Odd Lots - Why Brooklyn Nets Star Spencer Dinwiddie Co-Founded a Crypto Startup

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

Over the last year, numerous celebrities and athletes have gotten into crypto in some way. For example, some have announced plans to put part of their salary into Bitcoin. But Brooklyn Nets star Spencer Dinwiddie has been in the space for a lot longer, having held Bitcoin for several years. And, in addition to owning Bitcoin and other coins, he's also the co-founder of a new company called Calaxy, which aims to let fans buy tokens associated with their favorite stars. On this episode, we speak with Spencer as well as his co-founder Solo Ceesay about the world of creator tokens, and how various technologies, including crypto, are changing the relationship between fans and celebs.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Jill Wisenthal. And I'm Tracy Allaway. So Tracy, you know, we've been talking a lot about crypto, cryptocurrencies on the show lately. Yes. But in kind of like a sort of like very limited abstract sense. And I think actually people are getting excited about different things that can be done with coins and tokenization, etc. in a lot more ways than just sort of like the redefining money or redefining finance concept. Yeah, I'm definitely starting to see quite a lot of more creative use cases.

So there was a Barclays note the other day that basically talked about using tokenization to fix the repo market and try to make the settlement times more efficient. So that's fun. But we've seen lots of different potential applications or tokens, including maybe tokenizing future. income streams from individuals. Yeah, tokenizing athletes. And this is also like, you've always been obsessed with this topic. And we actually like talked about it recently with music rights.

And I think years ago, we talked about Bowie bonds. Like this is all like the idea of like owning like the stream to a person's income or being able to like invest in a person or a star has always been something kind of appeals to, right? Appeals to me. I think intellectually, yes. I think there are a lot of open questions about how exactly it works and whether or not it's good for society. But I think it's sort of anyone who's into or interested in securitization is at some point going to start thinking about whether or not you can apply the process to people and individual streams of income. I think Matt Levine once described this, our Bloomberg columnist colleague, once described this as like the classic sort of college, like late night dorm.

intellectual exercise. Yeah, well, no, like, you know, the kind of thing you talk about, maybe after you've had a few drinks or something else, can you actually sell stock in people and how would you do it? Tracy, this is so much more

than dorm room talking out. This is becoming big up. One other thing, you know, we're talking about, like, the idea of, like, betting on a person or buying sort of a stake in someone that you're really into. But I don't, did you pay

attention to the whole NBA top shot phenomenon a few months ago? No, and this is going to be an episode that comes with my standard sporting caveat, which is I have no idea what's going on in the NBA. I'm not an expert in the space by any stretch of the imagination. So go ahead and tell me what happened. Well, you know, your excuse is also that you're in Hong Kong, but a few months ago, there was this huge obsession with these like digital sort of like blockchain-based basketball cards and people were paying like tens of thousands of dollars for essentially like a playing card, like a star dunking or something like that. It was like a video.

It kind of looked like a gift. But collectible, one of a kind of things. It was this huge thing. It's kind of faded a little bit in the public's imagination, but as a proof of concept, people are just like really excited about the idea of like using tokenization, bought digital collectibles, all kinds of new ways for fans to express their support. Right. Well, if you think about, you know, we've spoken a little bit about NFTs on the show. You think about NFTs or sort of natural application to sports collectibles, which have always been, I mean, sporting fans have always been sort of interested in collecting things surrounding sports, right? Baseball cards kind of readily spring to mind. Yeah. Exactly right. Well, I'm very excited about our guests because we have an NBA star on the podcast today. Here's the co.

founder of the app Galaxy. He is a star player for the Brooklyn Nets. We are going to be speaking with Spencer Dinwiddie as well as Solo Sise, also the co-founder. And they are, you know, working on projects related to all this blockchain, interacting with

stars, tokenization, new ways for fans to interact with the game. So I'm very excited about speaking to both Spencer and Solo. So thank you both for coming on. Thank you for having us. We really appreciate it. It's honor to be here. Yeah, thank you. So Spencer, I mean, actually, Spencer, I'm sort of like familiar. You've always been into like crypto stuff or I know like a lot of athletes are

getting into it a long time ago, but I feel like you've actually been way ahead of the curve on this stuff like thinking about blockchain and cryptocurrencies. What got you interested in this world? Yeah, no, I mean, I was I was fortunate enough to get into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in early 2017. You know, a buddy of mine in the finance industry, you know, told me about it in 2014. And unfortunately, I didn't get in. Should have listened then. Yeah, no, I wish I had it.

You know, I might be retired right now, honestly. But, but no, I mean, I was fortunate enough to get in in 2017. I experienced both the rise and the crash. It sparked kind of an education process, and I wanted to learn about it. And as my pursuit of knowledge started to open up a new world, I started just try to apply it to, you know, what's familiar in my life, which is the entertainment industry. And, you know, fast forward four years and Galaxy is in beta. And, you know, Solo is primed and poised to lead us to heights that, you know, no consumer product has really seen yet in the blockchain space. So maybe this is a good time for you to introduce yourself.

