The Pomp Podcast - #534: MetaKovan on the Metaverse

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

MetaKovan is a Singapore-based blockchain entrepreneur, coder and angel investor. He holds one of the largest digital art and NFT collections in the world, including the winner of $69 million purchase of Beeple’s Everyday from Christie’s Auction House. In this conversation, we discuss virtual worlds, digital goods, identity, pseudonymity, contrarian investing, asymmetric markets, digital museums, and being the Donald Trump of the metaverse. ======================= Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide. Circle is also a principal developer of USD Coin (USDC), the fastest growing, fully reserved and regulated dollar stablecoin in the world. The free Circle Account and suite of platform API services bridge the gap between traditional payments and crypto for trading, DeFi, and NFT marketplaces. Create seamless, user-friendly, mainstream customer experiences with crypto-native infrastructure under the hood with Circle. Learn more at circle.com ======================= OKEx is a leading crypto exchange known for providing the most options for crypto traders and investors. Whether you want to trade spot, futures, options or swaps, OKEx gives you institutional-grade tools and a best-in-class trading engine. The platform offers credit and debit card funding options and supports 40 different fiat currencies, including EUR, CAD, GBP, TRY, INR and RUB, to name just a few. You can invest, trade, and earn yield, all within one place at okex.com. OKEx is not available to customers in the United States.  ======================= Exodus is an absolute game changer in the crypto wallet space, and we’ve teamed up to offer an exclusive discount for you, as listeners of the podcast. Sign up for Exodus today using my promo code Exodus.com/pomp. This is a no brainer for both newcomers and crypto heavyweights - go sign up today.  =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Medicoven is a Singapore-based blockchain entrepreneur, coder, and angel investor. He holds one of the largest digital art and NFT collections in the world, including being the winner of the $69 million purchase of Beeple's Every Day from Christie's Auction House. In this conversation, we discuss virtual worlds, digital goods, identity, pseudonymity, contrarian investing, asymmetric markets, digital museums, and being the Donald Trump of the metaverse. I really, really enjoyed this conversation with Medicoven, and I hope you do as well. Before

we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Circle. If you don't know about them, pay attention. Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments, commerce, and financial applications worldwide. Circle is also a principal developer of USDC Coin, USDC, which is the fastest growing, regulated, fully reserved dollar stablecoin in the world, now standing at more than $11 billion market cap, and it's adding nearly $300 million net new digital dollars in circulation every week. Short answer is, It's growing incredibly fast.

The free Circle account and suite of platform API services bridges the gap between traditional payments and crypto for trading, DeFi, and NFT marketplaces. You can learn more at Circle.com. Jeremy and the rest of the team over there have been doing a fantastic job. Not only have they built the fastest growing stablecoin, but also they've built all sorts of great partnerships with places like Visa and many, many others. Go check them out at Circle.com. I'm a fan and I think you will be too. Circle.com. Next up is OKEx. OKEx is one of those companies that understands crypto moves fast and many crypto focused companies can't keep up. Crypto exchanges that cut through the noise are the ones that give you access wherever you are in the world to the

cutting edge projects emerging in this new asset class. If you're looking for an industry leader that gives you access to a huge variety of crypto assets, tools and services, I recommend OKEx. whether that's access to a wide variety of new crypto asset listings that follow industry trends nfts defis etc or access to sophisticated trading instruments like bitcoin futures or other crypto derivatives you need to go to okx which is a one-stop shop again even though okx is primarily a crypto to crypto platform meaning you trade one cryptocurrency for another i like that they offer an easy entry point for the many people who are new to this asset class on okx you can easily use a credit or debit card to buy top cryptocurrencies with almost 40 different fiat currencies.

And that's just to name a few of them. So go open an account at OKEx.com slash Pomp. Again, OKEx.com slash Pomp. OKEx.com slash Pomp. Next up is Exodus. Exodus is leading the world out of the traditional financial system. Yep, you guessed it. They're building a beautiful and user-friendly blockchain product. With its focus on design and user experience, Exodus has become one of the most popular and loved cryptocurrency apps. They're supported on both desktop and mobile, allowing you to sync your wallet across multiple devices so you can have access to your funds anywhere. You can instantly exchange around 100 different cryptocurrencies straight from your wallet. Interactive charts let you view an asset's price history and your

portfolio's performance over time. And maybe the best part, Exodus is integrated with the treasure hardware wallet, making advanced security easy for everyone. Visit exodus.com for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or the Play Store. Again, exodus.com for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or the Play Store. They have built simply the most beautiful crypto wallet. Go check them out, exodus.com or search Exodus on the App Store. All right, let's get in this episode with MetaKoven. I hope you enjoy this one. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions

