The Wolf Of All Streets - The Real Story behind Beeple’s NFT Boom with Mike (Beeple) Winkelmann and Ryoma Ito

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

Summary: Just recently, Beeple collaborated with digital art platform MakersPlace to sell some of his highly coveted NFTs. The sale garnered so much hype that the website crashed, proving just how hard it is to secure a Beeple NFT. Mike Winkelmann aka Beeple and MakersPlace co-founder Ryoma Ito tell the real story, explaining current exuberance around the NFT space and where the market could be heading. In this episode, Melker, Winkelmann, and Ito discuss a range of topics including: Selling NFTs for millions The 5000 Day Selects OG NFTS and Crypto Kitties Digital vs physical autographs NBA Top Shot Changing stock market rules  Augmented reality vs virtual reality Crashing the NFT market The virtue of patience in art Reselling NFTs Beeple’s artistic style inspiration --- VOYAGER This episode is brought to you by Voyager, your new favorite crypto broker. Trade crypto fast and commission-free the easy way. Earn up to 9.5% interest on top coins with no lockups and no limits. Go to https://www.investvoyager.com/ and download the Voyager app and use code “SCOTT25” to get $25 in free Bitcoin when you create your account. --- Mina Protocol Mina is the world's lightest blockchain, powered by participants. Rather than apply brute computing force, Mina uses advanced cryptography and recursive zk-SNARKs to ensure a super-light and constant sized chain, that allows participants to quickly sync and verify the network. The team behind Mina is backed by VCs such as Coinbase Ventures, and Mina's adversarial testnet was the largest public testnet outside of ETH 2.0. To get involved ahead of Mina’s mainnet, visit https://minaprotocol.com/wolf --- Matcha 0x Matcha is the easiest way to trade in DeFi. Matcha enables traders to seamlessly swap tokens using 20+ aggregated liquidity sources that deliver better prices than going to a centralized exchange or Uniswap. Connect your wallet and start today at https://matcha.xyz/wolf --- Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members --- 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

What is up everybody, I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast. So for the first time in the history of this podcast, I have the pleasure of having two guests on this episode instead of one. Just recently, Mike Wickelman, the artist known as Beeple, collaborated with Maker's Place, a digital art marketplace who are good friends of the show. Now Beeple's made headlines with the most expensive digital art sales in history. Very recently, one of his pieces sold on the secondary market for over $6 million. But this particular collaboration was the 5,000-day selects NFTs, which were being sold

for just $1 a piece. Demand hit unimaginable levels, and they seemingly broke the entire internet. Is this story and the idea that digital art collectors around the world are willing to do anything they can to get their hands on a Beeple NFT that I want to discuss with Mike and Ryoma today? I also want to dig deeply into NFTs, why their value and demand is flying, and why they're so important. So Ryoma Ito and Mike Winkleman, thanks so much for coming on. I can't wait to get into this. Thank you for having us. Yeah, glad to be here. So before we get into the questions,

once again, you're listening to the Wolf of All Streets podcast where two times a week, I talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, and politics. Basically anyone with a good story to tell. This podcast is powered by Blockworks,

the fastest growing media company in the digital asset space. You can check them out at blockworks.co. I promise you will not be disappointed. And for all things me, you can check out thewolfofallstreets.io. So let's get right into it. I touched on it at the very beginning. So the recent makers place and people drop didn't go, I guess, exactly as expected because there was so much demand. I mean, it really proved how utterly insane people are to get their hands on your work. Mike, can you walk me through exactly what happened there? Yeah. So obviously, the demand was more than we expected. And so we ended up, you know, the site crashed, obviously,

despite best efforts here. And so we decided to do which actually I think in retrospect moving forward I think probably it honestly literally never occurred to me to not do a drop and to do this raffle instead uh I think is actually going to be much more fair and much more sort of um you know maybe a better way to do these things. Just because again, bots are an issue. And I think, you know, this could be a much more sort of fair way to for people to participate in these things and sort of distribute this in a in a truly random way. So I think it actually ended at a very good spot. But yeah, so the raffles just went out, you know, the raffle was last night. And so people just got the tokens. And so messages are starting to come in. And so, you know, to me, that's super, super awesome to see. And I just saw a guy posted a message, you know, with his wife, and they're just super, super happy. So when I see stuff like that like it just makes it you know totally totally worth it for me and it's a very if I'm being honest a very like surreal position like to sort

of be in because like this whole thing again has just blown up so like you know fast obviously I've been making this this art for a very long time, but like this NFT space and the sort of possibilities it presents, that's been fairly, fairly overnightish, you know, from my perspective, obviously Ryoma has been, you know, kind of living this for, for many years, but from my perspective, it was like, this was not on my radar, you know, six months ago. That was actually my next question for Ryoma. Like, it's been overnight for him.

It seemingly is overnight for people in the community. But the people who were building the platforms early like you were way ahead of the curve and clearly do not view this as an overnight sensation because you were willing to commit both your time and your money to building something with this explosive future in mind. So can you talk to me a bit about why you chose to do that and how that all started? Yeah, it's funny to see how the space has grown so much over the years. So we started back in 2018. Prior to that, a lot of my background was in e-commerce for the past eight, nine years, purely in e-commerce, working with a lot of merchants, trying to get them better sales, help them with conversions. And as part of that, merchants are always looking for ways to sell

stuff the easiest way. And digital content, by far, is easier to deal with. You don't have to deal with shipping logistics of physical goods returns. The only problem with that is like once you sell a digital asset once, someone just can copy and replicate it and then the value of that goes down to zero, right? So from like an e-commerce standpoint, you know, blockchain and NFTs made a lot of sense in how you could help address that problem, right. And then, so my co-founders on the other side of thing, you know, they were at Pinterest for many years. One of them was employee number one. So they've seen all the issues that come from it right from the get-go. And one of the biggest problems that they saw over there was attribution, right? So, you know,

creators create content and then people go to Pinterest and just share it. And nobody really knows who was the original creator of that artwork. Right. So attribution was a huge problem there. And that's one of the things that NFTs and blockchain can address is like figuring out where did that art piece come from? Who was the original creator? Right. So makerspace sort of came to be is the merging of these two issues from the e-commerce side and the attribution problem. And, you know, when CryptoKitties came out, you know, it was like a light bulb just switched. It's like, oh, wow, that can solve both of those issues. And that's sort of where Fakirs came to be like early 2018 when we launched.

