or 0.3, it just, it made sense to take that out and then try and find other projects to invest it in. And it got like over time, I became more of a long-term holder. Just as I was being successful at flipping, I was able to say, mint two or three in a project and maybe

sell two of them and hold one for the longer term if I believed in it. And then as time has gone on, I was like minting more, flipping more, and then trying to find projects that I thought were really good for the long term and putting and holding onto them more. And now I'm at a point where I basically do very little flipping, active flipping, like very rarely am I buying things with the intention of selling it soon, if at any time soon. but occasionally I'll be buying things and then selling them a few weeks later. If they go up like 10x, I'm like, all right, I should take some profits just because you should always take profits.

But yeah, now I'm focused more on the really long term and building my own projects and advising other projects. And it's really sort of, it's almost like a weight off my shoulders. I don't feel like I need to be flipping anymore. Like even though there's good money in flipping, I think. And it is fun and it was exciting. It's just, it's also stressful. It's also a lot of time involved and you feel like you're missing something if you're not at your computer 24-7. And yeah, I'm sort of happy to be to have moved on from that.

Yeah, I have to say, so I love you. You've called out Warren Buffett in a couple or maybe just the one, but newsletters in the past. And I got my start. My first job out of college was at a hedge fund that was very much built around Warren Buffett's investment philosophy, which is a very long-term orientation kind of a project. So the flipping thing is very anathomot of me and kind of hard to get into. And I think the thing that makes me fearful about it for people is moments like this where you're having a bear market. And I have a friend who's sort of started to get into NFTs.

And I think she's been a little bit more in a flipping mentality. And this bear market is like, has her kind of freaked. Like I was getting text this morning like, you know, why is it going down kind of? You know, so I wanted to shout out this. quote of Buffett that you mentioned in one of your your your pieces which is be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. Why did you shout that out? And can you speak about that a little bit? And maybe who knows when this airs? It might be a bull run again. Yeah. What people should take away from that here in this bear market? Yeah. So I mean,

it's just the general thesis of that I think is that if you're investing with the mindset of invest evaluating projects for the long term. And if a project has a good team, they're building something and they have like, quote unquote, the fundamentals, whatever the fundamentals are in the NFT space, we're still figuring that out. But I think a good team is a big part of that. Then obviously, a lot of the space runs on sort of hype, fomo, people seeing numbers go up and just wanting in on the action. But the sort of the secondary market prices doesn't really significant. impact the ability of the team and the project to execute on its vision and what it wants to do. Yes, the more floor price goes up and the more volume there is they get a little more in secondary

market royalties and stuff to keep them going. But by and large, they're running off the funds they raise from the initial sale and they have a vision and they're trying to execute on it. So if the project is going along nicely and then, you know, there's a bull market and a lot of people and new money get into space, they find these projects. They're really hyped about them. price goes up because people are really excited. Um, you mean, nothing is really fundamentally changed in the project itself. Like the team is still doing what it's going to do and it's sort of speculated saying, hey, I want to be in this project because I like what it's doing. And then people are just competing with one another to pay more effectively. Say, I'll pay one each to get into this project.

No, I'll pay one point five to get into this project. And then again, the fundamentals haven't changed, but people are just willing to pay more. And I think in those cases, it's just smart to take some profits, takes some money, because inevitably, there will be a market turn, there will be a sentiment shift, whatever reason, maybe if ETH price is pumped like we've seen in the last few weeks, if gas is really high, people get a little spooked for whatever reason, market sentiment will change, and then people will be less excited to be in the project, and that's when, you know, floor prices will start to drop.

People will say, hey, I don't want, I'm not as excited anymore. I will sell this NFT and I want the ETH, because I think ETH is going to go to 10K or whatever it may be. And then, and that's when you see sort of the market tanking, people are undercutting the floor, prices crash and then if they go really far down, that's sort of when people are fearful and I think is a really good buy opportunity because again, nothing has changed in the project. It's still essentially the same. And so you can get what I think of really good buys when the market is fearful, when everyone's panicking, when everyone's selling, largely because the people that are selling either bought in just for the speculative aspect and or because they didn't have

sort of a long-term conviction in the project. So, I mean, there are projects that I bought in, and they've gone up, you know, hundreds of percent and then down 80 percent from their peak. And I'm just sort of not bothered because I'm, I can see that the team and the creators are building things. They're working on their project, and they have like a multi-year vision.

And I think as the NFT space explodes, which I think it will over the next few years, the value will just naturally grow up, go up, and they'll find ways to, you know, build value and people find the project and be willing to pay more to get involved. So from that perspective, I'm like not fast when prices go down a lot in these projects that I have conviction in. But if someone is newer to the space, they didn't do their research that don't have conviction in the project, when prices do go down, then they panic, then they want to

sell, then they worry that it's going to zero. Then they worry that, you know, no one will ever pay more for it. And that's when people are fearful. And that's, I guess, when good buys can be made. Yeah. It was raised professionally with that sort of long-term orientation. You don't worry about the whims of the market on a particular day. But these texts for my friends this morning or this text for my friend this morning kind of reminded me that not everybody else has that perspective. And I think it's a really awesome things. Just keep reminding people like don't let your sense of self or well-being, you know, be dictated by where the NFT market is on any given day. It's down today. It'll be back up tomorrow. If you believe in your projects, don't dump because you're panicking. Yeah. There is, I mean, there is sort of money to be made and like an approach to take, which is much more short-term minded and you sort of like, you can trade with the emotions of the market and swing trade. So as it may be, but if you are doing that, I think it's important to understand that you are doing that

and that you're playing an insanely risky game. Like crypto is risky, investing is an NFTs are even more risky. And yeah, so most people don't have the stomach. it. Most people don't have the knowledge or the, you know, whatever, the wisdom to be able to profitably know what's happening with the market and make these quick flips or swing trades. So for most people, I recommend not trying that approach and not hoping to quickly flip things. And yeah, again, go back to the more long-term minded, I guess, value investing approach. Do you have recommendations for people on where to start if they are even interested in flipping?

