Bankless - 95 - How Kevin Rose Invests in Web3

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

Kevin Rose is a veteran of internet growth. Kevin founded digg, the news aggregator site that pioneered community-curated content in the early days of Web2. With a macro perspective of all things digital, Kevin has thrived as a builder and investor on the cutting edge of the internet. His experience allowed him to understand the role of community and has played a key role in his transition from investing in technology to investing in culture and artists. Seeing creativity blossom has fostered Kevin’s conviction and confidence in the space, and when Kevin speaks, the digital world of today and tomorrow becomes crystal clear. ------ 📣 METMASK | YOUR HARDWARE WALLET'S BEST FRIEND https://bankless.cc/metamask-shows  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 💰 GEMINI | FIAT & CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/go-gemini​  💧LIDO | DECENTRALIZED STAKING https://bankless.cc/Lido 👻 AAVE | LEND & BORROW ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave  🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 5:00 Kevin Rose and Digg 10:23 What About Web3? 14:53 Blending not Competing 23:25 A Hybrid Approach 26:53 Crypto & The Inevitable 34:04 Confidence & Conviction 38:15 NFTs for the Long Term 48:56 Backing Artists 55:54 Self Sovereign Industries 59:49 Interactive Utility 1:08:09 Experimenting & Innovating 1:12:30 Tokens and Content 1:16:30 Getting Exposure 1:20:20 This is the Metaverse 1:27:36 Rapid Fire Questions 1:39:12 What’s Next For Kevin? 1:43:00 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Resources: Kevin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevinrose?s=20  Proof Podcast: https://www.proof.xyz/  Tom Sachs Rocket Factory: https://tomsachsrocketfactory.com/  Ultra Scalable Ethereum: https://youtu.be/xjxyjgWiqLE  ----- 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. Do your own research. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams, and I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. David, great episode, Kevin Rose, he's not all of mine. I'm glad we had him on the podcast. What a fantastic discussion. What were some of the highlights. Two themes of this episode really stuck out to me.

One theme is that Kevin is just a veteran of the growth of the internet. We've had a number of these types of individuals on that have just watched the internet be born in front of their eyes. And Kevin was lucky enough to be able to both be a builder and then an investor in the growth of Web2. Kevin founded the dig platform, which is an early version of Reddit, which was a little bit before my time. But I think that those experiences that he had watching Web2 grow really kind of allowed him to understand the role in community and people as the content creators and the value creators for these systems. And the other thing that I think I really enjoyed was the transition from being a founder or angel investor into technologies or companies. And instead, in the world of Web3, being an angel investor into artists or creators. And just the paradigm shift that that brings along with it as well.

And Kevin, I know, is really just interested in seeing creativity blossom out of the Web3 platform. Yeah, it's super cool. I think Kevin's got a great perspective. So he was a builder in Web 2, right? It's like one of the first, he was building a web two company, dig.com, before it was even known as web two, right? So he's kind of a pioneer in that industry. And then he turned into a venture capitalist. So he's seen that side of things. And then he's also been like a media producer, right? So he's got sort of the hat trick of like builder, venture capitalists, and then also

media producer, which is super cool. Right up our alley. Right up our alley, right? So he's got all of those vantage points that he brings into exploring the NFT space. And I guess I'm a few things we got into the podcast is why he thinks celebrity NFTs are kind of lame and have jumped the shark, what he actually looks for in NFT projects and the differences between, you know, something that's new and creative versus something that's kind of like, you know, trying to ape the last trend and how to identify the next big thing moving forward. We've got an interesting discussion on the metaverse as well, like how that is going to shape up, what that's going to look like. And overall, it's really cool to just have someone on vibe with somebody

who's, I guess, does many of the same things we do, David, but is also like all in on crypto now? Like, you got the sense with Kevin like, okay, you're like us. This is fully consumed your life now, hasn't it? Right. Like, you're all in now. And there's no turning back and everything else is boring. So this is also someone who I think intends to spend the next five years or so on crypto, if not longer.

I always enjoy it when we bring fellow content producers on the podcast because they just know how to make good content. So the vibe of this episode is just three podcasters in a podcast together, having a good time. So I think you guys are really going to enjoy this conversation with Kevin Rose. So let's go ahead and get right into it. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Bankless is proud to be supported by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure.

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directly with your credit or debit card and have that fiat be instantly traded for any token that has liquidity. When you're making a trade, head over to macha.xyZ slash bankless and connect your wallet to start getting the best prices and most liquidity when you trade your crypto assets. Bankless Nation, we are super excited about our next guest. This is Kevin Rose. He's an internet entrepreneur. He's a partner at True Ventures. He was a builder in Web 2 and is very much tuned into the rise of Web 3 that is now going on. He's also a fellow content produced. So if you recognize that mic quality, it's because Kevin produces podcasts. He's been doing this since 2003. He hosts Modern Finance, which is a fantastic podcast as well as proof. This is a newer

podcast all about NFTs and the Metaverse. Kevin, how you doing, man? It's great to have you on bankless finally. Oh, you know, I've been, I listened to you guys. This may sound odd, but I have a sauna and I try to do that. And I put you guys on this sauna. And so it's weird to be on the show. But it's it's so cool to see all the great content you've put out. I think that there needs to be more of this type of content. So I always love seeing people that approach this space in a thoughtful way, in a way that is not scammy. I don't know if you've looked at some of the other cryptocurrency podcasts.

A little scammie. There are a few of them out there that are a little pump and dump, you know. So it's cool that you guys are doing it right. We've tried to occupy that niche. And, you know, I think that's what people appreciate. It's like this is a journey for all of us. and this is like a journey of self-discovery, right? So even this conversation, every conversation we have with someone,

we expect to learn something new. So I'm excited to learn something here today, Kevin. And you know what's super cool about you saying this is because this is like full circle for me because I first got into Web 2, believe it or not, on Dig. Oh, crazy. Okay? Dig.com.

This is where I learned about Web 2, like the power of Web 2. David's a young in, you know? He's like, I don't know if he remembers the original dig, but like I remembered it when it used to look like this. Kevin. Wow. Remember that? Oh my God.

Okay. So that was actually my design. This is your design? That's how you know it's bad. Yeah. So I remember these days. I also remember these days. And for those of you who weren't around at that point in time, like you were brought up

in Web 2 in the social web, okay? Back in my day, the web was not social. All right? It was like a one-to-one type relationship. It was you and the website. There was no notion of like a community. It wasn't a like many-to-we. website type relationship. And the innovation that Dig brought, which was absolutely incredible to me,

was like, oh, we can create the front page of this website, like the front page of the internet altogether. It doesn't have to be like someone in a high tower telling us what content is good on the internet. We can all collectively as a community create the front page of dig. And it's similar to folks are familiar with Reddit, right? It's like with Dig, you would dig things, which is kind of an upvote, and you could bury things, which is sort of a downvote. And this was like the OG original website where you could do that. It was my introduction to Web 2. Super powerful, man.

And I'm honored to be talking to you today, Kevin, because you brought me into Web 2. That's amazing. Full circle. Well, thanks for saying that. It was a lot of fun. You know, it's like I was pretty young back then. And honestly, it was just like right place, right time, kind of fun, new idea. And, you know, there was new technologies that were coming online at that point.

with Ajax where you wouldn't have to leave a page, you could actually interact with the current page you were on, which today, you know, when you click on something and you see a vote go up or something, it seems so you're like, oh, of course it's the way it works. It didn't always used to work that way. Yeah, you actually have to go to a, when I first launched dig, if you clicked on voting on something to dig something, would take you to another page.

So you go to another page and say, thank you for your dig. And then Ajax dropped, and that was asynchronous JavaScript, allowed you do everything on page. So you could see all that stuff happening in real time. The numbers were going up and. real time. It was a lot of fun. But that was, you know, 2004. So that's, uh, it was a while ago.

When you started this in 2004, was the term web to you even invented, like the social web? No. How did that meme arise? Yeah. So, uh, Jason Cali-Canis, who ran weblogs, Inc, which was a collection of different blogs like in gadget and a whole slew of them. Um, he came up to me and he's like, oh man, he's like, dig, you guys are, or web two. And I was just like, I was like, do I do anything run like a software update that I didn't know about? Like maybe I'm like, I literally was like, am I missing something here? What is this Web 2 thing? And it was just this collection of different sites and technologies that were coming together

that people started putting under that umbrella. So, you know, they lumped in us and Delicious and Flickr and Facebook and Twitter. And there's a handful of us that Yelp and some others that were all kind of part of this, you know, Web 2 founding crew. So what do you think about this Web 3 moniker? Are you vibing with it? Do you like it? Oh, I love it.

Yeah. So what do you like about it? What does it add? I just feel like, you know, the promise of Web 2, at least when we were doing Dig, was that, you know, we wanted to have this front page that would be a place where the community could come together and they could vote on stuff and the best content. It was like a fully kind of decentralized way of voting on and making up the front page. But in practice, it really didn't work.

there was just a lot of spam. There was just all different types of issues that we ran into to try and make that a reality. And then you have Reddit come and attack the long tail, which actually is why they ended up beating us in the long run, is that they went after these niche communities. And the aggregate of the niche was actually much larger than just the anyone front page that was dig. We hit around, I don't remember what it was now, around 30 something million uniques per month. that's kind of where we tapped out

and they just kept growing because of that long tail but in reality was still you know these were like centralized organizations they were like being there were corporations that were VC backed and it was they very much had a mandate to go out and make money

I mean they had to obviously pay the payroll and all the things and not all of that is bad but that means that you know we collected user data and we did kinds of things that all companies do in this ad driven model. And I just love this idea of the true empowerment of the individual to come in, collectively come together, to raise funds in different ways, you know, not having to go down

the venture route if you don't want to, and to decide and vote on things that are less about just what's happening here locally or in the United States. But it seems like the Web 3 audience is a much more international audience. And people are collaborating in real time in unique ways I've just never seen before. So, you know, the rise of Dow's, is a great example of this. You know, obviously the open source nature of Web 3 and the collaboration that's happening around that. It just feels like a maturing of this original idea

that was the promise of Web 2, but we're not actually seeing until now in Web 3. Yeah, so Chris Dixon has this thing, this tweet, this mental model, of course, because he's, you know, Chris Dixon, that's what he does. Web 1, and he says, read. It's all about read. Web 2, read right.