Yeah. And so, I mean, it's clear after this launch and seeing across the entire space that there's just the demand is so crazy that obviously it's difficult to scale or to have projected the level of scale and that there's probably a steep learning curve I would imagine for both artists and for the platforms themselves I'm curious and I'm just gonna like I want to address it early I'm a huge fan of NFTs what do you say to the people who say oh I just took a screenshot. I own your NFT. You know, like, let's get into what this is and why it's important and how absurd that notion is.

Yeah, to me, it's sort of like, I don't when people I think people get really like, pissed about that. And it's kind of like, okay, I think that's just somebody who just doesn't understand it yet. And I fully believe they will understand it eventually. But it's sort of like, it's not something that's like, Oh, you fucking moron. It's this is a very abstract concept too. And it's something that really goes against everything we know about sort of digital, like, you know, just digital things is you can copy them.

That's like the whole fucking point. You can copy them and it doesn't, you know, it doesn't hurt anything. so it is very a big paradigm shift um yeah i think i think you know the analogy i've been using lately that i i think you know to me is the easiest it's like an mp3 it's sort of like okay well everybody can have a copy of a song you obviously know you don't own the song though like it's very intuitive that it's like well okay i don't own thriller just because i have a copy of thriller and yeah you can record or you can do whatever you can copy it but you're not going to convince anybody you own it like that's very clear you don't own it and so that's what this is like it's sort of like uh everybody can have a bunch

of copies of this copy it and paste it right click it all you want nobody's gonna pay you six million dollars for that thing like that's that's the other thing i think people don't get is everybody who is sort of part of this ecosystem and with this like blockchain thing they all you might not recognize that that person owns it but other people do other people are like yeah no he owns it he has the the NFT. And so it's one of those things where I think, you know, as time goes on, people will understand this more and they'll understand that there's there is there's a difference between owning the token and just having a copy of the picture that the like, know token points to and references and those are very different things um and so you know i think people will eventually get that i just think it is it is kind of a pretty big sort of like paradigm shift in terms of like digital assets yeah did you have anything to add yeah just to add on it so you know, the question that people often ask, you know, back in the early days when we first started to where people ask the questions now really hasn't changed.

And the same question is like, why do I have to pay for something that I can already get for free? Right. So there is this mindset where, you know, people have access to content on the internet already, like whether it's social media or some other app and services where, you know, ownership to them really means I can consume it or I can just right click and save it onto my computer and that's digital ownership, right? Which is not the case with NFTs, right? So now trying to educate these people on what that truly is, I always go back to

trying to reference back to the, like the physical market, right? So the example that I give them has to do with like physical trading cards, right? They're accessible by the millions. Anybody can get their hands on it. But say like a professional athlete comes along and autographs one of those cards, you know, that card alone is going to have increased value compared to all the other ones, as long as you can authenticate that that signature is real. Right. And then that kind of same concept applies for digital collectibles as well. Right. So you have the digital content, you put it online, anybody can get their hands on it. It can be copied and replicated millions of times. But when a creator publishes onto the blockchain, their digital signature is going to be permanently associated with that file.

So as long as there's a way to authenticate that digital signature, that's the thing that's going to help increase the value of that specific asset. And that's where NFT's blockchain comes into play, is that that's the way to kind of authenticate, create that digital signature and say that that signature is legitimate, right? So if you're thinking about it in terms of like digital autographs and physical autographs, that's sort of the connection that people have an easier time understanding. I mean, I always laugh because like probably 8.3 out of 10 girls in my college freshman dorm had the Starry Night hanging on their wall and nobody ever accused that, you know, said, is that the real one, you know, or accuse them of as a result of the actual Van Gogh having no value. And so to me, that's kind of obvious, but also, I mean, proof of ownership is a huge problem in physical art, right? Because not only do you have the provenance, right? The history of where that painting has been, but you have people not only counterfeiting the painting, they have them

counterfeiting the provenance, right? Like making fake diamonds, burning the edges to make it look older, things like that. So I think a lot of people also here get confused maybe for the image and then really the proof of ownership being the key. The NFT itself, I mean, aren't you really, isn't that a trail of who's owned it and where it's been that cannot be questioned? And isn't that really where the value comes to some degree? Yeah, I think that's a big piece of it. And I think these are all sort of very natural kind of, you know, sort of arguments that people have. And that and, you know, a lot of the people that I've sort of my fans, you know, because again, I'm new to this space, they're completely new to this space. So I can't tell you how many people, you know, after I did

the first drop, drop is like, what in the hell are you selling? Why would I like sort of, you know, pay a bunch of money for like an MP3 or an MP4 or whatever. And so that's honestly where the sort of like physicals came in. And that was a big reason why I wanted to make something as a way to sort of bridge the gap, because then it's sort of like, you don't even really need to understand the NFT thing. What am I buying? You're buying this. Don't even worry about the other stuff. You'll get it. You'll eventually understand how they, that, you know, NFT is going to make owning this even better. But like as, as a bridge, I think, you know, that was a big reason why I really wanted to sort of, you know, introduce physicals as, as part of this. And it also sort of changes. There is some level,