like, you know, where to source new projects. What are the good spots to, what are the good people to follow on on Twitter other than yourself? Do you ever recommend that to folks? I get this asked a lot and I still don't have a good answer. Yeah, yeah. I was hesitant to ask it because I'm like, I don't think anyone does. Yeah, that's the issue because, well, so much of it is sort of self-learning. You just need to put in the time, start following people on Twitter, see who you think makes sense

and who you drive with. And yeah, jump into Discord, network, talk to other people in the space. Like, everyone is by and large, very friendly and welcoming and willing to share information and help one another out and sort of like, yeah, lift each other up. But it takes time to just wrap your head around the whole space and see what's going on. And I think the number one piece of advice I give to anyone is just to be patient because it's so it's so enticing and just people want to just jump in and want to buy an NFT. And if they buy one, it's fun and exciting.

They want to buy another one. And they see people around them making, you know, massive gains. But what they don't see because a lot of people don't publicize it is that they're big losses and the mistakes, which are around a lot as well. Yeah. So I recommend to be patient and just take time. It just takes time to just research yourself. And it gets called a rabbit hole. for a reason, right? Like it's a rabbit. You just keep going down and down and down and down. And

you know, hopefully eventually you hit that point where you start to get a feel for it. But it takes a while. I mean, I'm many months into this and I don't, I don't feel like I'm there. Yeah. The learning curve is steep and that's something that we need to improve upon. And I think we are getting better at it. And yeah, over time, we'll have better resources and like a go two place for people to go to to find and learn and educate themselves. Yeah, I know about some projects in the pipeline that are working on these things, which is exciting. Ooh, anything you can share? Sure. I mean, there's secret alpha. Yeah. I mean, they're launching next week. So I don't know when is it going to come out,

but a project I'm advising on is called Curious Addy's Trading Club. And it's, they're effectively their goal is to build sort of like the durolingo for crypto and NFTs. So an app, that, you know, beginners can learn, understand what gas is, what Ethereum is, how to transact, what an NFT is, everything, basically, in an easy to, you know, like just a gamified way, because that's fun and stuff. And it's back to, like, the two co-founders are a husband and wife team who have had tremendous success working on other startups. The husband, Ben, is a Thiel, Theo, fellow from, so he dropped out of Harvard, you got that. Yeah, did the Peter Thiel, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, yeah, yeah. So they've had a lot of success. They know what they're doing. They've built apps and they want to basically create this, basically go-to place for new people to crypto and NFTs. And, you know, it'll take them a while to develop the app and be out on the market. But it's, yeah, that's exciting for me because I would love to say, like, we all have friends saying, hey, you're into NFTs, how do you get in?

And you're like, where do I start? Oh, okay, maybe go to YouTube, watch these, a few of years, he's an article that I found and then ask me questions. And it's like, it's not scalable, but just say, hey, go to this website, look at this app, download this app. Great. So that's really exciting to me. Yeah. There's the like the macro and then the micro. It's like, well, let me first explain to you. We're trying to convince you that this is a legitimate thing. Then step two is trying to start directing you places and it's really a challenge. So speaking of learning, something you've written a lot about that I'm eager to learn more about

and I imagine a lot of other people are as well, is art blocks. I'm familiar with art blocks. I know it's basic breakdown, but I think there are a lot of people who are newer to the space who maybe aren't. And you've written about it, I think, really eloquently. So first, can you give the brief overview if somebody doesn't know of like what art blocks is and sort of how it's broken down between playground and curated and factory and et cetera? Sure.

So art blocks is a platform where generative artists can release their work. And so generative art is basically art that is created by code. So the artist will, they won't just, you know, they won't use Photoshop, they won't use pen and paper. They'll write some code and the code itself will generate the arts. They can, you know, code in a color. They can code in circles and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And they're able to make extremely sophisticated things and pieces of work that look visually appealing and aesthetic and just nice pieces of art. but rather than them creating itself that are generated by the code.