Web 3, read, write, and own. And like I simplify this as like Web 1 is links, then we got to likes, and now we're on tokens. Do you think that's like, I mean, Dig was all about communities and such, but the communities could never really own the net results of what they were doing. I mean, what they could do is they could form whatever links form the homepage, but they didn't capture the upside in that. Is that what Web 3 is all about? Is it about community ownership in your mind?

You know, I think that Web 3 is certainly that's a piece of it. Like, there's no doubt that we're able to capture value and spread value in unique ways that we haven't seen before. But that said, you know, I lump NFTs into Web3 and all the different things that come under that umbrella. So I would say that the ownership is a big piece. I think the organization of resources is a big piece. The way the kind of like grassroots bottoms up approach to building products is a big piece. But yeah, I really love this idea of ownership being now back in the hands of the individual contributors. Like, they're the ones that are providing all the value.

That's where the ownership actually should reside. But I also love this idea of brand building and company building being done at the community level. Like just this idea that you can get together and grab 10,000, 100,000 people and go and build board apes and what that. that's turned into. I mean, that's just like a beautiful idea of like this like bottoms up brand building. You see it with cool cats. You see it with some of the other NFT projects. And I believe the future of brands, like actual, whether it be clothing brands or you name it, is going to be driven largely by community participation and community ideas. And that that's really exciting to me. There's definitely a cohort of these web two platforms. Reddit and Dig are the ones that come to

mind where it really actually inspired some sort of integration into a community, right? So you pick your very niche community in Reddit and you see all the same people there on that one niche subreddit. And you actually get to grow a name for yourself and having some sort of, you weren't owning the actual like exposure to the upside, but you felt responsible for your community. I feel like that's a decent number of these web two platforms really tapped into that like innate human desire to own some sort responsibility, to have responsibility for something. And I think we all know in the Web3 world, it's that even more so. I also want to think, like, Kevin, you're a veteran of the Web 2 world. And when we, me and Ryan, when we talk about Web 2 on the bankless podcast and really the whole

entire industry, we're talking about it in this very negative way. It's like, oh, yeah, Web 3 is going to come and eat Web 2's lunch. Like, Web 2 will be destroyed by Web 3. But as somebody who's intimately knowledgeable about both of them, do you really see that antagonistic relationship? Or do you see, how do you see web two also coming along and perhaps being inspired by Web3? And because like it's not those web two is just going to like go down without a fight, right? Like Web 2, web two is going to come along with it. So how do you think these these platforms like that incentivize community ownership and community collaboration? How do you think they're going to come along for the ride here? It's a good question. I think in some sense you have to have,

you have to start realizing that participation, like if you already own a big brand or you have a big web two property, you have to understand that it's no longer about a closed boardroom making decisions for the future of your business. And it's about opening up really everything to the community so they can have a look inside of what's going on and figuring out how can I incentivize these users to use my product in ways that actually deputize them and really empower them to help me become a better product and help me move faster. I mean, if you take a look at what happened with Discord last week or two weeks ago when they decided to integrate Ethereum wallets and then all of a sudden the gamer said no no no no we

don't want that and they rolled back that decision it was just like such a centralized move I was like that nobody the community actually really wanted a lot of the community wanted on the crypto side and the NFT side they wanted this product to be more well I shouldn't say less about gaming but more kind of craft and purpose built for their use cases you know discord is is obviously the place where i mean you know this you have a bankless discord it's like it's a place where people go to have conversations to share off to share the different um you know either tokens they hold or nfts that they hold and it's really lacking like why there isn't a way for me to click on someone see their wallet see their

nfts pin certain nfts to the top like really make it about this interactive experience in this web three world and they came back and said, actually, no, we're not going to do that. This is what we decided as a company. That just feels so backwards to me. And I feel like they're just setting themselves up for disruption. And I think every company has to understand that they need to start playing. Like, they really need to start playing in this world and figuring out what can they open up and start doing a series of tests. It's a very, it's a very scary thing. When you have something that's working, like to say, okay, I'm going to rethink my entire business model is really, I'm skeptical that they can pull it off, but I'm rooting for them if that makes sense. And then that said, you know, when I talk about that, I think I'm thinking companies like Twitter, like Discord, like Facebook, you know, meta.

Like I think Facebook is just going to die, a slow death. I'm sorry, I think it's garbage. You don't think they're going to be able to make this transition? No, I don't. Why? Because Chris Dixon said, the one thing you could say about Facebook, though, is it is still founder-led. Of all the other fangs out there, you know, that one at least is still has Mark Zuckerberg, the original founder at its helm. I mean, you could have said that about Twitter until this morning, right? So it's, I just feel like, but, okay, you said they're evil, right?

It's like, don't evil companies do fairly well, right? Like, isn't the corporation kind of a, a sociopath? They do for shareholders. Like a psychopath, like, it's why it's partially successful. And I think a lot of shareholders are going to be very happy. But we're flipping this, right? There's this world now where it was about optimizing the outcome of your business should be optimized for the most revenue per user, right? And now it's about really putting the

community in the forefront of this and saying, how can we build the best possible experience for the user? And they will bring value back to us. So in Web3, users as the product doesn't work anymore. That's right. That's right. I think users need to be the ones that are more of the decision makers. And they're actually helping define the product, but they're not what's for sale. So that's, I think that's where, where this thing, whole thing gets flipped. If it works, if it's, the issue we have here is that there's a lot of like, um, it's early days. So I'll give an example. You could not build Twitter on any Web 3 architecture as it exists today at the scale they're at today. It just would not work. Like me, even, even if you want to say Slana at 50,000

transactions a second, whatever may be, it's not even close. Yeah, it's just not going to, we need. centralized infrastructure right now. So I think we're still a few years out from that dream happening. But there'll be bridges to get us there. I'm a fan of this idea that there is going to be a hybrid approach. And I believe that there are a lot of things that we should absolutely have be decentralized. But then there are centralized organizations that actually do things quite well. Like, you know, I don't know that I would ever send my mom to Uniswap or to sushi or something like that, right? Like, I'm just, she doesn't want to go there. You know, but that said, if Wells Fargo had a way for her to on ramp into crypto in a way that she understood,

I would say, mom, yeah, why don't you click that button that says allocate 2% of my holdings into crypto in a way that is just like, she doesn't have to think about private keys, right? And I think that we have to remember that there's a pretty large majority of people out there that are never going to be comfortable holding their private keys. And I like the idea they're being customer service for certain individuals when they need it, right? So it's always going to be a hybrid. There's always going to be a Pepsi for every Coke, right? There's going to be multiple winners out here. It's not a winner-take-all market. I believe that when it comes to infrastructure and support services, and also when it comes to coins. I don't think this is a Bitcoin or Ethereum take all. Like, I think there's going to be

multiple winners here for different use cases. There's going to be purpose-built blockchains that are more performant for certain types of activities, right? And I just, I just think when I think of like some of the NFT stuff with flow or just, you know, some of the stuff that Solana is doing and others. Like I, I, yeah, it's hard for me to be a laser eye. I'm not a big fan of laser eyes. I think they exclude too many people or too many ideas. You mean that literally the meme or do you mean like laser eyes? Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, just like whenever I see the meme, I'm just like you're excluding someone. Whenever you have a certain color laser eyes, you're excluding something. And for me, this is all about being inclusive. Like how many people can we bring along for the ride and that doesn't

me, I love Ethereum and I love Bitcoin and Solana and I have a bunch of chains. there's a lot of shit out there. Don't get me wrong. Like, look at some of the stuff that's out there. There's a lot that I avoid. But I just feel like this is an expansive pie and we need to think about how can we bridge and include versus exclude. Something you said, you said the word, the hybrid approach.

And I want to unpack that a little bit. And there are plenty of platforms out there that I think are particularly conducive to a hybrid approach. Facebook not being one of them. Discord definitely being one of them. And we know that Reddit is like really going full seam ahead. with integrating tokens. Even Discord, the way that Discord set up, Discord is already a token company.

Like, if you want to get into the bankless Dow Discord, you've got to have 35,000 bank tokens, right? And so, like, regardless of whether they actually formally put that into the application, like Discord is a Web3 platform for the communities that have integrated them. And so there seems to be a lot of these Web2 companies that have leaned in towards the community brings the value, and we are here to incentivize the community. And now there's room for them to really just more formalize that and let the community start to take that in their own direction. So I'm wondering if you are seeing like a schism between the Web 2 companies where there's the Web 2, which is like Twitter and Facebook that are kind of not really, they don't really have the surface area to do Web 3 stuff. And then there's things like Discord and Reddit, which do have the surface area to do Web 3 stuff, but they're still Web 2.

So maybe they're more like Web 2.5. Do you see like the future kind of something in this direction? It's interesting because, you know, you say. read its full steam ahead on their token. But I would argue they've been talking about this for a while now. You know, it's been a year and a half, maybe two years. Like, I think a better approach for a lot of these companies is just going to say, listen, almost like Discord in some sense and that you say, we don't know what you're going to do with this in the Web3 world. We have some ideas of what we might want to do. You know, Jack had some ideas for integrating payments and doing some things

inside of Twitter. But the best approach here is really just to open it up, provide some APIs and some SDKs that allow you to go in and extend it in new and interesting ways. Like the only reason why you're powering the whole bankless access on Discord is not because of Discord at all. It's because it got extended by, you know, a third-party application that allows you to verify how many tokens are in someone's wallet, right? So I think a lot of the things that the ways that you can win as a Web 2 company is to actually get power, again, back to the community to extend the product in new ways.

and that they'll be the first to do it. And I think the most interesting innovation is going to come by tens of thousands of developers thinking of what to do with your product next, not just the handful of engineers and product people you have, you know, working in your centralized organization. It's funny that you say that.

