Nobody Panic - How to Understand NFTs with Tom Rosenthal

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

Want to know what an NFT is and whether you should buy one? Or MINT one?! Actor and comedian and writer and excellent man Tom Rosenthal explains them to Stevie and Tessa so succinctly and articulately that it blows their minds. And will blow yours too. Subscribe to the Nobody Panic Patreon at patreon.com/nobodypanicWant to support Nobody Panic? You can make a one-off donation at https://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanicRecorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Photos by Marco Vittur, jingle by David Dobson.Follow Nobody Panic on Twitter @NobodyPanicPodSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Carriad. I'm Sarah. And we are the Weirdo's Book Club podcast. We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival. The date is Thursday, 11th of September. The time is 7pm and our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies. Tickets from kingsplace.com. Single ladies, it's coming to London.

True on Saturday, the 13th of September. At the London Podcast Festival. The rumours are true, Saturday the 13th of September. At King's Place. Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet. Hello and welcome to Nobody Panic with me, Stevie, and my friend, Tessa. Hi, Tessa. Hello, Stevie. And what's this? A guest in the booth today? Is there a non-fungible token in here? We've got Tom Rosenthal, comedy man, actor man, Superman, NFT man, who's going to be telling us all about NFTs.

Tom, thank you so much for joining us on this day. Thank you for having me. And I will just stress at the start, I am very nervous about being referred to as an NFT man because it seems like half the internet hates NFT men. And I am not necessarily saying they're wrong to hate NFT men either. No. I'm excited to talk to you about this hot new tech. I was going to think of NFT for nobody, nobody fire Tom.

Yay. Nobody get upset with Tom. He's merely telling us. ain't selling it or saying it's good or bad or anything unless you want to buy it and then he is selling it and then he'll help you but really we just buy mine we're just I've lost a lot of money yeah he's got some to sell you so this will clarify has absolutely no legal advice no financial advice oh NFA is the first one I've ever had to say no financial advice that's what a lot of crypto and NFD YouTubers have to say yeah just so they don't get sued so absolutely

Absolutely no financial advice. Great. Nothing. Nothing fungible here, only fun. Okay? And don't come for Tom, but we do have many, many questions. And also, we saw Tom at the weekend and he won a meat raffle. Yes.

I missed the meat raffle and arrived afterwards and saw Tom just furiously cutting up a sausage. Wow. Okay. There is a little bit of a story. I mean, it's not really a story, but like, have you ever won a meat raffle before? No. At a comedian's birthday. Never.

Because it turns out it's actually quite anxiety provoking. I mean, everyone else got their raffle tickets, and I talked to people subsequently, and they were all, like, really hoping they didn't win, because they thought they would have had to do a speech or something. But that didn't come into my mind whatsoever. I just got the ticket, and when they shouted my number, I went up and grabbed my meat and, like, came back down. But then afterwards, everyone was like, you should have done a speech, and I got racked with

anxiety about the fact that I maybe should have said something nice about the birthday girl, who I love very much. So then I started handing out sausage to try and placate an entire party who I thought now hated the guy who won the meat. Comedians, it's hard. It really was stressful. We didn't hate you because of the speech. We hated you because you won the meat. Just to clarify.

Good, good. So there's nothing you could do about that. No. But people seem to enjoy the sausage gesture. And I subsequently found out that the birthday girl would have hated it if I did a speech. which made me fit a lot better. Well then. There we go.

Everyone's happy. Yeah, everyone was happy. Apart from, don't win a meat raffle apparently. It's quite anxiety provoking. I'll do my absolute best not to enter one. And so, okay,

so we're not going to do our adult things this week because we want to get into the non-fundibles. But Tom, what's your adult thing of the week? And is it the meat raffle, you know? No, the adult thing of this week is actually that I paid my tax. Oh, great.

late? Well, I realize, like, they've extended the deadline. That's exactly the point. If you extend the deadline, I'm going to make the most of the extended deadline. Thank you very much. I also realized that in saying that it sounds like I didn't pay my tax and I'm just using the podcast as a vehicle to like, like pretend that I am, I didn't pay my tax, but that was that was what I did. I paid it in full and I am a big fan of HMRC. Thanks for listening. Well done. Did you, I set up a direct debit to pay my money? No, there's a new system this year.

