The Wolf Of All Streets - The Real Story Behind Web3 Gaming | Pavel Bains, MixMob

Episode Date: April 2, 2023

Don’t miss my interview with Pavel Bains, founder of MixMob! Pavel shares his experience starting his crypto journey with Bluzelle, a GameFi blockchain network, and how he is leveraging his gaming background to build MixMob - a unique game combining elements of Mario Kart and Clash Royale. In this episode of The Wolf Of All Streets podcast, Pavel delves into the world of web3 gaming, discussing its potential and when we can expect to see the first web3-native AAA games hit the market. Get ready to explore the intersection of gaming and blockchain technology in this insightful conversation. https://twitter.com/pavelbains ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/ ►►BITGET GET UP TO A $8,000 BONUS IN USDT AND GET MASSIVE DISCOUNTS ON TRADING FEES! 👉 https://thewolfofallstreets.info/bitget ►►NORD VPN GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/ Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c #Web3 #Crypto #Gaming Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:00 Bluezelle 2:55 When will we see great games in Web3? 6:00 MixMob 11:30 Problems in Web3 that have to be solved 18:20 Web3-native AAA games 26:10 Pavel’s way into crypto 32:00 Regulation issues 34:10 Solana 35:40 Grand vision for web3 games 37:20 Wrap up The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Gaming is one of the most important verticals being built in Web3. A lot of people are looking for the Fortnite's and the Call of Duties to come over to Web3, adopt NFTs, but that hasn't really happened. There are others who think we could see a AAA game built out of Web3 in the near future, and that also is seemingly very unlikely. But there are people like Pavel Bains who are building things right down the middle that can be extremely successful and really show the promise of Web3 gaming. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Bluezell was either the first or one of the first blockchain specifically dedicated to gaming, right?

No, we were actually doing storage. And then... And you pivoted. Yeah, because of, you know, are we even all these guys got better? And then Mixmob, yeah, Mixmob is completely separate on its own path. But you obviously believe that gaming

is going to be a major vertical for Web3 and crypto moving into the future. Nick Neuman Oh yeah. I think, so what's interesting is, so game people, because I came from gaming originally, right? That was my background before I went to crypto full-time 2016. So I worked at Disney, Electronic Arts, for Microsoft, all of them. So what game people are is they never want to be the first ones in. So if you look at it, I mean, if you think about mobile games, they were around before iPhone took off.

And then all of a sudden iPhone came and people were still receptive. But then once Angry Birds proved itself, then Supercell and all these companies came in. Social, same thing. They wait until it's proven itself, right? And so, you know, I knew crypto could be used for gaming, but until, like, I didn't believe it because there's no talent in it. Once Axie kind of proved that, hey, there's a certain mechanic that works,

then I was like, okay, now there's something uncovered there. This stuff is going to work. And then the thesis from there was, I look at, like, my kids are all between now 11 to 15. What do they know? They play video games. They understand virtual currencies because of Fortnite and Roblox and Minecraft and everything. They understand building things. Well, what are they going to do? Oh, now I can own the things I build and crypto is the money I can earn from it and use it. So it's just like a natural progression just on that thesis.

Yeah, that all makes perfect sense. But you mentioned Axie. I think Axie, obviously, there was an economic model that was compelling for people who could make more money playing Axie Infinity than working at their real jobs in the Philippines specifically.

And we saw that happen. But it wasn't a great game, right? Oh, exactly. So it's a proof of concept, but when are we going to see really great games in Web3? Do you think that's happening? I mean, that's a pointed question, obviously, because you're behind one of them.

But I mean, do you think that that's something that we're going to see soon? I think we didn't see it yet because the talent wasn't there, right? So let's just take Axie as an example, right? It proved, just like mobile games kind of proved there was something there, and then the talent rushed in. So once the mechanics are there, proof of concept, like you said,

work, social game, same thing. Farmville wasn't a very good game. It was just addictive. But then people came and just blew it away with what they could do. So I think if you take the case of, let's say, the Mixmob team, I called them up. I was like, hey, check this Axie game out.

