The Wolf Of All Streets - Should You Buy NFTs? Duncan & Griffin Cock Foster, Nifty Gateway

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

Despite only experiencing its first major hype cycle this year, the concept of NFTs has been around for many years, with NFT projects first starting to appear in 2017. Major NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway founders, Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster have turned an idea into an NFT platform that is ready to onboard 1 billion users. Their early insight into the NFT sector matured them into two extremely successful visionary entrepreneurs, eventually leading to Gemini and the Winklevoss twins acquiring the Nifty platform. If you own an NFT, want to purchase an NFT, or are interested in learning more, this jam-packed episode is an extremely important stop on your digital collectible journey.   In this episode the Nifty Gateway Co-Founders explore: - The 10x Improvement Theory - Being acquired by the Winklevoss twins - 1 billion people buying NFTs - The allure of collecting - NFT hype in 2017 - Physical art vs digital art - “Fiat is violence, taxation is theft” - Digital art advisory firms - Secure provenance systems - Crypto Kitties' boom and bust - Why NFTs are on Ethereum --- Cosmos:  Visit https://thewolfofallstreets.link/cosmos to learn about the Cosmos Hub and how the $ATOM can connect every blockchain. Cosmos is the port city connecting chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum to ensure your liquidity on any chain can be used anywhere.  Find new staking opportunities, applications, or build your own parachain at https://thewolfofallstreets.link/cosmos  --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co ーーー Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members

This episode is brought to you by Cosmos. Stay tuned for more information on them later in this episode. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast, where twice a week I talk to your favorite personalities in the world of Bitcoin, finance, art, music, sports, politics, or anyone with a good story to tell. Today I have the rare pleasure of speaking with two guests instead of one. Duncan and Griffin, if you can't tell, are identical twins, each with a burning passion for NFTs and entrepreneurship. The Cockfoster twins started Nifty Gateway to bring

digital art in the form of MFTs to the masses. It's my goal to understand why these two co-founders have made it their mission to have 1 billion people collecting their NIFTs, where they think the NFT market stands now and their thoughts on the crypto space as a whole. Duncan and Griffin Cockposter, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for having us, Scott. Happy to be here. So you two are identical twins. Your company was acquired by twins, the Winklevii. You're also both high school rowers. Is there a grand conspiracy here for twins who row to take over the world that I am unaware of? There is actually, yeah. There's secret twin meetups every year where twins get together and make plans for the future. And we actually probably shouldn't be talking about those, but yes, it is a grand conspiracy.

That makes sense. I can have that part edited out so you don't get in trouble if you'd like. Yeah, though, if they find out that i revealed the conspiracy they might be upset but so you guys actually were rowers is that is that true we actually were rowers and we started rowing after we saw the social network some of our friends were like hey you guys kind of look like those twins in the movie and then one of them one of our friends went up for rowing and he he was like do you guys want to start rowing with me i mean just like the twins in the movie. And we're like, sure, why not? And then we actually kind of got into it.

It was fun, but we didn't do it in college. It was just a brief surgeon in high school. Makes sense. So how did you actually connect with them? Obviously, your company was purchased by Gemini. So it seems like a strange twist of fate. Yeah, so we went through the Boost Accelerator with Adam Draper, which was awesome. It was really a great experience for us in Nifty Gateway.

And after the Accelerator was over, we were trying to figure out what the best next step were. And the way the conversation started is that we were looking to try and solve our problems with banking partners. Probably a very common issue for crypto startups because banks just hate. If you're talking to a bank and you say the word crypto, it's like they just kick you out the door. No questions asked. So we were trying to figure out the best way to navigate that situation. And Adam Draper said, Gemini is the gold standard here. Why don't you have a conversation with the Winklevoss twins.

And basically that turned into them learning more about the business model, about Nifty Gateway, about NFTs. And then they said they wanted to acquire us. So very serendipitous. And all thanks to Adam Draper, really. I had Tim Draper actually just on the podcast. What an incredible conversation. That's awesome. Yeah, Tim is a actually just on the podcast. What an incredible conversation. That's awesome. Yeah. Tim is a legend. He's great. He, he like reviews all the boost VC startups and talked to us about nifty gateway early on too. We also pitched Adam's grandfather. He's a 91

year old venture capitalist. Yeah. He gave us some pretty sound advice. He was very sharp for a 91 year old. I was impressed. Did he get it? Did he get it? Because obviously, you know, we see the Warren Buffetts and Charlie Mungers of the world and sort of that entire generation, I think, not only dismissive, but combative about, you know, Bitcoin and crypto in general, and probably technology and cell phones, for all I know. But, you know, they seem very out of touch. He got it. Yeah. Yeah. We, we explained to him what the business did. And he was like, that makes a ton of sense. I think you guys are going to be huge, which yeah, I was surprised as well, but I guess very open-minded person, very open-minded to new ideas.

So that was cool to see. You may just tell everyone that too. I mean, yeah. It's not investing. So I might as well tell you that you're brilliant. So I'm interested in hearing this story because obviously NFTs have taken the world by storm. I mean, it had to be the fastest from never heard of to Saturday Night Live sketch asset or class in history. But you guys obviously to have developed Nifty Gateway had to be far ahead of the curve, right? And to go all in on your own business on something like that, that at the time, very few people have heard of means you had a lot of conviction. So

what was it initially about NFTs? What was it that was lacking in the space that made you guys commit to this from the beginning? Well, for us, so basically we saw the CryptoKitties boom in 2017. And it's easy to kind of forget now, but CryptoKitties exploded and then came back down to earth. It was just a huge boom and bust cycle. And most people looked at that and they said, well, of course it came back down to earth. That was just Beanie Babies 2.0. It's a fad. But Duncan and I looked at it and we were like it's actually very surprising that they got so popular in the first place to us that like to us that was what was worth paying attention to and it was kind of the idea of here's this very surprising behavior that when you look

at the actual numbers people were very very involved in right we always try to watch what people do not what they say so just based on that it was kind of like it was kind of our thinking was where there's smoke there's fire if crypto kitt based on that, it was kind of like, it was kind of, our thinking was where there's smoke, there's fire. If CryptoKitties got that popular, it probably means people actually do care about NFTs. And then even in 2018, after the CryptoKitties bubble burst, you could look at people's behavior. And there was a group of people, a very small group of people, but a group of people who were just super passionate about buying NFTs. And that's what we saw with early NFT gateway customers. And we still see it today. I mean, our average customer spend is something along the lines of

