On The Brink with Castle Island - Garrett Weaver (Juke) on Digital Collectibles (EP.371)

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

Garrett Weaver, the co-founder and CEO of Juke joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Garrett's career as an entertainment industry executive and the path that led him to starting Juke. How Hollywood intellectual property works and how blockchains can open up revenue opportunities for studios. The use cases for NFT technology and the innovation on the horizon in the industry. To learn more about Juke visit www.juke.io Read about Juke's launch   

On today's podcast, I sat down with Garrett Weaver, the co-founder and CEO of Juk, a Castle Island portfolio company. Duke is a company that's building at the intersection of digital collectibles in Hollywood content, primarily focusing on movie and TV intellectual property. I think you'll enjoy this episode. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Garrett Weaver of Juk. Matt Walsh and Nick Carter are partners at Castle Island Ventures. All of these expressed by them or the guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Castle Island Ventures. Guests and host may maintain positions in the assets discussed in this podcast.

You should not treat any opinion expressed by anyone on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of their personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Brought down by bad mortgage investments, Lehman, which has 25,000 employees, will be liquidated. The federal government loans American International Group, AIG, $85 billion. This is a different kind of market, and the Fed is asleep. The federal government is stepping it to stabilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. the two mortgage giants that have been threatened by the housing crisis.

The Bank of England has pumped 75 billion pounds more into Britain's ailing economy with a new round of quantitative easing. You print a couple trillion dollars and all of a sudden people start to worry. So out of this worry, we have something called the Bitcoin. Garrett, well, thanks so much for joining us today on the podcast. Thanks, man. I'm happy to be here. Appreciate it. Excited to talk more about Duke. It's an interesting time to be doing a podcast as this FTX thing is unraveling.

It's got to be a weird feeling to be an entrepreneur in the blockchain. face. Yes. I mean, we kind of joke that, you know, we were trying to avoid doing our announcement during election week, but it turned out to be for a completely different, but just as legitimate reason in the new cycle. I mean, it's wild. It's one of the crazier stories. I think we've all seen, especially unfolding live in front of us. So from an entertainment perspective, the first thing everyone says it's going to make a great movie, right? That's like the thing we heard. Well, that's your world, right? So yeah, yeah. Well, don't we start off with a little bit of maybe just background on yourself, tell us how you got in the industry, and then maybe tee up. What is Juke?

Yeah, no, thanks, man. So my background is very much in the traditional sort of film and television space. I worked at a company called Entertainment 1 or E1 for a little over six years in space called like acquisitions, right? So our job was to essentially identify and acquire film content was specifically distribution rights to films to kind of put through our distribution pipelines globally. Did that for a while. And then I actually moved over to university. So I worked at the studio for a few years, doing a similar thing. I would say the difference there is that we were kind of tasked with acquiring what they would consider small films, so anything under 10 million,

which most people know there's a big space between zero and 10 million. But at studios, they typically focus on larger films. So it felt a little bit like a startup inside of a machine, right? So we were really trying to be scrappy and acquire third-party content to either produce or distribute for the studio globally. And then kind of like most people, I think COVID was a bit of a inflection point, at least for me personally. You know, you're working in a studio, you're driving to the big lot. You have meetings every day, 8 a.m. throughout the night, you're going to film festivals.

You're trying to put things together to kind of introduce to the world. And for me, I think the amount of work that went into that and then to get a call that you have tons of movies that are getting shut down or productions are kind of halting or movies that you're releasing. you have to push and your dates are kind of indefinite, right? I think for me it was kind of like, okay, well, if there's not going to be any activity in the space for quite some time, and once that became clear, that was kind of the time I think we really started to think about a bit more of kind of with just like an entrepreneurial lens, right?

Like, what are the things out there that we could start building that we were really excited about and might be able to shape kind of the future of the business? Because I think, you know, I will say one thing about the film in TV space. I've been out in this industry for maybe 10, 11 years now, is even when I got out here, you heard from generations before, like, oh, you should have been here 10 years ago. Or, you know, you should have seen what it was like, you know, when the heyday. And that's sort of steady decline of either companies,

you start to see a lot of layoffs happening or a lot of companies kind of like scaling down even when I got out into the industry. And then also revenues, right? Revenues were always coming down. It was the idea of that physical, merchandise was going away, right? So the idea of all that money that you'd make in kind of the physical space was going away. And then even with like digital distribution, like whether it was iTunes or any type of kind of digital sort of revenue streams, they weren't what everyone had