We could probably improve on that, right? They're like, oh, that's interesting. Oh, yeah, we can do better than that. And then they're like, let's get a talented team together and let's go for it. Unfortunately, games aren't like DeFi. It takes like a year and a half, two years to get to market, test it out quickly, iteratively, and then you'll have some. So I think over the next year and a half,

you'll start seeing some of the talented teams that came in probably like a year, year and a half ago start to come out. Are these talented teams that are Web3 native or is it guys like you who came over from disney ea and such who are seeing the opportunity in web 3 or both well i would say because i'm i am crypto native and because i came from that space i was able to recruit the talent um the problem and you've probably seen this is everybody thinks that gaming is like i mean you came from music you'll understand this best as content everybody thinks that gaming is tech, I mean, you came from music. You'll understand this best as content.

Everybody thinks that gaming is tech. You know, just throw some blockchain, we're going to hire some developers or whatever. It's like, if you can't, I can watch all the best action movies in the world. It doesn't mean I could produce one tomorrow and it'd be good. Or music, I could listen to hip hop all day.

But if I don't have a talent, I don't have the talent. So gaming, tech to supplement, is a support for the talent that has to creative design, balance a game, understand economies, understand art, all that comes in. So you can supplement that just saying, I'll just hire some firm and put it out there. So I think you do need the traditional gaming talent. It says, like, let's take the example, be the Mixmob team. They worked on Halo, Battlefield, FIFA, PokerStars, Nintendo games. They're like, hey, we've kind of done everything. We've worked on three-year budget titles. What else is there? Oh, this is interesting. We can actually carve

our own path there and do something really cool. So that's their draw. So you're just going to see more of those come in. So talk about Mixmop. What is the game? What differentiates it from other games that are being built? Why did you decide to focus on that? Yeah. So Mixmop as a concept was the core team when they came together was, what if we built a concept that an AI deletes the world of all culture and says, I'm taking everybody's going to become worker bees and they're drones. It's just a grayed out world. Then they had the concept was, okay, a group

goes underground, says, hey, we need to remix the world how we want. They were very influenced by Into the Spider-Verse. That was a remixed world of everything. They're like, let's take that concept and say, underground group comes together. They're called the Mix Mob and their whole goal is to remix culture, like how music is, how games are, how the cities are designed, and they're going to

battle the AI. So that's an overarching mega franchise theme to be like, kind of like a Mario type of franchise. The first game was almost like the studio designer, Simon, the CEO, they're like, you can't build the AAA game. It's going to cost way too much and it's going to take years. So for example, all you see in Web3, like crypto games saying, oh, we're going to build this AAA game. Years later. Yeah. If ever. They have awesome trailers though. They have awesome trailers. Okay, sorry. Go ahead.

I don't build a trailer that you can spend 50 grand on or a hundred grand on, but they're right. So I was at Disney when they greenlit two games based on existing IP that they owned, $35 million each game, which is relatively still expensive back then, but it's cheaper now. But anyways, 35 million, which is massive for them, two games each, 35 million, three-year development cycle, existing IP that Disney, the best IP company in the world, both games fell flat. So my thinking was, if the best IP company in the world can't buy a hit, who is anybody else? So with Mixmob using it, the team said, let's do a mid-core game instead of AAA that's going

to take three years and it might just be worth nothing and we wasted our lives. Let's do a mid-core game that people can pick up quickly, play, give feedback, short attention, like you said, short attention span and get going. So the game is a card strategy battle racing game. The best way to describe it is Mario Kart meets Clash Royale. Instead of you and I picking our power-ups while

we pick up while playing Mario Kart, we design our card deck from the beginning. That's our power-ups. There's a lot of game theory. You're like, hey, Pavel's got these ones. I'm going to pick these ones. I know how he plays. I'm going to try to counter that. That's how you get those elements. And each race lasts three minutes. Boom, you win some money, you evolve to the next race and keep going. And that's how it's designed. It's an interesting strategy to start there.