of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got a very, very special treat for you today. I've got medic coven here thank you so much for doing this thanks a lot thanks a lot all right let's jump right into it you purchased people's piece from christy's auction for 69 million dollars what the hell are you doing what why why are you buying this piece for 69 million dollars i think i paid uh 250k more than the other guy so i guess the market put a price on it so it's not

it's not really in my hands uh and and you know christie's was a very historical uh um like significant moment in nft heart history so i've been uh in the space where i've been focused on you know collecting entities that are changing the medium changing the um way nft is looked at right and and with christie's what i thought was it could really change the medium and open it up to the consciousness of the whole world right and that that gives us a lot of uh um you know like room to play with nft so i should say it's been a logical next step for me uh where we bought this nft because we've done this for a while now and and we went just went with that flow right and we are here now got it and so when you think about nfts or non-fungible tokens uh what do you see

like why are you so intrigued by these and why are you spending so much time understanding them buying them collecting them and using them very very very nice question um if i could um you know give a very different answer i would say um nft captures the uh aura of the moment so it's very interesting historically uh it's been that physical piece which we just been capturing this aura right like it has such an aura the physical piece of art uh you you you'll you'll book a flight ticket you know like from another country to go visit mona lisa and that physical like all this aura of someone you know that someone touched it like you know that the painter was near it you know like so many people have been close to it and all those auras what

goes into you know why and and painting is valuable right but we talk about physical art being there you can touch it touch it right like but but the first thing they say when you enter the museum is don't touch anything right so we've already been enjoying art where we only think about the aura on the on it right like we don't actually touch and feel the texture or anything that's all a lie right even the owner might not do it right so in that way i think digitally we've had this space for a while that that aura has never been captured because every copy was equal so if you take an m3 file you copy it and it's the same file there's no way you know to prove that this was the first copy right and so when blockchain comes in it totally changes the game

because now we have time, right? And human beings are very good at stories. So, but blockchain is now recording all these stories and an NFT is just that beautiful way to capture anything that you feel is significant. And you just make it an NFT and it stays there. And you know who made it for you, you know when you got it, right?

And you know it's there and that is able to capture the auto. And so when you think about kind of the first NFT that you came across, the first one you purchased, tell us that story, right? What was the first one? The first ones were land on Decentraland, right? I did not get into the thought of, you know, art and aura until I first started collecting collectibles, game collectibles. So that's a separate story we can go into. But the first ones were just land on Decentraland, right?

and and like back then my my thesis was very simple i was thinking oh yeah like i i used to watch this uh uh documentary about capitalism which which talks about amsterdam london and new york and how they became cities right all these three cities i love them right i love them i like if you if you visit these three cities you will you will enjoy the same historic way how this capitalism has made this whole society different, right? These three cities captured them. And that documentary is on time, I think. It's called Three Cities That Shaped the History of the World.

Now, after watching that, I've always been thinking, what is the next city? Because we are new money. And I have to find a place to invest in real estate, man. So I've always thought about, you know, physical space and what are the problems there, including cronyism, unfairness, not open borders, et cetera. And I thought maybe, just maybe, one of these virtual worlds actually becomes a city. And at least thereby, you know, historically, I've not had the opportunity to buy real estate in all these cities.

But maybe I would become important, right, and be able to drive the city. So that's how I thought about Decentraland. Got it. And so when you think about that digital land, is the idea that there's basically going to be virtual worlds or this metaverse, and therefore you've got a lot of the same dynamics that you have in the analog world, right? Whoever owns the land ends up being able to monetize it well. Or is there some other thesis, right? Like how much of this is dependent on the proliferation and adoption of virtual worlds? uh definitely to a large extent uh there is this um there is need in this world also we are not talking about a product that has no it's not solving any problem we are solving a very interesting problem with the metaverse that you can remove identities you can you can remove the total judgment that will come with someone and instead of being on say a social media platform being in the metaverse just means that you are able to display your character through various

ways it could be art and that's all we vibe with like when you when you meet people in person all you're looking for is who's this guy right and that's very hard on the internet so the metaverse is a very interesting place because you know it's like it's like a game right to an extent where you can make a friend in a game but not on twitter it's very hard right so so that's that's what we are talking about in metaverse where i think the next social media might not look like facebook might not look like twitter i feel like it will look more like uh the central lamp and the other other way of thinking about it is simple where i think about it as a distribution medium a new way to distribute uh multimedia content so right now netflix i would i would pay so much to you know