It's like, it's kind of like back in the video gaming world or how sometimes the mods become like better than the actual game itself. Like I remember like Half Life 2, just like, you know, back in the day. And Counterstrike was originally a mod for Half Life 2 that, you know, somebody created, right? Totally.

And it was like a better game. in a lot of ways, right? And so, like, what you're advocating for is, like, hey, Web2 companies, you don't have to be the center of top-down innovation year. You don't have to decide every feature, just open it up so that the community can mod. Right. Right. It's like, you know, Discord having the ability to, like, maybe add tokens as mods, add its own Metamask login as a mod, this sort of thing is how you think innovation, how Web2 companies will cross the chasm to Web3. That sounds right to me. I mean, it's early days with all this, but I mean, that's what we've been scene that's been working so far. Can we talk about your story a little bit, Kevin here with

crypto? So I know you've been knowledgeable about Bitcoin since the early days, right? In the early days when it kind of came out, it seems also that you've had a renewed interest over the last, I don't know, a year or so, 18 months or so, maybe partially through NFTs, but just walk us through that. So when did you first uncover crypto? And it's like, I think a lot of people, so if you're anything like me, it took like two punches, right? It was like a one-two combo punch. First was the Bitcoin thing. And I was like, oh, that's cool. But what can I do with Bitcoin?

Well, you can hold it, Ryan. So I held it. You know, and that was it. But then it really took for me. It was like Ethereum and DeFi and understanding that world of smart contracts. The second punch down the rabbit holes. And then I was like, I'm all in. Like it's over for me.

So like, bye bye bye, bye life. I'm crypto now. This is what I do. Was your journey somewhat like that? Did you have kind of like, you know, two opportunities at it? or has it been like, I guess, wearing it you gradually? What's the story? Yeah, I mean, I think about when I first started getting into Bitcoin in the early days,

like 2011-ish, it was one of those things where, you know, I was downloading the entire blockchain back then and running it on locally, because that's what you did. And I was one of those people that sadly, I mean, we all have this story. We bought, we tripled. You're like, oh, I'm out. You know, and then he just went back out to Fiat and then you're like, oh, wait, I'm back in again because this is going to stay. And then you rinse and repeat, right? Do that cycle like five times. And then finally something kind of clicks where you just realize that something is so big and has so much momentum that this is a snowball that's just going to continue to roll down the hill. And it's like you, for me, it was seeing that and just kind of realizing like, wait a second, I don't have to sell during the next down.

I can actually just buy more and that's probably a better idea, you know? And just and you can only do that if you believe it'll last more than one down like more than one cycle. Right. And well, once you see enough cycles, it's funny when I see these little bumps in the market now, they don't even phase me. They used to really upset me. I remember like waking up at like two M being like oh crap, what's the theorem at? Oh crap. It's back down to $75 like oh no like you know. Yeah. And and now I'm just like oh yeah. So so what? Like okay a month. month will go by, two months ago by, maybe it's going to be six. It'll recover. It is going to be fine because this is the future. And by the way, if you're new here, that is the goal. Like, if you're new to crypto is do what Kevin is suggesting, become volatility proof. That is like the best armor you can have. Learn to love the volatility. Learn to ignore it. Yeah, yeah. I think that it's once you can kind of, I think it's right sizing the investment for you for yourself personally is a big piece of that. Just so that if you do see something get chopped by 20, 30, 40 percent. you're not freaking out, right? Like, it's, I have a lot of friends that have lost a lot of money because they put too much in. And then when it got chopped, they were like, I'm going to lose my house. That's not where you want to be, right?

So it's, it's just, if you can right size it to where it's like you consider it like a crazy weekend in Vegas. And if it does go down 40%, you're fine. Then that for me was a big shift. then like you, I just saw, I guess it's, there was this thing that I had to understand, and I applied it to private kind of equities initially where the best strategy is always to just invest in the inevitable, like what is going to happen the next 5, 10, 15 years from now? And so that started with electric cars and realizing that or Amazon with EC2 and their web services and how that was scaling out when people were going cloud versus just racking their own servers.

And then, you know, I realize, like, this idea of there being blockchain and a digital currency, like, if you were starting a new country today, would you go buy printing presses? Would you really? Would you, like, everyone has smartphones. Like, no one's like, how are the printing press company? Like, the, there's only a few of them left. I know that actually, there was a winery that I was, I went to that they were buying printing, the old printing presses for currencies to, like, microprint the winery labels to prevent, like, fraud, but they're available. You can just, like, buy them.

You can buy money printing presses out there on the market? Yeah, totally. Wow. Seems like that would be like proprietary, you know, but I guess the old ones. Yeah, exactly. It was some of the older, older tech that was out there. But it was just fascinating to me that they're, obviously, they're printing less and less money these days because people are going digital.

But just knowing that the future is going to be, you're going to be able to move money, you know, internationally in a matter of seconds. Blockchain's not going away. this is the technology that's here to stay. And once you swallow that, and then you start to see Defi enroll, the whole DeFi movement when that kicked off, I was like, wow,

there's so many other potential use cases for this technology. We're probably first pitch, first inning here of just seeing where this is going to go. And that's when I swallowed the pill and I was like all in. So what's more interesting to you, or what do you think made you go more all in, Kevin? Was it defy or was it NFTs? It started off as as defy.

And it was just, you know, a true ventures where I work as a partner over there. We don't publicly talk about a lot of our investments, but we do quite a bit in cryptocurrency. So, you know, I'd say this year alone, we've probably invested, I'd say, 75 million or so into new crypto startups. And defy is something that we've been a big part of. whether it'd be the Aves of the world or you name it over the last couple of years. So it's something that we track internally quite closely. And that was the big aha kind of big use case that I was looking for that was more than just a store of value. And so when, you know, there was a lot of different, and there still continues to be a lot of different things that people are playing around with smart contracts and what can they do, you know, what can we,

fractionalize. What can we, you know, there's all these different, I've seen, I'm seeing home loans now that are fractionalized. There's like a whole slew of different things that are happening that are interesting. But I think the first kind of breakout, I'm sure you all would probably agree was when defy it started to break out. That was the first use case outside of the store of value that I was like, oh, this makes a ton of sense. It's just more efficient. And it's getting, you know, all of the margin is going away from big banks and they're going, it's being delivered back to the individuals. Like, this is amazing. So that's what got me really excited.

I want to like underscore your point here about the inevitability of this, right? You said as an investor, you're always looking for, you know, technology trends, things that are inevitable, right? Because that feels like a rock solid investment to you. Some people aren't there yet, Gavin, with defy. Okay. They're at the stage where they still think it's a toy. They still think it's got narrow set of use cases. They still think it's just for a niche audience, that sort of thing.

they'd say the same thing about NFTs. What gives you the confidence to think that defy and NFTs are so inevitable? Well, there's one, I would say, that's a fantastic thing that not everyone is there. Because as everyone is there, it'd be completely de-risks and there'd be no upside for us, right? Like, it's awesome that we're in the early innings of this, because that's where you capture the most upside. You know, when I was an angel investor in Twitter or Square or some of these others back on the day, people thought it was like a silly little messaging platform when we were doing Twitter. like, you just tell it your friends where you're at with that thing. Like, that's never going to get that big. And people laughed at it. They always laugh at it. You know, they always say that this is never going to. But part of your job as an investor is kind of projecting out if this works, how big will it become? And why will it work? And so when I think about, you know, why people aren't there yet, it's they don't quite see the efficiency that I think that this whole idea

of smart contracts brings into the equation. And just how much bloat there is. And just how much bloat there is. I have friends that work here in traditional finance that are like wanting to get out of it and get it in Defi as fast as possible because they sit around there at their desks at, you know, Goldman or Morgan Stanley and they're like, what are these people doing? Like there's just so much like there's so much fat to be trimmed there. And it's all going to go to Defi and it's all going to be programmed. It's just, you know, it's like the rise of AI. Like there's so many jobs, unfortunately, are getting automated away. I would say unfortunately. and fortunately. Unfortunately in that it's a shame because we're losing a lot of great middle class jobs. I would say fortunately in that some of this automation is actually really helpful. Like when you can have AI go in and analyze and detect lung cancer faster and better than an individual human, like that's a great innovation, right? But that kills jobs. So I would say the same thing is coming to the banking industry. And we're going to see the automation and usage of smart contracts just get rid of all of that extra crud that has been sitting there in the system.

I mean, take a look at the balance sheets of these big banks. They have a shit ton of money. And they're just like, they're making so much money because where's that coming from? It's coming out of the, that could be going back to the consumer. And that's the promise of defy. And when I think about, okay, as a consumer, what do I want? Do I want the banks to have more money or do I want to have more money? It's a no brighter.