How many people do you think are playing it? How popular has it been? Is it been somewhat consistent or is it sort of a proof of concept? I wouldn't say proof of concept. So the team just executes really well. So this is another thing I Web3 games or crypto games don't understand. Building a studio is really hard. Building a studio and building a game at the same time is doubly hard because you're starting from zero, team dynamics and everything. So the team starteduary full-time 2022 with like six people now it's up to 40 so after just over a year every three four months they release a version of the game like three alphas and it's not an alpha like just a level it's like a full game like how you log in the feedback you get how to set up a wallet the whole gaming experience like a full full game that each one has gotten better.

So over the course of a year, the first version alpha was last April. Average gameplay was like 15 minutes. The last one that just finished alpha version three that ended end of February. That's up to like 35 minutes. That's huge. Yeah, it's it's massive. So all the stats that we care about, like, okay, average gameplay time was big. Retention, I think it's like at 40% seven-day retention, which is super high. Normally it's

like way less. And this is all alpha, not big marketing. It's just a core group that just expands slowly. We launched the last version in-app purchases. So you're buying the in-game token to purchase entry fees and other things. Most mobile games, most games are like 2% average purchase. I think we were like at three to four. And this is like alpha with all holes. It's not a good experience, the purchasing side. So that was big. So those are the three main metrics. Oh, the other one was referral.

So we wanted to test out the virality that if Scott signs up, has fun, will he invite other players and everybody will join? We found that for every player who went to the referral program and sent out invites, it brought in 2.7 more players. So customer acquisition. So this is something like crypto people forget that this is what game companies do. You figure out all these different levers and keep putting more money into

it. So I would say after three versions, just over after a year, everything's trending the right way that makes us give confidence that next comes a closed beta, I'll run a few months. Ben Felix. Then once we're ready for open beta, where we go wide, we'll have figured out the marketing, customer acquisition, viral factor, how long they play, how to keep the loop going. It'll all be there. So that way it's a guarantee. We've reduced every risk out there and it should be successful. So I would imagine though, with anything in Web3 or crypto in general, there's still obstacles to success that maybe you don't control

as an individual project, right? Or an individual product, like just general UX, UI, or technological problems that have to be solved. Are there any glaring things that you think before you can reach a mainstream level still need to be solved and not necessarily just by your team?

I actually don't think that stuff is there. The problems have been is really is, and it's good doing like alpha versions that are good because the technology is still new that you're finding, hey, this didn't work with this wallet. We got to solve for that. So we're trying to plug all those things. So it's a smooth experience, but I don't think any major technical leap needs to be done in anything that we've got to wait for. I guess I'm more asking about UX, UI though, because even you're saying you're testing wallets. I think there's still billions of people on the planet who are intimidated by getting a wallet. So, okay. So I think this is really good,

what you're talking about. It's another thing that comes down to marketing and positioning. Is everybody is always thinking that either it's crypto binary or it's got to go mainstream. But forgetting that everything has to transition through.

And there's a book recommended to somebody, maybe it's simple, I can't remember. But it was really about identifying that slice. We're calling it the movable middle, like the swing boat. We're not going to get that gamer who's just saying, fuck crypto, they're a bunch of scammers, and I'm just playing Call of Duty all day. What we want is that person who plays that stuff and go, oh, I'm curious about the ability to own my own asset. So right now, that might not be a big, massive group, but that's okay. You don't have to be. There's games that I know friends of mine in

the gaming industry that they did a real-time strategy PC game 10 years ago. It wasn't by EA. They self-published it. They got some funding. No one really knew, but these guys are making, they were taking over $10 million profit a year for six years straight. But no one really knew, but they had their audience because it didn't have to be call of duty. It was like, boom, we've got these players and they'll keep coming and keep giving them what they want. So I think we just got to get out of our mindset that it has to be call of duty. It's like you could still make money through a certain market and then let it kind of expand naturally. I mean, we both obviously have like some background