own the banner in the netflix uh app think about it right i don't know how much value probably that's the value of the company because they took all the attention of the world and and they could bring it inside and they choose what you're going to watch right right so that's even though there are millions of websites people talk about it all the time oh yeah you can have million uh land pieces yes yes it's all yeah exactly it's all in our head but we do not go to millions of websites we go to netflix and we click on a banner and that's how we chip right so what i really like like about the metaverse is that you as a developer, I mean, like, like the real estate developer, you are able to pick up these lands, which are not very valuable, but by, by building

a Burj Khalifa, a building, a Marina Bay Sands, you're able to, you know, totally bring people's attention. And if you own land around it, it's a nice way to make money. Yeah. What's so fascinating to me is, uh, you're kind of mixing two things, right? You're mixing, uh, the values of scarcity of ownership of, uh, kind of attention, uh, with things that are completely digital, right? So I'd love the example of, uh, kind of the banner ad, um, in, uh, in Netflix. Another one that I've heard, uh, from a friend is, uh, kind of the top search result in Amazon. It's really hard to unseat whoever that top search result is. Uh, and so obviously they get most of the traffic for, purchases of a specific item or search term. Talk to me a little bit about when you think

about this whole new world, is it something that you're 100% focused on? Or do you hedge? Do you say, hey, I've spent a lot of time in virtual worlds with digital goods and NFTs and essential aid, but I also spend a lot of time investing outside of this world. Just walk me through kind of how you think about investing today in the virtual world compared to the analog world. So I, right now, I'm very focused on the virtual world, right? I feel like we have, it's like, yes, it's also investments in a lot of ways. But I also have this feeling that, you know, I want to be part of the building of this, right? You know, like making of this whole, like people say, I remember when, like I had the chance of meeting Ben Horowitz once.

and he told me like i was building some other company uh bitcoin too but uh he he told me you know like there are two kinds of people in the world one who ride the wave and who one who make the wave right so from then on i've always been thinking you know i should be part of something where i can make the wave right and possibly impact a lot of people in the world so i have this skin in the game to make sure the metaverse is is really an interesting place a visually interesting place and something that speaks to the next generation and i think that's a way for us to not just think about you know like something some economic game here but it's a very cultural game it's a very social socio-economic game so i think it's important for the metaverse

to exist because it opens up all the borders right um and it it totally allows you to be free of judgment at least you know where you have to grow and and that's really awesome over the metaverse. So I think more than the analog world right now, my focus is on the virtual world, but I feel like there'll be connection to the physical world and all mine have been happening through the virtual world. So when you speaking earlier, you started to talk about identity and this whole idea of basically taking yourself and immersing yourself in the virtual world, right? I think a lot of people think of, oh, it's an NFT, but I'm sitting in the analog world. I'm viewing it through my computer screen or my phone. And so there's a disconnect between that analog

and virtual world. What you're really talking about, though, is this fully immersive experience where you essentially put a character into the virtual world, you're able to go and experience things, you're able to go visit certain buildings or pieces of land, you're able to go to things like digital museums, walk us through, you know, in your vision, what does that look like 10 years from now right it's hard to see today because there's so many pieces being built and it's not quite put together yet but like what's the ultimate vision when it comes to that immersive virtual world um like the simple answer is you know uh we want artists to build up right the simple answer why am i why am i saying that is because yes i you know i'm uh i'm a capitalist and i'm i'm

probably I'm a 10% economist, right? Like I've not formally been educated, but I have no idea about the human condition. Now, metaverse is a huge risk. If you think about it, how it's going to evolve and really capture a lot of people's attention. And there could be other, you know, like issues which we just, you know, create

because we have no idea, right? So I think artists really are going to be part of the building of what's going to happen. so i think it will be focused on the human condition right so that's that's one thing i immediately feel about the second thing is the power of the the metaverse becomes powerful with a game layer in it right so something something you know you start with nothing and you are like metaverse gives you something first initially and with that you you are able to build some wealth but also connections friendships you know you're able to build the human moments inside the

metaverse and i think that's that that will totally change the world because a 14 year old then their favorite place to go then like it it will almost be a defiant move right for the next generation to just you know want to visit this metaverse because it will be it is just a graffiti wall right and it will speak to them more than it speaks to us and and that's why i think it will be able to attack and engage all these new new audience which is very important from the crypto movement also but this whole thing will not be only for the um you know people who already bought land or you know already it'll be that'll be a beautiful game layer is what i feel i i think even decentraland would there'll be people it's an open world right so you are able to build these