What's the relationship here and how did you get involved in the project? Yeah, sure, most definitely. So my name is Solosice, co-founder here at Calixy. Yeah, so Spencer is a very interesting guy. So he's actually a close friendly friend of mine. As you guys all know, he was one of the first people, if not the first, actually, to tokenize himself. And so he's actually a good family friend of mine. My brother actually put us in contact a number of years ago at this point.

mentioning that, you know, whatever it is that Spencer aspired to do with his contract and tokenizing himself, you know, and all of those conversations didn't really make much sense, but it made equally no sense to whatever it is that I did for work. So I was a securitization investment banker previously. And so we started having those conversations about what the future of fan engagement looks like, but also the idea of monetization and democratizing, you know, oneself in order to, you know, profit. off of your likeness in a way that you couldn't, you know, previously. And so that's kind of, you know, the impetus of what Galaxy, the modern project is. You know, we're really excited to, you know, take a stab at changing, you know, the creator economy and changing, you know, using crypto as a means to get there. Spencer, what are you, or either one of you really, but what do you sort of describe the basic galaxy? What is it? What is the model?

Oh, let's all take this one. Yeah, sure. So Galaxy stands for the Creators. Creators Galaxy, and essentially, we are a one-stop shop for a creator to monetize themselves. So if you think about the creator economy currently, there is a number of different social media platforms that exist out there. And, you know, the power of influence and the growing of the creator middle class, you know, nowadays, you can walk on the street, you know, of New York and walk by somebody that has, you know, 200,000 followers that's looking to monetize and connect those fans. And so, you know, those guys are often found. I am. Exactly, right? Those

are often found on a number of different platforms looking to monetize and have those authentic experiences that their fans are quite honestly looking for. So what we've decided to do is create a platform where all of that can be hosted in one space, giving these people the autonomy to really, you know, dive into monetizing their fan base in a way that makes sense for them. You know, so a celebrity chef might monetize their fan base differently than a star running back, like differently, you know, monetize themselves than a reality TV star. And so Galaxy is meant to host all of that all of one place. And then we obviously have the crypto and, you know, blockchain architecture to be able to benefit, you know, from things like NFTs and really helping,

you know, introduce that to the masses in a palatable way. Sorry, can you talk a little bit more about the differences in how different celebrities would actually monetize their income stream? So how would a, a chef do it that's different to, you know, what a basketball player would do or a reality TV star. Yeah, most certainly. So like to dive into it, essentially the way the app works is that each creator has their own cryptocurrency. And so we're creating personalized cryptocurrencies with instant utility. And what we mean by that is in order to buy, you know, Spencer Dean Whittie's token, you know, you would buy that and you would be able to redeem it for an interaction with Spencer. So be

get a video call, FaceTime call, you know, directly within an app, you know, whether it's access to exclusive content, you name it, you know, you're able to essentially use that as a form of currency to redeem those, you know, interactions. So it's really monetizing someone's time versus kind of their income streams, right? Like, this is distinctly different than, you know, securitizing your own, you know, MBA contract, for example. You know, that's something that speaks to, you know, the masses of, you know, influencers, right? Like, not everybody is signed to the Brooklyn Nets for a lucrative deal. We all wish we were, but we're not.

But, you know, somebody like a celebrity chef might want to offer cooking classes. They might want to offer, you know, different, you know, products that make sense for their communities. And so in our platform, you're able to turn on and off different things that makes sense for your fan bases. And then obviously you're also able to set your pricing, which makes sense. So, you know, if, you know, you set your price at one, you know, at one point and, you know, a more, you know, competitive influencer that's, you know, very similar to you.

And, you know, in a perfect market, you know, you might lose your price. your fans to go there, et cetera. But we're all about community building and all those things. So, you know, quite honestly, it's usually not a zero-sum game. But that's how the app works and how the ecosystem functions. Spencer, you know, you've been in the league since 2014, so seven years. And from a sort of technology, social media, and obviously anything related to cryptocurrency, that is a lifetime, just seven years.

Can you talk a little bit just about, like, how the fans, player relationship has been changed by technology over that time? Oh, man. It's funny. I mean, I feel like basketball, the entertainment industry, technology,

it's kind of like dog years. You know, everything's just so accelerated. I mean, to give you a basketball knowledge, I mean, when I got in the NBA, a lot of teams still had two big men.

You know what I mean? Like, it was right, right before the kind of golden state transition to, you know, shooting threes and there was still big question marks on if you could, could win the game shooting threes. I mean, now we're talking about, you know, NBA top shot and

there being, you know, virtual VR components, you know, to the NBA and its viewing experience. I mean, obviously, you've seen through social media where platforms like Instagram have become content distribution on a wide scale, not just for individuals and creators, but also for, you know, these brands as well. You know, the NBA does a great job of sending out Instagram, posts and videos and things like that promoting games. I mean, we play the Milwaukee Bucks tonight, and I'm sure if you go to the NBA's timeline right now, there's going to be Janus highlights and KD highlights,

obviously capitalizing on YouTube and having highlights distributed there more freely than some of the other leagues. I think that's something that the NFL kind of missed the boat on at the start. And then also having shoot the Twitter live show that I participated in with Taylor Rooks and Channing Fry. and Isaiah Thomas and stuff like that where you're getting some of that live streaming and commentating from, you know,

not just the telecast crew, but also some more maybe familiar personalities and maybe arm's-length personalities, you know, like I said, like a Chan and Fry. All these things that I've referenced are just part of that dramatic shift. And I think, you know, as these social medias and as these technologies come that decrease the barrier between fan and player or fan and product necessarily, I guess.