three or $4,000 a month per customer. The people who buy NFTs just buy them like crazy and it's very addicting. So yeah, we were just watching consumer behavior and working backwards from that. And to us, that made it look like this is a big opportunity. Yeah. I'll just add that if you know it feels like the world moves faster than ever nowadays and there's a million new ideas that you can you can think about and you can work on and in addition to that everybody has a has an idea about like what will work and what won't work and i think nfts it's just it was very hard for people to wrap their minds around it intellectually because you you an NFT and you told someone, you know, like, yeah,

people collect this work of digital art, but anyone can download the image file. You just have this like blockchain certificate of authenticity. And most people, when they hear that just immediately dismiss it out of hand. And I think that was a real barrier to like people understanding the nft concept because it was actually much more informative to look at what people were actually doing and as griffin said you know there was beyond the you know apparent ridiculousness of the concept there was a core group of people who were really into it and they would spend all day talking about new nfts on discord groups um you know they would figure out how to like improve and push the system forward and they would talk about their collections. And I think that was, in retrospect,

that was actually much more informative than, you know, my own opinion about like whether or not NFTs would work. What's interesting to me though, I love the cognitive dissonance of that argument and how often, because I'm pretty passionate about NFTs and most things in this space and we'll defend them sort of, that's a hill I will definitely die on. But like every single girl in my freshman college dorm had a picture of the starry night hanging on the wall, but that didn't diminish the value of the one that's hanging in the MoMA, right? And so like, why is it different that you can download a JPEG or take a picture of it

or you can posterize it or make, you know of copies of it what's right exactly and then and then as we got more into it as we learn more what we learned is that actually the the concept of an nft is it's kind of like pretty common in the art world as in there's a number of there's a number of very famous artworks that are easy to replicate physically, but that the certificate of authenticity is what gives them value. I mean, the Duchamp urinal is the best example. He just took a commercially produced urinal and he signed it. And it's an incredibly valuable artwork, despite the fact that it's easy to create a perfect physical reproduction. So yeah, this concept of NFTs is actually, like, I always like to point out that

we didn't invent it. It's a concept that exists in the fine art world and has actually for more than 100 years, or maybe even longer. But, you know, NFTs are just digitizing it and applying it to digital art. And so yeah, I always like to point that out as well. Right. I guess people don't realize at the high end that provenance is actually more important than the physical art itself. And that there's actually probably as large of a, call it a business, but of faking provenance. I mean, I've read books about people who, you know, they crumble up the paper and they try to find paper from the 1800s and they burn it slightly to make it look like an original certificate. So, I mean, this solves that even at the highest level.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's the same provenance system that's used to secure billions of dollars of crypto loans and of crypto assets being used to secure art. You know, it's the most secure provenance system for art in history, which is part of the reason I think it works so well. And part of the reason it grew so quickly.

Although to me, people, you me, people who just heard about it seem to think NFTs came out of nowhere, but Duncan and I have been working in NFTs for three years. A lot of people have been around for a while. It's kind of just that the rest of the world only recently caught up. Yeah. And I think more importantly, art is sort of the forward facing use case or collectibles. But I think the reason a lot of sort of the forward facing use case or collectibles. But I think the reason a lot of people are excited about NFTs probably when you started is actually the more boring use cases, your car title or mortgages or things like that, tokenizing stocks, right? I mean, all of those things, maybe, which is interesting that you guys, I guess, chose

the art route. Was that because you thought that that would be the thing that would take them the most mainstream yeah i mean that this was actually very common but all the almost all the conversations we had in 2018 it was like a lot of them were some version of like oh wow nfts to secure digital art i don't really understand that or collectibles but like what if we like what if we put a car title or like we use them to secure physical art and like that was the most common reaction um but but yeah i basically what what we thought was that that was actually much harder and like stuff like that was not going to happen until people had some sort of understanding of what an nft was because like it's very hard to explain two new concepts at once so it's very hard to explain two new concepts at once. So it's very hard to

explain like, oh, this is a digital blockchain token that also secures a car title. And it was, it was kind of easier to find one thing that actually could help NFTs like break through to the mainstream and focus on that. And frankly, at the time, like art and collectibles were just the use case that had the most traction. I mean, that was what the most people were doing. So like, yeah, again, it was kind of an instance of looking at what people were doing, as opposed to just like thinking about what we thought that made the most sense. And I think a lot of people fell into that trap where they're like, okay, I don't understand how NFTs for digital art makes any sense.

So I'm not going to pay attention to that. But then if you looked at what people were actually doing, that was the main activity. Like art and collectibles were what people were actually spending the most time and energy on in the NFT space. So yeah, I think it kind of comes back to that theme of it's much more, you're much better off paying attention to like what people are actually doing as opposed to like your opinions or your gut instinct about what you think makes sense and then also there are there are already certificates of authenticity for watches there are already deeds for houses those are things that exist but before nfts there was no way to secure and sell digital art as a collectible in a purely natively digital form i mean what we like so much about that use case was that it was something completely novel, whereas all those other use cases, there's

already solutions out there for them. So if you're thinking about from the 10X improvement framework, you know, a new business needs to be 10X better than whatever existed before. The other stuff, there's something that exists before and it works well enough, but for securing and selling digital art, there was absolutely no solution before. So it wasn't just 10x better it was like it was you know a thousand x better or infinitely better sort of uh if it ain't broke don't try to fix it sort of uh scenario but also it seems like those systems like i mean to to move all car titles to nfts requires breaking a system with so many like legacy parts in existence. I mean, that literally like, you know, government title companies and things like that have

to be eliminated. So I think that's a much probably loftier proposition. It is. Yeah. And then also, there's still no way to, you know, there's still no way to perfectly attach a blockchain token to a real world item. Any sort of barcode you have on a real world item that traces back to a blockchain item can still be faked. It still requires a centralized third party. What's so beautiful about selling just purely blockchain based digital items is that they have all those advantages.

So I'm curious, you guys have been privy to the entire NFT cycle, obviously. I mean, you've been the entire NFT cycle, I should say. So there's a lot of people who even months ago were screaming bubble, right? You see $69 million sales of NFTs. And much like, I guess, when you could just name an iced tea company in 2017, blockchain iced tea, and the price would go up a few hundred percent. Anything you called an NFT all of a sudden had value. So do you think that that's just a natural part of adoption of a new technology? And of course, there's going to be a bubble. And of course, the cream will rise to the top, and a lot of it will go to zero? Or do you think that we're still rising in that process?