Did you see the one with the QR code? Oh, tell us about it. Where you can get it direct from your bank, basically. You just, you go to an HMRC, you say you're with your bank, and then you flick the, I mean, this is, again, some high tech. Take a photo of it on your phone. And then it just goes into your app and does it automatically. It's very impressive stuff.

I didn't understand a word you said. Oh, right. Okay, so. That's how advanced, I believe it to be. I don't think I've ever confidently used a QR code in my life, and they've been going for a good five, ten years, Well, this new tax option is not for you. Right.

I will stay away. Well done. I'm going to come straight in. I'm going to come barreling in to this to web three with the question, what is an, what is an NFT? Like if you had to explain it and just be aware that I mean, I speak for myself. I can't speak for Tesla. I could not know less about it if I tried.

Well, to define an NFT, the word obviously as everyone knows means non-fungible token. Now, I don't know how often you use the word fungible in your daily life. Too much. But fungibility is basically, as far as I understand it, the ability to swap something for something else. So the... Pogs? I don't know whether you would count Pogs because I think...

I don't have enough knowledge of Pogs, and if you could just not throw me off my NFT whilst just by making... But if you can't throw things at me and say, is it fungible? Is it not fungible? I'm really just only just on the cusp of understanding what fungibility is. So let me get to the end of it. I'll try not to yell pogs again.

I don't know, but like so a pog right, like let's get into pogs. Do they, are they like two pogs that are the same? So like something fungible would be like cash, right? So I've got a tenor. You've got a tenor. We don't really care which particular tenor we have, right? But they both mean the same thing. You know, whereas like something that is non-fungible.

fungible is something where the unique the uniqueness of it means that it cannot be exchanged so I might have like a painting and you would have like if you had the Mona Lisa and I had a painting of my foot I couldn't go let's swap these two paintings right because you'd be like no okay that's not advantageous to me whereas like something fungible would be like yeah like cash or bitcoin or ethereum or gold these things basically doesn't doesn't matter which bit of gold you have you have gold doesn't matter which pound you have, you have pounds. Okay. So, I'm coming in for Pogs. So I think the Pogs if I could clear out the Pogs bit because I can't remember Pogs. If I clarify on the Pogs, everyone, I think Pogs came inside the crisps. Is this right? No, that's Tazos you're thinking

of that. Fuck. Pogs used to hit, right? It was a coin thing that you'd hit. With a slumber. Wasn't a coin thing. Right. Okay. So I think that they, they, they had pictures on or no? They had pictures on. Okay. So, so if you had up your picture was of, Tom's foot. I thought they were of Looney Tunes, right? No, that's Tazos again. So Pogs were anything, Tom's foot. Like, that could be a Pock. So if you had the Tom's foot Pock, you could swap it for someone else who also had the Tom's foot Pock, right? But you wouldn't really do that because you'd be like, what's the point? What's the point? Well, that's it. Tom's foot Pock. Right. So that is something that is, so Fungible is swappable for like, are we saying that?

Yes. Exactly. And I think, I think Pogs would therefore be like semi-fungible, i. I mean a mix of fungible and non-fungible because there be some instances where, two people have the same pog, but there would be obviously lots of instances where two people have different pogs. So you wouldn't swap a Bart Simpson for a crassly clown, but you could if you wanted to swap a Bart Simpson for another Bart Simpson, as long as they were both of similar quality. Quality and newness. I just don't understand why we've invented this word non-fungible when it seems like most of the world is non-fungible. Most things are not tradable like for like. Absolutely flying start from us here. We haven't even got in turn off the easier. What you're saying, Tom, is it's like it doesn't matter what bit of gold you have.

You can still swap that bit of gold for the same amount of gold. Tenor's gold. If I had like, I was just going to go, my hand, that's actually not. But like, a book that's the same as another book, you wouldn't swap. Unless there were like different editions or something, which is like, I mean, maybe it's sort of an easier way to understand it rather than getting into the definition of, like, fungible and non-fungible is basically, it's like digital ownership, essentially. So like we do not, without NFTs, have a concept of owning something that is digital.

