Bankless - UpOnly & Flip with Brian Krogsgard (Ledger) | ETHDenver 2023 Interview #8

Starting point is 00:00:12 Bank of this nation, we got the last interview of the day here at the Axler Interoperability Summit. And this one was a surprise, a very pleasant surprise. It's not really going to be about interoperability. We're talking to Ledger, Ledger Cast, also known as Brian Crosgard, from Up Only, from Daily Open, a fellow content producer and a long friend I've had in the space. We talk about his company Flip, which is all about NFTs, both being an NFT trader, but also an NFT community member at the same time. And after we're done talking about Flip, we'll, of course,

Starting point is 00:00:42 talk about Up Only and all of the other content that Ledger puts out. But first, before we get to that conversation with Ledger, a moment to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Cracken is our strategic sponsor for 2023. Why? Because Cracken has been around for over 12 years and has proven itself to be deeply aligned with the crypto industry. Trusted centralized crypto platforms are hard to come by these days, which makes the few remaining ones even more valuable. With over 9 million users and not a cent lost, choosing Cracken as our strategic sponsor for 2023 was a no-brainer. We need exchanges like Cracken. to provide the on-ramps to get people to go bankless.

Starting point is 00:01:15 And Cracken's emphasis on security and transparency makes us feel good about having them as a sponsor. If you're unsure about your centralized exchange or on-ramp, perhaps open an account with Cracken today. And if you're unsure about the rest of Web3, well, then maybe you should get your learn on with Metamask Learn. Learning about crypto is hard. There's no one out there to hold your hand

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Starting point is 00:02:03 Where better to start other than Uniswap? Utiswap is, of course, a decentralized exchange for crypto asset trades and swaps. but it's now also an NFT aggregator as well, making Uniswap some of the best decentralizing trading tech that's out there. Uniswap's big announcement at Eith Denver is their Uniswap wallet, which is waiting to get released to the public as soon as Apple stops being a big old bully about crypto apps in the app store. Uniswap is basically on every chain that's relevant in the crypto ecosystem. So if you want to use Uniswap, but with the cheapest possible fees,

Starting point is 00:02:32 then use Uniswap on Arbitrum. The Arbitrum layer two is the host of Ethereum's most vibrant defy and NFT communities. Arbitrum is already surpassed. the ETH layer one in transaction volume and it's not even close to full capacity. With so many vibrant communities on Arbitrum, Arbitrum is a good place to call home for the era of layer 2s. Speaking of settling into new homes, the Phantom wallet is now available on both Ethereum and Polygon. That's right, the number one wallet on Solana is expanding into the Ethereum ecosystem. Phantom is the one wallet for everything, displaying NFTs, making NFTs,

Starting point is 00:03:01 making NFT trades, swapping tokens, staking tokens. So if you're a multi-chain surfer or an NFT power user, then the Phantom wallet is for you. It also comes in mobile. Check it out at phantom. Dot app. Now, let's get into the interview. Vegas Nation, we're talking with so many different today here at the Axelar Interoperability Series.

Starting point is 00:03:18 We're talking with Brian Crosgard. You might know him as Ledger. What's up, Ledger? Not much. How you doing? Did I just docks you? What? Did you dox me?

Starting point is 00:03:25 No, no, no. I'm doxed. Hello, my name is Brian Crossguard. I live in Alabama. Keep going. I was born in the 80s. So I've been putting on my podcaster voice because I'm doing all the whole interviews,

Starting point is 00:03:38 but you're also a podcaster. know you don't need it. When people approach you at these things, do they know you from Brian from Flipside or Brian from Up Only? They don't know me as Brian at all. That's a good point. They just say, are you that letter guy? Yeah, the one in the corner of the screen. Yeah, the small, a small little video camera? Yeah. Yeah. So you like me, well, I actually no longer operate my own OBS. I got Luke behind the camera operating my OBS. And also Dave here. Nice. You still do your OBS? Yeah, when we record a show. Why do you put your own camera small and down in the corner? It just kind of was organic from the very first show that we did because I was actually trying to help Covey stream