Consumers, when the tooling is right and it gets easy enough for the average person to to take part in. And that might be via square. It might just be, you know, I have this, there's is going to be, again, with the how to web two companies bridge to web three, there's going to be the risky way or the do it yourself way, which is all of us. We're like, okay, we're hardcore into crypto. We can go in there. We have no problem interacting with smart contracts. We want that 8, 9, 10, 12 percent, and we're willing to play that game, right? And then there's the maybe I just want 5%. And I'm going to do that via

square, the cash app. And I'm just like, I don't know, but there's this high yield crypto savings account that if I tap two taps with my phone on my iPhone, I'm getting 5%. And that'll probably be the on-ramp for a lot of people. And then there's the do it yourselfers that'll go the extra step. So I think we're going to see a whole slew of different things. And there's going to be the big

banks that just don't get it at all. And they're going to go kicking and screaming out of this market. And they're the ones are going to be the most screwed in the long long run. I think it's, you're going to see a lot of web two companies actually do quite well in the space because there's, there's still some innovation there versus them being big old, you know, multi-hundred-year-old banks. So Kevin, you pay attention to a lot of things, not just DFI, but you're also into NFTs, but also just not outside of crypto, you're kind of the Tim Ferriss type where you're also into like health sciences. You're into a lot of different things. So I blame Tim for a lot of that,

but yeah. Too many interests. So, but now that, you know, but now that. So, but now that, you're not. So, especially with NFTs, just taking the crypto world by storm, how much of your day, of your time, of your mental resources are you allocating towards crypto? Has it kind of assumed your life like it's subsumed ours? Yeah. Yeah. It's, there's been a flippening? There's been a flippinging for sure. It's, it's hard because I have two kids too. So it's like I got to balance that as well. But I would say, you know, for my day job as a venture capitalist, it's, it's been interesting in that it started off really focusing on, you know, layer one chains and then kind of some of the DeFi-related projects and some of the layer two scaling solutions that are coming to Ethereum.

And then we did a lot of investing in and around those arenas. And then NFTs just kind of really hit me hard in January of this year. And I went, I like went all in. And so that is where I spend the majority of my time nowadays. And I do that because we invest in that area. I'm trying to think about how much I can actually disclose the stuff that we're doing over true. But, you know, I'll come out and say it. We are going to, as a venture company, hold NFTs on our books.

Like we will hold in custody actual NFTs and own them as digital assets for our LPs. Wow. So that's, that's happening. And so that's, that's coming very soon. We already, you know, I, I led our blocks last round. Every single person that owns an NFT is like, oh, which one? Which one is it? Kevin? Which ones do you own? It's funny because we have to be really careful. So I'll give an example. Like, let's just say, you know, our fund is 750 million right now. Let's say our next fund is a billion plus. let's say we earmark 50 to 75 to 100 million dollars just for NFT purchases. Like, I don't want to crush the individual investor here. So I have to be really careful when I and tread lightly when I go into these markets.

Like I'm not about lifting the floors here. We're not about flipping pieces. When we buy and hold an NFT, we'll do it for a decade. You know, it's like this is about being patient capital. Like that's the way that True's always operated. And that's part of the reason why I do love the firm. but I think we're going to go and we'll probably buy up a lot of the, you know, blue chip NFTs at this point.

There's a lot of like, you know, whether it be the autoglyphs or the cryptopunks or now board apes I put in that category. There's, you know, some of the early kind of artists that were, whether it be the, you know, hakittows or X copies or, you know, just a lot of the really early individual artists. So those will be one of one works. So it's a little bit of everything, but in a responsible way that doesn't crush the average consumer. So let's say there's a new PFP project that is really interesting. And I'm not a huge fan of PFP projects, but every once in a while, I'll get the bug and I'll go in on one.

We're not going to go and buy a hundred of them, right? We probably go in and buy, you know, five. And just do that a lot and not crush the initial launch, but more just either buy from individuals. at a later point in time. So it's tricky. But then again, we're not deploying all this capital at once either. So you have to imagine that when you do get that big of a budget, you go out and deploy that over a couple years, maybe two and a half years or so.

So NFTs are really, really new. And we have so much to talk about with NFTs. So you're talking about going in and putting NFTs on the balance sheet as like a treasury as an investment. But they're so new. What makes you think that they are actually like maybe NFTs as a concept is here to stay forever. But the whole thing about like the NFTs industry is that there isn't any one specific NFT that represents the whole industry. It's always like moving. They're kind of like fads.

So like it makes really a ton of sense for investors to invest in the long term. But why do you think NFTs are actually like the long term thing? Like maybe it's just like people's attention move from NFT to NFT to NFT. What gives you the conviction that it's actually the NFTs are actually going to be the cool NFTs that we care about in five to 10 years? How do you know, Kevin, you're not buying beanie babies. Right. Yeah. It's a good question.

I think there's a couple things there to unpack. And obviously, NFTs as a term as a kind of a blanket category, they just encompass so many different projects, right? So there's like, and you can... It's just a token standard. Yeah, it's just a token standard, right? So they can be utility NFTs. They're used to unlock and gate access to certain things.

There's a thousand different things that this type of token standard can be applied to. I would say to answer your question, though, there are the initial projects that are the first, like the first to have done something technical. And I think that historically, when we look back on some of these projects, you know, whether it be 10, 20, 30, 40 plus years from now, there will be value in the people that have pulled off something technically interesting for the very first time. So, you know, when Cryptopunks launched, they kind of really helped. There was no ERC 721 standard.

Like there was no, but they helped define that, right? So I think historically that's a very important project. And same with Autoglis being the very first kind of on chain, fully on chain NFT. Like there's these types of projects, I believe will always hold their value, if not continue to rise from where they are today. So we will be thoughtfully going in and looking for these first, like who are the early artists doing really interesting things in the space and holding them as kind of more of the blue chip NFTs. And I would say that applies to artists as well. So in some sense, you know, I think there's a lot of froth in the PFP 10,000 market. You know, when you take a look at new projects dropping every other week, that is not sustainable.

That is Beanie Baby Land. That's where the Beanie Babies live is all in that because it's basically, you know, it reminds me the ICO craze. Do you remember the ICO back in the ICU days? It was like, oh yeah. How can you can forget? Yeah. So, okay, I'll give you the ICO playbook. Fantastic landing page.

Some cool looking graphics. White Paper Link, of course, got to have that. List of the team there and where they went to school or where they've worked at previously. Hopefully somebody either worked at Google or had a cousin that worked at Google. Didn't really matter, but it had to be on that page, right? And then there was a token sale that happened, a countdown timer, and get in now, this is the future. Percent filled. Yeah.

86% filled. Exactly. So that was the playbook. And that's kind of what we're seeing with the PFP side of things as well. There's a roadmap now with PFPs. Well, you'll see we plan on doing this with them. We're going to do commercial licensing. We're going to do comic books with them.

We're going to do who knows what. Like it's just like that's, there's a bad. backstory and a lore that has to go with them now. So they're these little business units, right? I am less bullish on those because there are so many of them. And it's the same in that that playbook is getting pretty tired. Again, who are the ones that did that first? You got the board apes, the crypto punks, the cool cats, some of these earlier ones that I think will always have that, that staying power because they were so early in that space. So those are the ones I'm a little bit more excited about. Less so about the new ones that are dropping every other week, because

There's just a lot of noise in there. But then I think I go back to like, you know, who are the artists behind some of these projects? So I'm more interested in the individual artists, like the ex-copies of the world and some of the other, like, really well-known artists. And more so on the generative side as well. I think we finally have seen the emergence of a new art form. Not that generative art hasn't been out for many years. It's just been a really hard thing to capture. There's never been a way to capture generative art.

back in the day, I remember going to art installations, like in the early 2000s in San Francisco that were generative and they'd be like, hey, look at this. Like my computer is doing this really cool generative art. And you could actually like buy the little computer and like have it. And it's like a one of one or whatever. And then like, of course the computer dies or whatever, right? So you got to like get a whole of the artist and figure out how to recreate it. And it was there was no lasting way, no durable way to actually capture this.

And so I'm pretty excited about some of the early generative art. and that it can actually be captured on the blockchain for the first time and stored and transferred. So that's really exciting. So I guess I would say there's no easy answer to your question. I think it's it is, but you have to be in it all the time and kind of pay attention to who the emerging artists are, what they're doing that's unique and novel, and then back those individuals. So sometimes that means buying their drop. Sometimes it means commissioning one of ones with them.

you know and so that's kind of what I've been paying attention to is is really less about the the insert animal character times 10,000 with a funky hat and more about individual artists unique stuff on the generative side unique stuff that's coming on the music side like Mike Shinoda from Lincoln Park has a really interesting drop that's coming out here in like three days on the on the music side that's generative um I just that and the idea of the idea being able to break up rights and have those as NFTs so that I can own future royalties for some for some music or other things that are happening in NFTs like it's all just so new and it is scary it is it is there are certainly going to be bainy babies in this whole mix but there's

also going to be some really lasting breakouts that that I don't want to miss so I'm going to play the game and I will absolutely get burnt in the world of venture capital we expect about eight out of 10 investments to go to zero. And that's kind of what the game we're playing here as well in an NFT land is the vast majority of them are going to go to next to nothing. But there will be some, some big players that emerge. I think I just made a connection here. This is kind of one of the dots I felt like was connected for me this episode is going back to true, right? You guys are a venture capital firm. And so some people might ask, why are you investing in collectibles? That'd be like, your venture arms saying, yeah, we're going to go buy some Picasso's, but also we're going

to invest in like the New York emerging artist space and find the best paintings in the market and kind of double down on that. It's very different than investing in a company, right? You're investing in a collectible and you're not investing in a cash flow, a future cash flow. So on the surface, it feels like it's kind of a different thing. But here's the dot that was just connected for me is venture is all about finding, individual unique entrepreneurs and their teams and investing in them. Something you just said there about NFTs that you're interested in Kevin is we find the artist, we find the creator and we back the creator.

We back the artist. Right. Absolutely. That to me is the common denominator because what does venture do? The same thing that a good NFT curator investor does is find unique individuals, right, and invest in them, whether it's an entrepreneur or a creator in crypto in Web3, they're kind of fusing to become one in the same. And so that's what you're doing the same kind of thing that your venture firm has always done.

You're just bringing that from entrepreneur to creator and finding the artists in the NFT space. Do you see it that way too? Ryan, you absolutely nailed it because we've always said internally that we find the best entrepreneurs and we let them lead us into new markets. So they're always the ones, I would say, like probably 80 plus percent, 90 plus percent of the new deals that we do at true. are just founder referrals going back to us. And so we're watching our founders moved into crypto, moving to DFI, moving to NFTs. And, you know, it's both, how can we support and back the platforms?