hoped. So I think once kind of COVID hit and then obviously, you know, the emergence of sort of the NFT explosion of 2021, I think we're always looking for new ways to monetize. So I think that sort of convergence point was a big one for us, also kind of seeing kind of the patterns for a number of years. So yeah, I mean, there's definitely a longer version of that story, but that was kind of the context and the setup before we started. That's great. So you and your partner, Ben, had this great kind of insight, I'd say, into new delivery mechanisms for some of this content, some of this intellectual property and movies and TV shows. So maybe talk a little bit about what that insight was and then what you're doing with Duke in order to deliver it to customers. Yeah. So,

as you mentioned, you know, Ben, my partner, Ben, who comes from the agency world. So we actually knew each other because when I was on the buying side, he was on the selling side and packaging side. You know, we had done some deals together. And we definitely speak the same language because we come from that sort of same subject in the industry. It was actually spring of 2021. So at that time, I think still very much coming out of that sort of COVID world where

I think everyone was kind of aping into a lot of things, NFTs, but also physical cards. there was still a lot of interest in sort of like, or I think there was kind of a resurgence of like even physical cartelsing that point. So when we were introduced to Topshot, that was actually kind of our entry point into NFTs. So we weren't, you know, some folks who have been collecting for a number of years and got them through different ways.

Topshot was that first project where we were like, a bit of that Eureka moment, right? Where as fans, we were super excited. It was a really unique and interesting new way in. I think what they did was, pretty brilliant. They kind of took like the physical card collecting space and they kind of brought it to the digital way, right? There was a clear analogy there. And for us, I think immediately just kind of the insight we had was, you know, the idea of digital ownership was pretty profound one.

And I think it's one that had never existed for film and TV fans. So just kind of understanding like how studios think, how independent content owners think, we immediately kind of thought, well, if we could figure out a way to gamify film and TV collecting in a similar way, this could be a really, really interesting pathway into building, which essentially in our minds would be like a Web 3 community of film and TV fans. So we set out that summer we actually put together a kind of an early prototype of Juke and, you know, kind of a rough outline of what we went to do. And that was when we kind of actually met with Dapper Labs from the July 2021.

And our vision is really aligned, I think, right away. You know, our thesis on kind of how you would create a game of five products for film and TV, their thesis on what they were doing in the sports spirit, but also just across the flow ecosystem. So, you know, for us, I think the best way to think about you, we always say is movies and TV shows on the blockchain, right?

So we very much wanted to kind of create a platform where film and TV fans could collect, you know, collect across all different types of film and TV IP. I think one of the things that stood out for us was one of the analogies we used early on was, you know, imagine if you went to the Laker

store and bought NFTs, then you to go to the Clipper store and bought an Feece. So TopShat was great because it was inclusive, right? You could really participate in a product that as a fan, you know, you can collect across every team. So, you know, we kind of set out to build something that was cohesive, right? Which, you know, there's a lot of challenges there. Obviously, you know, there's not one entity you can kind of contract with.

But, you know, our general vision was to kind of create the most cohesive platform we can for film and TV fans in order to kind of encourage, you know, that type of community building. The range of things that you could theoretically do here from a infrastructure perspective is kind of vast, right? I mean, you could imagine a world where movie studios are issuing NFTs that get you access to events or you get to go backstage at a premiere. You could also imagine a world where at some point you actually own a fractional interest in the movie itself, or maybe you own a clip to the movie and in the future people are paying royalties to you. So how do you think about just the surface area for stuff that you can build using these digital

records and what do the studios actually want to do? Yeah, it's a great question. I think early on there was a bit of that gold rush wild west mentality where like everything could and should be turned into an entity. So I think for us, like we've always thought about how do you build bridges to get to that world right where there's a lot of sort of not only Web3 adoption to make it possible, but really, like, I think we firmly believe that if these things don't connect, right, you're never going to really hit a world where it actually is impacting things like, you know, fractural ownership or, you know, people talk about financing those NFTs. So I think for us, like we always started with what is the IP that people care about, right?