Starting point is 00:04:18 and interview with Bitlord, which was random. And then like all these people from, it's like a cast of 2021 characters came on that and we had like 7 or 8,000 people joined that show live. And that was episode zero. And in it, I was like, I'm just kind of here. So I've made myself picture and picture and then it just fit after that. Plus, I kind of like it. I like being, we would learn one thing in crypto. Don't be the main character. Right. So I am never the main character. So that works fine for me. You are the, you contribute a lot to the conversation, man, but no, like look at Kobe. Kobe can be the main character. That guy, that guy can be the main character. So what is it, what is the status with Up Only?

Starting point is 00:04:55 Up Only is a podcast that records sometimes and whatever the hell you guys want. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. We have no obligations, because I don't know if you know, but our sponsor collapsed and turned out to be a fraud. Yeah, the sponsor world has been different ever since then, let me tell you. Yeah, and honestly, we've been kind of slow playing it. Right. We'll be there when it matters. Sure, sure.

Starting point is 00:05:16 Is that like a news tagline? Welcome to up. Only TV will be there when it matters. When you want us, we'll be there for you. Yeah. Oh, man, okay, so, but you are here to be flipside crypto. No. No.

Starting point is 00:05:29 Not flipside, flip. Flip. Excuse me. Flip. Flip. In the vast world of crypto company names, there's a flip. Dot XYZ, a Flipside crypto, and I think there used to be another one that changed names that had Flip in the name.

Starting point is 00:05:42 Okay, I think Flipside might be my other buddy Will's project. So Flip. Flipside is like a very query-driven developer data thingy. Okay, well, they're irrelevant. Tell me about Flip. That's right. No, they seem like they're a cool project. They just should change their name.

Starting point is 00:05:59 You should change your name. So we're Flip, and it's Flip. XYZ and we're an NFT aggregation platform but we're kind of like if you take some of the best things from exchanges and aggregators and research platforms and slap it all together and it's a all-encompassing experience in one place and it's on desktop and mobile and it's damn good and not enough you know about it so you should go use it. Who is flip for flip is for the person that definitely has a wallet maybe has an NFT, but they don't necessarily treat NFTs as alt coins with pictures. Okay.

Starting point is 00:06:35 They care about their NFTs? Yeah, they care about the NFTs they own. Like, I'm, you know, Pudgy Penguin 965. Okay. And I'm invested in this community, and I'm going shopping for my NFT. I'm not just trading derivatives of NFTs at the margins of floor prices. Okay, so not the NFT power traders that blurs going out. Yeah, I think they're going after a different market, and I think they've done a great job at that and getting liquidity in it.

Starting point is 00:07:04 We're going after people that kind of like if you think of it in a ERC20 landscape, like a swing trader, not somebody on five-minute candles. Sure, sure. A momentum trade? Yeah, but it's like, I always say this in my own investing. It's like, okay, well, I'm going to invest based on fundamentals and trade based on technicals. and with my JPEGs, you know, like, I'm going to pay attention to the price. You know, like, if I buy something, I could think it's the coolest thing ever. But if I buy it for 0.1E, then it goes to 10E, I'm going to be tempted to sell it. So, like, the price does matter.

Starting point is 00:07:37 And a lot of platforms ignore price and metrics and community-driven stuff. And we have all of those interesting metrics, but the creator, the community, the art is still first and foremost. Okay, so what can Flip really do that other NFD platform? don't really offer? The big thing that literally nobody offers, and we've had since day one, is a native mobile app, and what it's best at is being a notification hub,

Starting point is 00:08:03 so I can follow your E&S, and if you flip an NFT anywhere, so you trade something and sweep something, I can get a notification, and it's like, hey, David is aping checks right now, and checks are 0.2E, and I'm like, well, David told me about Maddo when it was 11 cents, so I better freaking get over.