And all it does is it provides that via blockchain technology. So is this like when you have like a, you know, like memes and stuff, people can just take any, they can just steal them or like on TikTok you can just stitch something and you don't have to tag anyone, you can just take it? So NFTs is like, but you've got to have a code to show that you are. actually own it. There are elements of NFTs in the future which will probably build into some kind of platform which will make digital rights management be much more like you just described. But like right now it is more of just a means of saying you own something digital. Like when people go, here's a picture of a board ape and then they just right click, save it and they go, well, I've got the same image. It's like, well, you do. But in this framework whereby we've developed a

system by which you can say you digitally own something, you don't. And the reason for that is a reason that we've recognised in other kinds of ownership throughout human history, which is just provenance, right? Like, you want to own the Mona Lisa that Da Vinci, like, painted. You don't want to own the Mona Lisa that I've, you know, printed, which is exactly the same, but from snappy snaps. It doesn't mean the same thing to us. So when you're on the blockchain and you can basically track the image minting, the image creation, and you can track like who has owned it, just like you can buy a stamp now, which is worth like a million pounds, because like King Henry VIII once owned it, and that's been shown to be true through historical validation. The blockchain

is actually a perfect way of validating ownership, but on the computer. And obviously, as our lives become increasingly more digital, there needed to be, or at least the proponents of NFT would suggest that it needed to be a mechanism by which we can own stuff online essentially. You're really selling it. I can see why they're farming you out. I don't want to sell it. But the way that you described blockchain then, I'm breathless. Yeah, me too.

And may I circle back that I've answered, you've answered indirectly to the questions I had, which was me saying, like, why have we made this confusing word? And it's because, as I understand it, fungible tokens are cash. gold, all other things that were like swap like for like. And we've never had a currency system that has this non-fungible bit in it. Right. So we're, we're having to invent a word for the first time here. Well, I suppose what we haven't had before is, is the tokens.

Yeah. I think we have had like, yeah, as Steve you said, like non-fungible things that most things are non-fungible. Like, you would say like, you know, houses are non-fungible. Like if you were selling one of the word. Yeah, precisely. This is the first time they've entered into a token thing. Exactly, yeah. So when you tokenize something, essentially you are basically putting it on the blockchain.

That's kind of what it means. You're ever so good at this? Yes. I'm immediately under, I'm grasping. That makes me feel better because I'm nervous. No, you don't usually. I really shouldn't have been now. You meant you very casually mentioned the bored ape.

And I feel like considering my questions were like, what is blockchain, but you've absolutely answered that. Could you explain to us about the Bored Aid thing? Because I think that clip where Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon were just like showing each other their board dates was like the weirdest thing I've ever seen. He was like, what did he say? Like, I got these sunglasses because my daughters make me wear these sunglasses. It's me. I'm like this monkey.

It was honestly like my brain was exploding. Sorry, do you know who has made these, who started drawing these Bordaes because that man is rolling in it? I don't have as much information like that. I know because I think when I was looking into them that they, it's like four people, two of which are programmers, like one of which was like a writer or something. And I think that they're from four different parts of the world.

And they basically have just came up with this concept, which has been so successful in my mind, especially initially because it really like, people in crypto really like relate to it. the sort of the backstory of the board apes is essentially a group of apes which are called yeah sorry sorry sorry I know it's pretty pretty high level stuff who uh and when basically in crypto when you um buy into a coin uh that it's colloquially referred to as aping in uh basically when you sort of like stupidly like buy something you'd be like oh i aped into this you know tissue or whatever

um and the idea is that they're bored because they've basically made so much money from crypto that they just don't know what to do and they've like lost meaning in their life. So they thought what would they do? They just go and hang out in a weird club. And they kind of came up with this concept and built a world which basically really resonated with these people in crypto. Now obviously a thing with people in crypto is that a lot of them who've been in it for a long time are exceedingly wealthy. And if you tell a story that resonates with these people who by any measure got too much money, they probably will buy into it. And what they were very, very clever at doing is,

is basically building a world and setting a roadmap, which very wealthy crypto investor kind of bought into. And now what they've done is, you know, by any measure, created a very expensive brand. I mean, their market valuation, they've just, like, tried to get some investment for like $5 billion, which is like more than Marks and Spencer. How many Bored Apes are there? Are there a limited amount? There's 10,000. Great. And there will never be any more? There will never be anymore.