games which we have not seen yet but it'll be cool to you know collect stuff you know make your own swords kind of a thing or you know there could be many layers to that so i think that's where we're going for sure and you mentioned the graffiti wall so talk a little bit like uh more about that okay so it's uh graffitis are very important to a society right so i almost say who owned the wall decides what kind of society you live in so i don't know about america i think the walls are owned you know like by like by no one right like and when i say owned i mean who has control over them right so maybe you can do some gravities maybe it's frowned upon not illegal or or you know like they're okay but if you go to berlin the walls belong to the artist right and when you are

when you are going on the train and just look outside you you get a sociological lesson right every trip you go, you are being made aware through those graffiti. It's very important. But if you take India, the walls are owned by the politicians. So you travel anywhere in India, you will see graffiti, but

it's all the names of the politicians. That's what goes into people's mind, right? So it's very important to understand politically and socially, who owns the wall? And metaverse is just a new area. And those Walls are open up for grabs right now, but it's going to be so populated by a diverse crowd of artists, I hope.

Yeah, I love that metaphor. Like, I really do think that there's a lot of truth to whoever owns the walls owns the society. So that's a very prescient way to look at it. When you start to think about this digital world, what are your interests? Do you want to build really large buildings? Do you want to build digital museums? do you want to become the largest art collector in the virtual world just talk to me a little bit about your personal aspirations and kind of what you're focused on sure I've been you know like

because it's an experiment and and I've been mostly like it's all my own experience so I've been funding them so it's been a fun ride so far because I get to experiment right sometimes I think maybe should I become Donald Trump, right? The equivalent of Donald Trump being a virtual estate developer. I'm like, okay, that's a nice job description, right? And things like that, where you know there are so many new job descriptions, right?

You can be a builder, you can be an architect, you could be a producer, which I tried out. So in case of B20, which we did, it was a production in its own. we had 27 people working on it bringing together artists etc right so it's a very different experience i had with b20 and going forward i don't want to repeat them right but maybe three four different extremes completely different and then you know maybe a model will you know kind of evolve and and and and surface so maybe i can take that and run with it so right now

i'm just open the next will be a different experiment i wanted to i love it so talk to me about your art collection right how many pieces do you think you own um and what are some of the pieces that are in there that people will know sure um it's very it's a little hard to say how many pieces because you know it's uh actively being collected by not just me but but a team now and so we we are you know like we are we are focusing on right now we are focusing more towards causes right and like for example uh there was a drop about black lives matter moment right and we thought it would be interesting to collect that nft the proceeds went to you know supporting that movement so we really like that so there are so many nfts like that which are you

know cost based uh which are done by beautiful artists so that's great too other than that just before christie's up to christie's tubador from you know metaphors he's he was the eye right like he used to pick the best artist so we had this uh had this thing where he used to go out uh with other artists into the metaverse to buy art right so it was the best way to buy art man so you can you can just you know take someone it's your taste their taste you talk about it it's just such a beautiful experience everyone should try it and so we've collected significant numbers it should be in the thousands right but i don't have an exact number but it's all very uh one of our team really wanted it and that's why we have it it's it's like that so some of the best pieces

or one of the best piece in my art collection which i'm very proud of is is the first supper uh it's it was the first ever programmable art by from async art async art is is a company i just love i've fallen in love with companies that are founded by artists right so it's it's my new thing so i will it's like you know like we always look for founder traits i now look for an artist so it's it's cool that way and async art is one of them and then they released the launch the first That's when I understood. I really understood it was a significant moment. It had 13 artists. It was a 22-layer piece. It didn't have a lot of competition back then. I could buy it for $20,000, I guess. I'm talking about March last year. I feel lucky about that.

That's the piece I love. RAOUL PAL, How much money are you spending every week on digital art, you think? um like metaverse as a whole we are spending around 250 000 so about quarter of a million dollars per week and the idea is that you'll buy this stuff and you'll hold it forever you'll you know buy some you'll sell some uh you're trying to kind of figure out what has value what doesn't have value what's the strategy so we've not sold any nft until now like whatever nft i've collected i've never sold an nft except i dropped one which like i dropped an nf2 through nifty gateway that's one that was more of a meme right uh but we've never sold one from our collection right and uh

why uh because i feel like all these i don't know if they're going to hold value or lose value that's very different at least that we have the satisfaction it it went into different courses right so that's there you know and maybe it's a good way of charity i don't know but going forward maybe in a year or so what's going to happen is we are going to look back and understand what is happening right now i have no time to reflect i'm sure the whole industry has the same problem right now right and that's why i kind of like winters because no one looks at what we are doing and we could get the time right to think about what we are actually doing I feel like it'll be the next winter when I will be able to make a story of all of them together and see, oh yeah, this is what is emerging. I want it to emerge, so I'm not really making a value for it or anything, but I would love it to be valued because I really don't want to sell them, but people should know it's a nice painting, right?