with music industry and interest in that. And that's just reminiscent of the independent artists now. Right. I mean, it's always been that way, but like now with self-publishing and not needing a label and SoundCloud and YouTube, you build a fan base of a thousand two thousand three thousand fans who will buy everything that you put out you can make an incredible level of living without 99 of the people on the planet ever having any idea who you are uh i mean my best example because i'm in canada and i was talking about this the other day was i remember hearing the weekend before anybody even knew who was he had gone the first Weeknd before anybody even knew who his face was. He had gone the first year where he didn't reveal who his face was. People didn't know if it was a

group or if it was a single person. He dropped his free... Yeah. He dropped that mixtape album on me and we were like, what the hell is this? It's unbelievable. And then the first time he showed up live was a year later. And people were like, whoa. And he went like that for three years. Preston Pyshko Yeah. think mac miller had a very similar trajectory like not necessarily being anonymous but he was playing literally like 10 to 15 000 person shows before he had ever put out an official album or was you know or was signed to a label and didn't i mean drake famously you know put out a mixtape before he was signed to a label and stuff too. But so it makes sense that that path would exist also in the gaming world. I would also imagine that there's a huge sort of crossroads of people who trade crypto and

play games. I mean, I see it all over crypto Twitter, but there is got to be millions of people who are just the same audience. I think that's the really cool thing about it, that you do have a built-in audience of early adopters who are gamers. So if you can prove yourself from them and all the mechanics,

but you also got to design the game so it does appeal to them. So let's say Mixmob has a certain version, one of the modes, the modes that you got to see in the next month, it's going to be rookie, hero, and there's a degen mode that you enter this race, you put up some money and there's, and if you're perfect, you're going to win the most with the other ones, give you a bit of,

you know, let's say, okay, the rookie mode is let's say I enter for three bucks. Every race I win, I get some money back. And then, you know, if I win eight races and I only have three lives, let's say I'll get like, you know, triple my money back. But at four races, I win. But if I win four races and lose three in a row, I'm up, that's gone. And then house keeps it.

Then hero mode is win five races, but you get two lives. Then degen mode is you empty up the most, you only get one life, you got to win like five five races, but you get two lives. In degen mode is you empty up the most, you only get one life, you got to win like five straight races, but you're going to win the most. But that appeals, right? Preston Pyshko Larson I mean, literally, that's just like 100x, 20x, 10x leverage. Robert Leonard Well, that's why you'll laugh about this. So a couple of the investors in Mixmob, they're former poker pros.

So they helped design that aspect of it. They're like, no, give them that. And then Arthur Hayes as well. He's an investor. And as he was doing some of the analytics or just seeing the game design, he was like, yeah, you got to have these modes for these different guys. Like extract value, right?

That's what they want to play. So it'll be more fun. So it's pretty cool to get that from them. I mean, the guy who invented 100X perpetual swap leverage in crypto is an investor that says all you need to know about the degen mode, I would imagine, which is awesome. Yeah, he knows the audience, right? And what is MixMob built on? I mean, you obviously have a game-based blockchain that you founded, which is, you know, Bluzelle. Is there any sort of affiliation there or where is it being built? It was, no, we want to do it completely separate. Bluzelle could probably be used for the storage

layer after, but right now it was off the gat. It was off of Solana because Solana offered the speed that it needed for gamers to just basically get in, start playing, and the UI. Moving forward, we also look at each chain as... Like, when you make a game, you port to other systems. Like, you start on Xbox, it's made for PlayStation, PC, all that. So we look at chains the same way. It's like, what audience resonates with us? It could be BNB chain. It could be whoever after and be like,

hey, let's put a version on there and connect it all together. So you said, obviously, this is not what you would consider a AAA game. Are we going to see AAA games that are sort of Web3 native? I always ask this question to everybody in the gaming space, but I guess that could either be a Fortnite or a Call of Duty coming in and adopting some sort of Web3, but I'm more talking like, you know, NFTs in-game that you can actually trade. But I'm more talking about, well, there'd just be some,