You know, so our investment in art blocks, right, on the generative side. And then how can we support the individual artists? Because they are just entrepreneurs. And then also providing them with resources. You know, like, for a lot of these people, it's funny. I've probably interviewed over a dozen pretty well-known NFT artists now on proof. And I would say that the vast majority of them, this is life-changing money for them. They have never experienced anything like this in their life.

And they're kind of like blown away and scared and freaked out at the same time. And there's mental health issues that go around this. There is just a roller coaster of emotions that come. with this whole new world, including like I had an artist friend that just doesn't understand key management and lost $50,000 right after they did a sale. And it was because, you know, they're artists, you know, they don't, they haven't been trained up technically. So it's like when we think about this at True, it's like we have to provide the same way that we've always provided additional resources, the way that, you know, a lot of other venture firms do, like for

our entrepreneurs, we have to provide it for artists as well. So we have to figure out what is the product it true that we can build for them to help support them on this journey. So that's, that's part of the part of how we think about it is. How bad ass is it, though, that the creators for a change, the artists for a change get to be the rock stars of this movement, right? It's so cool. And they're getting royalties and it's baked into the smart contract. It's so cool. And they're getting paid over and over again. And then they're going out and they're backing other artists, which, so we're seeing this kind of a renaissance thing that's happening. I believe this is lasting. It's here to stay. But like with any new market, like we saw with the ICO days or anything

else, there's going to be some, I wouldn't call them scammers, but there's just going to be some fad to it, you know, baked in. And it's a, it's kind of a rush to see how quickly someone can launch a new project. And just it's buyer beware. You just really have to say and close your eyes and say, does this team have what it takes. Do they, are they in this for this quick sale or are they going to be in this to build something that's, that's lasting and durable? And that's, um, that's a hard one to answer. One of my favorite experiences I've had recently was when I was at NFT, NYC and I went to an in real life NFT gallery where you could actually like meet the artists and talk to them and they could talk to you about their art as if it was just, you know, the normal art world, which now this is

the normal art world. And so I met this guy and I bought, I like swept the floor on a, all of his like he minted 10 one of ones and I bought all of them and then I met up with a guy the next day for like breakfast just to get to know the guy because now I'm an investor in this artist and so I wanted to get to know him like I wanted to get to know the guy that I put a bunch of my ether and gave him a bunch of my ether gave me a bunch of the art and like I was just like blown away by some of the same language that we used to discuss things was some of the same language that venture funds when they invest in businesses or projects would also use. And so he was talking about, well, now that I have these NFTs that are out there, I have some

sort of like responsibility to my investors to keep on producing more art because they want me to blow up, right? Like they want me to become known as an artist. And it's the same thing as when like you bring on angel investors into your startup idea. Like the angel investors, it's like an advisership. They want to help you also blow up and become very, very successful. And the conversation was really just dividing lines between what is a financial startup versus what is an artist startup is becoming very, very blurred.

And the relationships between early seed investments or just buying art from an artist, they're starting to become the same things. You want to see the artists succeed. You want to do your best to help those artists succeed because you are now have financial exposure to these artists. and the parallels are almost the exact same thing. Yeah, absolutely. And then you add in Dow's on top of that, which you can join.

Those are just big collections of these people coming together around a movement. Or, you know, I'm in an NFT Dow called Flamingo Dow. And we basically have these weekly calls where we get together and talk about all the new and up-and-coming artists and who we want to back and, you know, how much do we want to allocate per new project. And it's just a really fun process. everyone kind of collectively comes together to support and help increase the awareness of these new artists that are coming out.

And this very much feels like the ethos that we've been hammering about crypto from day one is self-sovereignty, right? Like we don't need some top-down platform to support this economy. We can do it ourselves. Yeah. We don't need to have this gatekeeping about like who controls, like Spotify controlling all the musicians. We can figure out how to connect the investors and the artists in the same space at the same

time using the same new money and have these economies be bootstrapped by themselves. You talked about how the artist would receive life-changing money and then they would go by other artists art and start to generate this flywheel of some internally native economy. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's happening. And then the other crazy thing, though, and this is funny because I'm a VC and I'm saying this, is like in some sense, VCs have to be very careful because they could go away

or quite a few of them could go away because you have these dowls that are forming up that are better at fundraising. They're faster decision making. And they are really powered by the people versus just being a handful of unknown LPs that are backing venture capital. So it's kind of a new way. So we're kind of true. We're always thinking about how can we reinvent ourselves. And so for us, you know, we've done some things we've never thought we've.

do one we've invested in dows directly which is crazy we didn't know that was even going to be a thing for us here just a couple of years ago we've backed anonymous founders now which is nuts like we've backed somebody by the name of shade which is like the shade from a tree like we've like had anonymous founders so he've given money to but we have to think about also how to be you know there was this old model in vc where you had to come in and you would try and buy up 20% of a company that was kind of like, you know, all the big VCs, that was kind of their target ownership for most companies. Many times I push back on founders and say, you do not want that much venture capital. Don't muddy the waters here. Like have involved more DAWs, less VC, more DAWs, right?

And let's figure out how we can get that community support behind you versus it just being a handful of small VCs that may not even have the sway that you want in this new world, right? So in some sense, if you're getting a project out the ground, do you want five VCs that barely understand what you're doing to invest? Or would you rather have five DOWs each with, you know, hundreds of members that are going to be your best brand advocates and champions, right? Yeah. And so, um, your Twitter armies. Yeah. So we're treading very lightly. We want to make sure that we don't own too much. So we actually try and dial back. Uh, you know, when a new net, like we're buying into a coin, uh, you know, sometimes when I see these VCs that own,

you know, 10, 20% of a coin and you see this big chunk. You see that pie chart when you go into, you know, like, either scan, yeah, either scan. Yeah, and you see you're like, oh, there's, there's so-and-so VC and this massive chunk of the pie. And it's like, it doesn't feel right, you know? So we always like, we talk about single digit percentages. Like if it's a new network launching, it's like oftentimes like two or three percent,

not not getting greedy and really trying to put, actually have a more diversified. ownership than less. So there's a whole new world out here and a whole new way for VCs to think about this. And I think a lot of them just aren't going to get it. And they won't adapt. And it's going to be interesting to see what happens over the next few years. Yeah, those are the VCs that invest in Facebook in order to get exposure to the Metaverse. Yeah, exactly. I just think to myself that double-digit pie chart, you know, just screams kind of buy my bags, right? It doesn't scream like, I'm here for the community. It sends a different message. But I want to go back to, you know, NFTs as an investment.

and your breakdown earlier was pretty helpful, Kevin, were you talking about like PFP, NFTs and then one of ones? And part of what you said is like, hey, you know, your investment style is to, you want to own the blue chips of the previous revolutions, right? You know, the projects that did something new for the first time. But then you also want to look for what are the next revolutions going to be? Right.

And so I think that's where we are in the NFT space. It's like we're figuring out what. we do next with this NFT, this ERC 721 standard. And we've done some PFP things. We've seen one of one arts. What's next in your mind? Do you think it's like utility access based NFTs? There's been some buzz around that. Maybe we could define it and get into it. What's your take on celebrity NFTs? Do you think mainstream is going to jump in here? What's your take on the next big thing to get excited about in the NFT space? You have any ideas?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot to impact there. I think that on the celebrity NFT front, I worry that those are probably the worst investments that are out there because it's I, there's a lot of, it's funny, I was talking to, to bring up Mike Schnoda from Lincoln Park. I was talking to him on my podcast recently. And we're, there's, we're talking about celebrity NFTs. And one of the things I respect about him is he didn't jump into this, even though he was like way on the stream, almost before anyone else.

But he didn't jump into this because he saw it as kind of like the obvious thing. Like the obvious thing if your celebrity is just to slap your name on an NFT, right? And he's like, that's not interesting to me. That's the obvious thing. And oftentimes, sadly, it's not even the actual celebrities that are doing the artwork. So they'll come in. they'll work with and they'll commission some artwork to be done and then they'll put their name on it. Right. And that's not that, that's just a collaboration with someone that's not really

that interesting to me. It just, it just smells like a grab for quick cash. And so I, I tend to avoid that type of stuff. The more interesting projects are, are the ones that, you know, that I'm seeing that are around what can we do with NFTs in terms of them being a more kind of dynamic entity versus just a static one. So, you know, some people are working with multiple NFTs to combine them and burn them to create new original works of art. Some people are trying to figure out how can I pipe in kind of live data into the NFTs themselves so that they change and evolve over time based on, you know, it could be environmental conditions. It could be a whole slew of different things that gets piped into there. So just looking at the artists that are willing

to say, I see this as something that's programmable and what can be done here. So that's the kind of stuff that I get pretty excited about is some of those mechanics. And that's not to say that you should go out and just because something is being done for the first time, you should go out and buy it, but it does kind of grab my attention and it makes me consider whether or not it's a project worth that kind of further investigation. I've seen some. some really interesting stuff. Like Tom Sacks did something recently, like well-known artists that are coming into the space

that say, I already have a following in the kind of trad art world, but I'm now want to embrace NFTs, but not just to make NFTs, but do something new. And so when Tom Sacks came out with his rocket factory, are you guys familiar with that NFT series at all? No,

I think I've heard of it, but I can't even visualize this. So walk us through it. So yeah, this is a really fun one. So, you know, traditional artist has a great following, sells plenty of artwork on the more traditional art side came in and said okay i'm going to make a rocket factor so what is a rocket factory so you have to made all these individual kind of cones like the top

of a rocket all those individual different bodies of the rocket and these different tails of the rocket so these are three separate nfts there you go so is this it here kevin that's it so you probably you may have seen the news where bud wiser actually bought one of these rockets right that's right right right right yeah right so yeah you claim the different components and then you merge them, it burns the individual NFTs and creates your final rocket. Now, the question is, do you want to keep your final rocket as an NFT or do you actually want to schedule a launch for your rocket? And if you schedule a launch for your rocket, they actually turn it into a real physical rocket and then launch it and then they actually film the whole thing. It comes down on

its parachute. They ship it back to you. And now you have a Tom Sacks, like original, actual physical piece of artwork that is the rocket sitting in your house. So, It was just a fun, different take on like, how can we play with this idea of digital and physical kind of interacting? Another great example here is if you see with these different rockets that you can do a Franken rocket, which is a different, like a McDonald's nose, a NASA body and a Tiffany company tail. That's a Franken rocket. A pure rocket would be like all McDonald's up and down or, and of course they didn't get any of the licensing. So all this is done on the like this is it's not. It's shady. They're not getting sued for it, but you know, Tiffany and the company did not endorse

this. Yeah, exactly. But it's just a fun way for an artist to say, I'm going to play with this world of NFTs that in a new and novel way. And I like projects like this. You know, it was, it was just trying out new and interesting things that haven't been done before. So we'll see more of this done from traditional artists. It's a fun thing to track. So the formula here is you have, kind of a mainstream artist from trad art, by the way. I didn't know that was a term trad art, but I love that. I'm using that. And then you combine that with like some novel thing that you can do, almost some utility, something that is much more innovative than the, like, copying all the projects that came previously. And that to you is sort of a recipe for success.