Absolutely. You mentioned MetaPurse. Talk to us about what exactly is MetaPurse and how is it structured and what are you guys doing there? So MetaPurse right now, it's not a fund. It's just been funded by me personally. So I took some of the money like I had from crypto, right?

And I was collecting NFTs and then I wanted to go to also, you know, to collect them. So I thought, okay, I asked to go to, do you want to call this name and do it right and he said the meta post the post for the metaverse right so i was like okay that's cool let's do it so i started funding it and uh he started collecting stuff so it's a that's that's the duo here and then we've been doing the same thing so now i'm going to in in this year i'm going to structure it more uh not a fun but i know i want of structures at a startup, like a company, because this also could be an interesting

idea where from the B20 experience, I feel like when we take art and kind of tokenize it, it's too much volatility, right? Because people don't know what they're holding. It's really hard. And that's one of the lessons from the experiments I'm doing, right? But if it's an equity company, it might be a better way to hold these NFTs because I could give exposure to other people, but it's not too much pressure on me to make sure the value is going up or something. So it's nice, I feel like, to structure this as more of an equity company. So that's where we are going with Metaverse.

Got it. And so when you think about funding it initially, you said that you funded it with money that you made from the crypto world. Describe kind of what you did before MetaPurse. How did you get a bunch of crypto and then why choose to fund MetaPurse? So even to answer that question, I have two lives. So before even MetaPurse, you all get that now. So I'm a founder. I've founded multiple companies.

So I founded, the first one was CoinSea, which was, you know, a very average exchange, which I then sold. This was in 2000, end of 2013. So that's how I got started. It wasn't all coin exchange, you know, like back in the day. So it was really hard to run it and scale it. I had, like, I was so bad at it. And then I sold it. Who bought it?

It's a person called Saif and a couple of people, Diago. And it's a company called Casa Cacto. it was it was not like you know like a huge acquisition i didn't make a lot of money from it you know but i could not run it properly so i thought it's better you know a team runs it i was just one person and i grew from one user to 14 000 users within two months and i had like just like i was the same guys doing support and and you know like a bunch of stuff so i and i actually pitched it to a number of people where like do you want to be like part of this and do the people were very worried because i just moved to canada right and people are like no no no let's not do

this there's a lot of you know like regulations you should understand and stuff i had no idea back then right and then the good part was i i met a lot of interesting people in bitcoin and started bit access which which you know was a very nice company it's still a nice company we made bitcoin atms i wrote software for it um we actually came up with the name btm so through the screen of our machine because we didn't have space to write Bitcoin ATM, right? So it was just BTO.

That's how it came. And yeah, like over time, that was a Y Combinator company also. So I had that experience too. And over time, I've been very cognizant of, you know, the industry in the sense that

what really drove me to crypto was freedom. When I said freedom, freedom of access, what I mean by freedom of access is i a person who came from india got to invest in ethereum ethereum is a high growth startup right and i don't get that out like i don't get that access even if i'm one it's very hard it's really hard to be in the cap table especially because there's so much money in the world and and the company is the ones who are choosing it right like on who gets to be in the cap table

so equity investing was not not going to be a thing for me right so i thought okay crypto is very interesting so with ethereum the lessons learned were awesome because you know i could i started understanding initially i was like why is why why am i making so much money and then i looked at uber i looked at rockefeller everyone was an entrepreneur you know made money like this you know being part of a high growth startup and i'm just doing that right so i went from there and i i understand like i always try to understand this industry politically and and from a religious angle so that's that's my mental model i don't think about tech i only look at it from how politically it's behaving and how as a religion it's behaving right so these two

models gave rise to other investment ideas. So Polkadot was one of my favorite projects because it's like the Switzerland of crypto, right? Like the way it's arranged, that's the easiest way I can say. So I thought Polkadot was very interesting. So I participated with my Ethereum in that ICO, right? You know, it's like a poker table, you know, like bigger but next round we get bigger checks so so that's my life and uh i i have very little physical footprint right i don't own my home i don't own a car so what happens is my burn rate personally is very low so yeah like most of my investments i feel like whatever even if this like no industry totally crashes i'll be better better than where i started so this is fascinating um mainly because

uh it's almost like you're incredibly wealthy in the virtual world but you don't necessarily have the material possessions that someone would assign uh value to in the analog world right and not because you can't afford them it's just that you've chosen to uh store and hold uh and acquire most of your wealth in that virtual world to talk a little bit about uh kind of the difference between the lack of physical possessions, but also this enormous wealth in the virtual or digital world? For me, it's quite obvious that I'm doing this, right?