you know, I think it's somewhat of a valid argument in terms of, if you're not going to sell these things, which that is a big piece of it, the experience of owning a NFT versus not owning it is not really that different. You know what I mean? Like you have your name on this website, but that's kind of it. And so that's why I really wanted to have the physicals because then the experience is very different. You have this physical piece of art in your house and that makes the experience of owning it quite different. So I think there's still a lot more work that can be done to sort of, you know, make ownership of these things, have more utility, have more sort of, you know,

experience behind it. But But yeah, I think these these questions of, you know, provenance, that's obviously something that, you know, the blockchain makes very, very instantly accessible. And I think it's something that, you know, I believe, especially with how quickly this space is growing, that I think in six months to a year, these conversations are going to sort of fade away. And people will sort of understand, you know, what these things are. They'll understand that just because something becomes an NFT doesn't mean it automatically has value. It's not just you take any picture, make it an NFT and boom, it's worth money. That's obviously not the case. And so I think people sort of thinking around this will sort of mature and they'll come to realize that there's a time and place for it,

that it has very real value. And there's a time and place where it's like, you just made an NFT because you could like that doesn't nobody's gonna give you money for that. And that makes sense. I took all of my baseball cards, probably like 100,000 of them from the 1980s. Not kidding. I used to like hoard wax packs and sets and all this stuff to a card dealer a few years ago. And they literally laughed me out and told me they would pay me to take them out of their store because they had absolutely no value. But you know, kind of same concept. If you have a Mickey Mantle card from 1952, it's a very different conversation.

So I'm curious. And I think there's another big question people have, right? And maybe you can address this. You buy it on your platform, you transfer it to your wallet, then what? And that's where I think the physical that you're talking about, you can put it in your house, you can stare at it.

There are people who aren't just trying to flip it or sell it on a secondary art market. They're in love with the piece and they want to display it. So what's the best way? Is that evolving for people is still pretty early in that respect. I mean, the main use cases right now are CryptoVoxels, Decentraland, getting into these virtual communities, you know, building up your own plot of land, putting up your own galleries and showcasing them there. So, you know, creators and collectors alike, you know, spend a lot of time spending, you know, building up their plots there and doing that. The other one that has become more popular is these physical digital frames, like the one that Mike showed, where they are using those to showcase them. So you got your murals, your infinite objects, your Canvia devices, which are specifically for art. So a lot of people are going towards that.

But, you know, in the future, as more people come into the space, there's probably going to be new innovations that come along with it more like interoperability, more apps and services that are integrating NFTs. So I would say that now is just a starting point where people are getting educated about the idea of NFTs. And then after that, we'll become more creative ideas about how to actually use them. I mean, do you think that our future is full on Ready Player One and everybody puts on their VR goggles and we all go visit each other's restaurants, art galleries, live DJ sets and nightclubs? And that's where this really shines? Or do you think that that's so far in the future? Because I think a lot of people buy NFTs, like you said, Decentraland and those sort of things. That's what they're sort of looking to is the future, because I think a lot of people buy NFTs, like you said, Decentraland and those sort of things. That's what they're sort of looking to is the future.

I think personally, before that happens, we'll put on AR goggles and they'll be displayed in your house. That it's like, OK, you can display these things and that will have some proof in the program that it's like that's not just a JPEG that you're displaying on the wall. That's the actual like real, you know, sort of blockchain that you'll be able to sort of view it on the blockchain. And maybe it has some sort of, you know, maybe it's permanent in your house and it's sort of recorded on the blockchain that it's like the GPS location of that, you know,

sort of virtual item, you know, in in virtual space and anybody can sort of like see it in your house i think that is probably something that could be i don't know five years away from it being sort of really kind of you know useful i think the full vr thing that's still probably i don't know maybe 20 years away or something like that that i think is still a bit out yeah i think vr still has to figure out more of that uh mainstream adoption part of it um but i like at least from my standpoint i think that uh the next phase where i like to see is where people are just more actively trading um these things uh between one another sort of like how back in the day, you know, people would just actually trade cards, maybe Pokemon cards or like athlete cards, you know, making that process a lot easier, right? I would like to see that kind of stuff happening. And I think that we're sort of at an

inflection point where more people are understanding the space, getting into it. And then, you know, where more influencers like might come into the space, that's just going to snowball into more people, you know, getting into it. And then hopefully from that, people would just become more active in the trading aspect of it, saying, you know what, hey, I've got this card or I have this NFT. Hey, what do you got? Let's let's do some kind of deal to kind of make that happen. Right. So seeing that kind of activity will be a good sign to see that the space is on the right track. So largely, it runs the entire spectrum of collectibles. I mean, you're talking about, I used to literally go to like baseball card trading conventions in the 1980s. And we would sit there and argue and do it. And so being able to do that online is incredibly cool. We see people doing that sort of an NBA top shot and all that. But then we're talking about all the way up to

fine art, what you're doing, things selling for $6 million. So does it really like can NFTs cover that entire array for every kind of collector and trader? I absolutely think so. I think it's going to be I think they're gonna I look at NFTs as this very blank canvas, you know, similar to the early days of the internet where it's kind of like well what's the use case for a web page well there's a lot of fucking use cases and i think nfts are going to be the same way i think there's going to see you're going to see them for um you know fine art things like that that could be very very high value and i think you're going to see them for things that are like a parking pass or some shit that's insanely low value and it's just this utility use case thing

that it's sort of like okay well that's how you like do it and and you know it and the functionality especially as more and more of the like functionality of this stuff is hidden and it's or not functionality the sort of complexity of this is hidden around the blockchain and it just becomes people are really sort of focusing on the utility of these things instead of sort of right now i think we're still in the shiny object phase where it's like right what's this new thing like everything connected to this has it has you know magical value just like you saw at the beginning of the internet, that it was sort of like in the late 90s, it was like, if you had a webpage,

that webpage was magically had value. And then it was like, oh, wait, yeah, actually a lot of these webpages just suck just because you made a webpage, it doesn't magically have value. And I think you're gonna see that with NFTs. And that's where, to be honest, I would caution some,