Yeah, I do think it's a natural part of the evolution cycle. And frankly, I think a lot of people came into the NFT space and didn't really understand what they were buying or what was going on. And that really tended to create these sort of bubble-like dynamics. And then we also saw a lot of people who were buying NFTs, not with the intent of holding onto them for any meaningful period of time, but with the intent of reselling them within a few days or within a week, which is always like, I mean, that's a pretty telltale sign of a bubble to me. So yeah, I do think this, maybe not unavoidable, but it's certainly like, I think it was highly likely that this was going to happen at some point. Just, just based on the dynamics of like how technology develops

nowadays. And if you're selling something that has value, people are probably going to get overexcited about it at some point. And, you know, some sort of like bubble-ish thing is, is going to form. But I think, you know, underlying that is just sort of a steady growth in the people who want to collect NFTs for the right reasons and the people who really love the art and people who have a strong understanding of the space long-term. So there are sort of these boom and bust cycles, which, you know, is stressful and creates a ton of volatility for the space. But the underlying dynamics, there's sort of been like a healthy, steady improvement and healthy, steady growth. Yeah, for whatever reason, I mean, I don't really know why, but crypto just seems to have these very

natural cycles, which happened in 2013, happened in 2017, and definitely happened with NFTs in 2020, where there's a mass speculative frenzy. And like Duncan said, a lot of market participants were short-term momentum buyers trying to buy NFTs so that they could then resell them a day or a week later, which obviously isn't sustainable. And for whatever reason, it just seems to happen very commonly in crypto. But underlying that, there's always more adoption. And that's what we've seen. I mean, if you look at NFTs from a year over year basis, even on our slowest week in 2021, our user base is still way, way up. And the number of people who've heard of NFTs and collect NFTs for the right reasons is way, way up. So long term, just like with Bitcoin and Ethereum, long term, the picture is very good, but there's massive volatility in the middle for whatever reason. where it's all rug pulls and things all dropped and then the cream rose to the top.

Potentially because in those other crypto markets you mentioned, we can look at metrics or charts or whatever strategy people use to see when it's in a bubble. But with NFTs, I don't think there's a way for your average person to say, hey, these are all dropping in value or rising in value. So even if it is popping, so to speak, I don't think your

average person who owns an NFT even knows, right? So it kind of is this unique situation where there's no way to sort of gauge the entire market, I think, as an average person. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, based on my Twitter mentions, it seems like a lot of people know. Yeah. I mean, I think it really depends. For some NFTs, for one-of-ones, for artists that don't have a lot of attention and are never traded, that is probably true. A lot of the NFTs we sell on Nifty Gateway are additions. And so those tend to be more liquid than a one-of-one, because if it's an addition of 20 or 50, then it trades more often than an addition of one. So you can see the market moving there. And then you can see stuff like how many people are listing an item for sale versus, you know, like placing an offer to buy one. So yeah, there's not like an order book and liquidity in the traditional sense of a market, but there are indicators that you can tell. And I honestly think that this is one issue with NFTs. And one thing that we're trying to work on, which is like

helping more and better information rise to the top and making it more accessible, making it easier for people to see the state of the market. Because right now you're right, it is pretty difficult. And I think frankly, you basically have to be spending all or most of your time in the NFT space to figure out what's going on in the market, which is, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm a huge fan of the platform. I'm a huge fan of Micah Johnson, who's sold a lot of things with you. So I've bought all his Aku NFTs that have been on your platform. And I've noticed that every time you or any platform does a release, there's like, obviously, because of the insane demand, there's, I won't say infrastructural issues, because it works

how it's supposed to. But people just freak out when they can't get them. I mean, in my experience, I'm identifying bridges on a captcha, and I'm trying to get through. And it's like this panicky thing, which I think actually adds to the allure. But I guess it lends to the question of where is the infrastructure right now in terms of where it would need to be for, as I mentioned in the intro, you guys want a billion people buying these things. Can that happen right now? Or are there massive improvements that need to be made to the

infrastructure first? I think there are a lot of improvements that need to be made to the infrastructure first? I think there are a lot of improvements that need to be made. But we've also made a huge number of improvements over the last few months. And the bull market of January, February, March was a great test case that really let us battle test a lot of this technology and let us make great progress. So for Nifty, I mean, we had the site crash during drops kind of for the first three and a half months. There was a long period where it kept crashing every time. And we finally dug in and figured out why that happened. And now we have the infrastructure in place to scale up and meet demand. And we could probably handle a drop with 100,000 users coming to the site or something crazy.

I mean, knock on wood. I do think there's other infrastructure that needs to be built to get to the billion person mark, especially around marketplaces and discoverability and exchangeability and access to information. Accessing the site during drops is tricky, but I think that's something we've gotten good at. But there's a lot of other infrastructure that's just waiting to be built for nfts um you know and there's there's things like art fellowships and things like museums for nfts there's all this infrastructure that exists in the art world that doesn't exist for nfts yet but feels inevitable and that serves to raise awareness of the nfts and tell the artist stories and micah johnson's stuff is amazing i mean what he's doing creating a show around Aku. I love how he's building the story of Aku. And that is kind of, I think, it's a very forward-looking NFT project and it's really impressive what he's doing. I think we'll see more of that. I mean, so much traditional art has such a good story behind it,

like Starry Night, like you said. Everybody grows up hearing about Starry Night and it's such a part of our culture. And I think the infrastructure for NFTs is them more firmly embedding themselves in our culture and the stories we tell ourselves. I would say holistically overall though, like, yeah, the NFT infrastructure is nowhere near ready. And that was honestly like a, I think that was a big contributor to the bubble dynamics in 2021 and i think frankly i think it probably is with crypto as well where when a big bull run happens the the exchanges are just not ready like the right yeah exactly i think i think with nfts what we really have to see develop is um you know like uh more awareness around the market structure and dynamics and like better,

better options to like display and like, you know, more of like a true collector culture. I think the lack of good display options is one of the biggest things missing in the NFT space right now. Yeah. And it's kind of, I mean, if someone's spending millions of dollars on an NFT, like they want a good way to show it off, you know, and then, yeah, the traditional art market, it's actually a very fascinating market to study. And I think it's really not mainstream and it's

very poorly understood, but it has all these interesting dynamics that are sort of like, I think, an integral part of the whole thing. Like the traditional art market, you know, it really, it does a good job, not only curating artists, but they do a lot of like collector curation where they're really wary of speculation and they're wary of flippers. They're wary of people coming in who just want to buy a piece and sell it a week later. And a lot of like galleries, you know, they'll screen you. And if you're not an experienced art collector, they just won't sell you art, which is kind of a crazy thing to do. I mean, you're a business, shouldn't you be making sales? But what they say is, you know, like,

this is better for the health of the market long term. And I think what we're seeing in NFTs is like, the market is immature right now. And a lot of the same dynamics that exist in the physical art world that help create value and help create sustainability long-term don't yet exist in the NFT world, but are going to get developed. And hopefully, you know, I think the physical art world is often criticized for being, you know, way too not inclusive at all. And, and like very like difficult to, to penetrate and get into. I think a lot of those criticisms are valid, valid. And I think the NFT space can, can do a better job of building something that's inclusive, but also like building up an infrastructure and, you know, making sure that the art is valued the way it should be.