And I know it sounds terrible to call us products, but the content that we produce, the basketball game we play is like weaving a one-of-a-kind art piece every night. And that's what the fans want to be attached to and part of. You know, it's all about kind of decreasing the friction for the fan to be able to interact and consume the content that they love. Well, this is something that I wanted to ask you about, actually. So Joe and I just launched a subscriber-only platform at Bloomberg, and I've been sort of struggling to come up with stuff to write for it. So do you find it difficult or do you feel pressure to produce content suitable for Instagram or suitable for, you know, selling for extra money to fans in addition to being an athlete? Because it's, I mean, everyone takes it for granted now, but it is kind of a big shift over the past five years or so.

Yeah, I mean, I think to Solo's point, when he kind of referenced each creator, each demographic, each subsection of this entertainment industry has their ways to monetize. You know, a TikTok star is going to do it pretty different than a YouTuber. It's going to do it different than a gamer. It's going to do it different than a basketball player. Remember, like, all the content that I produce still has to abide by a certain, I would say, unwritten code that the NBA kind of represents, right? because you never sacrifice your main check to, like, go grab small endorsements, right? Like, this summer I should sign, you know, a contract that's north of, let's call it $60 million, right? If I could pick up another $1 to $2 million in endorsements or whatever it is a year, it still wouldn't just, it would take me 30 years, you know, to satisfy my, you know, abbreviated NBA contract.

So it wouldn't make sense. It would be nonsensical for me to start posting a last. or disingenuous or, you know, explicit content or just anything that would violate that NBA code. And so all my social media posts have to kind of flow in that line. Now, I want to be authentic. And so if you look at my social media, specific, my Instagram, it's typically me working out as I'm coming back from ACL and kind of showing my progress. So it's very authentic to my life that I live every day, you know, multiple workouts at different times. And maybe, you know, you might see a smoothie or something like that because I try to eat healthy.

things of that nature, but, you know, I can't necessarily, you know, it just would be remissed me to post, like, alcohol in large quantities or something like that. And I mean, I like wine, but I don't drink, obviously, hard liquor in large quantities and things like that. But I just couldn't do that and still expect to maintain the type of conducive image that represents kind of the shield well at the same time. So each person, and that's the beauty of social media, it's such an individual experience that you kind of have to attack it in the manner that's best for your life. Yeah, and I think on that point, too, like, you know, just to chime in to, we've uniquely identified that in terms of, like, our broader vision for the CaliCe platform and

that, you know, each creator, like Censor mentioned, and like, you know, we spoke about a few times now is that, you know, they all have different revenue streams. So, like, you know, things like, you know, paving way to a future where you can, you know, offer securitization as a potential, you know, liquidity event for, you know, an NBA player or an NFL player, et cetera, like having the rails set to be able to do something like that might make sense. And then, you know, obviously, you know, when you think about what's much larger is that, you know, the creator economy, right? Like, you know, like going back to my example before, you know, the need for monetization is, you know, quite great in that step, you know, in that creator middle class. Like, right? Like,

you know, to Spencer's point, you know, he's just talking about signing, you know, lucrative NBA contracts, but there are people, you know, that got a million followers that, you know, really need to, you know, monetize because that's their lively, right? Like, you know, Spencer makes money playing basketball. But, like, you know, some of the these people don't necessarily make money having, you know, a ton of followers on Instagram. And so their price, you know, per unit of effort or, you know, however you want to think about it is probably lower, right? And that's the beauty of our app and, you know, setting your price, you know, you're able to really take ownership and, like, have autonomy over what your time is worth. Right.

And that's something that's, you know, really important and necessary when you think about how, you know, traditional legacy social media platforms exist where you have, you know, TikToks or YouTube's or bigger, you know, larger organization. are deciding how much these people are worth based off of the follower account and traffic that they bring. You know, the whole idea of centralization and defy, and I'm sure we'll get into a lot of that, you know, later on in the conversation. But, you know, the idea of being able to have that autonomy and be able to monetize their time as you see fit is, you know, really the key. I think this is super helpful for me and Tracy as we think about sort of balancing social

media against our $60 million contract. Something that I'm really interested in is like, I'm curious. because, you know, like Tracy and I, you know, I'm 40. I don't know how old Tracy is. But, you know, it's like we didn't grow up with all this stuff. Things like tokens and buying cryptocurrencies, like related to a star. It's like still like very like awkward for me. What is your experience with like the sort of like current generation of fans and just their level

of comfort with, say, like the idea of like buying a star token or a creator token in some way? And understanding interacting with that. I know you guys are part of the older generation, but I don't think it's actually that, you know, unfamiliar for you guys. You guys traded basketball cards, baseball cards, things like that, which is, you know, akin to top shot. Yeah, right. OE bonds came out, you know, a long, long time ago. And that's something that obviously my tokenization is similar to. I think people throw around the word crypto, they're throwing on the word token and people get a little bit of gunshot because they feel like, oh, no, it's a whole new world.