Like, that's usually a great way in. Like, typically, if you focus on things that people already have a connection with and kind of creating premium collectibles out of that, because this space kind of works forwards and backwards. So in order to get to that point where like new IP is introduced, I think you do have to still create a value proposition for people based on IP they already know. For us also, like there was just kind of the on the point of like original content. You know, I think some people did focus on all right, how do we use NFTs to finance movies? And I think one of the pitfalls we've seen, we've seen this time and time again in the entertainment spaces, if you try to introduce like new content, I don't think it's particularly important how

that's funded if the content's not premium, right? And there's still like a huge issue on accessing like premium talent to create premium content. So our thesis on that was if you build a community first, right, especially like around IP that people love and that community is strong and that sort of microeconomy is healthy, introducing like more things to that community makes a lot of sense. We've kind of seen it in the history of, you know, people use the example of like an A24 or a neon great independent companies who kind of grew now to have. have like really strong brands and really loyal following. But they actually did that by kind of curating third party content to distribute, right? Like they went out and they said, hey,

like we have an eye to find great content out there. We're going to kind of bring that in and find ways to distribute that. And now next to you know, they have this great following and they have this great model and great marketing. So they're creating their own content. But they didn't start that way. So I think for us, the eye was, you know, how do we curate the best movies, best TV shows from our partnership network, introduce that to the Web of 3 community, create premium collectibles or out of that, premium collectible experiences out of that, but also kind of push the boundary on what it means because utility is such a buzzword in the space. So for us, I think like, we would say like every project is different, right? So some projects are going to lead with,

you know, utility that might be more to your point that have access around it, like new releases, franchises, things that are, you know, happening kind of right in front of you. you that are live. And then some things might be more like utility around the kind of collectibles that you access, right? Like more scarcity. You know, we talk a lot about and it's a topic that we're pretty bullish on. I hate the word, but the sort of digital space, you know, the physical connection to digital assets. Like we think limited edition physical merchandise that's token gated or at least, you know, you need to sort of validate your access to is really interesting. You know, I think about that a lot when a lot of entertainment IP you do see kind of

collabs and crossovers to the fashion industry and the idea that you could be walking around with like your favorite movie as a t-shirt that only you and a hundred other people had access to even purchase or print is a cool. That's a cool thing. And it kind of gets down. I mean, I know we're kind of going down, you know, the different kind of aspects of the space, but like that always kind of comes back to a question we get a lot and something we think a lot about it's like, how do you express your digital?

identity as a fan or a collector. And that's something that's very, very important as well, right? If you cannot express your fandom or your ownership of these things to other people, I think you're always going to be limited. But it's funny because like every time you get down this conversation, you think about, well, how do you get from point A to point C? And that's why I think it always kind of goes back to when we say like premium collectibles. Like the collectibles do need to matter.

You know, I think the product does need to matter. Like you have to spend a lot of time and thought and creating something at someone, I think, wants to purchase first, like, period. And then you can kind of build, you know, those bridges off of it. I guess from a studio perspective, there's always been this untapped market opportunity around fan engagement and people meeting and before the internet having in-person meetups to talk about films and eventually message boards and then social networks. And so it strikes me that potentially public blockchains become this nexus point where

the ability to actually tie someone's digital identity to a fan club becomes really interesting. I'd be curious your view on what the nexus point is. Is it people collaborating around a movie or a TV show they really like or is it around an artist? How do you envision the fan experience working? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, sometimes when people think about, okay, for the first time ever we can verify who the super fans are of something or the people who like certain things, sometimes people can view that as, well, I don't necessarily know, like, why would you want to know who I am? Or like, you know, what are you going to do with that information? And I think just because we've been in this business for a while, not only just, by the way, from kind of the corporate side or the executive side of it, but also as fans.

And like we all grew up, most of our team were all film lovers. And a lot of us grew up with kind of these collecting mindsets, right? Whether it was baseball cards or fantasy sports or video games. Like, you kind of grow up with this idea that your decisions should add up to something. And I'm a big believer that gamification is a part of all the things we do in life. Like, I think about credit card companies and how we work. Like, that's fully gamified, right? You choose who to spend your money with based on the perks you get.

And they've convinced us smartly that if I go to a certain restaurant, I get three points. And it kind of builds, right? The thing that's fascinated me for years is why the entertainment industry didn't have a better value proposition for its fans. So one of the things that we think a lot about is, you know, for your continued consumption, your continued loyalty, like, what are you getting back? And I think the idea that we live in a world where just consumption alone, it's just not enough. So when I think about that, you know, nexus point, it's if I'm buying certain things, right, like verifiably an owner of certain things like collectibles, I think that's step one, right?