It's the velvet rope mentality, right? I mean, there's nothing new there to what you're describing, Studio 54. I mean, go to any club in New York City, wait in line for two hours to get rejected. And then when you get inside, you realize there's only 30 people inside and then they just didn't let anyone in, right? And it is kind of the same thing, but that's what probably keeps that demand and interest. So I guess that lends the question, what is it about scarcity or the desire to have something that's being dangled in front of you that you can't have that makes people such passionate collectors in general, not just of NFTs, but what is it about having something that you can't have at this moment that is so enticing. Yeah. I've actually, I've actually thought about a lot about this and I think it's like, it just comes down to like an evolution, an evolutionary mechanism and

like a desire to be seen as like high status. I mean, you know, think about back in the day, like a high status person is the one with the coolest stuff that no one else can have. And I think it's like, it's really, that's where the core desire comes from to like own the most expensive stuff like the highest quality stuff, the stuff that no one else can have. So I think it is like, it's honestly a very fundamental human desire, like you see it all throughout human history with all sorts of different, you know, physical items, collectibles, et cetera. But yeah, I really do think it just comes down to that to be like the desire to be seen as like a, you know, a high status person, I guess. In my opinion, it's not so much about status. I think a lot of collecting occurs. I mean, if you think about someone who is a centimillionaire or a billionaire, someone who's very wealthy and kind of has all the money they could want and

their material needs are met. I mean, at that point, there's, they've kind of just run out of things to want a little bit and, but humans are not meant to just sit still and do nothing right from an evolutionary perspective, kind of, you, you have to keep hunting or else you die. So I kind of think our brains lead us to want something else. I think for a lot of especially with the art world a lot of high-end collectors they you know they need something that they can access that no one else has and and owning that piece of art I think is just really special and it's not even necessarily

about status it's about it's about like buying into a story and doing something. Once you have everything else you want in the world, all of a sudden, collecting starts to make a lot more sense because it is something fun and something that you really get a lot out of, even though it doesn't meet a direct human need. We're so used to thinking of products as being all about utility, but this is something that's very different, but it still works and it has for a while. Guys, this is so cool. For the first time in history, rather than a company or project sponsoring the podcast and newsletter, a grassroots community is doing it. The Cosmos community is extremely passionate and active. And because of that, cool things like this sponsorship can happen. Their Adam token has been absolutely on fire and solidified itself as a top 50 coin by MarketCap.

And the Cosmos platform has so much in store. Now, if you don't know about them, Cosmos is effectively the port city connecting chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum to ensure your liquidity on any chain can be used anywhere. One of the things I'm most excited about is their new DEX, which is coming out, which will connect to any blockchain. So you can swap ETH, ERC20, BSC or any other token with Atom plus this DEX will have order books just like any centralized exchange, so it'll feel familiar trading just like you do anywhere that you've traded before. This is a first. It's never existed until now.

You need to absolutely check them out at the Wolf of WallStreets.link slash Cosmos, C-O-S-M-O-S, and see everything they have going on. I grew up in like, I couldn't have Jordans when I was a kid. So I started buying them when I was an adult. And it's interesting, the same issues you've described about, you know, a quick drop exists in the sneaker world, the platforms fail, you try to get in line and you can't get a pair. So it's nothing new, right? I mean, I think it kind of adds to the allure. And I think that's interesting, your point about rich people who are so rich, but also we see this collector mentality with people who have almost nothing and will spend everything they have on that one NFT or that one pair of sneakers or something. So I do think it,

you know, ranges top to bottom. It's true. No, good point. I mean, it's kind of like it's the only way you can get. Collecting just provides a feeling that nothing else can. No, good point. I mean, it's kind of like it's the only way you can get. Collecting just provides a feeling that nothing else can. I don't know. I think it's tough for people to understand unless they've done it themselves. But it is a very common behavior. It's a natural human behavior, for whatever reason. I mean, it seems like the entire world, clearly, if you're in this space, money, everything else is moving digital, right? So this seems like a very natural part of the evolution of art. Do you think that we're going to see the legacy art system really adopt this and potentially even a move from physical art largely to digital art in the future? I'm not talking about next year, but I mean, you know, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, do you think that we'll see more digital art than physical art? I think probably we will. Yeah. Although artists tend to love to create in a lot of different

mediums. So the artists who've primarily created in physical art right now might not transition and switch over to creating purely digital art. You know, they have physical art they make that they really love. So if we do see that transition, it'll probably be new artists who are digitally native, who then come to represent a large share of the art world. I think physical art still will hold a place. It just might be smaller than it is now, or digital art might be bigger. I always like to look at it sort of from a accessibility and logistics standpoint where collecting an NFT is just like, it's just far easier. There's just so much less to think about than collecting physical art, frankly. I think

long-term that will drive a lot of people to NFTs. You know, a year ago, if you'd asked me about this, I would say the biggest open question is whether or not people accept NFTs as a legitimate fine art medium. And once that has happened, then yeah, I think adoption is inevitable because like I said, the driving mechanics are just so much better for NFTs. You know, to store and insure a physical art collection, you usually have to spend around 2% of the value just to store and insure it and a lot of small museums um they they can't afford to operate anymore because they have collections where they just can't afford the the carry costs it's like it's a huge reason why museums close um and then that's that's not even accounting for stuff like you know an nft it's so much it's so much easier to to to move an NFT. It's so much easier to move an NFT.

It's so much more liquid. The authenticity is perfect and impossible to fake. And then the actual creative medium itself, you can do really fascinating things that you can't do with physical art. So yeah, my perspective has always been once people accept NFTs as a legitimate medium, then yeah yeah it's

just going to be a slow march till they're larger than the physical art world because of all these things that just make them like fundamentally easier to use than than physical art i mean look look at uber got so much adoption just by being far easier to use than than a taxi and in a way this is like a much more transformative thing. So yeah, I think long term, the NFT market will be bigger than the physical art market. But yeah, I think that there's a lot of a ton of infrastructure and a lot of things that have to be put in place for that to happen. And, you know, I don't think it's going to happen overnight. And so I don't think you should go off and spend all your money on NFTs in anticipation

of that, you know? Yeah, I mean, I think Sotheby's coming in, Christie's and all of these coming into the space and seeing a Beeple sell for $69 million means that it's real and that it's credible at this point. I had no idea what you just said about museums. And that's so interesting that if your art collection appreciates and you're not selling it it's actually problematic which is not something i'd ever thought about because that two percent just increases maybe your uh your income stream

is not right exactly um and you know i mean think about like i have 260 nfts just think about storing 260 pieces or prints like yeah i mean i i can't even i i would not want to think about that but it's so much yeah nfts are just so much easier to deal with yes you guys have touched on a few times then the infrastructure that we're lacking so you buy your nft and now you want to show it off. Okay, so what excites you about what's coming, what's needed to really make this a fully inclusive, holistic experience for art like we have in the physical world?