I know it's very heady times right now, but I think people need to look at it, you know, step, take a step back. And it's like, okay, is this something people are truly going to give a fuck about in 20 or 30 years or, you know, even 10 years, otherwise it's going to be, I hate to say it, but it's going to be similar to you walking into a pawn shop or the big thing how much it is worth and it's like oh yeah all of those are worth nothing like that's what will happen most most nfts unfortunately that will be the case that

the the joke will die off you know 30 years from now pepe's might not be quite as funny and you know this or that like there's a million things like that, where it's like, it's hard to know what's going to be popular sort of in the future, and what's going to hold value. So that's where I think people do need to exercise some level of caution with this stuff. But at the same time, it's one of these things where we're still so early in this, and we've out you know in my eyes a few use cases art um you know digital collectibles different collectibles but again i i think the utility use cases i i think part of the reason we haven't sort of begun to to really see the the the true benefits of these utility use cases is because right now, we're still kind

of hampered by COVID. And so people aren't able to like go out to concerts, they're not able to go to big events. And so some of these things are not, we're not able to really sort of like, okay, let's test the waters on this stuff. How would it work if we attach an NFT to this experience or, or, you know, gave this ability to it. So I think as, as COVID sort of hopefully fucking wraps up here in the next, you know, six months, hopefully, you know, we'll be able to see a lot more of these use cases in the real world. And then I think you're going to see another like huge explosion of sort of interest and, and, you know, things that we right now are not even thinking about. Yeah. Just to touch on that. So I guess like,

like thinking about how NFTs can use and how they can succeed, I sort of like think about it, like from a physical collectible standpoint, like what are the markets that exist in that space and how big are they? Right. So, you know, if you do the comparisons, like like, you know, sports collectibles in the physical space is huge. And then, you know, like, can it succeed in the digital collectible space? Absolutely. Right. We already see examples of that with NBA Top Shot, which is doing huge numbers already. Right. And you think about all the other different types of physical collectibles that exist. Right. How can those transfer over to NFTs? They absolutely can in a lot of ways. You have your art, even like gated access like Mike was talking about,

tickets, NFTs can be used for that kind of stuff, certificates, gaming. Gaming is another big area. You think about what already works, NFTs can be used to improve those experiences. So definitely NFTs have a lot of use cases and they can succeed in a whole bunch of different categories as well. Sick of paying ridiculous fees to trade crypto? It's time you try Voyager. It's hands down my favorite place to buy and trade crypto and is 100% commission free. Voyager gives you easy access to more than 50 top crypto assets and you can instantly transfer cash from your bank account so you never miss a trading opportunity. Even better, you can now automatically earn interest on crypto holdings. Currently, they're offering up to 6.5

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Sign up for Matcha now at matcha.xyz slash wolf. That's M-A-T-C-H-A dot X-Y-Z slash W-O-L-F and join the tens of thousands of traders who are already a part of the movement. I'm curious if there's any risk associated with Ethereum. One of my very normie friends asked me this, and he's gotten into NBA Top Shot and is having a great time. He's like, but what if all of a sudden the company that I have my wallet with, that they're associated with, just goes out of business? Or the Ethereum blockchain doesn't work anymore? What happens to these coins

that are sitting in my wallet, these NFTs? Well, NFT runs on flow blockchain. So that's actually much more, I don't think flow is going anywhere. I don't think data is going anywhere. But if you're talking about like a private blockchain like that, that is probably more of a concern that it's sort more of a concern that

it's sort of like it is that whole ecosystem then it is very much kind of tied to that blockchain right um ethereum it could go somewhere but at this point it's one of these things where i believe it's it's very much you know kind of crossed the threshold where it's hard to sort of imagine it going somewhere at this point. And so, you know, I think nothing, nothing is guaranteed, obviously, in the future for Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever. But I think there's definitely enough momentum. And again, to be quite honest, I was not like, you know, sort of prior to this, somebody who was super bullish on crypto, to be quite honest. I thought it was interesting. I didn't think it was bullshit. But I also was kind of a little sort of, you know, kind of more on the

conservative, I'm, you know, sort of naturally more conservative with like investments and stuff. But it, you know, looking at the fact that it not only survived during the pandemic you know one of the worst economic sort of uh environments we've had in the last 100 years or whatever it it thrived during that it's kind of like well we can survive that like this is probably gonna be around a while i'm not i'm not sure what is gonna like come by and freaking knock this out like again nothing's fucking sorry i agree with you no i agree it's to me that that says quite a lot yeah yeah i'd say that ethereum is pretty well established so it's not likely to go away um but it's not to say that there won't be other players

that could come into the space and gain like a lot of notoriety. So I think that in the future, what could happen is it's not more about like just one platform that is succeeding, but multiple ones, and then figuring out a way to kind of interconnect between these different blockchains. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's more likely going to be the way forward. Yeah. You touched on it earlier. You know, I think that the perception with the learning curve is that NFTs are about art and collectibles, but there's so many other use cases that are not exciting an NFT and you don't need a centralized authority to sell your car and transfer that NFT, right? So, I mean, it really comes down to proof of ownership to me. I know we touched on it earlier, but I think a lot of people don't realize the implications and how important the non-fungible token itself is even outside of the art world, right?

Yes. And especially given that you can sort of put, you know, rules into that. And there's, you know, there's a bunch of different ways that those could sort of, you know, interact, you know, using that. And I think another thing that I've been thinking about lately is sort of just NFTs as an asset class. I think we sort of take for granted that, you know, or a lot of people sort of take for granted that, you know, you grow up, you get a job, you get some money and you start buying stocks. And that's just kind of what most people do. And they put their money into equities. And that's kind of that's what you do. And that's over the last hundred years, what most people have done. But there's nothing that says that that has to continue like that. And to be quite honest, young people really don't like corporations.