No, so at a surface level, there's not really much more that you can say, apart from the fact that it's art and people buy whatever art speaks to them. But on a kind of wider level, you can say that what they've very successfully done is built a community that, you know, in the same way that Adidas or Nike or, you know, Louis Vuitton have kind of built their brand strategically. These people have used a new technology in order to captivate an audience and basically make it so people want to own this stuff as an expression of their identity. And what people don't really understand about NFTs right now is simply that throughout

human history, we have always owned and collected stuff as an expression of our identity and as a method of communicating with other people about who we are. And I think all of us have those things in our life, like whether it's like whatever DVD collections or like hats or anyone with any disposable income will start to spend on these things which they feel resonate with them and help them to resonate with other people. And so NFTs are just basically another extension of that phenomena, but in the digital world.

Now, you can go, I don't understand it, I don't understand it, but it's really not that hard. And I think the younger you are, the more you understand it, because they've spent more time in digital landscapes. They spend more time in digital environments like playing games or on social media. Like, you know, these kids will buy skins for them to use in Fortnite. And, you know, they want to be able to look a certain way when they're playing a game with their friends. And if you think of the amount of money that, like, suits, you know, people at like, you know, premieres will get given clothes to wear, and they'll get photographed once. And for some reason, brands think that's a very good advert for themselves. But like, if you own an NFT or if a celebrity has your image, like,

that is, imagine how many people will see that your Twitter image every day as opposed to a photo of you at a premiere, you can kind of start to get an idea of the scope and scale of like what digital identity means and the potential that has to, for brands and, you know, money making. I think if we look at like just the time that we've been alive, we have lived. through a period of increased financialisation, increased digitisation, and also increased materialism. And NFTs is basically all of those three things

in one phenomena. And so I think when people say it's like a scam, I mean, possibly a lot of it is, but capitalism is kind of a scam. Do you know? It's like we're all buying into all this nonsense all the time. It's just like another way for us to do that. Firstly, it's so eloquent.

I mean, too eloquent, actually. To the point that I was like, I want to buy it. Yeah, I want to eight. I wish to ape. There's only 10,000 and I want to be part of this respectful community. Yeah, we'll have an ape. Justin Bieber and Serena Williams. We all want an ape.

But when people say about like, so taking the Jimmy Fallon thing, Paris Hill and thing, if anyone listening, is that what you're talking about. So basically there was just like a bit on, tonight with Jimmy Fallon or whatever his fucking show is. hell. It's absolutely hell. And they just got their bald apes out and they were like, here's mine. And then he was like, here's mine. And then everyone, not everyone, but lots of people online were sort of saying stuff like, isn't the whole point of NFTs to like mean that anybody

can sort of join in. I mean, that's a very simplicity way of looking at it. And then there's this fear that and I might have got this wrong, but like it feels like then there's this fear that it's like, oh, it's just become an elite club for loads of celebrities and now being like, get involved and then all the money goes up and then no one can actually afford to really get involved. That's completely right. Oh, okay. I do think that you are quite right in that there is a slight myth that a lot of NFT advocates would like to spread, that this is just like a purely egalitarian mode of making the world better for artists,

whereas the evidence is so far, like just like the real world, basically the rich people centralise this thing and then they make everyone else want to have it. Just like, I mean, a good way to think of it is like those, like, you know, when you go to the airport and you see the stupid duty-free shops that like billionaires shop in and there's like a mad watch for like 30 grand and there's like stupid clothes that are just extremely expensive and like supercars. Like this is what happens with a distribution of wealth. This is what happens with inequality.

Like this isn't really a problem with blockchain as much as it's a problem with like humanity. Yeah. So like I do think the technology. is actually there and it has increased opportunities for artists. But just like in the real world, just like in the real art world, like, you know, art gets disproportionately brought up by extremely rich people, often as a tax dodge, often as a way to show off. You can't ignore the fact that that's what ultra wealthy people do, but it's also what all of us

do. Like all of us are buying clothes or buying things to kind of express ourselves. And, you know, if you get a rise, you're going to go and buy something more expensive unless you're like, you know, a completely ardent socialist, which I think maybe they are right about stuff. It's difficult because I personally think I got into it as a kind of like interested in the future, interested in new technology,

but also as someone who wanted to enrich themselves. And I think you have to kind of go, well, I'm going to invest in this because I think this technology is going to underpin the future and I'm going to sort of support the artist that I like the art of. That's a big mistake that I made as well. The NFTs that I bought, I liked the pictures. Whereas, like, if you're going to invest in NFTs,

you should really just ignore the art. It's not about the art at all. It's much more about everything around it. About, like, what their community is doing, what they're saying they're going to do in the future, the future utility of the NFT, whereas I was just like, that's a funny-looking alien. And I bought it.