you know, team that comes out of Web3 and builds a AAA game like we've been waiting five years for, and it all functions perfectly and comes out of Web3 and builds a AAA game like we've been waiting five years for, and it all functions perfectly and comes out of this industry? I don't think it'll be for a long time. I mean, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, I mean, you play these games like me. Grand Theft Auto takes like eight years cycles, right? And Rockstar has been doing it for 23 years and uh those teams have the technology and the iterative and they know how to do it to all of

a sudden take a hundred person studio and say yeah you guys go make one in this space it would just it's going to take they're going to go through so many uh if they're even successful to release a game because eagles and everything come in like i said i was at a game studio at disney where they had the top talent eagles got it in the way once it got to like 80 people and it literally self imploded because super talented people but they couldn't get the processes together and stuff like that so i think there's just so much risk attached there's so many obstacles attached to it. It would just be so difficult. Preston Pysh So do you think then that, do you think we could see some of them at least adopt some

side of the crypto aspect? And obviously, NFTs are the lowest hanging fruit there where you talk about skins and stuff in Fortnite. If those actually become NFTs and tradable for real world dollars, is that something you think we'll see? Or do you think that they're resistant to that? Ben Felix 2 sides. I think logically they'd want to, but a lot of these bigger companies are owned by public companies and everything a public company does, like an electronic art or whoever, has to go through legal, everything. Some of the stuff that the Mixmob team can't believe we do with marketing and stuff is because it's crypto. Just launch it. No one's going to say anything. We don't

have that internally. But if they're at EA, if they want to just do anything on Discord, EA would be like, no, you're not going to do that. They're a publicly traded company. So I think that's going to hold them back from doing it. So I think independent game studios are doing it. We've got like a three to five year advantage in that. Now I think, will a AAA game come out? I think, and this is being biased, but I think if a team adopts a strategy like Mixwomp's team where put a mid-core game out, because that's our plan, put a mid-core game out, that's successful, we'll tell all our processes in a low risk way, the next game they already have planned is a AAA MMO. But at least

they've already got the processes down that they can transition and say, okay, now we've got the time to do that because one game is already successful, that feeds into the other one. So I think you've got to kind of follow that type of route. Yeah. So do you think that there's a fear of regulation then from the larger ones? You said, obviously, they're going to have to go through the processes of being a publicly traded company if their fear that an NFT is some sort of unregistered security. I would imagine that kills it dead in the water from day one. Exactly. So that's what they're thinking.

If they have no idea and they're just like, it's too risky to even put into, I think they'll pay. You hear some of them, they'll pay lip service that, oh, yeah, we're looking at it, but none of them have actually done it. And I've heard from internal people that they tell their teams inside, fuck no, you're not touching anything with crypto. And it's just a fear factor, right? Which is an advantage to us. Robert Leonard So I think gaming we've established is definitely one of the next main verticals of the space. Is there anything else that you're seeing built right now that you're excited about?

I mean, I go back to what you and I kind of always chat about. It's music, man. Like it's so, it's, it makes so much sense of like the distribution of money. Like, cause I used to remember even like eight years ago with Spotify, sit there and go, if I listened to what happened, it was, I think my kids, they were listening to Tegan and Sarah from Vancouver, that twin group and they're like indie and pop. So my kids are spending, let's say, and my kids are five to eight then, but they're spending, let's say 10 bucks a month. And all they spend is 80%

of the time listening to Tegan and Sarah. Preston Pysh Literally the same song. Yeah. Over and over again. Nick Neuman Eight bucks should only go to them, but how Spotify and all that, they aggregate it into a pool and Taylor Swift's getting a majority of that money, not Tegan and Sarah, right? So where crypto would basically easily just audit that through and saying, yeah, those are the plays that's going to that band. If I'm listening to De La Soul or whoever, they're getting the biggest portion, my 15 bucks a month. And then publishing, it's just so natural for music. It just needs somebody that they almost like an indie. It's like needs a 50 cent was coming up today or a Drake and say,