And why I'm saying it's obvious is not because I, it's definitely one of the parts that I think this is one of the best ways to accumulate money, you know, like compound interest, right? Like the same formula. So if you're able to compound money here. So tokens, the best part of tokens is liquidity, right? Compared to equity.

I've run multiple startups. I've made no money from my startups, ever. It's very hard. And the only way to go about it, maybe exit, right? Like exit is just entering the market. So you don't know what's going to happen. So it's like tokens have this optionality of liquidity. And that gives me a huge power.

because you know like i can i what what you would do in 10 years you could do in three years probably right and and choosing a physical location to live where that's okay was very important to me but coming to your question of you know the the difference or how i look about but like how i look at digital and and the physical world is that this is where the perspectives of of how we look at the world is very different i feel like because i've stayed in america for a while right you know months and you know i i've met americans who who are so passionate right and they they can be you can be politically you know people are politically aware and they understand property rights and they will fight for it right but the rest of the world is not like that like

america has property rights i don't know about all the states but i think texas right like especially right so i i hear about it as a as a you know almost uh uh it's very inspiring to to learn that human beings can defend against the government which is very hard in the rest of the world so then you go to say india or when you go to singapore the physical is not the same you own something because it's permissioned right ownership is very temporary it's also philosophical to say that but you know they make it real right because the governments are permitting you to own something right and and there are different ways to um get back that property from you um you know maybe they want to build a highway and and they don't like you they'll be built in your home so these so

these things are not common in the other parts of the world because in the other parts of the world um like especially the worlds which which are you know developed i feel like the good part is the law but the other parts of the world it's very important to understand that a mind an individual is always a minority right so it's it's very hard to become you know like straight rich into the into the world without you know being able to have layers of connections why because i need to defend And, you know, think about it. It's like making money is itself a war, and we have to defend. From whom?

Government? So that's the context here. Yeah, it's very fascinating, too, when you think about kind of the lack of government participation, not necessarily regulation, but just their participation in a lot of these kind of nuanced ways in the digital world today, right? A lot of what they still do and where they still focus is maybe there's electronic, right? And I use the definition or the nomenclature of electronic and digital as two different things. Electronic more as the centralized world that's tied to the analog world, but a truly digital

world is exactly what we've been talking about, kind of this metaverse, digital museums, digital art, et cetera. And what I think is very fascinating is the governments around the world have yet to understand kind of the rise of the digital worlds and understand kind of just how popular they are, how much value and economic activity is occurring inside of these worlds. But I do think that's going to change. And so when it does change, or if it does change, what do you think happens? Do you think governments try to go and implement some of the same rules in this digital world? Or do you think that they just will be, you know, kind of incapacitated from

kind of implementing their will in those worlds? two two differences there one of them is uh we are looking at these virtual worlds pretty much similar to uh like we we hope that they are decentralized so it's censorship resistant right so yeah like decent land could be run on a few servers now but they have they are finding ways to you know scale that a node infrastructure where you know it no one is responsible for a central server so that it cannot just be shut down so i think that's very important you know as a as a as a position we should get to so that we can we can defend free speech but i think that's very possible right that's very possible and the other answer which is more

interesting is what we have done here as a crypto industry as the world approaches singularity what we are doing here is as an industry we are changing the playing field all the time so what's happening is regulations come

but we are playing a different game and you know they have to figure that out now but maybe we will be playing a different game then

right so this technology and this free market of ideas has continuously thinking been thinking about

regulations for a while now so I have a feeling that we would we would be able to fight that battle if it's a global,

you know, a global network. If it's caught within a country, man, like it's, that's done. But if it's a global network, right,

and some countries really try to censor it, you know, on a TCP level or something, it's still fine because there'll be ways for, it'll be the ultimate, that's what,

I feel like it'll be the ultimate defiant move for a youngster, you know, to come to the metaverse, right? It's cool. If it's hard to get there,

maybe that's the experience. So I'm perfectly all tied with that. I tend to think that you are more right than wrong, my friend. Earlier in the conversation, we talked about identity. And for a long time, you had a pseudonym. And you still use that pseudonym today, which is Medicoven. Talk to me about where that name came from and why use a pseudonym rather than your real name in the beginning. So pseudonyms were an obvious thing in the, it's an obvious thing in gaming world too, right?