Starting point is 00:08:23 over there and sweep like 50 checks or something. So you get notifications of anything like that. For all of my friends that I've told, hey, you should totally buy MFers, they could set notifications that if I ever sell my MFer, they could be like, yo,

Starting point is 00:08:36 David, what the fuck? And they will. Yeah. Yeah. I gave away, so Charles Reed is a big crypto dickbutt guy, and now I've said crypto tibbutt guy.

Starting point is 00:08:47 Yeah, now I've said that. So he gave me one, and I told him, Charles, I won't sell it. And I did ask him, though, I was like, hey, can I give it away to somebody as part of a thing? And he was like, yeah, that's fine.

Starting point is 00:09:01 So I transferred it to someone and Meltem literally like the same day was like, what have you done? Because she thought I sold it. I was like, Melton, I did not sell it. Do not kill me. I'm so sorry. She would too. Yeah, I know. I've talked out with Meltem a couple times in New York.

Starting point is 00:09:16 Within five minutes, every time of meeting here, we're talking about crypto dickbuts. Yeah. And now we are too. And that's just how it is. But if you're obsessed, like, you get those notifications. It's directly in your feed. So, like, all the wallets I follow, all the collections I follow. It's going to tell you, like, out of standard deviation price movements,

Starting point is 00:09:34 it's going to tell you, hey, this person listed that. If I'm following, like, I have this Azuki, this, like, my favorite Azuki. It's got these background firefly things. And the guy finally listed it, and I knew because I was following it on flip. And it's like, hey, it popped up on OpenC. send me a notification and I'm like, okay, I like it, but I don't like it for 69E. Sure. But you get all that information.

Starting point is 00:09:59 And by the way, if you ever just want to share it, it's the best single NFT landing page in the world, go try it. For the NFT newbies out there that need a good UI. Yeah, anybody. Like, you know, if you think of your sources of truth, there's ether scan from a data perspective. OpenC, except for OpenC, it's like, no, no other exchanges exist. Right. Ours is going to show the accuracy of EtherScan and the trustworthiness of OpenC,

Starting point is 00:10:25 but it's also going to have like just a beautiful interface. Okay. So when Meltem did come and say, yo, why did you give away your dickpot? What she usually, did she get notified by a flip? I hope she did, but I don't know. I'm sure she did. I'm sure she did.

Starting point is 00:10:37 She may just have like a direct brain connection with the... She's like, somebody gave away a dickpot. Yeah. So it seems to be like really at the intersection of people who care about collections. Yeah. But still play the trading game. And so I really care about cool cats. I'm willing to sell my cool cat, but I'm also willing to buy another cool cat because I really like the cool cat system.

Starting point is 00:10:59 So it's like somebody who's like willing to play the financial game but still enjoys a collection at the same time. Yeah. And I find what most people do is like they actually, they may have one thing that they really care about. I was talking to Luca from Pudgy Penguins recently. And I think it might be the only collection that I've never sold something from. and I didn't realize it, but I think I'm a pudgy maxi. Well, I am, however, am a Pudgy Potom's bottom seller. There you go.

Starting point is 00:11:26 I'm sorry. Yeah. They're like 0.4 or something. But what people, they may be a pudgy maxi, but they're a cool cats enjoyer. Sure. And so, like, they actually see the monetary side of some stuff that they're not totally in love with, but then they've got like their version of a grail community. And for that one, it's not about the money, but they, you know, they, they,

Starting point is 00:11:47 still want to keep track of everything. They want to know the news. They want to see what their portfolios were. So we have like a portfolio evaluation tracker. Nice. With multi-wallet. We have taxes. Of course we do.

Starting point is 00:11:57 Ryan's going to love that one. All of a sudden Ryan's going to love it. Me and Ryan are just going to nerd out on the taxes. So it actually will transition your cost basis between your multiple wallet. So every wallet that you've connected to flip, we can generate a report and send you your tax basis if you're harvesting. If you're lost harvesting or looking at like long-term gains, it'll quality. qualify that, tell you what you've made. It's pretty

Starting point is 00:12:20 damn cool, man. I'm sure a lot of 2021 NFT traders, or 22 NFT traders are now like, oh, I wish I had had that when I was doing that. In 2021. Yeah, exactly. Well, now they're still doing it, but they're like, I cannot believe I lost $50,000 on a JPEG. Did you raise for Flip? Like, how was this whole thing was trapped? Yeah, we raised in late 2021 was our seed rounds. Cool. And that was led by distributed global in chapter one. And We'll probably be raising again this year.