Generative art has been a thing for 50 years, you know, even before computers, people were finding ways to generate art without, you know, physically creating each piece. But obviously, as technology has improved and gotten better on coding, coding has gotten better, people have created more sophisticated versions of generative art. But they had never really been a good way to sell it, to capture it, and create value out of it, because essentially the artists could just run what they would do before art blocks and before NFTs, they'd run their algorithm a thousand times or 10,000 times, look through all the outputs and pick out like 10 that they like the best, and then they would just sell them as prints or like

digital images, but there was no, again, no true digital ownership over it. With NFTs and blockchain technology, what can happen is that, and what does happen with art blocks, is that the artist will upload their code to the blockchain, so it'll be permanently and forever stored on chain. And the user will go to the Applox website, and when they want to buy a piece, they click the Mint button, and it uses the sort of the hash code. So like each the seed phrase, not seed phrase,

but like the seed from the transaction. So each person who, you know, they have a unique Ethereum wallet at a certain time, it inputs it. and the code runs and the output is, you know, a generative piece of art based on this code, but the output is unique. So no one else will have the same output. And the artist themselves don't know what the outputs are going to be until people click that mint button,

until it is generated in real time. And in real time, it is saved to the blockchain. It is this piece of art, this NFT that's created. It is all stored effectively all on-chain. So it's not like a lot of other projects. you buy an NFT and it's sort of the actual image file isn't stored on the Ethereum blockchain just because it's prohibitively expensive to store that much data. But with art blocks, the code is on chain and effectively everything to recreate it is on

chain. So art blocks can disappear. The website can go down. They could pack up and leave tomorrow. And as long as the Ethereum blockchain is around, more or less, people will be able to recreate their art. I mean, there's usually a couple of other dependencies like a JavaScript package. called P5JS, I think, which is a generative art package.

But for all intents and purposes, that package itself is as decentralized as the Ethereum network. Like it's, it's, the code is like locked in a cold storage locker under a mountain in in Norway or something like that. And it's like in, you know, thousands of people's computers. And it's like, yeah, it, you will be able to recreate your art whenever you want. So it's like true ownership in the truest sense. And yeah, so ArtBlocks is this platform where artists launched their projects on their users and collectors can go and buy them and find out what they get.

Like, again, no one really knows exactly what they're going to get by clicking the mint button. So it's a bit of fun experience. And yeah, they've launched a couple hundred projects now. And they sort of split their platform up into three different areas. So there's a curated collection, the playground and the factory. Curated is basically what it sounds like. So the ArtBlocks team themselves will go through all their applications and curate and select the ones they think are the best or the most interesting or unique or whatever it may be and release them under this flagship collection. And they restricted to one a week at most.

Like lately it's been a few weeks since we had the last one to sort of like restrict the supply and keep quality high. And, you know, they go through a curation board. And so it's very prestigious to release under that. And then any artist that has released a curated piece can sort of release a project in the playground, which as it sounds like is just a place for them to try new things, experiment, play and create new art. And, you know, they can launch one project a month there effectively. And then the factory is just sort of everything else.

So if you're a generative artist, you can apply and maybe you don't want to go through the curation process, which can take, and it months, maybe even years now to actually have your work on art blocks in the curator's section. or maybe you're just newer to the space or you don't have the, you know, your work isn't as unique or advanced or whatever to necessarily pass curation, but it's still generative art. It's still cool, interesting. And it passes like a lower bar of curation. And that's where the factory comes in.

And they release multiple projects a week there. And it's a lot more affordable as well. Like for curated, the prices now, you know, several each each usually, maybe less now because of the bear market, but one or two, eth at least. whereas in the factory you can get it like 0.1E for example. So now's the time to buy art blocks. Yeah, probably. So you're very bullish on it and you've written about art blocks specifically a couple of times.

Why are you so bullish on art blocks? Generative art can be created anywhere. What it is about an art blocks stamped piece that you find so exciting? Yeah, so I would say I'm very bullish on generative art as a whole. So there's going to be very successful generative art that has been. not on art blocks as well, created elsewhere, other platforms, other individual artists releasing it. But I just think that generative art as a medium is just going to explode over the next several years, decades even, because it's just the perfect vessel or like this, you know,

this point where art and coding and technology and culture all meet. And it's a thing that wasn't really possible again before blockchain technology. it was sort of still in the early days, I think, of real, what they call long form generative art where you can create 500 or 1,000 iterations or something and sell them. And so yeah, very bullish on generative art in the long term. And I was actually sidetrack. I was talking to someone a couple of days ago who has created a platform for kids to learn generative art. And so, you know, it's sort of like a learning course. You know, I think it's ages 5 to 17 or something. They go on, they click what their interests are, and then it really takes them to the basic steps.

It's like copy and paste, like, tells you the basic code. And it's like, write this in and it'll create like a square that's colored. And then you can add a ball to it and you can move it. And it's like, you know, really teaching the next generation of generative artists. And like, I think that's going to be bigger and bigger as we go on. Is that like an online thing or is that that's in Germany somewhere? It feels like that's the kind of thing that Europe is going to catch on to you before the United States. No, no, no.

You know. Oh, wow. for us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, um, yeah. This should definitely probably be, start being like the school curriculums themselves. We need, you know, much heavier focus on generative art and on computer science and NFTs and crypto in general. And yeah, we'll get there in a hundred years once it's past the time when we needed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I know, yeah, we're getting there. And I guess to get back to it, generative art very bullish, art blocks, it's just already a massive, well-established brand in the generative art space. They have tons of artists that are, you know, many of them very well

respected. Probably all of them. I mean, I don't know them all specifically, but, and yeah, there's tons of people that have really fallen in love with the art and found personal connections with the art and the artists and the platform. And I know that the team, the creator of Snowphrow, Eric, is, he has a really long-term vision, like he wants to build out art blocks and just essentially encourage this whole generative art movement from not just a collector's or a financial or investment point of view. He's more focused on the art and, you know, making that explode. And I think that's really important. And, you know, again, they're building for decades, not just the next month or a year. So I'm bullish on the whole ecosystem.