I think an easily consumer accessible display solution is absolutely critical. So that means it's something I buy online. It's pretty easy for me to install in my house. And then I open it up and it has all my NFTs. I just click display. It takes care of the formatting and make sure that the image quality is high. It figures out how to fit the NFT onto the display screen. And then that, bam, that's it. Like something simple for me to execute on that that really does not exist right now there's a number of people trying but it's a difficult problem you

have to solve hardware issues because you have to if you're making the screens you have to figure out how to produce enough of them which is just hard for anyone and then you have to solve software issues you have to make sure that the nft are displaying correctly. And maybe it's a 500 megabyte video file, which is really hard to download and display. So there's all kinds of issues. I think that's step one. And then step two of the infrastructure is I think the physical art world is full of all these value add mechanisms where if you're an artist and the moment decides to do a show of your work, that's huge validation for you. And the NFT space has a few of those value affirmational

places, including Nifty Gateway, but it doesn't have nearly enough. So I think that's like another big part of the infrastructure that needs to develop. Yeah. There's also infrastructure around art fellowships, art critics. That's another big one. I mean, I think the NFT space is still really in its infancy in this regard. But what's remarkable about NFTs is how much of the imagination they've already captured of the online zeitgeist. And just the number of people who have a board ape or a crypto punk is their profile picture. That says so much right there around the cultural impact they're already having. So I think everything else is kind of downstream from that.

And the physical art world at one point, I think, occupied a much larger part of the zeitgeist. And it was kind of more impactful of culture. But now we have movies and novels and TV shows and all these other things that have kind of moved and also occupy a large place of our culture. But yeah, I mean, with NFTs, it's still very early, but there's a lot of positive signs in terms of the impact they're having. And in terms of how much people do connect with their NFTs and how willing

they are to put them as their digital avatars, which is where we spend so much of our lives these days anyway. So yeah. Do you think that that's where we're going to spend our entire lives? I mean, do you think that we's where we're going to spend our entire lives i mean do you think that we become ready player one and nfts like people are displaying their art in their house which is completely in a second world and i mean is that where we're headed i don't know i don't think so i don't think we go fully virtual full-on metaverse although i have been reading snow crash lately and it is pretty fun. I just think the advantages

of the digital and the advantages of the physical are both being borne out. I mean, on Twitter and online, you can connect with so many different people all around the world instantly. But at least for me, the last year of the pandemic and not being able to see my friends or anyone else in person just showed me how much people do depend on hanging out with other people in person socialization is kind of built into our biology so i think what's happening is the advantages of the physical are developing and people are realizing they need connection but the advantages of digital are also developing and getting better and people are doing all their meetings over zoom now and you know instead of a full-on metaverse you have people putting nfts as their profile pictures on twitter which is also very good yeah what i would say is uh it

doesn't look to me like demand for for physical stuff is is shrinking that much like demand for digital stuff is definitely growing but it doesn't look to me like that's leading to people wanting to go out less or even the Bitcoin Miami conference. I mean, that was like, I wasn't there, unfortunately. Oh, you were? It seemed like everybody had like the time of their lives, the way they're talking about it on Twitter. So I don't think demand for physical events is going down as a result of digital. I'm not seeing that happening.

Yeah, people were definitely dying to be in person and to interact. And that was gave it a little bit of a fire festival vibe because it was over oversubscribed and overbooked. But the energy was inescapable. It's interesting, though, at that conference, you know, there was an art gallery. And so it was effectively people hanging screens on the wall and displaying their NFTs. And it was cool. And there was definitely some that stood out. I mean, I'm a huge Trevor Jones fan. And actually, I have a physical painting that's going to be hanging that's in route from him that's going to be hanging behind me on my podcast. And to me, maybe just I'm a fan. But like when I walked past, you know, the Picasso bull, which was hanging

there, and you know, his pieces, it definitely struck me. But most of it, it was kind of like somebody put a picture on a screen, you know, and maybe that's the same if you walk through a museum. You're not stricken by 90 percent of the art you see even in the MoMA. But there's that one that resonates with you, I guess, as a collector but I did see it sort of as like we have a really really long way to go until I would you know spend millions to open a museum in New York City that's just NFTs and go walk around and look at screens yeah I do think that we have a long way to go um and there's a lot of like there's a lot of kinks that have to be worked out with with physical displays and then really what I think it is is like these artists are, they're not designed to go on displays right now. You know, like if, if you're trying to display a

physical artwork, like oftentimes the dimensions don't fit or, you know, it's like the, the color palette is, doesn't like align with the screen itself. So they're really, I think people underestimate the difficulty of the problem and, and like, yeah, how, how difficult it is to make like a, a digital screen. That's like truly a pleasure to, to enjoy it. And honestly, when I go to the, the MoMA or the Met, I do feel like most pieces there like do stand out, like, and that's the, that's the goal we have to get to there where like most pieces stand out. And I think we can, but there's definitely a lot of work to be done. Do you think that, I've never really thought about this, just kind of crossed my mind now, but it's funny, NFTs are so inextricably tied with Bitcoin and crypto, but it's almost like they're actually something completely different and shouldn't even be considered a part of the

crypto space in some regards, right? Of course, you're buying them with Ethereum or whatever. So that part, you can't untie. But shouldn't NFTs be viewed more like art than they are as a part of like the crypto boom? Yeah, definitely. I mean, well, if you look at this NFT behind me, I don't know, for people watching, you can see it says fiat is violence taxation is theft i mean this is an nft that really plays into crypto culture which this one there's a really popular one but um no you're totally right and kind of the same way people are talking about i i think it's such a shame that everybody views crypto so monolithically and they view ethereum the same as bitcoin when really they're completely different projects projects with completely different goals that should not be compared to each other.