Is there like a utility element to any of this too, right? It's like, you know, Gary Vee, some of his NFTs, they provide access to conferences, you get surprises in the mail, all sorts of like other artists have talked about access to Discord, for example. Do you think utility is going to increasingly become an important part of the NFT experience? Yeah, but I think this is going to be the future of monetization for creators with their communities. I think the utility side will really shine. You know, so for example, you know, just to talk about my own own bags for a second. So I proof, you know, we're going to be launching a utility NFT that will allow you access to just as you said, like a podcast with no ads, which I already do no ads anyway, but it'll, you'll get

the podcast early, you get access to the private discord, in-person meetups, collaborations I do with other artists. Like, it's just going to be a whole slew of different things that as a content creator, you just add on value over time as that creator. I mean, it's very similar to to what you all are doing with your Dow. It's like how can you take something and put a fence around it and say, if you're really a true fan, this, you're doing it with tokens, though, right? 3,500 you have to own? Is that right?

Yeah, there's different tiers. This is kind of separate. It's kind of like, you know, our concept was like launch a Dow with the community we have and see what they make, you know? And so it's totally the communities. It's got a mind of its own. Yeah, it's got a mind of its own, which is a little bit different than I think if we were doing like an NFT of the type you're describing.

Right. Which gets you additional access to things. Yeah, but tell us more about it. And one other comment I think I'll say that I'm curious your perspective on is we found the tooling to do what you're saying. I don't know how it's been with proof, but like very rudimentary. Like it's just, it's hard. Like there are no shrink wrapped packages to spin out an NFT token if you're an artist and

to create a token gated community and to like add. features your fans like everything is bespoke and it's difficult well it's getting a lot better so that's that's the cool thing is every have you heard of unlock protocol yeah i've heard of unlock yes yes so if you go to unlock dash protocol dot com like this is basically a way to take nfts and and and and put various things behind these kind of locks that you created so it's like managing membership around nfts so you know this will this will allow you to do some of the integrations that you were talking about like where you you block off certain certain content on your blog and but you're right it's like really early days for for these types of this type of tooling to be done but you know I imagine it's just going to

it's it's certainly going to be here in the next six months like there's so many different entrepreneurs that are working on on kind of creating this it's it and it's very doable right all we have to do is look into someone's wallet and say, do you hold this NFT? If so, you have access to this resource. So for me, I'm going to be doing a bunch of, you know, there's a, I'll probably, you know, have a small gallery in New York or LA that moves around and travels around. If you want access to the gallery, you bring your phone and you use the app to unlock access with your NFT, you know, like to get behind that door just by holding this NFT, it's going to be something that we all do. I was talking to Mike Shinoda about this. Like, you know, if he's, if you're, if you go to 10 of his concerts,

do you get a special NFT that allows you early access to the 11th one on forward? Like, um, this proof of attendance, uh, I'm sure you all have heard of is really interesting. These popes that, that people are collecting, um, this idea of once you have enough cred in a certain, within a certain organization, um, you know, certain things start to happen. Um, certain resources start to become available. So I'm, I'm, I'm really excited. for NFTs as they're as as as Gary was very smart to kick that off and say this is about providing extended access to all the things that I do through through these NFTs. The era of proof of stake is upon us and Lido is working to bring proof of stake to everyone.

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but paid to you in your preferred crypto assets. When I get my Gemini credit card, I'm going to make sure that I get my cash back in ETH. So whenever I buy something, I get a little bit of ETH bonus back to me at the same time. You can open up a free account in under three minutes at Gemini.com slash go bankless. And if you trade more than $100 within the first 30 days after sign up, you'll be gifted a free $15 Bitcoin bonus. Check them out at Gemini.com slash go bankless. I want to highlight another thing that I'm noticing, Kevin, in your approach to investing the space, is like you're actually going out there

and experimenting and doing things, right? So like if you have a thesis that every creator with a fan community is going to have some sort of token gated access, some sort of fan token, whether it's in your C-721 and NFT or whether that's another token, the best way to go figure that out is to like, your content producer,

so you try and experiment with what you're doing with proof. And like that gives you a lay of the land of, okay, where's the tooling in terms of maturity? What's missing? What does an artist actually need to think about when they're launching one of these things to their community and you kind of learn by doing? Has that been a key part of your crypto journey and your success today? Oh, 100%. I think you just have to go out there and play and experiment, not even just as a creator as anyone. One of the main things that I talk about on my podcast is, you know, there's so many times where we mention these things. and you know, you just, you think about playing in this world of defy or this world of all these new things that are, that are happening.

And one of the biggest mistakes that you can make is just to listen to podcasts. Like, you have to go and actually install the software and put in, put in 500 bucks, 700 bucks, whatever. Maybe even if it's consider education and go test out. And it's unfortunate because gas prices can be so high that they eat up everything. Just go try it on Polygon or like some other, you know. no side chain. You got to go kick the tires. Exactly. And you'll, you'll probably lose some money. But it is, it's like, it's like buying the best textbooks. Like, you're just going to learn so much by doing that. So I'm, I'm a big fan. I know that when I launch this Profin of T, I, I purposely didn't promise a ton outside of just a couple basic things. Because I know that over the next three years, I'm going to probably launch a good dozen or so things that, you know, half of them will fail. But all have been. And, you know, the first to have done it and it'll be like, why not? Let's just try this.

What happens if we, if this works, you know, and then also trying to... You got to leave room to over deliver. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's it. I mean, you guys do this quite well with, with all the great content that you put out.

So, by the way, I don't know if I ever told you this, but I subscribed to your newsletter as of like, maybe a year ago or something like that, I started paying for your news. Oh, really? It's good content. OG. No, I appreciate it.

Appreciate it. Yeah. Do you have the bank list poeap? I don't. You can grab that. If you pay for the newsletter, you get the bank, with POAP. Yeah. Amazing. I didn't know that. It's awesome. Yeah, we actually have one every single year. So you can have the 2021. And now you would get the 2021 one. Oh, that's awesome. The idea is obviously just like marking attendance. Like how long have you been around. Right. And as for just like analytics for our customer base, like it really lets us know how much they really care. Right. Like, oh, you've been around since 2020. You've collected it's 2025. You've been around since 2020. You have all five PO apps. Like, oh, man, you are really committed. And it's just a great way to have. insights into who your actual community members are.

Yeah, and we don't really know what else we're going to do with it. Right. It's kind of the interesting thing. But you don't have to know, right? You don't have to know at the start, right? Maybe five years from now you'll decide to do something really cool with it for people that have been around with you that long, you know? Exactly.

It's definitely an option on the future. So, Kevin, NFTs are insanely fun because of how much surface area they have. They have all of the surface area. That's what they are. Non-fundable tokens means they're going to be super unique. But a lot of people can be bullish on. on NFTs and not want to like expend the mental bandwidth to like have the upside to them. If somebody came to you and was like, I want exposure to NFTs, but I don't want to have to

pick and choose between any of them, how do I get exposure to that? Do you have an answer to that question? It's a good question. You know, in some sense, there is the game like that you kind of alluded to, which is the person that pays attention that is like, that is buying the latest BFP drops and they're flipping and they're so actively in it that that's the, that's, game that you have to give up like half your life to or more, right? Right. And so I would say that the thing that's really tough is that all of the stuff that we know to be good stuff, that, meaning that we can look at it and say, gosh, wouldn't it be great

if I was able to afford a crypto punk or a board eight because they're just, they're so massive now that they'll just go down in history as being these first, right, that we've been talking about. the only way I know to play in that arena is in this is I was talking my sister about this actually is just like go and buy a fractionalized NFT so that that's that's what a lot of folks that can't afford a crypto punk are doing is they'll go on like fractionalized dot art or there's a there's another one I know that's actually it's not out yet but I can talk about it in the next few weeks but there are these basically these smart contracts that go in they take a high value NFT they lock it in

the smart contract and they create a token that is associated with that NFT and then you can buy that token and then you know people buy and sell it it's liquid it's you know they add liquidity to uniswap for that token and you can go in and just own one one thousandth of a zombie crypto punk right and so if you in your head are thinking like okay this is something that i believe is going to go up over the next couple decades but i can't afford 400 000 for a crypto punk right now today then it's the easiest way to get some exposure to some of these high value assets without actually having to go and, you know, putting up the cash for a whole one. So that's the only thing I can think of.

Other than that, it's just really about going in super deep and just understanding and trying to identify who the next, you know, X copy is going to be before they blow up. And I think a lot of that is happening on Tesos, actually. It's that whole Henn ecosystem. And all of the, I don't know if you've paid much attention to everything that's happening on, on TESA's with like object and Henn and these sites that are just like, so many people are minting on TESOs because, and it kills me to say that. I'm not a huge Tessos fan, but primarily because it just, they're having skilling issues like everyone else.