Starting point is 00:12:49 Okay. And we're in it for the long haul to build wealth. And one other thing you mentioned earlier, kind of some of the hot topics, we're doing some stuff around like a royalties API right now. Because we think part of being catered to communities is to really empower them. It's to be opinionated but not necessarily political. Like we're not telling them, hey, here's what you should do with this royalties API. Right.

Starting point is 00:13:12 But you do deserve the information of like, my community, I want a token deal. my Discord based on whether they paid royalties or not, you can do it. And so that's one of the things where it's more of like creating tooling specific to those communities. So we're trying to think pretty deeply about that side and get a bit opinionated. Yeah, so that's, yeah, I'm excited. Very, very needed, especially as other platforms are really just marginalizing everyone to have the opt-in platform.

Starting point is 00:13:38 Yeah, and that's something that I think a lot of us saw coming for a long time is like the race to zero for fees. And, you know, liquidity and NFTs. is good in a way. But I think if you take something non-fungible and then just make it completely fungible, you're not really,

Starting point is 00:13:58 you're kind of upending the original purpose. And to me, like the ERC 721 spec is a deed or a title or receipt for a thing. It's like this thing. And I think that's still important and that's the future use case of NFTs. But derivatives platforms are still huge and they can, like from a volume perspective,

Starting point is 00:14:18 they can trade at multiples of the spot platform. Right. So it's not impossible for Board 8s to do a billion dollars worth of derivatives trading, but like $100 million worth of spot trading of the underlying. So who are you looking for in the, for Flip? What's your ideal customer? And on the hiring side of your hiring or BD Relationship side,

Starting point is 00:14:40 who are you looking for to join the movement? Yeah, we want movement. What do you guys call yourselves? We say flip and then say go to flip.xy Z. Cool. But yeah, we call ourselves Flip. We, from a customer perspective, we want people that are excited about NFTs, excited about the long-term future of NFTs. Like, there's more than even just the speculation side of NFTs.

Starting point is 00:15:01 I'm really into experiential NFTs. So like, hey, I'm at this event and I'm, I didn't spend any money to be here. Sorry. But let's say I spent $1,000 to be here. the art or the NFT is actually my receipt with a visual component. But like I'm happy to have spent that thousand dollars. I don't need long-term value from it. But that NFT can still be my token, my access pass, my like, you know, the various

Starting point is 00:15:28 gated components that NFTs can serve an interesting purpose for. We want people that are excited about what that means, what the community side of NFTs unlock. And then from a business development perspective, if you are one of these communities, if you're building NFTs, if you're looking for better tools, better places to send your community. Talk to me. Beautiful.

Starting point is 00:15:50 What is the future of content production? Tell me about the future of LedgerCast, Up Only, and Ledger doing content. Yeah, I still do content every week, but more on the technical side of things, weekly open and LedgerCast, but Up Only is still here, I promise. We talk a lot, and we'll, we'll, we'll, get back to a more regular format pretty soon. Sure. But if something really big happens, we'll pop on.

Starting point is 00:16:17 Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Hopefully, I could take a little bit more break before that happens. Yeah. Ledger, if there's anything else, feel free to got an open mic, but otherwise, thank you for joining me. I'm just happy to be here, and, man, y'all are doing great work. It inspires me, so I appreciate it.

Starting point is 00:16:32 Well, hey, before I had Luke behind the camera and Dave behind on the audio, I had Ledger teaching me everything I know about OBS, and so the cross-pollination goes back. pretty far awesome good to see it cheers later later

Bankless - UpOnly & Flip with Brian Krogsgard (Ledger) | ETHDenver 2023 Interview #8

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