Ben Felix I mean, it's the same way in the 90s, everybody talked about the dot-com companies and there was Amazon and pets.com and all these other dot-com companies. They were all lumped together in a group. But really the only similarity they had is that they were built off a similar technology, the internet. And the exact same is true of NFTs and other cryptos. I mean, blockchain technology powers Bitcoin, it powers Ethereum, it powers NFTs, but they're completely different things with completely different value props. You actually, you don't even need Ethereum to trade NFTs. I mean, you buy and sell NFTs on Nifty Gateway for fiat currency. And you can always, you can completely separate the payment

from the actual transfer of an NFT, right? Like I could just send you an NFT and then you could give me $100 in cash for it. Yeah, so wire you. Yeah, you can wire me, yeah. So you still need Ethereum to pay a gas fee to move anything around on the Ethereum blockchain, obviously, but I think even Ben Thompson

in an article when he was talking about NFTs thought Nifty Gateway ran where we had to pay cryptocurrency to facilitate the sale of NFTs, which is actually not the case. So, yeah, I think they are totally different. And we're just early days of crypto. So people view it monolithically. And when investors are talking about thinking about crypto, they're like, oh, which crypto should I buy? Like, should I buy Bitcoin or Ethereum? When in reality, they should be understanding the two projects differently and like understanding what they're about and not just thinking of it as getting exposure to crypto. The exact same is true of NFTs. I mean, they're powered by the same technology,

the same way Amazon and Facebook are both powered by the internet, but they're completely different things. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I wonder if that's a part of what you guys, you know, anyone in the space passionately of messaging that needs to be sort of developed for it to go mainstream, because there's so you get this carryover of all of the sort of negative dialogue from the last 10 years about Bitcoin or crypto in general, you know, for criminals and the electricity debates and all these things that literally have nothing to do with NFTs, but probably affect your average person's perception of them because

they're lumped into that under that umbrella. Yeah, totally. I mean, I think, especially when NFTs got so popular in February and March, so many people heard about them for the first time because of the Beeple $70 million sale, or they saw some crazy story about how much a certain NFT went up. And then all of a sudden, a lot of people heard about the environment. And I think a lot of information got spread there, which wasn't fully accurate. And they kind of assumed NFTs came out of nowhere. The point I'm trying to make is that I think when anything grows that quickly, it means a lot of people are exposed to them kind of in the wrong way. And the first thing they hear about is totally off. And I just think that's inevitable. I mean, that exact same thing happened with Bitcoin in 2013 and kind of again in 2017.

And a bunch of people heard about it and developed all these negative connotations. But parallel to that there's people who are just learning about the space and developing an appreciation and it's growing more slowly and and that's what that's what matters a lot more so i think people do have the wrong impression about nfts sometimes but you know we do focus on education and just telling the story and getting more people into it and then you know i think once people buy an nft they really get it they're like oh i'm just collecting this thing. Like, this is fun. It's just collecting. Like, so. Yeah. And I think, you know, like I can certainly speak only anecdotally, but I have

friends who I tried to convince to buy Bitcoin for five years who had absolutely no interest, but are degenerates on NBA Top Shot trading like seventh man off the bench dunk highlights. You know, they get that because we're in our 40s and we collected baseball cards when we were kids, right? Yeah. Yeah, they're just use cases. So, yeah. So I think that it's just an absolutely a messaging problem,

you know, down the road. So that said, are there glaring misconceptions about NFTs that you guys see often that you can address? Well, I think one would be what Griffin just said, where you have to pay for an NFT with cryptocurrency. That's like, I think that is a big misconception. And a lot of, I mean, some of the most famous NFT transactions and like, yes, a lot of the most notable projects, like you don't have to use cryptocurrency.

It's just like trading a physical art print. You could pay with cryptocurrency. You could pay with fiat currency. You could barter for it. You could trade for it. So like, I think that is one big misconception. The environmental stuff I think has really gotten out of hand where I think a lot of this, like it comes down to the audience of people who are paying attention to

NFTs versus crypto people who are into crypto are, are mostly like, you know, finance types or, or decentralization libertarian types. And so like, they're not really that concerned about the environment but nft is you know a large number of artists are are getting into them who are concerned about the environment and so i think it's created this like it's less prevalent now but for a few months it was sort of like this online huge amount of disinformation where someone would post an nft and they'd like, congratulations on destroying the Amazon rainforest. And it's like, that, that doesn't make any sense. Like those two things are not connected. So yeah, I think that's a huge misconception where people didn't understand that NFTs were not adding any

marginal mining demand to the Ethereum network or any other network where they were created. And like the whole NFT ecosystem could disappear and it would have basically no impact on mining demand. I think that was a very poorly understood thing. Let's see, those are some, I can't think of any. Yeah, yeah. The other major misconception is that NFTs just came out of nowhere and that they only started in January, which I think a lot of people perceive. And I think for them, that's like destabilizing, especially people who come from a finance background like Matt Levine or something. They hear about NFTs and their first assumption is that NFTs are just this vehicle for speculation. For them, NFTs are the ultimate

bubble, the ultimate sign of that speculation in the economy has gone too far because in their perception, like the way I see NFTs written about a lot of the time in Bloomberg is that NFTs are basically just nothing. And it's a demonstration of all the excess cash in the world. And it's like the ultimate like speculative degeneracy. Whereas for people like us who've worked in NFTs for three years and know a lot of NFT collectors and understand where the demand comes from and people like yourself who collect nfts i mean it's just a fun collecting thing that people do and people enjoy it's not like that at all so yeah that is one of the misperceptions is that nfts just showed up yesterday but in reality they've been around for years yeah i saw this article that was like the nft bubble has burst after just four months and i was like guys like do you know how many people have been like doing nfts full-time

for like four years at this point it's it's just like yeah it it's crazy to read but i i don't think it's all all that surprising honestly and i see a lot of parallels with the way that like bitcoin and and ethereum developed and honestly, I think Bitcoin and Ethereum were like probably more extreme where like the winters were more intense. Like the doubt and fear was like crazier. There's parallels with the internet too. I mean, when it first popped up, people thought it showed up out of nowhere. They didn't realize the internet was invented in the sixties by a team of government scientists. And the technology was kind of perfected and refined over decades before it was finally made available for commercial use. And the same is true of Bitcoin.

I mean, people think that just showed up out of nowhere. They don't realize that that also came as the result of decades of tinkering by passionate, dedicated engineers who finally got the tech to a place where it could work. And the exact same is true of NFTs. I mean, for a lot of people, they think it just showed up out of nowhere, but again, it's the result of a technological breakthrough that came as a result of decades of tinkering. And it's kind of, it's been going for four years and it's had booms and busts like anything else. So even further onto that, I i mean i always like to explain nfts as a digital good that you can truly own you know if fortnite gets shut down or if your account gets deleted then your fortnite skin disappears forever imagine if your nike imagine if nike shutting down meant

that your air jordans disappeared forever yeah but that's like kind of the bigger picture in my opinion like nfts are a digital item that you can truly own. Digital items are like those have a history of like 15 years. And actually, look, you look back at that history, and you read about that history, the lack of true ownership has really held back digital items. So yeah, I do think that there is a much broader history and a much broader context. A of people are missing maybe like a blog post would be warranted or something like that but you know to that end what if the blockchain that your nft is on disappears well then you're in trouble right this is this is why we only we're basically all on ethereum because like we we are concerned about that. And the effect, it's not going anywhere. Yeah. Yeah.