I want to give a special thanks to overpriced JPEG partner Block Block, not only because they are a sponsor of this show, but also because they are my employer. BlockBlock is an innovative blockchain lab. We work across NFTs and the Metaverse, and our goal is really to push the industry forward with every new project we take on. We founded and currently run the Nebitz Dow, which just partnered with Larval Labs

to create more Metaverse-friendly renderings of Nebitz, which is awesome. We are also partnered with a Sundance Award-winning filmmaker to build the first Dow that will own a feature-length documentary film, we have a ton of cool projects down the pipeline and are really looking for cool people to partner with on this. So go to blockblock.com.io to subscribe to our newsletter and be kept up to date about what we have going on, and also to check out open roles we have available. We'd love to have you apply. Come work with me coming out, blockblock.io. On Juno is your new crypto-enabled financial services company. On Juno lets you get your direct deposit paycheck paid to you in crypto.

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your On Juno account and our friends at Juno will air drop you $50 in Eath when you set up your first crypto paycheck. Sign up at onjuno.com slash crypto to get started. That's on junno.com slash crypto. You taught me the term in your writing via your writing. I'm not going to pronounce it probably correctly, but Vablin or Vablin goods. Viblin, I think. Viblin. Okay. And this gets to the piece you're talking about with branding, which is the Art Block's name has really started to establish itself as a well-known brand in this space, which of course comes with power. And therefore, it's able to create this dynamic of a Veblen good. Why don't you explain to folks what that means and what that is?

Sure. So traditionally with markets, like we all know that supply and demand. If something is in low supply and in high demand, it's very valuable. And then if supply goes up, the existing supply and total supply generally goes down in value, just because, you know, there's more of it to go around and the demand might not be matching it. With a VEbblin good, it, again, I'm not an expert. I found out about it not too far before I wrote that piece, but effectively it's, it goes against that. And it suggests that as in some cases, as supply goes up, price can also go up because it's sort of the brand power.

And like a good example of that is, say, a Rolex watch. Like there are, or whatever, you know, a Louis Vuitton bag or whatever. luxury good that there might be, it's not like they're restricted in supply. Anyone can whenever they want, go out, go to a shop and buy one. You know, they're pumping out thousands, tens of thousands. I don't know how many exactly hundreds of thousands, maybe a year. But because they are considered a luxury brand already, it's sort of as a new person buys in and gets one, they feel like they have this luxury good. They have whatever social status that they may be looking for by getting it. And then now all of a sudden this person is an advocate for the brand.

They're part of the network. They themselves will probably be talking it up and saying, hey, you know, Rolexes. I have one. They're really cool. Hey. And, you know, other people will see that. And it's sort of, yeah, it goes against traditional supply and demand. But I think that in a way, art blocks may, at least art blocks curated, maybe all of

our blocks will be that way where in the future, the case, I mean, it even is still now. but like if someone owns a piece of artworks curated, it's sort of like considered a luxury item. Obviously, it's thousands and thousands of dollars and multiple eth to own one. And they keep releasing more, but it's not really hurting the value, I don't think, of art blocks curated.

It's just, you know, more of the same luxury good being released. And I think you made this point sort of as a response to people who were like, oh, because there continue to be new art block exhibitions and new artists, is there going to be an oversupply problem with art blocks that's going to hurt them in the long run? And I think we in the NFC community maybe are so wired for like, there's only 10,000, right? There's this 10,000 drop. The idea that something is going to continue to be produced over many years, like freaks us out.

And I think that's the wrong perspective. First of all, 10,000 is so tiny. Like there are going to be so many more people that flood into this space. So like supply, I don't think is at all an issue right now we need to be worried about. But I think that point of that. like if you're if you establish a strong enough brand and establish yourself as a luxury good, uh, you are less subject to the, to those kinds of wins, the supply and demand wins. Yeah.

Yeah. So I want to make sure we talk about your project. I think it's really exciting. You have announced you are launching your first NFT project. You mentioned this earlier, said you're, you're excited to kind of get out of the flipping game and start building something. Talk to me about the project. Sure.

So it is effectively the NFT or the token is going to be a membership token. So you'll get access to largely my Discord server. And so I created this Discord server two or three months ago now. And it was free and anyone could join. And I sort of always intended it for it to be free. Like I even had in the back of my mind, yes, I may launch an NFT in the future. Maybe you'll get access to a couple of private channels within the Discord, but the whole Discord will be free. And over the last maybe two or three weeks ago,

I sort of changed my mind and decided to make the entire Discord sort of gated. And you need the NFC to get in. Although anyone who was in at the time, which was like 11,000 people, I said, you know, you're here, you supported me early. You have lifetime access, basically. So I didn't want to, you know, make anyone who had found it have to pay. But the biggest reason for wanting to make the whole Discord gated as it is, is that the NFT space is so wild west Ian to create.

term. It's full of scammers and bad actors and like especially on Discord, people are joining servers and like DMing people with malicious links and posting links in the Discord. And we had a case a few weeks ago where three accounts joined three or four and then one of them posted a link to a project saying, hey, this is minting now. It's really cool. And the other ones were jumping in and saying, hey, I admitted some. Hey, that looks really cool. And so, you know, one of our members thought this was just genuine conversation. They went to the site, minted and lost a little bit of on this scam project. And, you know, obviously I hate to see that.