You can look and see, I can look at Matt's wallet and see, all right, you're a huge fan. of these types of films or you own certain things that express that. But I think you have to push it further and say, like, well, what have you watched this year, right? Did you go to the theater and watch that film as well? And then I can see, wow, you did that as well. So now you're kind of stacking loyalty, your stacking points. And the idea, and I think the utopian version of this that we're really seeking to build out is all of your behaviors as a film or TV fan are connected in a way where you're now unlocking

a better way to now re-engage, right? It's almost like you're trying to create a flywheel out of this, but in a way that actually benefits the end user, right? Where it's like, wow, imagine a world where if I binge watch that show this weekend, it's actually going towards increasing my ability to be a better collector. Or it's going towards increasing my ability to be a better film and CD fan. And access is always an important part of this because people talk a lot about that, right? it's like, does that give you an opportunity to get somewhere that you wouldn't normally get to?

And I think that does factor in, you know, like, you're starting to see that stuff in sort of the Web3 space where it's tickets to a movie premiere, right? Where it's like two people who would never normally have a chance to go to, you know, movie premiere get to go or, you know, film festival access. But I just think it really ties together. And it's not, I don't say this to be too broad or vague. I really do believe fundamentally that every single decision that you make as a fan. of a specific, such a specific thing, right? Like movies, TV shows, I really think that all those behaviors need to be connected, or I think the industry will always kind of lack behind in a very specific and objective way. How does this all work from an intellectual property standpoint?

I mean, you guys have really been at the forefront, I would say, in this industry of mapping out that market structure and who owns what? How does the artist figure into this? So, yeah, curious how you guys approach just, you know, who owns the asset and how do you get access? to it. Yeah. So for us, our sort of collectibles or our NFTs, which we call frames. So for us, frames work for the most part, depending on the asset class that's embedded inside of them, like most digital collectible, couples that you've seen. You know, if it's something like a licensed movie poster, for example, right? So you have the license as a collector or user to display that. You own it and you can display it, but you couldn't go and take that art and, you know,

sell that on your own or reliccense that. When it comes to other things like specific assets from films and TV shows themselves, whether it's screen grabs or clips and stuff, it's a similar thing for the user. For the user, they can display it and access it, but they don't have any ownership over the IP. And on that point, I don't know when you're going to see a world where at least major studios

or like a plus sort of franchise IP or high-loven. level IP like that are going to be receptive to things like fan creation or iteration. I mean, one of the things I think is really fascinating there is like there is a history of fan fiction, like acknowledged and not acknowledged in things like Star Wars. So there is a world out there and I get it. It's pretty exciting. But I think right now when you think about the licensing of these things, like you still have kind of a ways to go before you're starting to iterate on that.

But one of the ways I actually think we figured out that we're really excited about a cool connection to artists in the space is, you know, for our first series of collectibles that we're doing in December in our close beta, so we're working with Ace Ventura, Morgan Creek Productions, who are the owners of the Ace Ventura franchise. So on that one, we're actually doing a series of what we call dynamic posters. So they're basically reimagined movie posters as digital collectibles, but they have movement and they animate. So there's some life to it. Because for us, like, we looked at the history of movie posters and movie poster design, which is very much a rich history in the film space, because that's the closest thing you're ever going to get to like an official trading card for a movie, right? Like the movie poster and how much work goes into approving like what that image is that you see that you associate with. So when we started to look at like what happens.

happens when that becomes digital. It actually opens it up creatively for like how that could look. And one of the things that we thought about was very important was why not work with some of the folks who are the most prolific or most well known in creating these anyway. So we actually partnered with Akiko Serenberger, who's, you know, one of the most prolific film poster designers and illustrators in the space. And she had never done anything in the Web 3 space. So she's actually created a completely original sort of dynamic version of an Ace Ventura poster. And that's really cool, it's because we allow artists now to kind of put their stamp on this,

which has always been the way it's been done, except for they've just always been, like, hired to do it, but they're not necessarily, like, front and center, right? Like, when you go see a movie, it doesn't say, like, you know, hey, like, Dune out this Friday, poster designed by, you know, that's not really how that works. But we do think this space is one, because you're speaking directly to a collector or a fan or a consumer,

that they want to know who created that and why it's special and how they did it and who they are. So it was a way for us to actually start to think about, okay, like, if you're starting to iterate on the life cycle of these IPs, so to speak, you can do it in a way where like you're giving artists of voice and how that's created, right? Because now they're iterating on that as well. And they're also obviously like their name is now kind of front and center, synonymous with the film. So just one way, I think you're able to kind of set the foundation for more. And then the last point on that, just because I do think the community factors into this in an important way.