Now, to a certain extent it is. Right, but we're talking about units that can be more effectively moved, right? What does the blockchain really do? It gives a trustless trust layer, right? Like, I don't have to trust you, Joe. You know what I mean? Like, I can just simply trust the ledger. I can trust the Ethereum blockchain or the Hedera hashgrap blockchain itself.

I take out the, you know, counterparty risk in that sense, right? Because the ledger is the baseline and something that I know to be true, right? Because it's been, it's had verified transactions for however many know. number of years, et cetera, et cetera. So it's more so utilizing the trust layer, the speed, right, to handle these kind of escrow system transactions, these smart contracts. So I don't look at it from a standpoint of, you know, necessarily reinventing the wheel. And that's why I said I was trying to apply the technology to the entertainment industry in ways that I thought it solved issues and solve problems, right? Like Bowie bonds was something that was effective, but a little bit

outdated, right? We look at kind of, even the owners have talked about they want liquidity in teams. They want 51% financial obligation, but they want 100% control. Well, how are you going to get that? It has to be from the fans. No other billionaire is going to say, hey, I've my money, but I don't want a board seat. I don't want executive decision making. I don't want to look into the financials. I don't want to, that's not going to happen, right? Like, but fans will buy in because of their emotional touch of the experience. It's the same type of thing with contracts and other illiquid assets such as intellectual property or time, for example, you know, things that are hard to extract value from. We want to kind of put it on this blockchain, right? So you take out

the fear of not trusting this person. And then you set the playing field level and you say, hey, if you want to interact or you want to buy a piece of a team or you want to buy a piece of a contract or whatever it is. And we understand some of these things are securities and some are non-security. So I'm not saying cali-handles all this, right? But just in terms of blockchain, its application, that's the way we viewed it and the way that we kind of go about applying the technology and scaling caly into the future. And obviously, any of these ideas that Caly doesn't do, if somebody's listening to the podcast, take it, run with it. I hope you make, you know, billions of dollars with it. So I want to press you on this point. And I'm going to start

with a kind of weird anecdote. But seven or eight years ago, I was living in New York and I was going to a gym. I think it was like a New York sports club gym or something like that. And there was a manager there who had an idea, which was basically to start something very similar to like Patreon or Cameo Now and to have fans pay in order to get specialized content from their favorite athletes, their favorite stars. And this was seven or eight years ago. He told me that idea and I was like, oh, that sounds really interesting. And he was sort of asking for media and legal and financial advice and stuff like that. I have no idea if he ever got it off the ground. But clearly he was directionally right because we have all these platforms now. I guess my question is, what

differentiates Calixie from the other things that are out there? And you've given the sort of the case for crypto here. But there are other platforms doing this that do not use the technology and seem to be achieving the same thing. Yeah. So I'll take the first piece in terms of broad vision and then I'll dedicate it to solo for the comprehensiveness of Cali. You know, on that note, when you talk about looking into the future in him seven, eight years ago, talking about the cameos and things that nature, it still came down to decreasing friction, right? Because people want to be tied to what's innately special. I use this analogy a lot when we're discussing this kind of broader topic. If you took the Brooklyn Nets logo

and you dropped it in the middle of, you know, Times Square or wherever, um, He would probably stop. He would take pictures. It would be somewhat of an event. It would kind of be a little, you know, like, oh, what's going on here? But it wouldn't stop traffic, right? If LeBron James right now tweeted out, hey, I'll be at Times Square at, you know, 12 p.m. tomorrow, everybody is showing up to Times Square.

COVID or not, it doesn't matter. Like, they're showing up, they're going to be that. Whether they have to take their picture from, you know, 10 yards away, or they actually get to meet them, and have a conversation, whatever it is, everybody's showing up. And so it speaks to what's actually special. Like a long time ago, people thought of this more in the, you know, college way, right? Where there's all this, you know, school pride and program tradition. And they thought it kind of applied to the professional realm, but it doesn't.

You know, there's a reason why McDonald's goes to a LeBron or a Katie or whatever and ask them to endorse their food. You know what I mean? because people want, you know, that access to that person. Like the golden arches are nice, but I'd much rather talk to Katie. You know what I mean? So, you know, that's where it's going. It's not going to stop. And so, you know, on that note, obviously I'll shift it to solo one, why Cadaxi helps

that. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, to piggyback off that and two and, like, you know, I think in general, the answer has a lot to do with the idea of just customizability for each person's, you know, intended audience, right? So, like, if you think about cameo, right, like, you know, I love Spencer to death, but, like, you know, he may not be the type of person that makes a killing off that platform, right, based off of who is or even better, you know, patron. right he's not a content producer he's not going to have in you know in you know in exclusive you know documentary series or docu series like some athletes do but like for him personally that's not how he