And by gating it and having this sort of higher barrier to entry, which is not that, I mean, the base token is going to cost 0.033th. So it's like, it's reasonable, I think, for lifetime access to a discord. Yeah. So I think that will eliminate a ton of scammers and that kind of thing. And the other thing is it will just sort of make the whole discord more cohesive rather than having two different sections gated and stuff like that. For the majority, everyone will get in.

And so, yeah, this is a membership token. 99% of people, so I have two different price tiers, but this is the one that I think 99% of people will be interested in. 0.33Eth. And the drop mechanic will be that it'll be an open addition. So there's no restriction on the amount that I'm going to sell, but it'll be open for two weeks. So, you know, anyone can wait for gas to be low.

If they want in, they can wait, take their time, mint. If they want to mint multiple, maybe they can give it to friends in the future. or if they think it'll go up in value in the future, they can do that. But yes, this avoids any sort of gas war, any sort of white listing necessary. And it's not like I'm selling a rare commodity. It's not like every NFT is going to be exactly the same. So it's just going to be a digital letter written by me with some text. The fungible, non-fundable token.

Exactly, yeah. EFC-1155 for the technical ones out there. It's basically what it's going to be. And so, yeah, everyone will be effectively the same, but it's just like a membership card to the Discord. And I want to get into the second tier as well. But before, so what's going on in your Discord? Like sell your, like, you know, what's the Haps happening in the,

in the Zeneca Discord? Is there awesome people good insight? What are we getting there? It's all of that. It's just a really good community. It's tons of people that are, I mean, friendly and willing to help and share information and learn about the space. I, we have like an alpha channel, which a lot of discords have now,

where people post about mince going on. in real time and try and share information but I'm trying to make the focus not so much on like what's happening right now in short-term alpha but just sort of create this greater environment of of education and sharing knowledge and researching longer-term projects and so I post like occasionally I'll do deep research into a project and post like a breakdown hey I think this is good this is coming up or this project that had launched a while back is maybe on the radar it's worth looking into obviously I don't recommend anyone buy anything I don't give financial advice. I just do some research and share some of it. And I mean, that's part of it. But a lot of it is just like,

it's just another community to hang out and be around like-minded people who are there to learn and like, I really here for the long run, not like there's so many communities out there which, I mean, hey, I mean, people like them as well, but they're all focused on the short term flipping that talking about like, this is minting right now. Let's get in. Let's get on the way. Let's flip it and then, you know, move on to the next project. Whereas mine is hopefully more of like a chill, calm environment. and that is the community that vibe that I'm fostering. And yeah, so I, with the size of the community and with money raised, I hope to bring value in other avenues,

whether it's discounts to analytics tools or whatever it may be. But again, like, I hate roadmaps. I'm not promising anything. I'm just saying, hey, if you buy in, you get access to the Discord and we'll try and do cool things together. And that segues me to the second tier. I'll tee off the second tier by saying I loved something you wrote about it, which is you realize this is expensive and I'm not offering that much, correct? Or some variation on that, which is a wonderful way to sell your own project.

I actually think it is really effective, but it's hilarious. I want to talk about why you wanted to emphasize that. But let's start with what is the second tier that you're launching? Yeah. So, I mean, the first tier unlimited. 0.033 available to most. The second tier is basically much more exclusive. It is 3.33, and restricted to 33.

You can tell I have a thing with the threes. It's everyone asks, when I created my Twitter account, I was 33 years old, so I had 33 in my name, and then I just ran with it. And I think I'm still 33. I forget my age, anyway. You created your first Twitter account this year, or within this age? I created this Twitter account. I had one from back when I was an online poker player for a while.

it had like 2,000 followers and it didn't really. Yeah, I didn't really use Twitter that much. Now you have like 100,000 followers, right? No big deal. It's stupid, but yeah. It's growing fast. It is growing fast, which I think is a testament to the whole space growing so much. It's a testament to YouTube though. I think you give, you do long threads. So for anybody who doesn't follow Xenica 33, that's his handle. I really like you, you give thoughtful threads, which I enjoy on Twitter more than like snarky one-liners. So I think you're providing real value for people that way. Yeah. Okay, so 3.33-Eath, oh, sorry. 3.33 and restricted to 33.

And basically what I'm saying is that's getting access to a more private discord. So within the private discord, there'll be one channel that's just the 33 of us will make a few channels. And it'll basically be more access to me. I'll spend more time in there. And I will, yeah, it's just my time. And so I was sort of going back and forth on whether I wanted to include this or not. And then what really sort of, I guess, pushed me over the edge was that, that a couple of weeks ago, I decided I wanted to start advising and consulting for projects.

And I created this Google form for people to fill out if they wanted to, you know, bring me on to their team. And I had 80 responses in 36 hours. And on the form, I'm saying my fee is 6% of initial sale revenue, which for most projects is going to be like between 30 and 60th, which is obviously a ludicrous amount of money. And this many people were still willing to pay it. And then after the 36 hours had ended, I got another like 50, messages for people saying, I missed it, you know, can we still work something out, et cetera. So effectively, people are willing to pay for my time and find some value in it. And I mean, I want to help people.