Like, we always say that community can't be a one-way street, right? You creating products and then selling them to people who buy them isn't a community. But if you sell them to people who also have input in the types of things that you might be able to create going forward, like that's a community. So one of the ways we kind of see this evolving is the community then could turn around and say, hey, love that. Like love Akeko, love Ace, that was awesome. What would you imagine this looking like if you did this for this film? And then we can start to really see, okay, cool, there's some artists out there who might be clamoring to do work in this space or that space.

And there might be a community out there who's really interested in seeing how that would work. That's where I think to your point earlier about like how fans can start to like really interact with the. IP, that is one, like, legitimately verifiable way that can happen in the short term. That can hopefully give kind of way to more, more of the kind of higher, crazier ideas that I think people have talked about that we'd love to see. I wonder if you get to the point where capital allocation decisions are informed by some of what these studios start to see their fans doing. I mean, when you're doing a movie, I guess, pre-blockchain, and, you know, you're just

seeing how many people show up in the theaters and what the box office looks like. But theoretically here, you'd have a lot of information about sub-segments of users and how they're engaging with certain collectibles. And maybe at some point in the future that informs, okay, we have 10 options here for new movies to put out next year. Maybe we pick this one because we know it's unbelievably popular in this genre of fan and they're just all over it. Yeah, you know, it's such a good point. And one of the things we really hope to see out of the space is just in a broader sense, like more informed decisions. making about the appetite for either new content, but also like kind of library content that you can see kind of reemerge. There's a lot of things that kind of come to mind. I mean,

like I think there's a, you think about movies like cult movies, right? Like, remember that movie like the room, the Tommy Wies out film that it became a cult classic, right? People were, they were programming the movie. People would go see it kind of in a rocky horror way. I think that was one of the first examples where people were constantly showing up in-person dressing up to watch a movie that they could go watch at home at any point. But it wasn't about that, right? It's about being part of this community of people who go do this thing together and experience it together.

And I say the room because that movie gave way to a spiritual successor in like a disaster artist where it was like a movie, a new movie about the making of this cult classic. And I only use those examples because I actually think those are like really great examples and movies that in the next five, 10, 20 years, like could be really good examples of things that in a Web 3 sort of mindset, those are very, very identifiable communities, right? So, like, would those communities want to have some ownership over the life cycle of something like that? Like, it's something that's singular, right?

It's sort of, you know, you could manage to alter sort of the creation of that or the iteration of that using a community that was already kind of. of verifiable, but they couldn't really speak to each other outside of just showing up to the theater. But in terms of like the decision making, the financial makeup of a movie, kind of the way that independent films were made for a very long time, right, is you kind of have to back into a number based on what you think a movie can do in a lot of ways, right, from a financial point of view. And I think the marketing of movies, right, you still kind of have that idea of, like, we create, whether it's a trailer or key art or, you know, whatever it is that you can kind of

create to kind of tease out this the marketing of a film. But the P&A is still pretty archaic in the sense of like you'll spend, you know, maybe $10 million broadly, right, on the actual release to try to capture an audience. But the way they convert is they just show up and buy a ticket. So we've talked a lot about this where it's like, how can you start to use your marketing materials in a way that actually incentivizes people to show up, right? Like if they have ownership, quote unquote, in this film. And I think there are some ways to do that. I mean, I think the idea that, you know, if you interact with marketing materials,

you're incentivized, right? Like if you, to use a practical example, like if a movie was coming out next month and you minted a theatrical poster of that film, right? And 10,000 existed. But you saw that, wow, we actually had 50,000 people who wanted to buy it. To your point, Matt, like maybe that's, making you, you're making more informed decisions out already because you're like, movie hasn't even come out yet and there's demand for the merchandise.

Like, that's a world we haven't lived in before. And then I start to think, you know, well, if people owned that thing, which is, it used to be a marketing material, but now it's actually a collector's piece, right? It's a, it's one time, one time only. Well, how do you then use those 10,000 people to potentially sort of amplify the potential release of this film, right? Because those are your super fans already because they're already saying, hey, not only do I want

to see this thing, but I think this thing is going to be valuable enough that I'm going to want to own something representative of it. And I think you can already use your mind to figure out like all the different ways that that could be interesting and powerful. And look, there's a reason why I think every major studio or every company in Hollywood has either

explore the space, hire people to explore the space, invest in the space. And there's some obvious kind of reasons that's there. But I also think that just to kind of go back to something we're talking about earlier, is like if you don't create something that is sticky for the user, right? Like there needs to be a place that people want to go and hang out and collect and discuss. And that's the thing that we're really, really aiming for is like, how do you build something where people are going to want to continuously come back

or participate in that discussion? Because the one thing that I think we love about entertainment is people are united by that thing the same way in sports. Like, people are united by the love of the NBA. Like, here people are united by the love of movies and teeth. So, like, how do you kind of start there and kind of build off that? That makes sense. So you and your partner and number of people at the firm have come from kind of a