And in my verse, it was quite obvious. Everyone I knew were just pseudonyms. And it was too weird to, you know, have a real world name. It's almost frowned upon. So it would be so uncool to be named Vignesh. And, you know, like some avatar walking around. So, like, pseudonyms were obvious, but I had to take some time to figure that out. So actually, I asked my mom to help me out.

So I explained to her about the metaverse and everything. And she came up with the name. She said, okay, like Koh in Tamil, which is my mother tongue, it means king. So she came up with the name. It means the king of meta, right? That's amazing. And so when you start using that name, obviously, now that I have the context of what it means, that's pretty cool, right? And you continue to build all this wealth up in the metaverse.

Why eventually reveal your real identity? Two reasons. One is I felt like we were not at that. Like this was such a small experiment for me. And it was not Satoshi level identity, you know, like privacy moves, right? So I used to speak to people when I used to work with them, myself and through video and stuff. So I felt like, you know, the avatars were nice just for an introduction to people. You know, before they know me, they know me as an avatar.

It's nice because they totally, it rejects all the judgments that might go with it, right? And it only shows my work in front of people. And I really like that. But after I made these connections, I was perfectly okay for people to know me. So when this happened, I didn't want the naming and, you know, like being named someone and the transaction being on Ethereum and stuff. You know, there was a lot of confusion whether this was even a real transaction, right? So I felt like there was some, the conversation was moving away from talking with the piece. And once that started happening, I thought, okay, maybe I didn't have the confidence to just, you know, think my story is interesting, right?

But then I had a lot of people in the industry who helped me out and said, maybe this is a very good time to connect the dots, right? So I went back and thought, like, I've never reflected on how I came here and this happened. And I feel like, okay, now I have all this money, thanks to crypto, right? I don't want to take too much credit here, right? Because crypto allowed me to do it. And I'm happy to kind of give back, right? But my story mentions a person from India, right? Just getting started and started in crypto with zero

and being able to do this. I felt like I might talk to a lot of people and resonate with them, inspire them to be part of the crypto movement. And also India, which is at a point thinking about, you know, only Bitcoin as a bad thing and trying to, you know, maybe want nothing to do with it. I feel like stories like this will inspire a lot of people, you know, to also take this path. And maybe that will become a good point of conversation with the government, right?

Absolutely. Before we end with the rapid fire questions, I want to go back to the Beeple auction. Obviously, everyone knew that the Christie's auction was going to happen. uh and it was open for a number of days did you know uh that you wanted the piece and you were willing to kind of spend whatever on it did you have a price in mind that that was kind of your highest number uh walk me through just your strategy going into the auction so the strategy was to buy it right so i was i spoke to uh noah from christie's before like maybe 10 days before the auction even started and i told them what what are you thinking what what do you think it's going to go for and he

said my maybe eight million and i told you should know that people in crypto are crazy right so don't don't make a because they have this uh system where they have to set a limit for you right on the maximum you can go so i told them man you should you should not set my top bed you should you should not do that so i'm ready to show like what what's required to have a competitive topic so give me the same top bed with what what you're giving anyone and that was that was what i spoke to them so so that it's it's it's about my decision right and not the system that's limiting me so i was very clear about that and i did you know have a decent limit uh like even above this but i'm not ready to disclose uh that number now because it's a story that's

done why won't you tell us what the uh what the limit was okay that's the price down so i don't i don't yeah i don't i don't want to discuss that at all all right uh so as we get to the closing minutes and seconds of the auction, my understanding is basically everyone's just throwing bids in rapidly. And you picked $69 million. Did you feel like that was going to win it? Did you just randomly pick it? Kind of walk me through what happens in like the last 60 seconds of the auction. So I think being in the crypto world, participating in the high traffic ICOs and then the high traffic NFT drafts really tripped me up for this right so I don't know what the other people who are who are doing this like maybe they were not well prepped

so I was very technically good in this one so when I when I saw the bidding going on I didn't touch the bidding until the last 80 seconds because every last 60 seconds it will always increase or it will reset the timer to close right so when it was just 80 seconds the bid was still very low it was around 25 million or something right and then i put my bid and it comes back and says no you're being owned but there is some other person who has you know informed of christie's of that they have a higher bid but it'll only come out when there's another bid that's you know a little higher than them right it's it was a it was a hidden hybrid from the other person so i i'm trying one and then it came you're out but i tried a couple i tried three and i was like oh

we are at around 50 million and i had exactly 18 seconds to guess some number where i could win and i thought maybe maybe you know like putting something like 70 you know would get me through and then when I did it it said yeah you are the you are the winning bid and I was so you know like nervous that the other person was going to out with me right but you know he was like I would say maybe he was not prepared for this last minute combat so that that's what you know made me win the auction I don't know I don't know I might have lost this auction so it was so you put in 70 and basically 69 was the winning bid actually it was uh not 69 it was 60.250 uh and it with christy's fees it comes to 69 got it so the christy christy's made a lot of money