And there's nothing that guarantees that they're going to give their money to corporations. And so I think looking at this as a potential alternate asset class that could be just like crypto, just like Bitcoin, a significant store of value in the future, I think is something that, you know, could definitely very much be a possibility. I think, especially to given the amount of sort of ownership people have over these versus a stock. With a stock, you sort of, you have very stringent rules of how you can trade it how you can when you can trade it who you can trade it to how you can sell it and as we saw with the gamestop thing those rules can change on a dime and then it's sort of like well here's the new rules don't like it go yourself

and so that's another thing that that nfts could sort of have a very real advantage of over equities. And even if they captured a fraction of that market, it would be hundreds of times bigger than it is now, the NFT market. So it's still, you know, if you're looking at the overall market cap of NFTs being, you know, last I saw somewhere around 200, 250 million, that is still like just nothing compared to, you know, what it could be, you know, sort of looking at the additional use cases moving forward. Yeah. From a, like a platform perspective, there's a, there's a lot of signs that suggests that, you know, NFTs are a good store of value. So, you know, asTs are a good store of value. So, you know, as long as a creator is continually creating and publishing new artworks, in many,

many cases, the prices that are releasing them at are increasing over time, right? Some of them are releasing it from the, like, from the time that they release it to, let's say, like, a couple months later down the road, you know, their prices go up, like potentially like 10x by that point, right? So like the amount of, you know, value that you can accrue during that period is pretty substantial, and probably better than what you could get from like the equities. Yeah. And what's I mean, also, when you talk about a one of one sort of as a store of value, you only need one person who loves it, who's willing to pay for it to buy it. So there's sort of this indefinite possibility, no matter what happens in the market around that you find that one other person in the world, like people sell the ugliest

houses, right? Because there's somebody who loves that hideous house. And so I think that that's really important. Like if a stock company goes down, that company is going down and, you know, and you have the systematic risk of everything associated with the market and that individual thing when you have something that's one of one. I mean, scarce items have held value throughout time. Right. I mean, people love scarcity, whether it's shoe collectors or art collectors or whatever it is. People just love scarcity, knowing that they're the only one who owns something. And I think there's always going to be someone who wants to buy that. And I think what NFTs can sort of offer versus traditional sort of physical items in terms of store of value is that they have the ability

to be traded super easy and quickly so the the you know liquidity around these things is much much faster than sort of like okay you go to you buy you know this rare whatever then it's like okay it could take you months if not years to find somebody versus through the marketplaces you can immediately you could buy something and immediately sort of flip that like right away so that that's, and you have to prove it's real. And you have to set like, when I was young, like when we went to baseball card conventions, that was in the pre PSA days before you had to verify something. So yes, you could obviously be sold a fake, but now, I mean, you literally, if you want to sell something, you have to send

it off to a company to verify its authenticity, pay a percentage of the value of that object, which can be a lot. It's kind of like, you don't know if you won the lottery or you got screwed when they send you back the price because it could cost you more than you have. Right. That system is obviously really, really broken. So yeah, this is just so much more efficient and easier. I'm curious. A lot of people who knew I was having this conversation, Mike, they want to know about your creative process. I think people are really interested in hearing, you know, how you conceive an idea, how it comes to fruition, how you decide how to release that, the strategies around it. And then, Ryoma, you know, we could talk about when somebody comes to you at the platform, what's the process like for actually doing that

drop? Sure. Yeah. So the, the everyday is obviously it's been something that I've been doing for the last, you know, 13 plus years here. And it was really just something that I started to, to try and get better. And at first it was sort of, you know, getting better at drawing and then it moved into sort of 3d stuff, but that's really I mean, that's honestly nothing's changed. There's still like I see a massive amount of improvement. And so, you know, that that's why I do this sort of every day. It's like in terms of the creative process, I take a lot of inspiration from other people's artwork online. I take a lot of inspiration from, you know, the news. And so

it's really kind of a mix of sort of what's going on in the world, what's going on in my life, and sort of, you know, kind of this quasi diary of, you know, both of those things, with a pretty healthy dose of just what the fuck weirdness mixed in as well. Like, this is, it's not like when you see some weird buzz light your titty thing like oh that's what's going on in his life that's not what's not really a reflection of my day okay well that's what he did today that makes sense mondays so there's also some there's some wild cards thrown in there too. But in terms of how I decide to release these things,

obviously I have, you know, 5,000 plus every days. And that's just one thing that I have. I also have like a couple hundred VJ clips, which are also very, very popular in the like concert visual world um and then i have short films and a bunch of other like you know kind of weird sort of one-off things um but i'm really sort of very much and and this is one mistake i i personally you know see people coming to the space new artists or whatever i'm very much trying to sort of pace myself. And I'm trying to, I'm going to assume that this market and this sort of, you know, way of selling things is going to be around for 30 plus years, the rest of my life. And so, okay, I'm going to approach it like that. If I'm

really looking at this like long game, like, okay, I could have sold the first every day number one the very first one i could have sold that right away but i didn't and i sold number 4392 for whatever amount of money so now how much is the first one worth and so that's where i think you know artists really need to sort of pace themselves with this and don't sell the most valuable special piece of work you know you have right out the gate like don't do that because then you don't own it and then yeah you'll get the royalties potentially but you know at the end of the day there's a difference between 6..6 million and $600,000. And I'm fine with that. But like, there is, you know, again, there's a difference there. And so that's where I think people really

need to sort of like, pace themselves and, and kind of make sure that they're looking at this of like, okay, how can I sort of sustain this as a practice over a very long period of time and release my work in that fashion with that in mind? Yeah. It's almost like it's not a get rich quick scheme. It's not. Yeah. Which is, you know, that's the, I think you just described the proper approach to anything where anyone is going to rise to the rise to the top. Right. And I mean, putting out your first thing and you basically set a low bar on price for an infinite future i've seen so many artists do that where it's just like oh my god don't put that up for sale and it'll sell for like 2 000 bucks and it's just like you know because they didn't market it well and people