you know what? I can make my audience, like you said, Mac Miller and be like, dude, I'm going all like crypto. I'll manage everything for me. And there you go. That's a proven model. I mean, we had Bandcamp. I mean, there's been, if you just outside of crypto, I mean, there's been ways that they've done that. But I agree that music applications are potentially absolutely massive. But it's once again, so disruptive that you have to wonder how the incumbents will react or whether they'll adopt it or whether it does completely push it out. A record label does not want to see a musician putting out a bunch of NFTs that they don't get money on and supplanting that model. But there are really interesting companies that are working on

it. Royal, obviously, and Audius on the the other side they're trying to solve these problems it's just i i think uh it's hard to disrupt the music industry it's like disrupting the banks with crypto right yeah i mean it's crazy because we were talking to one i'm not going to say it like a really mainstream artist who wanted to do something with put some music for mix mob do this and they also look at it as a money grab so the amount that they were charging i was like i could find an indie artist and invest that into them and take a chance that this person makes it as opposed to paying you for two tracks for this like come on this is out of hand what you're what you're thinking that we would pay like yeah forget it yeah you ever see what a rapper gets for a verse? I mean, that's just that,

that it's a sort of a very selfish model. So music, gaming, do you think that we'll see the NFT side, the art side of NFTs mature further? I think we had sort of a pretty clear bubble, I guess, you know, a year ago or even more now at this point. Do you think that we're going to see continued sort of popularity of the PFP side and the cartoon art? Or do you think that we've sort of seen the winners there and are going to move on? Yeah, I think the PFP side will be hard. I think the one of one and real

artists. And the reason I do this is, I mean, you're married to you. My wife just got into this stuff, like the art side of it she went to a couple events in singapore met some of the artists she's been deep diving the past month into like okay which artist is what who does this identifying it and she's heavy into this thing now so that's actually pretty cool that she's kind of learning that on her own and saying, this is what I want to buy and hold for the future and going through all that. So I think that still is a massive area for the next generation to go. How the PFP, that type of IP model, how that works out, yeah, I don't know yet. Robert Leonard So I want to go back to your start. Obviously, you said that you came over

for gaming, but there had to be an aha moment with crypto that just made you sort of make the leap, right? You had a great career in gaming. You could have stayed on that side of it. What was your introduction to crypto? How did you find it? And what made you become a degen like the rest of us? It was, yeah, it was just like, you just kept hearing Bitcoin here and there and then tech. So I finally said, let me read up on this. And like most, you just get deeper. So once I understood the first white paper and the concepts of Bitcoin and then really understood how banks work and how you know how these where Visa really makes their money so I was also studied finance so that helped a lot uh but then Bitcoin what I

realized was okay growing up what was I into like science fiction tech you always want to make some money uh you know futurism and then also as a kid the music we grew up with is like, you know, revolutionary, rebellious. So I found that that was all wrapped up into one product called Bitcoin and crypto. I'm like, whoa, this covers like every interest I've ever had. It's like this one thing. How cool is this? And then you start going down that rabbit hole of, oh shit, this is really awesome stuff. And if it works, this is like a whole different system and then at one point you start understanding that and now with music i mean with nfts art and gaming it's like i just look at it as an alternative system that i can like reside with like i can unplug from the existing one because i'm getting everything i want here

finance games and get my own art i just like that that's being built out at the same time. So that's kind of like the philosophical side and the futuristic side of it. Right. But when you came in, you didn't do gaming, right? BlueZella's storage. So you found a completely different sort of side of the market to focus on. Yeah. What we were doing was originally started in when we came to Singapore. We're just doing consulting projects and stuff for KPMG, some of the banks here. And it was a really cool experience to understand and understand what we want to do with where Web3 was going and things for just needed. But it was literally some of the most painful stuff.