And when it slows down, it kills me. but people like it because it's green, it's proof of stake, which obviously Ethereum's going there very soon. But a lot of the up-and-coming artists, when they can go on Tesos, then they can mint something for $5. Like that's a win for them

versus having to go out and deploy their own smart contract or mint for hundreds of dollars, right? So you see a lot of scrappy up-and-coming artists that are on Tesos, that are minting on Tesos. So that for me is kind of, of where I pick through the up-and-comers and try and find, you know, really interesting, unique artists on that platform. So that would be the place where I would say to spend some time, for sure. That's some good insight and definitely some good alpha. Some people are asking,

like, are NFTs really for everyone, right? When like gas fees are so high and it costs so much to mint and, you know, every transaction, like the existing ones are so expensive. So having these like playgrounds, being able to identify the next big thing is super important. But I want to zoom out and ask another question because earlier in the podcast, we were talking about Facebook, right, which is now meta. This is Mark Zuckerberg's bet on the metaverse, right? Now we've just been, you know, spending an hour or so talking about crypto and NFTs with you here, Kevin. And I want to know if what we're talking about is actually the metaverse. Like, have we been talking about the metaverse this entire time? We have been talking about components of the metaverse for

Sure. Okay. Well, what is the metaverse then? How does it come together? How do these components form to create this thing everyone just started talking about in 2021, which is this digital reality? David and I think of it as very much like digital property rights for the individuals, but there are other definitions of this thing. What is the metaverse in your mind? So many people like to think of the metaverse is like this VR experience that is just like, oh, you have to own an Oculus to participate in the metaverse, you know. And, and for me, I would say that I've always been known as a hater of VR. I've always thought it was like very, remember when the Wii came out and we all got super excited about like swinging and playing tennis and doing bowling for a little bit.

I remember VR sort of platforms. Like, did Sony ever have one at one point in time? Was there some old janky version? Like it's been the promise, I feel like for every five years. It's always been, yeah, it's just three, five years away. It's a great wow factor. A demo is quite well, right? Like everybody, everyone can agree that we all can have fun in VR for the first couple hours. And then the question is, does it have that, you know, is it sticky enough to beat out just a couple of friends sitting on a sofa, you know, playing Call of Duty, you know, just with their standard traditional way? And the answer at this point is no. So as somebody who's put in 50 plus hours into an Oculus headset playing golf in VR with my friends, I'm going to go ahead and take the other side of this argument. I think it's very much the social element that is really what VR.

has optimized for it's not really the games it's playing games with your friends and if you have other friends playing games with you VR is pretty tight I get that that's I get that that is a very fun experience I think that you are in a very small group of people like how many how many people are doing that what what is so I was saw some the other three people I do it with are in a VR startup so they're in the right yeah that I've seen in terms of like concurrent active users in VR it's like in the tens of thousands like it's not it's not big like But that said, you know, I've played some awesome boxing games. I've done a bunch of these drawing things with friends.

Like I, I too, I have the latest Oculus sitting upstairs. And it's because I want to give it a shot. Like every two or three months, somebody will be like, you got to try this out. Right. But it still hasn't replaced, you know, a standard PlayStation or Xbox just sitting there for me. But I hear you. Like there's the, you know, and I do believe at some point in the future, it'll be the right combination of price, form factor, battery life, all the things like the nausea stuff, like they'll figure all that stuff out.

But in the meantime, I think the metaverse really today, for me, and everyone defines this a little bit differently, I think of it as more components, reusable components that have a defined open source definition that we can move around to different experiences and platforms. And they could be 2D, they could be 3D, they could be Oculus, they could be whatever. But I believe, that when I look at what's happening with some of the NFTs and how they're getting wired up, whether it be like the 3D Kongs or the me bits and how they're creating actual models for them so that they can be used in these kind of metaverses, you know, crypto voxels or whatever it may be or sandbox. It's, it's, I don't believe there's going to be kind of one winner take all here

where it's going to be like, oh, of course, it's just Facebook. That's the metaverse. I think it's going to be a bunch of different experiences on different platforms that we can take our components own our stuff and bring it with us and move it around. Our property. Exactly. So if we have a really cool me bit that we like from Larva Labs, we can move it into five or ten different games and seamlessly, it'll just be connecting our wallet and it'll come with us. And I believe, and I hope that is the future of these digital assets, is we can just quickly and easily move them around through these different worlds. But it's really early days.

Reusable components you can take with you from environment to environment, right? It's like owning your own inventory. In the gaming world, these are like items. How important do you think is decentralization in that definition? I think it's a pretty big piece. Is it like fundamental? Is it like so, I mean, someone from Facebook might argue that, hey, like Facebook can provide you all of the items and guess what we created this standard and it's a world adopted standard

it's the facebook uh 721 the fb 721 and you can port it to you all of these other ecosystems because they've also adopted this standard um is that the metaverse or do you think decentralization has to be part of it because without that individuals don't really own anything what are your thoughts Well, it's a, it really depends on how Facebook approaches these digital assets. And I don't think they've yet kind of shown their hand here. Um, you know, there was the old school Microsoft way of saying, hey, look at us. We're, we're, we're like, we're friendly. We play with everybody. But in reality, it was kind of like still trying to lock you into their walled garden. Um, I'm probably dating myself, but that was the way Microsoft used to operate. And I, I, I worry that Facebook is kind of optimized for more of that type of world than they will a truly free and open world. So we'll see. I think it's on us as individuals to push the agenda and to say this is what we demand, that it be something where I can take my components elsewhere.

And I think it's going to be really difficult, especially for some of the larger game manufacturers out there where the bulk of their revenue comes from selling skins. and it comes from selling these assets. Why would they want you to bring your own into their game? Like they're just missing out on revenue. So I think there's a huge opportunity here for indie developers to come in and kind of really do some work here that embraces this new tech. Like it's going to be web three native folks that are going to get it, right? It'll be the older ones that already have this as part of the revenue stream that are going to be the last to want to adopt it. Kevin, as we come to a close here, we want to,

throw some rapid questions your way, and we'll just hit on a number of different subjects. You ready for them? Yeah, let's do it. All right, question number one. Are you ever going to go bankless? That would be very difficult for me because I believe in a diversified, I still believe the equities kind of, you know, play a part in my overall portfolio construction. And so in some sense, I have to have centralized, I guess I could request the stock certificates and put them in a vault. or something.

Well, we're bankless maxis, but Ryan and I are also convenience maxis too. But neither of us have actually officially broken up with our banks yet. We have a Wells Fargo account, sadly. Yeah, I mean, there's certain things that, like, you know, you just have to. I'd imagine that for me to be, to get rid of my checking account is probably another decade out. But I think that will come through a new modern form of that. I don't, we'll see.

Totally. Do you think one chain will dominate over the others, or do you think it's like a purely multi-chain world, there will be thousands of chains? What's your take? It's a great question. I believe that there are chains now that have enough traction that it's going to be hard to unseat them, just like some people still use Oracle databases. I think that there is, there's, once there is,

enough around something, it tends to stick around for a while. There will be use cases that emerge, that specific chains will address better than others. And, you know, for example, like our weave for file storage, right? That's a really interesting play on file storage that sticks around for several hundred years, right? Ethereum's not going to tackle that anytime soon, right? So I think there'll be very specific use cases. I do believe that with speed, we will see new blockchain use cases. So I would love to throw a question back to you because I've never, I don't believe I've

ever heard you talk about in the show. I know you guys all have, I mean, you got the Ethereum poster hanging in the background. But I'm curious on the Salonah front, like I believe that type of. of performant tech will unlock very interesting use cases in defy that you wouldn't normally see even on a layer two world. So, yeah, that's a long way of saying, I believe it's going to be a multi-chain world. But I just want to hear the 30 second from both of you on what you think of Solana. I've never heard you.

Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know if we can wrap that up in a rapid fire type format, but I guess my TLDR would be we very much agree that high throughput. chains, I guess, or low transaction fee chains will unlock a massive amount of use cases. So totally with you there. New use cases, things we've never seen before. We also think that monolithic chains like Solana or like Polygon, Prove a Steak or something like that, they also have their fit, right? They're net accretive to the ecosystem. And so they're bringing more users in. And that's fantastic. And users should go use whatever chain they feel like they want to. There shouldn't be dogma about it. like, oh, I have to pay $10 because then I'm an Ethereum's all that, right?

Further, though, we also believe there's an episode we put out around modular versus monolithic blockchains. We actually think the monolithic design that Solana is optimizing for is kind of a dead end. And Ethereum in its current phase. This is what Ethereum currently is. Yeah. And so we're very bullish on layer twos and roll-ups and actually maximizing the base chain for decentralization or the consensus layer in a modular blockchain design for decentralized.

centralization. But this is a whole top of can of worms. And again, something... That's interesting. I want to listen to that episode. What was that... Yeah, check out that episode. It's called Ultra-Scalable Ethereum, modular versus monolithic. We'll put it as a link in the show notes, too. And... So what you're... Just so I can... Just to summarize

a little bit, you're saying, give me security at the base layer, make it more modular, get the... And that is better than having less security, but more performance at the base layer. Yes. Yeah. So just like what you were saying with how many different chains will optimize for very many different use cases. Ethereum, the L1, needs to optimize for decentralization so it can sell that product, which that product being

decentralization to other blockchains. And these other blockchains, we consider these L layer two's. And so there's a lot of use cases that decentralization is really an afterthought. But you still want decentralization. And so if you want to make an application-specific blockchain that optimizes for execution and throughput, you can do that. You just tap into Ethereum and you get Ethereum to give you its decentralization. And this is roll-ups, right? And so just like how Solana is optimized for execution, Ethereum is optimized for decentralization. But it does mean that Ethereum's going to have this weird sort of puberty type era, this awkward phase era that we're in now, where the actual usage has to transition from the Ethereum main chain onto layer twos. Right. So like ultimately, in this

modular design, Ethereum mainnet is actually just a chain for other chains to settle on top of. Yeah, a settlement hub. It's a settlement hub. And users should get off. They should migrate off. It's weird that we're there.