I want to work with projects. I want like when people message me, you know, if we go back a month ago or six weeks ago, I would answer everyone and try and help them out to give feedback. But it's got to the point now where I just literally don't have the time to do that. I can't look at every project that people message me about. So this NFT is sort of one way that, you know, if you're launching, a project. If you want a little bit more of my time, you want some opinion, then you can, you know, buy this, get access to Discord, chat with me and I will be much more able to,

let alone willing to, you know, look at your whatever you're launching. But I mean, that's one reason to get in or that people might want in. The other is just if they want this to be, it's like, the community will be small and will be hopefully with like-minded people. I'm sort of curating the community myself because I put out a Google form for anyone that wants to jump on the white list to to buy it. And like, I wasn't sure if it would sell out or if there'd be that much interest. And then I got like a thousand responses in 24 hours. So yeah, just before this call, I was going through and I had a field on the form saying, why do you want to be in, in the community or what? Why do you want to pay this much money, basically? And, yeah,

what's wrong with you? Yeah. It is so much money. It really blows my mind, like, to think of how much money it's going to raise and I need to figure out what what I'm going to do with the door because I mean there's no denying it if it sells out which it's seeming like it will it'll be like a thousand eth just from this tier you know four million dollars and that's a ton of money and I I don't know what I'm going to do with it but I need to be thoughtful about it and think about it and like what what I can say is I'm not like I'm not going to just create a token and pump it back into the like it's not a project where I'm saying hey I'm going to build this thing I'm not going to, I don't have, I'm not an artist, I'm not a game developer.

I'm not trying to create a Dow or anything like that. It's like, in essence, people are paying me for the access and the time and it's that kind of thing. But it does give me the ability to do cool and interesting things that, again, I'm not putting it in any roadmap, but I don't know. I commissioned artists to create cool art and air drop to people, create by like Metaverse land and have clubhouses. And I mean, it just collabs with whatever. There are a lot of possibilities. And I just, I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I, it's something that I need to think about, of course. But yeah, so I get to go through this list of people that have applied to be whitelisted.

And I curate the list a bit and I hopefully put together a group of people that are right there for the right reasons. And then part of the value will be this network effect where, you know, you have these, this group of people that are either they're new and learning and want to learn and have, you know, maybe they have expertise from outside the NFT space that they can impart. or you have someone that's launching a project and wants some inside and can help other people in the future who are going to, anyway, there's so many possibilities. But yeah, it's a bit of an experiment and that that's what it is. And I'm excited for it because, you know, it does, it will give me the financial freedom to not feel like I need to flip, not feel like I need to be buying and selling NFTs. And I can focus on, again, helping others and spreading, I guess information and education and that kind of stuff. Yeah, I think the reality is not to show for your

project for you. But, but, you know, $13,000, right? Whatever this sort of lands at, who knows, if it's 10K by the time this launch, then a little bit more, but is, is not unreasonable at all for, like, lifelong consulting services, you know? Like, consultants charge a lot of money. And there's no, as long as you hold this token, you have that access, right? So I think, I mean, heck, $12,000 is not a lot for a month of consulting services. So, you know, if you're somebody who's looking for a really strong consultant, I mean, I could see this being a huge win for like, not that you necessarily want to pick these folks, but like for institutions, right?

Like who are trying to get into this space. And that's practically cheap if you're them, right? I'm sure you're targeting sort of individuals that you want to bring in. But I think that 3.33 can be initially like, oh my gosh, whoa, because we're so used to drops where it is. more like 0.05 or 0.03 or whatever. But when you frame it for what you are offering, as much as you joke that it's not much, it really is something. And then the other piece that I'm interested in is this network effects part. So I get a lot of questions and I'm sure you get even more questions than I do

about, hey, I'm an artist. I want to get started in this space. I see the opportunity, but I don't really know how to take a breakthrough. And it strikes me that one of the biggest advantages an artist can have is other network connections within the NFT artist space. I'm curious if you would agree with that. And, you know, you feel like maybe it's worth spending a bunch of time getting to know other artists in the space who can kind of be your network effects when you launch and be how much you're thinking about that with this community that you're building. Yeah, I 100% agree that it seems. incredibly important the network effects. I think just for anyone in this space, like,

whatever your goal is, if you want to succeed in the NFT space, networking is probably the number one thing to do. And, you know, networking sort of has this businessy-ish vibe, whereas like you go to these events and suits and conferences and you chat to people in network. But in the NFT space, it's a lot more fun. It's like you just chat with people on Twitter, you join in discords and you vibe and you know, you have fun and you talk about cool JPEGs and whatever crazy. madness is going on in the space, like someone refusing $9 million for their punk or, you know, whatever, Coinbase is launching the marketplace. And there's just, you can talk about tons of stuff and you just make friends.

And like, everyone is so friendly, you network. And then, you know, if you are launching your project, if you are an artist and you have friends and communities, then that's, these are the people that will be there to support you. And yeah, I really don't think, I can understate how important the network effect is and just how important is to network. Obviously, you can be successful and you can find success by just being like a passive person in the space, just lurking if you don't want to talk to people. You can use, you know, research and be on the outskirts and still find success by investing and stuff. But it's definitely harder. And especially if you're an artist trying to sell your

work, trying to spread the word, then again, networking is key. I think there's a way people could think about this as a marketing expense for their project of, hey, I'm going to be in this intimate group of 333 people who this person I've trusted had sort of handpicked so that I think are going to be good people to have meaningful relationships with who are maybe meaningful people to talk about my project out publicly if my project is good, right? I know you've been clear I'm not just going to market your thing because you buy this. But you know, $12,000 is not a crazy marketing expense for a brand and a way to build a meaningful network. Yeah. I do. Yeah. I mean, it's it's to say that I think it will be worth it or the value is there. And I really don't think anyone

should be buying it if it's a significant amount of the net worth. Like if they only have 10th, if they're not only, but it's a lot of money, but if that's what they have, then spending three or 3.3 on this may not make sense. Like it may be a longer term thing and the value that they may get from the group will be smaller, non-tangible. I mean, certainly non-tangible. But yeah, If you're a project launching, if you have, you know, you're an individual with hundreds, thousands of eth, at your disposal, then it makes, I think, some sense. So what is the biggest piece of advice you would give to a new artist wanting to launch a project? I'm sure this is the question you get all the time.