And this is why, I mean, like almost all of the most valuable NFTs are on Ethereum for basically exactly that reason. Yeah. There's definitely other interesting experimentation happening in the blockchain space. And a lot of other blockchains would be much cheaper to mint on. So it's not like it hasn't been tempting, especially because Nifty Gateway is a centralized custody exchange. So theoretically, it would be much easier for us

to use a different blockchain than someone like OpenSea. But I mean, yeah, it's just a no-brainer in our opinion to use Ethereum because it's the most likely to be a non-for-all. That's always been my concern with NBA Top Shot. And that was something that that very same friend who loves it kind of questioned one day.

And I was like, I don't have an answer for that. But he was like, this isn't really on Ethereum. Like, what if one day this wallet just kind of goes out of business and they shut down and stop updating? You know, what happens to my collectible? It's not in my safe. Yeah, it's true.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It is a real risk. Although we know the guys over at Dapper and,. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. It is a real risk. Although we know the guys over at Dapper and, you know, they're great. It's a great team. And I think they're really impressive. And they're definitely leaders within the NFT space. I mean, they made CryptoKitties, which, you know, was one of the early projects that got so much traction. But it's definitely a risk that every collector should analyze and be aware of.

Yeah. I mean, the blockchain is definitely not in a very decentralized state right now, but it's still, I mean, like technology can evolve. Like, you know, it can become more decentralized. But this is definitely something that we like study very thoroughly when we're trying to like choose where to mint NFTs. What would you say to absolutely average person knows nothing about it, but kind of gets it and wants exposure, you know,

what would you say to them how they should start looking at or collecting NFTs? Honestly, the best thing that they could do is, is do research first. Like instead of buying something, spend a month. I mean, it would be better if they could spend like more than a month but like the space moves so quickly that a month is like um you know probably the only thing possible but yeah spend a month and like do some research and that's probably the best way to get started especially with art um you know you really want to you really want to figure out like which

which artists you want to collect and like do research do research to understand the market this is actually another big infrastructure piece that's missing in my opinion um is like the art advisory firms the physical art world has a ton of art advisory firms we don't have that equivalent yet in the NFT space. It's something that we're actively building at Nifty Gateway, where if someone comes to us and they're like, I want to buy $10,000 worth of NFT art, we could just basically be like, here's our recommendation. But that's something that needs to happen as well. And that's something that we're actively working on. But yeah, that would be my advice. First, do research and figure out what NFTs you really like and you really want to own. And if you just ape into NFTs

and just go around and like, you know, buy, buy, buy. Yeah, it's like a lot of them are pretty illiquid, honestly. Like there's no guarantee that an NFT you buy, you're going to be able to resell. Like there's no guarantee of that. And I think a lot of people are not aware of that fact. So research first is definitely the most important thing. Yeah. I would say just don't buy anything. Don't spend any money. Don't expect a return on the

money you spend. I think a lot of people made that mistake, especially during the bull market. They thought they could pour a bunch of money in and they would get it back. But I view all my NFT purchases as consumptive personally right like i view them as something i bought and i'm not expecting anything back on and then maybe if at one point i want to sell it fine but for me like the joy and fun is in collecting so that's just how i try to look at it my parents told me the exact same thing about art i'll never forget when i was younger and i started even start talking about like maybe i'll collect art and whatever and they were like you just buy art that you love and you hang it on the wall and everything else is a bonus.

Right. Which I do think is, yeah, I do think is the right way to think about it. I mean, there's a saying in investing, like bears get rich, bulls get rich, pigs get slaughtered. Yeah. And honestly, I mean,

I think a lot of people who come into the NFT space with the expectation of a quick profit, like don't end up with a quick profit and end up with a loss instead. And we try and warn people about that, but, you know, I think we're doing more to like build this into the product, build this sort of, I think the NFT equivalent would be like investors get rewarded and collectors get rewarded, but like just don't. Specul yeah calculators get slung yeah i hear about outlier nfts like the nft behind me i mean this one sold for 40 originally it was a 40 open

edition back over the summer i think and then at one point it was trading for 15 000 at the peak of the market um but you know it was a crazy outlier case right like this nft just really caught fire and it kind of hit the whole cultural zeitgeist within the crypto movement. And it was well positioned to kind of explode when the bull market happened. But that's not representative of the vast majority of NFTs. Right. Like you can't buy $40 NFTs expecting them to hit 5K. So that happens in the trading and finance world all the time. Like you hear about, I mean, maybe you read about Dogecoin 20X or something and you're like,

all right, so let me buy into this other shit coin, see how it does and then it drops 99%. You're like, oh, weird. You mean there's no guaranteed multiple 100X returns in investing in a week? Yeah. A lot of friends who were showing me on other shit coins. Dog coins. Yeah, dog coins. Yeah. So I'm curious.

I know that we're kind of running out of time here. What all of this said, sort of just to bring it back together, what are you guys building now that you see will be necessary in five years, 10 years, specifically on Nifty Gateway, not talking about the general infrastructure, but how many of these things we've talked about, are you personally building or how are you going to refine your product to make sure that, you know, you're still a leader in five years or 10 years or even a year?

Yeah, great question. You want to go down? Sure. I mean, first thing that we're building out is the sort of art advisory that I talked about. I love that i mean first thing that we're building out is the sort of art advisory that i talked about um i love that the second thing that we're building out is we're building out mechanisms that imitate the the mechanisms that exist in the fine art world where if you're a new collector they don't just immediately let you buy the best stuff we're building out mechanisms that sort of reflect that. We're calling it a collector's score and essentially like if you've been collecting for a while and if you have a proven track record of not flipping essentially, then like you'll have a score that reflects that. And you know we're working on that. We're working on more display solutions.