It's weird that we're in this hybrid place. So like we're very much, we don't think gas fees will go down sustainably over the long run. They can't. Ever. Like they'll just go up. And so Ethereum's in this awkward phase where like users are still kind of stuck on the main chain. Yeah.

They hate gas fees. Especially because they have to bridge right now. Totally. And bridging is like, when I think of, I always put my like hat on, my consumer hat on. And, you know, we've all done the crazy, you know, Maddock over back and forth and through the woods. It's terrible. It's like, it's horrible. Nobody's going to do that.

Like, I have a hard time doing that. I'm just like, why am I doing all this? It's like 10, like, hurdles just to get to a, to an L2M back, you know? Yeah, we can't. But we do think that, like, bridges will come from centralized exchanges and the soil will get easier in the future. But anyway, okay, it's back to rapid fire. Kevin, because we still got some questions. Why is Dogecoin still a thing? This just goes to, it speaks to the power of community. I mean, one of the things that I'm a believer in is that we have to start thinking about, you know,

these PFP projects of 10,000, these, anytime you, community is actually part of the product, right? And so even though there hasn't been any technical innovation going on there, people want something to rally behind. I mean, and this and Doge is, I mean, I was buying in playing with Doge. I actually had the founder Jackson on my show on my podcast. Gosh, it's been eight or nine years ago, eight years ago, something like that. Yeah, because he quit. He's out now, right? He's out.

Yeah, and he hates it now. But he had a pretty long rant on that whole thing. But I think one of the things that I really loved about my initial conversation with them that long ago was that he was all about understanding that this a community can come together, work together, and do amazing things. And they were sponsoring NASCAR back then. They were doing all these really crazy things. And they feel like their owners in the project. And this is theirs to like own hold. And it's a game that they want to play.

partially. And it's partially because they think of it as like, well, at least back in the day, it was their tipping currency. So it's a brand. At the end of the day, it's a brand. And I think that any modern project also has to be part brand, you know? So Kevin, let's fast forward 10 years into the future. NFTs have exploded. Everyone's got their own NFTs that they like, layer two ecosystems vibrant. Crypto gaming is blossoming. Where's Bitcoin in this world? This is the hardest one. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, this is a, God, I want to hear your guys' answer on this one. I want to hear David's. You know, it's funny. It's a weird thing in my head, this sounds so odd because it's cryptocurrency. But in my head, Bitcoin is like bonds. Like I like have a little Bitcoin because I'm like, that's my little safe nest egg over here to the side. You know, I don't think of it is anything kind of like sexy. and innovative, but I think of it as something that is just going to give me a nice, reliable,

long-term store value slash return over the next couple decades. And, you know, with the happening's happening every four years, I can't imagine it doesn't continue to at least track the market if not outpace it. So I don't know. I'm not a seller because of that reason. I mean, it's the OG. It's like in some sense, you have to kind of pay respect and always hold a little. So is it the crypto punk of cryptocurrencies? Almost. In some sense, it is, you know? So I am not, I'm never going to say, like, I'm not a seller of Bitcoin, but I'm not buying anymore, if that makes any sense. It's just like, it's my safe, it's my safe crypto. As weird as that sounds. It seems like a very, very reasonable take. I think it's like the ETH-BTC ratio, which a lot of people are looking at right now, and

you can, it's a fractal, right? You can go down the line, like Solana versus ETH, like Avalanche versus ETH. All like ETH versus BTC goes up in bull markets and down in bear markets. And then the same thing with all coins arise in bull markets and all coins die in bare markets. If we are bullish on this as an industry, everything else is therefore going to outpace Bitcoin because that's what happens when this industry grows. Right. but Bitcoin also never actually goes away itself either, right?

A lot of things do go to zero versus Bitcoin. Well, and there's these purists, though, that are on the other side of that, that are, that I feel in some sense, I have a couple of these friends that are, I won't call them crazy, but I can say I won't call them crazy and that makes them sound a little crazy. They're like these people that they're obsessed with like this trial, this Craig Wright trial. And like, they're like, they're like, they're so, they know every. little intimate detail of everything on the Bitcoin side. And for them, they don't care about like programmable money. They're not really interested in any of that. They're just like,

they're gold bugs. Give me, give me basic crypto. I want basic crypto, you know. And so I feel that that is always going to have its fan base, right? It's like you don't have to figure anything else out. There's no funky, how do I get to a layer two and back? It's just basic crypto. And so I just imagine that stays around for quite some time. Yeah, I totally agree. I can say this confidently. Bitcoin will appreciate relative to Fiat. Right. Yes, 100%. So that I am pretty certain of. Kevin, this has been fantastic to talk to you, man. Really enjoyed this. I got to end with this question because you are totally dialed into the crypto space. It's obviously you spend so much of your working time there now in kind of the Web 3 world. So what's next? What's next for Kevin?

You got some projects that you're excited to launch? What can you hit us with at the end of this conversation? Yeah, I mean, I think for me, I really do want to start exploring how we can embrace community. And so at proof, just on specifically on the NFT side. And so, you know, the proof, it's going to be called the Proof Collective that I'm coming out with. It'll be launching in December. Yeah, and folks can just sign up for my newsletter at Proof.X, Z, and I'll do the announcement on there. but that's going to be a way for me to play and test out different ideas,

a whole slew of different things that I have ideas around that I want to play with. And it's going to be a fun NFT to do, I'm going to do a thousand of them, basically. And there's going to be the most hardcore kind of NFT collectors that hold them. And then these thousand people will have access to all these crazy experiments, more or less. And yeah, there's like, I'll give you one, like, one fun one. that is just I've been toying around with. And I think this is applicable. I'm talking to a few different artists,

and I think that there's something here. Basically, let's just say you have this utility NFT, right? And this utility NFT gives you access to a special, I wouldn't call it a club, but just a special, actual physical space that you could go to. If you ever been to like Soho House in New York or any of these kind of places, right? For sure.

So say you have access to this, place where you can go in, use your NFT to check in. And there's a gallery. You can check out other NFTs. You can even display your own as you walk in into different spaces. So just figuring out how as you walk around through physical spaces, your NFTs kind of follow you around would be interesting. And then having live artists kind of perform there as well. So you can imagine there being, let's just say there's a night, a musician comes in, does a live recording there in front of the, however, 50, 75, 100 people that show up that have that specific NFT. you then take that live recording and instantly both press it out to vinyl,

give the option to either press it out to vinyl or also send it to you in an NFT form that you could then destroy and get received one of the vials in return. But just of that actual attendance, that place that you went on that specific occasion. And so I'm just trying to figure out, I mean, it's just one of a thousand little ideas of how can we bring more of this experience into real life environments for, you know, holders of this type of thing. I believe that there is interactive real world, when you're a member of something like this, you will then be able to participate both in terms of enjoying something new and also when you walk in bringing the environment with you, if that makes sense. Yeah, totally.

That's awesome, man. Yeah, I do think there's something special about the NFT community, you know, at this point in time where you get a bunch of them together holding a common NFT and who knows what you can do with it. Yeah, absolutely. And then other artists like getting together to actually create artwork live would be a ton of fun. Like how cool would it be if you could actually go to a private event and you watch people make a live artwork in front of you up on a projector? And then you walk out with that NFT because you were part of that live event. Like that's freaking awesome. Like that would just be so much fun.

So I think that that's the cool thing about NFTs is it gives you this, this like open license to just go play and experiment because it is so art driven that you can, you know, know, just try anything and just see if it sticks. Yeah. Playing experimentation, that is the name of the game in Web 3 in the NFT space. Kevin Rose, you were my guide to Web 2. That's how I first uncovered it on dig. It's fun to meet you on the other side in the Web 3 world. This has been a fantastic conversation, man.

We really appreciate it. I got to thank you guys for, well, thanks for having me on. And I got to thank you guys for also educating me. Like, honestly, as you all know, there is just not enough time, right? There's not enough time to check out every single project and every, And so I'm so heads down on the NFT front, I need someone to, like, feed me all the defy and all the stuff that you all are talking about. Like, it's been nice to get that education from you.

So thanks for putting out great content in a way that is authentic. Absolutely. Glad to do it. Yeah, we're fun to do it. I couldn't imagine doing anything else. It's absolutely a blast. It does get exhausting at times, though, David, right? But I don't know.

What else would we spend our time doing? Once you go crypto, you don't, you know, everything else is boring. It gets exhausting, but then, yeah, as soon as I stopped doing it, I'm like, well, I could do more. Absolutely. Well, then you get FOMO, right? Because you're gone for two days and the entire world changed yet again. And you're like, I just miss the entire world changing again. Like, I need to get back on.

That's what happens to me at Thanksgiving. Apparently, this Constitution Dow people token started mooning and I'd like already redeemed to mine and like, what? Come on. Just miss a couple days. And you miss a lot in crypto. But bankless listeners, you are not missing out on anything because our job is to get you educated, keep you up to speed. Kevin Rose, thanks for joining us on bankless. This has been a blast. Thanks for having me.

Bankless Nation, a couple action items for you. Number one, subscribe to Kevin's podcast and newsletter. That was mentioned in the show, proof.xyz. You'll find it. Link in our show notes as well. Also, you can follow Kevin on Twitter. We'll include his handle in the show notes. We'll also include a link to our modular chains versus monolithic chains podcast that we were making references. So if you haven't listened to that one, you want to get a feel for what, at least the bankless thesis is in the emergence of modular versus monolithic blockchains, Ethereum versus Avalanche and all the alt ones, go tune into that podcast too. Risk and disclaimers, guys, of course, NFTs are risky, eth is risky, crypto is risky, but the beauty of Web3 is you get to own this

risk yourself. You can definitely lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.