spends his free time right like so in order to monetize that or like the reward of you know being on a platform like that that becomes a lot of work right like when you were saying you know at the beginning you know you want to minimize the friction right like we keep coming to the same idea right you know take that example and apply it to you know an instagram model or to apply it to a you know a YouTuber, right? Like there are people who are in YouTube who are not famous, but they're famous to somebody. Right. And so like when you think about that idea, right, there definitely is a need for a platform that can meet the needs of them. And they all exist in some way, shape, or form there are a lot of unique interests cases of our galaxy that don't, you know,

you can't really find elsewhere. But like the idea of doing a video message, right, like are doing, you know, calls or, you know, exclusive content that does exist as to your point. But, you know, in order to, you know, monetize your fan base in a holistic manner, you have to be and all these different things, and they might not even fit or suit you, right? You know, depending on, you know, who you are as a person. If you're a YouTuber and you got 75,000 followers, like, I'm sure of those $75,000, there's a thousand people who think you're the greatest person in the world. But, like, are you going to make a killing on cameo?

Probably not when the Rock is offering the same thing, right? And so, like, I think when you think about, like, our platform, you create this sort of ecosystem, not to mention, you know, the idea of the added benefit of integration of blockchain technology. And you think about NFTs. and you think about the idea of ultimately tokenizing a person and having them listed on in exchange one day, like that future and that architecture is so innately important in like our DNA.

Can you just talk briefly about your technology choice? What platforms, blockchains did you use? And what was the thinking behind it? Yeah, no. So when we're building this platform and understanding that to kind of future proof it in a sense, that's why we use blockchain. I mean, you spoke about the cameos.

the, you know, only fans, patrons, et cetera, they don't. But, you know, we view, you know, an ecosystem environment where not only are you showcasing NFTs, but also you're going to have kind of fluidity of these tokens in terms of the secondary market structure, you know, and to do that efficiently and effectively, blockchain was going to be something that would greatly help us. So with that being said, you know, we start targeting layer ones and looking at which ones had the most robust infrastructure to support that. You know, obviously, Ethereum comes up first because it's by far the biggest smart

contract layer one. Bitcoin doesn't do smart contracts, obviously. But we knew that CryptoKitties had once kind of thralled the network and fees were very high. So, you know, that wasn't going to be appealing because if we were bringing on people such as myself or Ezekiel Elliott or, you know, we just got a TikToker, you know, excuse me, I don't know if TikTokers is the right nomenclature. but somebody that is famous on TikTok has about 8 million followers on TikTok.

You know, today we just signed him up too. If we bring all those followers, right, we didn't want to throttle the app nor the Ethereum network. We didn't want fees to skyrocket and become unusable. So, you know, we figured that probably wasn't going to work in its current state. So looking at other layer ones, whether it be Tesos, Al-Garan, just several. Flow wasn't quite out of, you know, it's beta yet. So we didn't choose them, although I'm invested there.

And we started on Haderer Hashgraf. The reason for that, if you look into Hedera Hashgraph, they have, you know, a council with Fortune 500 companies that we had to pitch to get a grant. So, you know, there's incredible reputation risk management to be aligned with, you know, people like Google and LG and IBM and DLA Piper and Deutsche Telecom, to name a few. On top of that, they're kind of considered next generation blockchain. they technically aren't blockchain specifically. They actually are hash graph technology, literally. They're the only one that comes to a complete finality, asynchronous, bison teen fault tolerant.

So it's the highest level of security that was created by a guy that used to be a part of the Department of Defense. You know, you look at the other projects, they, that their network is just outrageously robust. And so, you know, when choosing a layer one, like, why not align yourself with some of the top companies in the world? Like, you know, it's, it's an honor to, for when Hedera Hatchef puts out, you know, their partners list to see Google IBM Coxy. You know what I mean? Like, it's pretty killer. And granted,

our balance sheet doesn't necessarily look like theirs as of now, but to be in that same breath at this early stage, you know, is both humbling and inspiring. So, you know, to get their stamp of approval and all that stuff, it seemed like a no brain for us. So I know you're still in beta, but what have you learned from a plumbus? blockchain technology so far. Because one of the criticisms of blockchain is this idea that it's sort of a solution in need of a problem and that real world applications actually either, you know, don't exist or there aren't that many of them. So I'm just curious, like, as you roll this out, what have you discovered about the benefits or drawbacks of blockchain? Yeah. I mean, I think from my

side of things, what, you know, what we, what we discovered, I guess, like from our side of things is that, you know, there are, you know, there is a big need and a big one, actually, to understand this technology, right? Like, we're not the only ones. And, you know, Spencer being, you know, one of the, you know, trailblazers in the entertainment industry to really be one of the early adopters of it. Like, you know, a lot of people followed suit, right? You know, we, you know, we were actually, you know, really close with Matt James, the, you know, most recent bachelor. And, you know, he, you know, is very much so involved in, you know, learning more about the technology himself. And so, like, in this process of onboarding different creators and things like that.