And so just don't, if you're going to buy NFTs, which I don't recommend you do, don't buy them because you like them. But isn't that quite sad? Like, don't you? Why not? Like, so firstly, firstly, how many NFTs have you got? Oh, God, I don't know. I must have 100.

Oh. Okay. But I would say, like, as Sooner was talking about in the crypto episode, like, and this is actually a big feature, as I was describing before, like, the money being spent is profits made from cryptocurrency generally. So, like, I, you know, I've been in crypto for like four years. And when the money is in the crypto ecosystem, it kind of ceases to have the pound value that you associate with it. it just becomes an Ethereum investment essentially. So, like, whilst I have spent silly amounts of money on these nonsense, and I think that was moronic,

I would say that it's kind of like in the crypto ecosphere already. So it kind of has a little bit less meaning to the amount of money that I generated from my actual labour. You know, it's divorced. I see. So it's not your actual money. Yeah, it doesn't feel like my actual money. It feels like sort of weird gambling.

like Chuckie cheese coins or whatever, you know. Yeah. But it still is. And so that is a self-deception and an ugliness. So say I wanted to go and like buy an NFT, I don't even know where I'd look. So like what's a good starting place for people who are like, oh, look at some? Your entry level market is open sea, it's called.

Now there's a lot of sort of controversy about this place, mainly because of the constant battle that blockchain has between centralisation and decentralisation. So, like, in a few instances recently, uh, bored apes have been stolen or, you know, more accurately put, hacked, whereby like, foolish board ape owners have, like, responded to a fishing email with their meta-mask, whatever, you know, their password. But isn't that terrifying?

Because isn't that totally undermined the whole point of it, where it's like, actually, if it's easily hacked, then you're like, but no one can hack the Mona Lisa? They can't steal it. It's a bit harder, you feel. It's a bit harder, you feel. It's a... It's certainly harder, simply because the people who own NFTs are morons. I think art, art, diamonds, things that have more weight and value because of their ownership history have been stolen throughout history. Yes, exactly.

So it's no different. The blockchain ideal is to remove the need for banks, essentially, to be your own bank. Now, some people will love that idea. because they don't like middlemen, they don't like political financial infrastructure control in their lives. Some people will hate it because they are clumsy and they, like, I left a pair of shoes in a cab other day. Like, I have got a lot of money that is just on my computer that if I got the wrong email

and I put the wrong thing in, I would lose it all. But basically, because OpenC, you know, if it was completely decentralized, they wouldn't do anything to, they would just say, well, it's been hacked and that's the rule. But what they actually started doing is like locking down accounts who have. had stolen board apes, which basically makes it a bit more centralised. And there's this constant battle between pure decentralisation and a bit more centralisation, because some people are like, oh, I want to be free, but that guy stole my thing. So it's almost like you're like, it's like trying to be not a bank, but it has to be a bit of a bank. Otherwise people steal everything. Exactly that.

Anyway, yeah. If you want to buy an NFT, go on OpenC. And you can type in board eight, yacht club if you want. That'll cost you the floor price, which is the lowest price of a collection you can buy is currently 87 Ethereum, which is how much is that? So it's 170 grand, kind of, the cheapest boarder. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, there has been live events where the board apes, like, throw a party and you have to have a board ape to get in, which honestly looked so bad. It sounds excellent.