And then we're really working on refining our curation process for artists and figuring out the best way to release work to try and like ease some of the market volatility. Cause yeah, the releases that we've done over the past few months have been insane. You know, like in February and March, we would do releases where people would just show up and spend crazy amounts of money. But you know, now the market is not in that state. And I think the volatility can be really

tough for people to deal with. So we have to figure out mechanisms to ease the volatility. We're also building out more discoverability natively in the Nifty Gateway and curation and social features that show off your NFTs, which I think will be really important. That sort of discoverability is key, as well as more payment options and tools to buy NFTs or make offers on them. I mean, somewhere when Bitcoin exploded in 2013, only Mt. Cox was the main exchange or something, which is kind of crazy to think that it got popular in the first place, given how little infrastructure there was. So I think NFTs are kind of similar in terms of the infrastructure for exchange. And right now on Nifty Gateway, if you want to make an offer for an NFT, which is one of the most popular features,

one of the advantages of being a centralized exchange is that you can make a global offer. You can say, I'll buy any like a coup by Micah Johnson, but only one. And then if someone accepts it, you can buy it, which would be basically impossible to facilitate on a decentralized exchange. But right now you can only do that with a credit card. You can't do that with prepaid Ethereum or with ACH or wires. So more payment options I think will be key. And that's something we hope to launch really soon. Paying with your Gemini balance so that you can deposit in and pay large

sums of money. And then, yeah, discoverability on the marketplace is a long way to go as well as sorting and, and also helping you access, you know, all sorts of NFTs. And, you know, I think there's a lot we can do. And we do want to be a gateway to the NFT world that's easy to use and accessible, but that, like, is still very powerful. Yeah, a few other things to add to that. We're redoing our contract and minting system so that if Nifty Gateway goes away, the artists will be able to essentially take ownership of their contract.

Or even if Nifty Gateway doesn't go away, they'll be able to take ownership of their contract and then switch the NFTs over to a new metadata link so that they'll be truly eternal as long as the Ethereum blockchain lives on on which i think is really important um and yeah shoot i had one other thing oh yeah we're also we're also like making an effort to to make nifty gateway more compliant um and more in line with like current regulations which is like not only it is a challenge yeah not a lot of people are paying attention but um you know congress just passed an extension of the bank secrecy act that specifically covers

antiquities dealers and everyone thinks the the next step to that is like the bank secrecy act will cover art dealers and most a lot of the major art dealers are actually already compliant with like bank secrecy regulations in preparation for this. And in the EU, if you're an art dealer, you have to like follow BSA regulations. So I think that's coming to the NFT space, probably, I don't know when it'll come, but we definitely don't want to be caught in a situation where we're like trying to operate, but also like trying to manage a regulatory a situation where we're like trying to operate but also like trying to to manage a regulatory burden so we're making we're basically you know like bring nifty gateway and make it more compliant and like well regulated i mean do you think they're going to deem nft securities like all these things that we've heard about this sort of like is regulatory is regulatory

risk a huge headwind for you guys or you do you just kind of take it as it comes? I don't think NFT securities, to me, that doesn't seem likely. Me either. It seems stupid, but... I don't pass the Howey test at all, but there are existing regulations around the sale of high value pieces of art and requirements there,

as well as transferring large amounts of money across border. I think Nifty Gateway is well positioned because we're centralized and custodied and we have regulatory infrastructure we can access via Gemini and they're very helpful in navigating this. And it is all, you know, there are like things we need to do, but the way our system is set up, we can handle them and we're making sure that we are handling them. And we kind of handle it on behalf of artists and customers. So it's not a risk they need to worry about. That being said, I mean, a more decentralized approach. And, you know,

this is kind of an issue for Uniswap too and decentralized finance companies, but it's not really clear where the regulatory burden lies. But if the answer to US regulators is that it doesn't lie with anyone, then that's not exactly a great answer either. I mean, so it is kind of unclear how this will all play out and there's more decentralized NFT exchange companies. And most of our competitors are like quite decentralized. So it's not really clear how regulation will affect that. So we'll see. I don't know. All we know is that we're making sure we build a system that's compliant and

can handle regulation and work with regulators. Yeah. That's important. Cause yeah, pretty soon. I mean, yeah, they don't have to be securities for regulation to happen. And as I mentioned, like, I think, yeah, I think fine art dealers are probably like in the very near future going to be regulated as like money transmitters because like, that's the way it happens in Europe. And like every, all the indications are like that that's about to happens in Europe. And like every, all the indications

are like that that's about to happen in the, in the U S. So even like we present ourselves as an art platform, we make no like effort to present ourselves as like a platform that sells securities, but pretty soon, like an art platform, you're going to, you know, have to follow these regulations. So that's why we're being, we want to be prepared there. Right. I guess if Bitcoin is property and crypto is deemed property in the united states and art is deemed property then we can expect the same sort of regulatory burden coming to all of them yeah yeah exactly but i do think it's a huge unknown honestly for almost for almost all of the popular ethereum apps right now i think

yeah it's a massive unknown and i I'm really not qualified to like make a prediction about how it'll play out. But yeah, I think it'll definitely be like one of the biggest things that has to be figured out before all these Ethereum apps can go mainstream. Sounds like being part of Gemini then is a huge benefit when it comes to all of that, because they've probably been you know surfing these waves for for quite a while and it would be pretty hard to be out there on your own to navigate all this oh yeah definitely gemini is i mean they've done a really impressive job building a great brand and really following through when it comes to security and compliance i mean it is impressive to watch

it was kind of a contrarian move to when when they decided to do that. But it's really needed for the crypto space, I think. I mean, crypto needs to operate within existing regulatory frameworks. And it's not like it's going to just completely bypass those. And Gemini has done such a great job building a fully compliant exchange where compliance is really important. So yeah, having them help us navigate that has been awesome. So the moral of this entire story to me is that we are so, so early. We're so early. Yeah. It's crazy to think about. And it's easy to forget after a bull market, just how early we really are. But yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I think that's a great way. And I kept you guys over time. So where can everybody follow you and check out Nifty Gateway and start to, you know, get, get involved in this market? Great question. Yeah. You can just go to niftygateway.com

and you can subscribe to our mailing mailing list. We'll let you know about every upcoming drop, which is a great way to handle it. And you can follow me on Twitter on Griffin Cockfoster and Duncan is Duncan Cockfoster. Pretty unique name. Most people, pretty unique last name. It's memorable. It's memorable. And it's two words, right? Yes. How'd that happen? It's our dad's last name and our mom's last name. And like, they just like pushed them together. I don't know. Yeah. Cause often you get the hyphenation when you get the, uh, you know, the, yeah, I don't know how they did that. Like there's no hyphen, but I don't think it's legal to have two last names or like it's legal at a state level, but not a federal level. I don't know.

Like smoking weed. Great. Awesome. They understand regulatory arbitrage pretty well. And that's how they figured out this last name. Your parents are awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for doing this. I think that was really enlightening. And honestly, I didn't expect to necessarily talk NFTs

for like 70 straight minutes solely. But it's a conversation that I haven't really been able to have and that so many people have been asking for. So I think there's going to be a really, really valuable and enlightening episode for the listeners. Well, thanks for having us, Scott. Yeah, it was great to talk to you too.