You know, the blockchain thing wasn't something they shied away from. Quite honestly, it was something that they leaned into because they saw the future. They saw a lot of the benefits. And, you know, I think one thing that we wanted to be absolutely deliberate on and, you know, very clear, you know, on was creating a product that was palate, something that made sense and something that wasn't going to confuse, you know, the average person, you know, in middle America or, right, like when it comes to creating something that, you know, is highly functioning. but at the same time, you know, something that's like easy to use when you think about like

kind of Apple and like creating a project, you know, a product that's, you know, supremely capable about at the same time, you don't know how it works. It just works, right? And so when we think about, you know, our product and stuff, you know, we found that, you know, a lot of people have been really excited, you know, not only for solving the real world issue about there needs to be some sort of one ecosystem to develop, you know, a fan base or a community, but then also, you know, creating the opportunity in the wingo path to be able to kind of help educate and teach and bring crypto, you know, very similarly to the, you know, to our part, you know, to, you know, to, you know, to the flow project. And, you know, Roham is, you know, an advisor to our project, the CEO of Dapper Labs,

you know, and their whole ethos about kind of bringing crypto to the masses through games, you know, very similarly, we're trying to do, you know, very similar thing here, um, with creator economies and social media. And so, you know, from our side of things, it's, you know, we've learned a lot, And we've been able to iterate and continue to grow and build a product that's, you know, truly and organically felt like it's been built by the creators, you know, censor an influencer himself. He goes in Brooklyn, that's like behind this. We had a lot of, you know, great information that a couple of dudes in Silicon Valley with a similar idea may not have had.

Just by the fact that, like, you know, our network, our friends and family, like the creators that we've onboarded so far, our personal relationships. And, you know, it's starting to get a lot of inbounds, obviously. But, you know, kind of the initial cohort that we started with, you know, helped us, you know, realize those beginning points. So the last year has obviously been incredible for all things. Crypto, obviously the big coins had an incredible year. And Top Shot became a phenomenon. Spencer, you know, we were talking about at the beginning, you're very early on all that stuff. I'm curious, like, what you've seen, like, in the locker room and so forth as other players

have, like, do they turn to you to, like, help them, like, understand and navigate all this navigate all this stuff? Yeah, a little bit. I think for me personally, I'm not going to lie. It's much better being asked questions than being laughed at. In 2017, I was definitely laughed at. In 2018, for sure laughed at, 2019, for sure laughed at. But, no, in all seriousness, I think, you know, overall, since I've been in the league,

I think people have spoken about this shift that's happened since I would say probably 2010. And I only got it in 14, but the education. process of the athlete as a whole. I think guys are much more involved in their finances. I think we have a lot of brilliant guys that are looking to form generational wealth, in whatever avenue that is, whether it's real estate, traditional, you know, stocks and equities and things, or now in emerging technologies. And I know VC was kind of the wave right before blockchain really kind of took over. So it's been fun to get asked those questions. I actually shy away from offering explicit advice. I mean, I discuss my partners all the

time. That's smart. Yeah, no, I discuss my partners all the time. I just to say, as financial journalists, this is one area that maybe we could actually genuinely relate. Tracy and I have a lot of experience of being asked financial questions from friends and family to which, to buy anything, to which we have absolutely no good advice. We're just like, you know, buy an index fund or something like that. I tell them, you know, I personally am investing in Bitcoin. I tell you, I tell them that my platform is built on hashgraph. Two of my main partners are flow and chain link. And other than that, I would encourage you to do as much research as you possibly can. That's the biggest start I can give you. And that's just from a transparent place and

something that you could read online. So obviously, I'm going to be invested with my partners and saying I'm going to support a Bitcoin is no secret at all. So, you know, that's what I'll give you. If you want to talk about the big picture and where I think distributed technology, distributed ledger technology can kind of take markets in a comprehensive fashion. I definitely love to do that. And I can talk your off all day. But explicit investment advice, I definitely shot away from because I don't want to be the guy that says, you know, do this. And, you know, you lose some money and now you're mad at me.

Yeah, that's good advice. That's exactly what I think anytime someone asks me a question. I just don't want to cost anyone their money. No. And then you're not welcome back for Thanksgiving dinner. Exactly. And I love Thanksgiving. There was something I wanted to ask you that Joe and I sort of alluded to in the intro.

And it was this idea of, I guess, the moral dimensions of selling some sort of financial interests that is tied to people. Obviously, when you say a sentence like that, it tends to make people squeamish. And I remember after the 2008 financial crisis, when there was so much criticism of the process of securitization, in itself, every once in a while there would be like an idea that would pop up about securitizing people's future income streams. Like maybe you sell a student's future income and they use that money to actually go to college or something like that. But every time the idea came up, people would sort of instinctively feel uncomfortable with it. It feels like things are changing a little bit. You know, this, I guess are familiar.

familiarity with content creation now maybe has sort of changed that equation. But I'm just curious how you're thinking about the moral dimension of all of this. Yeah. I mean, on that note, I think you test on something that's good. Content creation is much more prevalent. But the two factors that I think make this an actual functioning ecosystem, and this really has nothing to do with technology, but it's the reason why it's going to be easier for me to secure something versus like a college student, you need somebody that has, you know, semi-public to public cash flows so that it's not a situation where they can really hide and divert money and try to screw their investors because, you know, in more normal situations, that wouldn't be too difficult to try to do.