It sounds really, what's his face? Kendall Roy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had a board ape. He'd 100% have a board ape, yeah. Are all the original 10,000 board apes, are they all sold? So when you go there, we'll be buying Jimmy Fallon. ape.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. They're all owned and obviously some are like listed for, so basically, yeah, you have this mint for NFT collections, which is generally where you can claim them for a small price or free. And then depending on how well the developers develop the community, depending on how much hype there is around it, they basically just start being traded between people. So like if you're me, you'll buy an NFT for like two Ethereum and now you'll be able

to set it for like 0.02. Great business. But if you're someone who like knows what they're doing, you'll probably buy a board eight when they, you know, like when they're two Ethereum and then sell them for 87 Ethereum, you know, so. And would you recommend only getting into NFTs if you've already listened to our episode on crypto and make some money in the cryptoverse? Yeah, no, I think personally, in my experience, it's much easier to make money with crypto than it is with NFTs, but I would also encourage neither, like, or at least only invest what you would happily

burn. Yes, okay. But that's what Sunil said. He was like, you know, don't invest anything that if you lost, you'd be devastated. But enough that you're like, oh, a bit of fun. And then if you get more, it's like, then it feels really exciting. And then you can use. Well, yeah. Then you get more and you have play money, basically. Yeah. I think it's this

very clear. And people listening, I just want to like reiterate this idea that like, do not go there to make easy money. Go there because you like, like the experience and the world and the community and the stuff. I would absolutely say, like, the best way to learn about technology is just to give it ago.

Yeah. And like you can easily, it's very simple. Just watch YouTube about having a metamask using like a decentralized exchange like what's a metamask. Uniswap. A metamask is basically like a Chrome extension where you just have a wallet in your, on your computer. That's the wallet that I was describing that has all my money in it.

And it's just, it literally just has like a password. And then you can buy all your tokens and sort of keep them all there. It doesn't really keep them there. But it obviously is just like a window into the blockchain, whereby you can see the wallets that you have access to. And so you can trade in and out of them. And if you're going to do NFTs, as I said, you can get these things generally for very cheap like mince.

The only thing is, the impossible thing with NFTs is that there's like thousands of, well, probably hundreds of collections launched every day. And a lot of them are scams. Like a lot of them are just like cheap copies of the successful ones. And there's loads of people who are trying to like take your money and try and con con you into thinking that this is a good NFT project. So it's hard to encourage. encourage anyone to get into it without just saying you'll probably get scammed. I mean,

I've been scammed numerous times and it's just like part of it essentially. So you don't, you don't look at them and enjoy them any all day, no? There's a few. Honestly, there is a few that I, I do like owning. And I think that again, that is like a key thing in this obviously quite nascent technology is that like humans like to own stuff that they like. But when I look at that koala, obviously I'm not like, I'm glad I bought that. I think I actually, I bought that as a speculation, simply because a very, like, top, a very influential NFT guy, he bought the, like, most rare one. He bought the most rare koala. And as an idiot, I thought, oh, that meant that this collection is going to pop.

And he's, I mean, he, I think he literally said that he thought they were going to be the next board apes. So I was just like, oh, buy that. And that's just not true. And that isn't true in the vast majority of the, of NFTs. there's so many like chances and like hustlers who are trying to make you do that and I've essentially been scammed to an extent on a lot of the internet I bought but like I have bought like one or two collections which are successful and I've like retained their value and I like building and it feels like you're buying into a potential future brand or a future community or a future digital

experience and it's like I basically think that if you invest very smart and you do your research it's a very, very good place to like invest, but I'm not, I'm not smart like that. And also I think I'm maybe, I've just not quite digitally native enough. I'm maybe not too like aware of what's going on on the cool digital. But it also feels like as well as I mean, when you're saying, you know, but is it on your computer and do you not enjoy them? It feels like it's different to so if you bought like some nice art, you put it on your wall and every day you look at it and go like, ah, my lovely art. It's more the process of it is well. Well, I mean, obviously like people have their NFTs on their wall as well. And I will do that. Oh, that's nice.

flat, you can get, you know, digital frames and put them up. But you can do that with anything, I suppose. And I think the feeling of looking at something that you kind of own digitally kind of maybe means more to people who like Ethereum. The other kind of like potential flaw of NFTs, which is quite interesting, is that I mean, as soon as I was kind of talking about, there's going to be numerous chains. And I think the future of blockchain is probably going to be lots of different chains operating for different people.

So like an NFT collections only ever exist on one chain. So there is potentially a problem that, like, you can. have a bored ape on Solana and on whatever Cardano and on Ethereum and then it would be like who actually owns the board ape, you know what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean, yeah. I have literally no idea. That's the only thing you've said this entire time. I'm like, and I'm gone.