definitely man definitely you have to talk about that all right what do you want to talk about no it's just i think it's just platforms and i think they're going to evolve their model too but i think it's a lot of money definitely because provenance is gone what what is their job here it's just cloud so it's okay because i was like okay the first time they're doing it so it's nice and and it's nice that you know they make money because they gave this uh they've given this attention to the nft world right but i felt like it was quite steep because usually it's provenance they have to verify a traditional piece of here it's an nft their job is gone the world is changing and uh i actually think i agree with you that many of them will change

they will evolve but uh yeah it's a very very different world than uh than the one that they started out in right yeah yeah definitely yeah all right uh before we get rapid fire what uh what's your favorite memory over the last couple of years in uh in bitcoin crypto nfts etc if you had to pick out one memory what would it be can i go further than two years sure back oh yeah shanghai 2016 for the at the at the conference ethereum just hit 14 and we were you know like people celebrating yeah right so that was the moment i love it fourteen dollars looks uh looks very very cheap right now we're all celebrating so much so much amazing um all right i got three questions that you'll ask me one first question what's the most important book that you've ever

read i think wings of fire for me personally uh it's by abdul kalam and it's it's it's uh with a person who was a fisherman and became the president of the nation in here. So he's a, he's an inspiration. Wings of fire is his biography. Autobiography. That's amazing. What did you learn from the book? Like what'd you take away? Like you have to work really hard and be righteous. And then, you know, there's a way for the world to figure you out.

I love that lesson. Second question. It comes from our friends over at Eight Sleep. They've got this thermoregulated bed that I sleep on. I turn it super cold and it helps me sleep. I used to only sleep like five, six hours. Now I'm more like seven, eight hours. What's your sleep schedule and how has that changed over the years? I try to follow schedules very tightly.

I can never miss breakfast. So I always sleep quite early. I feel so bad if I skip breakfast. That's my one thing about life. So it kind of centers me around it. I sleep around like 11 p.m. and wake up around maybe six. That's not bad.

You know, maybe a couple extra hours might help, but that's not too, too bad. Not too bad, yeah. Last question is aliens. Are you a believer or a non-believer? Probabilistically, yes. But not the way we visualize them. Explain.

probabilistically right like it's very like there are like this is the galaxy right like the universe there is so much randomness so i think the world is all about serendipity right sweet accidents and that's how the world came so there is definitely a possibility of another sweet accident somewhere which which led to life and maybe it does not look or feel or or anything like we have visualized or or created stuff in our head but you know it's just too the universe is too large to think that we will be the only life right so i think it's it's definitely a probabilistic bet to say yes to that i uh i tend to uh tend to agree with you i don't know if there's little green men running around but uh but there's something out there uh you could ask me one question to wrap us up what

you got for me um who's your favorite uh nft artist right now my favorite nft artist i'm gonna cheat because i've been helping them uh but it's for cody uh cody's been um i think just really understands uh one obviously the artistic kind of quality that goes into a bunch of the work but more importantly just understands the importance of access and kind of democratizing some of that access. And so, uh, they do some pretty interesting things. Like they'll do these drops for, uh, you know, 0.01 ETH, uh, and nothing gets sold for more than 0.01 ETH. Uh, they'll do these things where with drops, they'll give away pieces to people, uh, just because, um, due to the scarcity, there's so many people miss out. And so I think that it's like really interesting

to start playing with, um, almost this, uh, this element of, uh, you create amazing art that everyone wants but you still kind of take care of that fan base you take care of the people who who helped make you right um and so i think that's like a really fascinating way to to kind of view the world so ricotta would definitely be the answer really nice wow i'm gonna take him out where uh where can we send you uh people to uh to find you uh to find meta purse uh or any of stuff that you guys are working on so um tubador who's the who's the steward of of metapers he's the best person to talk to right so you can uh connect through either going on twitter metapers is a thing and there's also we also run this newsletter called metaperser.substack.com

like we just push updates on on what we are collecting etc so we tend to you know like look at trends and talk about that also so it might be a good resource awesome tubidor is uh is doing a great job i think you guys are are in good shape so uh this is uh this is fun for me uh congratulations on all the success i think that people uh you really woke people up to uh to a whole new world and i tend to think that history will be very kind to those who are excited about and helping to push kind of the the adoption of these virtual worlds so keep at it and we'll have to do it again in the future thank you thank you that's a very kind word thank you