But if, you know, obviously I'm in the NBA and my contract is public, then I can't, and then other than that, I would say you have to have the incentives be aligned. You know, it can't be a situation where I sell my entire contract and then, And if I play really bad, you know, nothing matters. And so I can fake an injury and just sit down and whatever it is and, you know, and just put not only myself, but investors in kind of a, you know, less advantageous position. It has to be a situation where, you know, the incentives are aligned. You make it so there's hopefully some promising returns for the investors, of course,

but also, you know, it encourages the athlete to continue to play well and win games and do right and all that stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think from my side of things, too, like as a, you know, a securitization banker in a previous life, you know, I think when you think about kind of the, you know, recession of 2008 versus kind of now, I mean, I think, you know, there's a lot of different points, you know, places that you could point to, you know, where you think that there are inequities in terms of the education level that, you know, people might have investing in these sorts of things.

And, you know, obviously this is something that, you know, we've touched upon, you know, immediately in day one, is this something that Alex's really. looking to, you know, commercialize as a business, not exactly. You know, it's definitely a part of our bigger macro picture that sensor, you know, has put together in his thoughts and stuff. But when you think about, you know, just general education, right? Like, the barriers to entry to trading are couldn't be lower, right? Like, people are getting, you know, $5, 10 to open up brokerage accounts and start trading on different platforms. And, you know, there are a lot of people when you think about like GameStop and, you know, AMC and different things that you saw this year. And, you know,

the idea of people wanting to take on their own personal finances, you know, 20, 30 years ago, it wasn't the case that the average Joe was trade. But, you know, that's not the case now. And that's distinctly different. And so, you know, to your point, you know, talking about, you know, securityization and how it's had this stigma around it, you know, there are a lot of different areas in the financial industry that, you know, obviously require a little bit more, you know, education around the ways in which that you can use this, you know, access for, you know, quite great, you know, wealth creation and building over time. But, you know, when you think about the idea of, you know, securitizing a person, you know, that ultimately, you know, is the,

is the way in which that you think about the future, right? Like if you're, you know, LeBron James or you're somebody with a very, you know, large empire, there should be different means and alternatives for financing outside of just, you know, going to a bank for a traditional one, especially, you know, as Spencer mentioned, if you have public, you know, cash flows. Because, you know, outside of that, there are people, you know, taking out, I can't remember, you know, it might have been a year ago, it might have been a couple years ago since they're not at this conversation, but there are, you know, people that take out egregious loans to be able to, you know, cash advance their lives, right? Like, they'll take out loans at, you know,

crazy, you know, 15, 18, 20 percent, you know, when there could be a lot more, you know, efficient ways to finance your life, especially if you, you know, have the, you know, the validity behind it. Spencer, you mind if I just ask you a few general, not specific blockchain-related questions, like real quickly, a little quick, like lightning round of other question. Yeah, let's do it. I'm with you. How would you summarize why it feels like NBA has just done like such a better job? So many people I know are so into the NBA. They like talk about the NBA.

They like talk about the players of the NBA like yourself in a way that I don't see with other leagues. Like what do you think it is that's like the NBA is really like figured out something culturally? I think the NBA has embraced emerging technologies. And this is a complete non-block-tintact thing. I'm talking about like streaming YouTube. to highlights, make them easily accessible. I think, you know, they didn't put, they didn't try to block like the copyrights usage.

So you see all these comedians things hopping on, you're highlighting and distributing this content and repurposing this content. And so you attract new fans, right? Especially in, you know, foreign countries when it's hard to watch the games live. I think another component of basketball that makes it very attractive to fans

that you can see our face. We seem like human beings. this is no shot to football or anything like that but obviously they have to wear a helmet for protected reasons but you know you don't necessarily know the person behind the mask

unless he's a quarterback like quarterbacks take off their helmets all the time so you know them but other than that I couldn't tell you a de lineman if you walk down the street other than the fact that he's probably you know outrageously you know muscular right basketball players are recognizable not just in turn not just

from the standpoint of seeing our face but also obviously statute you see a six eight person walking down the street and his face is familiar you'll probably think he's a you know, a Brooklyn net player. So just things in that nature allow a lot of invade a scale, just familiarity in fans' minds, allowing players to be more vocal about, you know, issues, whether it be, you know, social or economics or, you know, whatever it is. So that kind of broad ranging where you have outspoken people, you see their face and

recognizable, allowing your content to be repurposed and used for fun, for business, for whatever it is, it just creates a kind of wildfire type of distribution. So what do you do? You mentioned if someone sees you walk around Brooklyn, they probably might guess you're a basketball player. What's your off-court life in Brooklyn like? What do you like to do? I mean, before I started playing well, I mean, I would just kind of, I mean, I wear sweats, hoodie, you know, stuff like that every day. So I'm a very chill person. I wear bands every day. before I start playing well, you know, people might like catch a glance. And then if I make eye contact, you like, are you, I mean, I don't know, maybe you are.

And you kind of keep walking and stuff like that. Now, obviously, haven't played better, things like that. You know, I'm more immediately recognizable. But, you know, in that respect, I take it in stride and I actually enjoy it just from the standpoint of it. I understand what it's like to be on the other side of that. And I understand the fans create this ecosystem. I think that's one of the biggest benefits. It's a building an app and going through the tokenization and exploring entertainment industry

and learning how the NBA was built on a nonprofit system and all. Just a bunch of different things you understand at the end of the day, fans make this thing work. If fans spend their money, we all have jobs. If they don't, then we don't. You know what I'm saying? Is that kind of drive, it's that simple. Like from an economic perspective, no billionaires behind an NBA team if it wasn't a revenue-generating entity at the end of the day.