I'm sorry. No, please don't apologize because that's amazing that this is the first thing. Yeah, I guess basically what they're selling is unique ownership of a thing. But if that unique thing exists on multiple chains, then the uniqueness is therefore somewhat according to question. And I guess if a certain chain becomes more prominent over another one, then who owns the real one? So there's been some very interesting stuff that happened recently,

whereby actually on the same chain. So like Cryptopunks were a very successful NFT, one of the ones that sell for so much money. And these people created this thing called CryptoFunks, which was just punk punts with like pH. And all they did was they took the punks and they mirror reversed them. So they were just like looking at another way. Exactly the same images.

furious if I was a crypto-pritopunk. And then these things started selling for quite a lot of money, like about a tenth of the worth of a crypto-punk. And it was like, in a way, that is like true decentralisation. But in another way, it's like people thought that's sort of not really on. It's kind of like, sort of copyright infringement, but there is no real copyright. Like, you can't really sue people for that.

And it's, I find it really fast a day. It's like a whole new world. But obviously, like any new world, like any gold rush order, there's always like loads of people selling snake oil. I think Michael that bit mixed up. No, no, that's completely right. Snake oil is correct.

If that was the thing that you were confused. Yeah, was that a gold rush thing and snake oil? Were they the same time? And why not? Yeah, go on there. Go on there. I think any sort of utopia, any kind in which people are like, no more banks, no more police, we don't need this, we don't need any red tape,

we'll take control, sees, you know, scenes and means of production. And then you're like, yes, but not like that. Don't be naughty here. Like, you know, and then you're like, well, maybe we should get some kind of policing system. And the next thing you've done, you've invented the police. So I can understand why people get up, we're really striving for this very, you know, egalitarian, utopian, perfect. And then people start behaving.

The argument for NFTs, it isn't just that it's like, so obviously right now it's kind of all art and collectibles. But the kind of proponents of NFTs think that it's going to have a much more fundamental underpinning of like our whole society. Oh, I saw a tweet that said, um, uh, the future of literature in, is like, I don't know if it said this is the right way of putting it, but basically saying that books are going to be NFTs, and I like had to log off and, you know, had a meltdown. Proponents would say, like, basically all artists, like, all, like, music.

Not just that, but, like, stuff like real estate, like, all of our houses are going to be, like, tokenised, and to make, like, buying and selling houses much easier. And not only that, what you can, what you'll be able to do is, like, fractionalize the value of your house. It's all of these quite profound like revolutions in finance which the proponents say are going to underpin society

Now there is like a lot of criticism about that because there is a sort of theory that like crypto people are trying to onboard as many people to cryptocurrency and the blockchain as possible simply as a vehicle for increasing their power and influence because obviously who has the most Ethereum it's the people who created Ethereum So it'll be the same like you were saying

earlier that humans will always create this like division and it'll maybe be the same with that. On like on on on Reddit and stuff there's there's been this meme for like 10 years about Bitcoin and it's called the Citadel and the idea is that it's like this mass and beautiful city that everyone who owns Bitcoin lives in and I don't know what's outside of that but presumably it's like a hunger games hellscape right it's sort of like that kind of seems to be the society that they're kind of these people all sort of want to build towards to an extent but for us as artists and in the short to medium term, essentially what NFTs allow the fan to do is have a greater ownership over the artists which they want to support. There's a theory that basically all ticketing in the future will

be NFTs because the idea would be in the future. Instead of, when you meet someone, instead of checking who they are via like Twitter or Instagram, you would kind of look at their wallet and then you'd be able to see kind of all the events that they'd gone to. And just like tickets from the first World Cup, you know, you can trade them and you sell them, you'll be able to be able to kind of trade like beautiful tickets between each other. As I say, proponents of this technology think that it's basically the biggest revolution since social media. Probably is though.

It sounds like it sort of is, but also like just like every single revolution we've ever had, there's a terrible downside. Yeah. Well, I mean, the equivalent they always say is social media. Remember like when social media started and everyone was just like some kids messing about on my space or whatever. And now it's like everyone has it and we've realized it's terrible for everyone. I feel like we just might be at the start of it.

new thing. Obviously, you'd hope that it's not completely terrible for everyone, but the idea that we're going to increasingly financialize everything, so everything can be tokenized, everything can be swapped. Doesn't sound like a great idea for society. Do you know? But I think it is happening. And like brands are getting on board, like Adidas, bought a board date, like Nike have just bought a company called Artifact. And their whole thing is basically interchangeable products from digital metaverses to the real world. So you'll be able to buy something in the metaverse that then you get in reality and vice versa. Like Louis Vuitton and Gucci, like they're like looking into, you know, basically making digital.