Hollywood executive background. You're not crypto, defy people to begin with, but you're building this company on a on a blockchain. How does this FTX news, which, you know, is the time that we're recording this, It's shaping up to be one of the largest frauds in the history of the financial services world, really. How does this impact what you're doing? And talk a little bit about just what it's like to build a startup when one of the larger exchanges in the world is a fraud. No, I mean, it's one of the crazier stories that you're ever going to see.

I mean, I would just say that when you see these stories kind of play out and, you know, I think for anybody in sort of entrepreneurial space, there's fear, there's a lot of uncertainty. it obviously makes the space. It's definitely kind of a dark cloud over the space. I would say when we started, especially as it relates to, you know, Hollywood or the entertainment industry, it was hard even just to explain to people a year ago, like what NFTs were, period. I mean, it sounds crazy. But like there was a time where you're, you know, getting on, you know, meetings and

Zooms and things and just explaining the fundamentals of what that thing is. And there was always kind of this conflation of NFT and crypto and defy and people, sometimes would conflate all of them into one. So I think right now we're kind of back in a place where there's a lot of conflation over like what's happening on a centralized exchange versus like what's happening in the crypto community broadly or what's happening in the NFE community. So it's definitely an odd time. But I think the reality is like there was a ton of talent that kind of flooded this space

over the last year, two years, right? And I don't think you're going to see the yield of that, as you know, for quite some time or it takes time to build stuff. And honestly, one of the things that we really, like, looked hard at over this period, especially, like, as the overall marketplace has kind of lowered from where it was. And you kind of have crazy times like this is you have to really focus on, like, who are the types of people that are interested or will be interested in your product? And how do you make this?

And like I said, build a community. like how do you build a community that even five people want to hang out it and really start to build and iterate off of providing a great experience for five people and that can kind of grow to 10 to 50 to 100 and that really doesn't change regardless of what's happening kind of in the broader world around you because you can't control that and I think for us especially being a company that focuses on film and TV like I remember during COVID like one of the things that one of the few things you could do, right, in those times, it was like, watch a movie, watch a great TV show. And people are always going to clamor for and celebrate great movies and great TV.

So this isn't going to go away. Like ways for people to interact or engage with film and TV in deeper ways, like, that's something that we care enough about to pursue regardless of the next giant cataclysmic scam or fraud in the space. And it's also something that's not new to the entertainment industry, obviously. a lot of like really high level controversies that have been said to kind of bring the industry to their knees multiple times and people find a way to prevail. And to be honest, just to make the analogy, like the film and TV industry is one of those industries like fashion, like music. And

honestly like blockchain now and crypto now is it really survives on the back of really passionate people who will work in that space and at that thing because they love it. And And that's how it survives always. And that's something that I think crypto and the NFT community definitely has is it doesn't take long to go on Twitter and find thousands and thousands of really passionate people, which is important, right? Whether they're passionate, whether they're angry, whether they're happy, like, that's very important.

People care a lot about the space. And I think that's going to carry through. Yeah, I think people's passion, it's such a good point. I mean, you're seeing people just over this past weekend spend their entire weekend, just chain sleuth thing and trying to figure out, you know, where the money went. Yeah, it's funny to hear you talk about the entertainment industry. I guess Joe Lowe, the famous con artist, financed a bunch of films and has been on the run for a long time. So maybe Sam will go find somewhere to hide with him.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Look, would it surprise me if Sam emerged as a film financier one day? I've seen crazier things happen. I've seen crazier things happen. Well, Garrett, where can we send people to learn more about Duke? So we're releasing this on the day that you guys are kind of going public to the world here. So where can we send people? Yeah. So anybody can go to www.juk.io, jukes.io. They can enter their email to kind of stay in touch with us and also request access to our closed beta.

As I mentioned, we're going to start doing some closed beta drops with the Ace Ventura collectibles in December. So if people want to get on the allow list for that, just hop over to juke. I.O. Enter their email and our team will be in touch. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us to podcast. Matt. Really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to another episode of On the Brink with Castle Island. To find out more about Castle Island, visit castle island.Vc. To listen to all of our podcast episodes, please go to On thebrink dashpodcast.com or just click on the tab in our website. Thanks for listening.