That's what it is. Whether the stock goes up or you actually are cash flow positive, one of them has to happen for a billionaire to want to, you know, dive into this business. And so, you know, I try to be as cordial, as inviting and as appreciative to the fans because they allow me to live the life that I live. You know, and as long as they approach me with common courtesy and respect, you know, then why would I approach them like they're any less of that same human being? We're all humans. Great, great answer. Final question, which is recording this June 7th. As you mentioned, your team, the Nets that are playing the Bucks tonight in the playoffs, you're injured right now, so you're not participating. What is that like, sort of like, as you like watch those games from the sideline? I mean, I'm sure it's like brutal not being on the court and supporting your team. But how do you deal with that? It's tough. I've had, you know, two main injuries in my life. One was ACL on my left knee. One was ACL my right knee. You know, when, When you're on the sideline, it's kind of an introspective experience. I would say it was weird watching this season just from the standpoint of you saw the bubble.

Then you saw this season where we played in arenas with no fans. But I'll tell you what, with these fans back, with the energy in this playoff atmosphere, you know, the itch to play has gone to, you know, through the roof. It's at 10 times what it was during the regular season, just keeping up with the guys. Now it's at a level that's like, I mean, I need to get back out there. It's a need at this point, not just a want. So, you know, I miss it and I can't wait to play soon. All right. Well, that was fantastic.

Spencer Solo, thank you both so much for taking the time. Fascinating project. And I appreciate you coming on, Oddlock. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks so much, guys. Tracy, that was a really fun episode.

I feel like that's actually like a whole different dimension of the crypto-competion. that I think is actually really important and kind of totally unexplored, totally something we've under-explored. I guess the thing that stood out to me was just how much the fields of sports have sort of changed in this idea that athletes need to be content producers, or if they can be content producers, then they have potentially another stream that they can monetize. I guess, I guess to some extent that was always the case in professional sports, people would always have some sort of sponsorship deal on the side.

but it just feels like we're in a whole new, at a whole new level in many respects. Yeah, I guess what I mean by like, I mean, I completely agree with you. The way to contextualize that is probably more within the realm of new ways that celebrities and athletes are monetizing their fame than crypto. I guess like what I was thinking is like when I think about like crypto, I think about like these hardcore sort of like distributed tech systems that are designed to be censored. censorship resistant and designed to be, you know, sort of like powerful computer science ideas. But the idea that like another application is it's just fun to like buy a token that's sort of related to a celebrity like is actually like a pretty huge use case for all this stuff that probably doesn't get talked about enough in that context.

Yeah. And actually people like to talk about tokenization. Well, we just did this. people talk about tokenization as this brand new thing all the time, but actually, like, I don't know, I guess baseball cards were the original tokens or maybe at least ADRs were the original tokens for stocks. Yeah. Like, there are examples of tokens out there that have been successfully deployed and they

weren't like an earth-shattering financial system-threatening thing. It is funny, like, I guess, because I'm like, you know, old. And, like, it's hard for me to, like, wrap my head around, like, NFTs. But, like, what is the difference really between an NFT and, like, a basketball card? Like, it's really not that different. Like, it's like when I was young, like, I could understand basketball cards or baseball cars, but this is a piece of cardboard. Yeah.

The other thing I liked about that conversation, though, was actually the discussion of applying the technology to a specific use case because I feel like we don't hear enough about that. So this idea that, you know, they couldn't do Bitcoin for obvious reasons. They looked at Ethereum, but they were worried about the cost of the system getting clogged up. And so they settled on an alternate technology. I think it speaks to probably that point that you made in your gigantic 5,000 word post about this idea that you can't look at crypto as a monolith because different technologies,

different cryptocurrencies slash tokens have different use cases. Yeah, it is interesting too. I remember the CryptoKitties phenomenon in 2017 and that just brought the entire network to a halt. And so you do see like this use as like, well, let's just use a different. chain that's maybe more optimized for some other use case. So I don't know, it'd be fascinating to see where it goes. And I feel like Spencer seems to have a particularly like really good intuition about where this is all going. And he's sort of demonstrated that over the last several years. Well, he's definitely perfectly placed for that sort of confidence of, um, I like that on that

one point, we have something in common with him, which is we do not want to give financial advice to our friends and family. Yes. I think that's the only thing we have in common. probably. All right. Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Allaway. And I'm Jill Weisandthal. You can follow me on Twitter at the stalwart. Follow our guests on Twitter, Spencer Dinwiddie. He's at S. Dinwiddie underscore 25. As well as Solo Sisei, he's at Solo Cise. And follow our producer on Twitter, Laura Carlson. He's at Laura M. Carlson.

Followed the Bloomberg head of podcast, Francesca Levy, at Francesca Today. And check out all of our podcasts at Bloomberg, onto the handle at podcasts. Thanks for listening.