don't realize and it was like oh that was actually a really like very pivotal piece. And I've seen this happen a few times and it's kind of like, oh man, as more people come to this space and the space matures, like, and especially with digital art, because I feel like we're just at the beginning of people are gonna start,

go back and look at the last 20 years of digital art and be like, okay, actually, yeah, no, this is of digital art and be like okay actually yeah no this is art like this is okay yeah we didn't really have a way to collect it and really own it now now we do now let's go back and look at what the fuck just happened over the last 20 years who were the key players what were the movements what were the like you know who were the key artists in this and so i i've seen a few of those key artists sell things where it's like oh that was a very pivotal work and you yeah now you're the two thousand dollars you're is you're the high bar you or somebody is going to like even that nyan cat going for six hundred thousand it's like well

that sounds like a lot but i would not have sold that right now like i that could be worth way more in the future and i believe it will be worth way more in the future right so yeah i think people need to sort of it needs to be a balance obviously of okay well i need to fucking eat now if you're a guy like you know and sort of like looking at this as something you can sustain over the long term so, yeah, I want to circle back before we miss it. And so that's obviously his creative process. What's it like when I guess your average person wants to sell something on Maker's Place, but also like when someone like people, you know, comes and says, Listen, I want to do a drop with you guys. How was that process look like? How does it work?

So we're a curated platform. So we're invite only. So, you know, people like people come through people that are lesser known come through. And I guess And, and like the second one is what is the story around it that we can put together, right? What is the story around that creator? What is the story around that artworks that we can kind of communicate to the collectors to make it appealing, right? So being able to communicate is that is sort of like a big, like way that we kind of filter through some of these candidates is how do we tell that story right so you know for people like mike um you know it's not just his follower counts that's like the biggest thing it's like mike has this story where he's you know spent a lot of time in the digital art space beforehand he's put in his dues he's got this interesting story around his every days

that's the kind of stuff that appeals to the collectors so the question for any type of artist coming into any of the other platforms is what is that story that like collectors are going to appeal to you and what is that story that you can communicate right so thinking about that um as a forefront of like when you're applying to any type of art platform it should be the key things like you know if you're relatively early on then the question is like what can i do to differentiate myself to all these other people like that is that story that you're relatively early on, then the question is like, what can I do to differentiate myself to all these other people? Like that is that story that you need to work on. Right. So it's not a question of the platforms. It's more it's like if I'm serious about digital arts, how do I build that story around myself? That is very true, because it's going to it's going to start to in the past over the last, you know, even up until very recently, there just was not

that much sort of like supply of art in the space. And so you could just come on and put anything up, to be quite honest, and people will buy it because there was a massive like there was a massive demand supply imbalance. Now you are seeing everybody come to the space, all digital artists will eventually come to this and realize this is, you know, at least some possibility to be able to sell their work like this. And so cutting through that noise is going to be very, very, like a key part of this, because again, you could be the most, you know, amazing artists ever, but if nobody sees your work, it's very tough. It's going to be very tough. You're going to get lost in the noise of the internet.

So I think, you know, looking at sort of growing an audience, even outside of sort of this collecting space is a big thing and and something that you know I took very sort of like seriously over the course of my career that it's like okay I'm gonna do whatever I can to sort of grow an audience right now I'm not really trying to sell them anything um but in the future maybe I could try and sell them anything and now I have something to sell them and so now it's sort of like having that audience that I built up over the last you know decade or whatever has kind of paid off I guess if someone's a brand new artist though and their and their work is exceptional can they pitch you guys and say listen like we would do it or does it really come down to the story I mean it's the same in music what you just described right I mean the best singers and the best pianists in the world are not the most famous ones right it's that combination

of whether it's a look or a marketing or a connection or whatever it is that eventually gets to the top talent is not the thing that generally you know um you have to have the talent to sustain it i think hence the one hit wonders with crappy songs and things like that but you still need to be given your shot. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely and that's where I think there is there is some degree of luck to it, to be quite honest. It's sort of like, you know, that's a piece of it. But I think it's also sort of having patience. I think if you're like a young artist, I think that's the biggest thing with this is like I see people and it's sort of, you know, having that patience, because to sort of make it at, you know, 22, 20, you know, seeing some of these kids sort very young and to be quite honest, that put out very little art and sort of be in a position where you're selling something for a massive,

massive amount of money that there is a high degree of luck there because that's not many people. And so I think having patience and sort of focusing on, you know, not focusing so much on the like selling piece of it, focusing on the actual art that is very, very key for young artists. Yeah. And to focus on being unique, right. I think that's the big other thing to kind of focus on, because there are lots and lots and lots of talented artists out there, you know, who might not have a lot of popularity. So within that noise, you need to be able to differentiate yourself. And even if you don't have a huge following, if you have something that's special, that's unique, that people want to talk about,

that alone will be able to kind of help you build whatever it is that you're trying to build, whether it's your career or a following or, you know, presence in the crypto art space. Yeah. So the cream will eventually rise to the top to some degree, not all of it, but if you're truly, truly talented and you're a part of the community that it should. It's funny. I mean, Mike, you're kind of the perfect example.