Do you have like one piece of advice, either to an artist or to an investor, one of the two or both? Yeah. I mean, the advice is probably the same. and one part is what we just said, network and just, you know, make these connections. But the biggest piece of advice I think I give everyone is just to be patient and realize that it takes time to find success in this space, usually. Yes, people do get overnight success. And there are these edge cases, but they are edge cases and outliers and the exceptions. And for everyone that has overnight success, there's dozens, hundreds that do not,

thousands, maybe. and realize that it's very exciting the NFT space. There is a lot of money to be made. There's a lot of other success to be found. But it's not going anywhere. The tech and the space is going to be here forever for a very, very long time. And we're very, very, very early. Just because it's exciting and fun and looks great,

you don't need to jump in and buy an NFT today or tomorrow. You don't have to launch your NFT if you're an artist today or tomorrow. Take some time, build up a community, you know, have a network. talk to friends or just, you know, soak in information and research. And so that when you do go to, say, invest or buy into a project, you know why you're doing it. So you have the conviction in the long term so that you can hold and, you know, survive these bare markets, which I think is important and not necessarily panic and freak out

and text your friends in the morning about it. That's one thing. Or if you want to play the aggressive flipping high risk game, understand that you are doing that. And again, that you may be losing a ton of money. You could go to zero and only, you know, risk money that you afford to lose. But the issue comes in when people are impatient and then they just jump headfirst in, not really sure what they're doing.

You know, they just want to get involved right away, which I can understand. Because it is cool and exciting and fun. And, you know, it's all happening. But, yeah, people feel like they're going to miss out that they're late already. I want to jump in. Yeah, there's so much fomo. But you're not late. You're early.

Even if you listen to this in two years. you're probably still early. Like we have a long journey ahead of us, like decades. Think internet in 1995. It's not like you are late. If you go into the internet game in 2002, no, you're not. So I think we have plenty of time ahead of us. Just think about learning and invest in yourself,

educate yourself. And yeah. Yeah, you threw, you embedded within that, the one I was going to say, which was don't, don't play with more than you can afford to lose, which you were getting at with, if you have 10th, don't spend three of it on this project.

It's, I don't know if it was you or somebody else I saw on Twitter who was like, if you have a stomach ache after you bought something, like you spent too much. Was that you? No, it wasn't, but it sounds like something I would like. It sounds like something you would say, yeah. It was like, hey, if you have a stomach ache, if you can't sleep at night because you're stressed about the move you just made. I've said the sleep thing before, but yeah.

Okay, so maybe I'm conflating two different ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, that makes sense. Did you have any moments of that when you were early in this space? where you overextended and it was like that learning moment of like, oh, yep, okay, that's, I went across the line for myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely had a few moments like that where, yeah, I guess I did overextend because I couldn't

really sleep or I was just too, like I invested in a couple of projects and then I sold them for profit, but then they went up and like five or 10x and I was like agonizing over it, which, I mean, that's, it's going to happen in this space. You just can't time the top or the bottom or whatever. Yeah, I learned from those. And over time, have, I guess, started to, yeah, invest less or like less as a percentage of my overall bankroll or portfolio. And more towards projects, again, so I have conviction in all of those moments where I was, had a sinking feeling in my stomach or I couldn't sleep or whatever.

It was always because I didn't have conviction in the projects I was investing in. And, yeah. I will say I've had a moment and I feel confident and saying I've learned from it. I'm somebody who, again, comes from a bit of a finance background. I know you should never play with money. You can't afford to lose. But that means different things to different people. What you can afford to lose means different things to different people. And I went a little too far, like totally swept up in FOMO. I was in a discord. The whole discord was like going like, you know, it was sort of the the price was rising. Everybody was like getting each other so hyped up. And so I went in a little harder than I should have, like right at the peak, right? Like, right as the thing starts coming back down. It's, it's since gone back. I actually did have long-term conviction in the project. So I was able to handle it, but like, I had the stomach ache. Like, I went to bed. I woke up the next morning, just feeling so embarrassed that I'd like fall and pray to the hype cycle on a Discord channel. So this is to say, like, it happens, you know, again, God willing, like, oh, yeah, okay, I'll say it. I love, I actually, I love this project. It's creature.

So it was like, I love creatures. I'm such a long term. But I bought in the first time it went up. I bought in at like 1.5 and then like 1.85, which is, it's over that now and I think it'll go higher. Like I really believe. But like I bought a few. Like at the time, it was just like like $10,000 or whatever it was.