You know, the stupid stuff they're selling in the real world like we're talking about. They're going to sell it just in digital. And the stupid idiots will buy it again because it's Gucci. And I'm a stupid idiot as well. I'm not being disparaged about them. I'm stupid idiot. Like there's been some gross stuff recently with Bored 8's where it's tweets where it's just like people who own them being like, I sold my private jet so I could buy a Bord 8 because I thought a board 8 was a bigger flex.

And there's like, you know, lots of people who've done this. Like I sold my Ferrari, whatever, Testerosa so I could buy a board eight. And that's kind of what people do, basically. And they're not going to stop because some people are angry about it on Twitter. It's just, it's the kind of gross reality of humanity. But you have to decide, like, how much are you going to use your NFTs to show off? How much are you going to use them as an expression of your identity? Like, I think there's quite profound, like, psychological, philosophical and economic issues at play.

And I think when people are angry at NFTs, they're often just angry at those more fundamental realities of the nature of human beings and the economy and the world that we live in and society, you know. Incredibly profound. Wow. It's like talking to a profit. It's like, you know, grandma who's left behind because she can't use a laptop. Like, you almost want to understand NFTs to, to an extent where you can, you can function within society in the way you want to. I absolutely believe that. I think regardless of the merits or demerits, like it really will serve you to do a kind of just to a kind of, just, learn it, understand it, and just get used to how these things operate. Because as you say, even if something is not net great for the world, it's much better to understand it than not. Well, thank God you were here to explain it to us. I'm going to have to have a wine. It's quite early in the morning, but I do think we're all going to have to start drinking. It's very, it's very, and I've used this suspicion before, touching the void, it's where you hear something

and suddenly like, no, I don't want to close that door. It's too much to think about the house being a fundrable token. Well, if you go on OpenC, there's an NFT collection called Bitwine. The floor price is only 0.05 Ethereum. That's affordable. Off I go. Off I go. I'll enjoy a bit of wine. Cheers.

One final question to bring us home is just if you are an artist yourself listening, is anybody able to put their stuff up on OpenC? Yeah. Yeah. Anyone can mint. You just have to get a bit of Ethereum to do a few transactions. You've got to get your Ethereum first. you like, I don't know, maybe it'll cost you 100 pounds.

I don't know. I've not actually looked into minting anything myself. Okay, but not massive to get your Ethereum. Obviously, what will happen if you mint an NFT collection with absolutely no hype or like no one interest in it is it will just sit there and no one will buy it. I mean, it's just like going to a market. Got it. It's all about the hype and the flex.

I've got to get Justin Bieber by my art, right? Yeah, but there's amazing stories, which again are complete freaks rather than norm. But there was a kid, I think from the Philippines who just took a photo of himself every day for like four years and then uploaded it as a NFT collection and it's now like worth loads of money. This kid's just made loads of money. The artist set the price for each selfie at $3 without expecting

any serious buyers. So I don't know, people just saw it and they just loved it so that everyone's got these photos of this kid as their as their like Twitter photo for a bit. Gazali, he's doing so well for himself. And he's making a million. Fair play. Mint your non-fundable tokens everybody. Get your Ethereum and mint your non-fungible token.

And that is a sentence that I fully understand. And I do think at the beginning of this podcast, I wouldn't have known what a single word of them meant. No, same. Thank you so much, Tom. We're going to start minting things. But until we do, we're at Nobody Panic Pod. And I'm at Stevie M, but the S is a 5.

And Tessa Coates. There she is. And we pray love on Instagram, but you will be disappointed in both places. And if you have any ideas for future episodes like this, because we're trying to do more of like getting interested by things. If you want to get interested by something, email is,

Nob2epanic Podcasts at gmail.com and we will try and find someone and we'll try and learn about it. And thank you so much for listening. Tom, thank you so much. Thank you so much. You were so eloquent. And really, really held our hand through that. I'm off for an on-chain wine. Yes. Bye.