Anybody who sits and goes, if somebody comes and pitches me an enterprise blockchain idea, I'm just like, I can't believe you're trying this. They're never going to hire you. It's never going to happen. It's like, focus on our market that's there. But doing that allowed us to understand the market a bit more. And then my CTO, who's more into tech, he was like, hey, if Web3 really goes and decentralization, they need a storage layer because we need a full stack. And that kind of dawned on there. And then we just kind of kept going with there.

And you just kind of go through the bear market, adapt, keep pushing through, new opportunities come up, which is the exciting stuff about this. I mean, look at your career, where you started and investor and media person. I don't even know what to call it on any given day. But yeah, it's nice to be able to constantly evolve, but to sort of find a path where you can incorporate all of your previous passions, which I think has been the case for me and clearly the case for you. Totally.

That's it, right? We get to... I mean, come on. We're like, you and i are kind of the same age exactly it's like when people ask what do you do i'm just like same shit i wish i was doing at 14 i'm still doing like it's crazy i think all that time goes and i'm still i'm being able to do that every day now bullshit with my friends hang out work on some cool projects and we're always trying to try to make some money that's's it. Living the dream. But interestingly, I think for a lot of people, just going back to sort of like

the crypto ethos and what's being built, a lot of people in the early days believe that Bitcoin and DeFi and all these things could replace entirely legacy systems. I've always thought they would just be like a parallel rail for the people who wanted to opt out. It sounds like that's your approach to the gaming side as well. Like we don't need to be to replace Rockstar and EA to have successful Web3 gaming. Yeah. Oh, not at all. Like definite, right? Like even if you look at mobile games, Supercell, the guys who did Clash of Clans, all these games got pissed on at that time too by game

developers. Game developers are super arrogant because they think what they're working on is the biggest thing. So if you had these guys working on Call of Duty, Halo, Gears of War, they looked at social games, mobile games, it was like, oh, you guys suck. Who would play these things? But it didn't matter. They started making money and grew on their own. So despite what they all could say about crypto and three games, it doesn't matter because it's like, we'll own our own area, just like mobile and social did. And it could generate a ton of money on its own and live in that same place. And people can just get to pick which type of games they want to work on and which ones they want to play. It's just a new genre. So, I mean, are you still then passionate

about some of the original things outside of gaming, DeFi, Bitcoin itself? I mean, do you still consider yourself sort of a maxi about crypto or is it more just where you're building right now? No, no, I'm still like half the time, you're still reading, doing that. That's what you transact with.

That's what you want. Like going back to what you said, that parallel system, I like living in that parallel system of Finance and seeing all these things evolve like it's awesome like it's an unbelievable time that we're all in that we can get a kind of witness I mean I'm actually more grateful that gaming came out as that because I was really in it for the financial system and parallel stuff that's happening there. The fact that gaming came along and allowed me to call my old friends, build a studio, put that together, leverage the relationships I built in crypto from 2016, and opportunities and everybody I knew and bring that all together. That's just like

a byproduct of everything that's happened beforehand. So it's super cool. I mean, you've obviously been living abroad for quite a while. What do you make of what's happening on the regulatory and legislative front for crypto in the United States? I mean, you're obviously living in more friendly jurisdictions. How do you view everything that's happening here? And do you view it as a threat to what you're building? I think, I mean, same as everybody else, I think it's just frustrating to watch when the people making those rules or casting opinions are so ill-educated on it. I read that report that Biden and then put out the other day and they they're like, well, crypto, as these five things fail to do it, it's like, no, it did eliminate the middleman.

It did allow lower income people to transact for some of the things. It's like, oh, the five things they named out, it's like, no, they proved out each of those things. Like it's just, there's so misinformed. Yeah, that's what's frustrating. Yeah, but you don't think that they'll land in a place that will fundamentally impact what's frustrating. Yeah, but you don't think that they'll land in a place

that will fundamentally impact what's being built in the space? It may in the United States, but it's very global, obviously. What do you mean by that? I mean, listen, like if they deem everything a security or try to ban, you know, like what does that mean, you know, for if you're building something in this space yeah i think it it'll be a bit painful but i go back to i mean like i said we grew up in the hip hop era where it was all parental advisory stickers don't listen to this they were steamrolling albums

dude i i say this to people i was like growing through it, the closest thing I've seen to a cultural impact since hip hop is crypto. It's rebellious. It connects everybody. It's a fuck you attitude. It's like the more they push against it, the more people are just going to find a way to survive and connect with more people. So it's just, I think I'll still just find a way, whichever it is. I mean, it's gone this far. I love that.