And I was like, that's more than I feel comfortable. And then it was like right before it went back down to like 0.7. And I was like, oh, God. It was also learning for me. It was like Kevin Rose had just made it his profile picture. I think Gary Vaynerchuk had just said something about it. So it was a moment for me to learn, like, right after a bunch of celebs start talking about a project is when you're probably going to have a little, like, short-term peak. So, like, just like, take a breath.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We saw the same when, I think it was Shaq made a creature his profile picture. Oh, and luckily, I was already holding it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's when I bought in. I bought into, as soon as that happened because I was like, okay, this is, I already thought the project was cool. And I was planning to buy in a day or two before. But then I saw this and I was like, all right, I'm.

I should get in now. Yeah. And again, I think I only buy into projects that I have a long-term conviction because I haven't learned how to flip yet. I may never. But that was a case where it was like, you took it a little too far. I probably shouldn't spend that much. Awesome.

All right. We're running low on time here. The last thing I wanted to address, because I think it's really interesting, is you, so Richard, who's an influencer in this space, kind of famously recently, did not sell his crypto punk for like $9 million or $8 million or something, right? 9.5, I think. 9.5, okay. Yeah.

And you retweeted his tweet about it saying, I'll get it exactly. Like when we say NFTs are different because institutions can't just come and buy them, this is what we mean. Some things are just not for sale. Can you explain that a little bit more or maybe explain to people who are new to this space? like what that says about the culture and the sort of ethos in NFTs and why it's interesting? Yeah. So NFTs are at least up until now, everything that's been sold. It's sort of like the ownership is distributed amongst the community, amongst real people, people, especially in the case of crypto punks that were here like OGs in the space early.

And compare it to sort of most other, basically every other crypto investment like coins or even financial stocks and stuff like that. If a big institution wants to get involved and into the space, they can just come along and they can just buy a ton of Bitcoin or Ethereum or Salana or whatever. And then they just have a significant portion of the market. And even at the beginning stages, they're often funded by, you know, VC investors, angel investors and seed rounds and private sales and publics. And then eventually, you know, the rest of us that the, the, what's the word? Lay people. Lay people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Regular casual investors or there's a word for it. Retail. Retail. There we go. Yeah, yeah. We are usually stuck having to buy in later on and then price may tank because the institutions decide, hey, we're just going to sell off a ton today. And then, you know, it's just like that isn't really a case with NFTs, at least at the moment. If an institution comes in and they want to buy a ton, like they want to invest a billion dollars

into Cryptopunks or Apes or whatever, it's like they just, they can't. They have to pay what we who hold the NFTs are willing to sell for. And in the case of Richard, he just said, my punk is not for sale. So that means that it's not a case of, hey, we're going to offer you a billion dollars. It's just not for sale. And if enough of us say it is not for sale, then we get to keep the integrity of our community. We get to have it decentralized in our hands. And for the ones that do decide to sell, they get to dictate the price.

They can say, okay, it's not for sale unless you give me. you know, a hundred million dollars or whatever it might be. And then it's, yeah, so if the institutions want to get in, A, make them pay and B, if you don't want to sell, don't sell. Like my profile picture ape is just not for sale. I've created an identity with it. It's a brand now. I have a podcast called Two Board Apes. I've, you know, it's just, it's for better or worse, it's now my avatar for the metaverse, for the NFT space. and it probably will be forever. Maybe I'll find something I love more in the future,

but if someone comes long and offers me double floor price for it, I'm not going to sell because if someone comes in offers me $9.5 million, I will think long and hard. Okay, you hear that? Who was it? Was it like Visa or MasterC or whoever was trying to buy? No, it was Po-Ap.x, Y, Z. Oh, yeah, okay, of course, of course, yeah.

All right, well, Poab, X, Y, if you're listening. Yeah. But yeah, buy and large, it's like, NFTs are ours. You can say it's not for sale or you can say it's not for sale unless you pay me this much. And they just can't come in and invest however much they want to into buying it up in a way that they can in many other industries and get control of them. I think that one of the big reasons I was drawn to this space is this underdog contrarian in me. And I think this dynamic is sort of a microcosm of what's how. happening sort of broadly right now, which is there's this increasing tension between, like,

individuals and institutions. And institutions are crumbling in some ways. And I think you saw that play out with, like, the Melvin Capital, like, Wall Street Betts dynamic, where there was a whole bunch of us kind of being like, go Reddit, go Reddit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think this is David Vos Gleith. Yeah, and this is the, this is an economic sort of extension of that, which is very cool. The last anecdote I'll share to this point is, um, I don't want to get my self in trouble. But recently my company was sort of I'm not a founder, but was approached

by this kind of institution who's trying to get into the space and who wanted whales to help them. Like they know whales are important. They wanted them to like help you know push and market this NFT they were dropping and it was like that's not how this works. You can't just come and like swing around a bunch of money

and think that the whales have money. Right? Like that's why they're whales. Like they what they value more than your money is their kind of independence and in many ways, I think, reputational integrity around that they've built up around this space. And so I think that's a really kind of beautiful thing. It was kind of fun to like tell this boardroom of like corporate white guys, like, your money's no good here. It's not, you can't, you can't buy the marketing in the same way in the space. You have to network your way to it. So awesome. Roy, Zeneca, I keep calling you both.

This was so fun. I really, really appreciate you. You take me. this time and really excited for your project to launch. I think it is not an overpriced JPEG. Awesome. Thank you for having me. It's been a lot of fun. Awesome. Cool. Well, we will talk soon.