I think that it was largely like this for me in music. It's like they say, you know, it takes 20 years to be an overnight success. And, you know, people just see the overnight success and don't realize the effort and planning and all of that that went into building that community. So, you know, I think it just like in any space, it is very rare for someone to just put out one thing and all of a sudden become a millionaire. It's quite rare. And I think this, this, you know, space, it's, it's very, there's a huge hype factor. And it's very easy to just like, you know, sort of, again that will come down to sort of you know a bunch of different factors but i would be you know and that's again something i would also sort of look at with when you're purchasing art it's like okay is this something that has is this a person who's sort of like proven over a long

period of time that they're able to sort of that they've got a career here and that this is something that you know is going to be uh that they're still going to be doing this in in in sort of you know five ten years because artists come and go and they oh i don't really like making art anymore and then they just go do something else and then it's sort of like well that art there's a good chance that art is going to go to zero then if if they're not sort of like in this this making making art over a long period of time. So I think it's a lot of things that, you know, both collectors and artists sort of like, looking at the long game more, I think it's going to sort of help everybody sort of, you know, be able to make this sustainable. Yeah, that makes sense. I know that one of the huge criticisms is sort of

in a bubble and you see these things like hash masks and punks. I think what is the new one, waifus or something that people are, you know, eventually is it just, I mean, are we going to see sort of a bubble pop? I don't think that ever affects the people at the top when those things happen, by the way, because the true stuff has value. But do you think that we're seeing just this insane flood in the market right now and that a lot of it people are just over paying for and it's gonna go to complete crap? Like, I would, yes and no, I think there is definitely some irrational exuberance around certain projects. And that I don't really want to like name any projects, to be honest,

because I don't want I want all these projects to succeed. But there are some projects that I look at. And I think I'm not sure that's going to be super popular. And I'm not sure that's going to hold value in the future. I would be I would be shocked. And it's one of these things, if that holds value in the future, I'm going to have 200 bazillion dollars. Like if that's still popular in the future. Yeah, it's one of these things where I think. Yeah, just not like not getting too caught up in the Twitter hype of, you know, this the shiny new object and really sort of taking a step back and breathing with this stuff, I think, you know, and really trying to do your due diligence and make sure that these projects that, you know,

you're buying into or artists or whatever are sort of, they seem like they're going to be around for a while. And they seem like they've, they've been around a sack and that they're, they're going to be around in the future. And sort of, I think that's what i would be looking at when trying to sort of determine and it's no there's no guarantee like there's it's nobody knows and and so that's what makes it hard and that's what makes it fun and exciting is that there are no nobody's gonna tell you i can't tell you it's just like any other stocks or any other investments anybody's well this is what's going to happen you know fucking no nobody knows so like you know that's what makes it exciting but i think taking a step and breathing uh i think can help but at the same time i think there are certain things that that people you know i i look at the the internet and

there was a big crash and And like, it kind of wiped out all the bullshit. But people didn't stop using the internet. And so it's sort of like, I think there could be a point where a lot of we kind of reset the clock here. And a lot of these NFTs, people realize it's like, oh, shit. Yeah, I tried to sell that, you know, three years from now. And like, nobody wants to buy it. And it's it's practically worthless. Yeah. And there could be some reset here, but that doesn't mean people will stop using NFTs. That doesn't mean NFTs are useless.

It just means like those people are going to find out. Yeah. People are going to find out the shit that they thought had value maybe does not have value. Yeah. Like the ninth man off the bench for the Timberwolves dunking randomly in a game on a Tuesday in 2021 might not be the one that makes it 10 years from now. Exactly.

Exactly. I know you wanted to ring in there. Yeah. So I would say that, you know, attention span in the crypto space for the most part is pretty low right so people like i think a lot of people are coming into it you know they're riding the hype train um you know a lot of them are saying hey i want to get rich i want to get rich quick like what is that project right i think that's sort of the part of that's problem part of the problem

that's feeding into it is that these prices that are popping up, they understand that. So, you know, they're popping up left, right, and center, all these type of potential things that you can make much money very quickly on. So, you know, are they going to go away? Are they going to last long-term? Like very realistic, they're not, right? But I think from the other end, yeah, most will not. And I think that from the other end of it, people buying them, I think they already understand that as well. But everyone's just trying to get in as fast as they can and get out as fast as they can. Right.

So, I mean, it's hard to say. It's like trading. I mean, it's right. I mean, we've seen the cycles of different crypto phases, which, you know, it feels like 100 years in just a few years. But I mean, we saw DeFi last year, it was like everybody was experimenting and food coins and whatever and rug pulls and all this craziness. And it sort of matured a bit, I would imagine that it'll be somewhat the same here to some degree. But like, also, I think it's important to note, I don't think we can depend on the crypto community to carry NFTs into the future, right? So when is the art basil crowd here? When are the really high-end collectors who are out there every single

day looking for rare pieces of art, not in the digital space, when do they, and I'm not talking about a few of them because I know they're here, but when do they en masse start to take this very seriously and this becomes like a true, you know, space for high end art collectors. I think that will actually happen fairly quickly to be quite honest. I think the Christie's thing is very much sort of, you know, rapidly, you know, help, help sort of just give a lot of just credibility to the space space in terms of that and to be quite honest there's other talks that i've had since then and i'm having that i i'm very confident that

that is something that in the next you know one to two years talks that this will be a fairly established um you know sort of medium because again it, it's like anything else, it can be crap, and it can be very useful and very artistic and very, you know, have a lot of value. It's what people put into them, just like anything else. It's what you, what do you put into a website? That's, you know, you put a lot of time and you put a lot of energy and value for the in-person, then it's going to have value. If you just put up a website of some stupid bullshit, like that has no value. So I think, I personally think that the broader art community is going to come to this pretty quickly because I think you're going to see it come both ways.

Right now, you're just seeing the digital art sort of pushing this into the traditional space. I think you're about to see in the next six months, the traditional space being like, hey, we want to make money. And so they're going to come and they're already starting to come and they're going to push and they're going to attach NFTs to their work. And when this happens, it gives it a lot more credibility too, that it's sort of like, okay, you know, this is something that these traditional artists now are sort of seeing value in too. So I think there's a bunch of different ways that this, you know, to me, I, I, it's such an agnostic platform that I think, um, you know, I would be surprised if, if six months from now, everybody called bullshit and just kind of

walked away from it. But I don't see that happening. But that's really interesting because I guess there's a couple of ways it could happen, right? Either for some reason, mainstream collectors become very interested, or I guess some high end art dealer who has access to those people starts pushing it. But then I guess really, and you've seen it on Maker's Place, certainly the creators themselves just saying, hey, man, nobody's going to a gallery right now, whatever. it but then i guess really and you've seen it on maker's place certainly the creators themselves

just saying hey man nobody's going to a gallery right now whatever there's this is an opportunity to make money i'm just gonna print like i'm gonna mint an nft of this painting that i did there are definitely i could tell you there are definitely more and more fine artists and people who are very established in that world taking interest in that space and you will see that very soon actually i'm 100 positive that because i know these projects are are you know weeks from launching not like wow so yeah it's fast yeah yeah the christie's uh thing was just a great catalyst to kind of bring awareness to a lot of the fine artists. Right. So, you know, from that, there's been a lot of conversation and a lot of noise about like fine artists

taking notice, getting interested in it and having these conversations of like, how do they get involved? Right. So like Mike says, like it's, it's, it's going to happen pretty quickly. Yeah. That's amazing to hear. So I'm curious specifically in Maker's Place, what plans do you have for the rest of 2021 going into the next years? Do you have any massive improvements that you're looking to make, or are you just going to continue to

curate the best art basically and have the best experience for the buyers yeah priority number one work on our tech make sure that you know we can work on all the influx of new people coming into this space so um you know beyond that i think it's just trying to build out experiences that the community is asking for right so as more collectors come to the space what do they want to see as more creators come into the space like what are the tools that we can build to support them right so you know we already have our storefronts uh we give them better channels to kind of get their work out like how can we help them improve upon that like can we work with other partners to get them more distribution get them more visibility what can we do in that regard? So I think a lot of what we're going to do this year is going to be listening to the community and seeing what they

want and building upon that. So far, a lot of it has been driven with our ideas, but as new people come into this space, they're going to have fresh perspective, fresh ideas on how this space can evolve, how entities can be used. So we're going to be listening and like listening to that and building upon that. That makes perfect sense. Mike, what do you have planned for the rest of the year? I know we're kind of getting up against it here with time, but I'm curious. I mean, you're at the upper echelon of this thing. How do you, you know, sustain that? And what kind of work do you have planned? Well, to be honest, like sustaining it to me, it's kind of like the market's going to do with the market. Like I can't, I can't, uh, you know, I can't control that. And it's one of those things where I don't even worry about that because it's, it's, that's the market. My job is to make shit, cool shit that I like the market shop is to decide how

much that shit is worth. They'll do what they're gonna do um so for me i'm sort of you know after the christie's thing obviously ends the next thing i'm really sort of focused on uh we got one more surprise with with maker's place coming up here uh and then the next sort of like big kind of major release that i had is the like spring collection and that's something that you know we've been working really hard on for, you know, as soon as the, the, uh, you know, last big drop in, in December or whatever, immediately started working on the like spring collection. Um, and so sort of moving forward, uh, the spring and fall collection are kind of the two sort of big drops that I'm going to have, you know, kind of modeled after fashion houses and stuff like that. Um, so yeah, I think there's just a ton of,

you know, a ton of different, you know, angles to push here. And that's what's so exciting about the space is there's so many people, you know, all that, that's a cool idea, how they structured this drop or all that's, you know, the way they sold this, you know, with, you know, burning the tokens or, you know, this or that, there's just so many people pushing in so many different directions. It feels like we're just at the beginning of this and everybody gets kind of like right to rules of this space, which to me is just super inspiring and really fun to be a part of. Awesome. So both of you, I guess, Mike first, where can everybody follow you and keep up with you after this? People collect, people dash collect. Otherwise, you know,

Instagram people and you know, it's everywhere. I posted a billion fucking things. Just open a web browser at this point. You'll still be there. I'll be there staring at you. With your beat up face. What's up with the picture? or at this point you'll still be there i'll be there yes it's staring at you fucking you know yeah with your beat-up face what's up with the picture i beat up where's that come from i gotta ask you it's just like a picture i took like one night that i was like again this is like you know when i first started a twitter account like you know 15 years ago or whatever super long ago um

i like had a picture of like, I was drunk that night. And then I just Photoshopped to look like I was beat up. I was not. So you didn't get your ass whipped. It was just, I don't know why I did that. And then that just became a picture, but it's one of these things where like, I'll probably never change that because it's one of these things where,

well, it's just, you glance at Twitter and you can just immediately glance and see my thing and like then you know it versus when i when people change their twitter profiles or their like profiles then it's like i it's like oh shit that's them like i'm so used to their other picture like so i'll probably never change that i'm saying you're locked once you once you do it if you get big your avatar is your identity you're locked in the laser eyes are throwing people off i think all over twitter at the moment but so ryoma where can people uh check out what you're doing personally um maker's place of course and obviously sign up for future drops and things like that so yes for our mix place

specifically you know we have a lot of great drops coming up. So I would say go to makersplace.com slash drops and subscribe so you get notified for those. We're actively on our social media. So Makers Place Co, you know, check us out on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. We're on all the channels. So if you want to keep up to date with what we're doing, just follow us there. Personally, you know, I have my Twitter account, Instagram, but not so active on there. But if you want to follow me on Twitter, Ryoma Ito, I'm there. It's almost like some people are too busy to tweet all day.

I don't know who those people are. Building things and doing stuff. I'm certainly apparently not one of them because I tweet endlessly all day. I want to thank you guys so much for doing this. I think it's so important for clarifying what's happening in this space. I think there's just a lot of misinformation and hype and confusion. So this was really, really awesome. I know that people are going to really get a lot out of it. So thanks once again. Thanks. you