Obviously, you said you built on Solana from the beginning. You have any concerns with what's happened there over the last year? I mean, I think they were sort of the baby with the bathwater for FTX and literally had nothing to do with any of that. And I think that's largely been resolved. But is there been any friction with like their issues with some downtime or anything like that? Or is that not concern you that was last may um and then all that but all those things have been solved uh you know talked to the solana team core founders just a couple months ago and even them they're feeling a lot better they were saying because the developer activity the developer the solana

community for itself is like i was at lis Lisbon for Breakpoint, and it's totally different from an Ethereum event. Ethereum events are like Silicon Valley, tech focus. It's like that Silicon Valley, Lisbon Breakpoint was like Los Angeles. It's like people just... And how they dress, how they interact, the products they want to make, it's more consumer friendly. So I was like, that's actually pretty cool.

It's like a city. And then they said that didn't leave. The developers didn't leave. They're still there building and getting through. A lot of the technology issues of downtime have been resolved. And so I think the new stuff that they're making a play at, it's going to be pretty cool. And it's like, for us, it's just gamer experience. They're an audience there. Can we prove it out? And then move on to the next thing. I think we kind of talked about the shorter term vision the next year or two. What do you see as best case scenario in 10 years

for everything you're building? What's the grand vision? Oh, grand vision is Mixmob is like a Mario style IP. So you've got the battle rate, you got the racing game, then we'll have the Fortnite style, MMO type of game. Then we wouldn't mind having,

let's say a Mixmob sports game. Just like you got Mario Tennis, Mario Party, which is like their fun thing. Super Mario Brothers, obviously, which is like their platformer adventure. So that's how we want to see it. Like as a fleshed out IP

that has different genre games, that'd be the ultimate 10-year plan. Preston Pyshke I think it's possible. Nick Neuman Yeah. I think the first one's successful. The cool thing is I was playing to somebody and one of them was like, what if you're playing Mario game, but all the stars you collected and coins, you can go transfer to the next key and that gives you a leg up or an advantage on that. How cool would that be? And we could actually do that with crypto, which is awesome, right? I want to see it happen, man. I believe, and I think that I've had this conversation over and over again, but here sort of in the bear market where interest is less, I think we're going to

see the coolest things ever built that people just don't see coming. Well, for sure. You can still see people are still passionate, doing stuff. I went to a couple of Solana hacker houses. I mean, it's offset, but I always say to people when they doubt crypto and things like that, and like, oh, it's this, it's that. I was like, go to a hacker event. You can't tell me all these people came into this room just to build up some bullshit and some scammy stuff. They actually really care for the next three days of what they're doing. And then that will change your mind right there. So those are always refreshing to see, these hacker events. Preston Pyshko So where can people check out what you've already built and keep up with Mixmob and then keep up with you after this

conversation? The best is mixmob.io is the website. And then from there, the two places that we spend the most time are probably Twitter and Discord. Our team is always on there. And it's really full of crypto guys who are into gaming, but they care more about the product. So the amount of feedback that you get when you release a game and these guys just come back and tell you what's good, what's bad, and you get in real time, real studios go and pay people a lot of money to get that. And in crypto, you've got the natural community who does it. So come to our Discord.

And then myself personally, just at AppleBains, P-A-V-E-L-B-A-I-N-S. And usually I spend the time just talking more about gaming, how it comes together, the combination of culture, music, entertainment, and crypto and finance. So basically the stuff that you and I just jam on. Before I let you go, the most important question, Biggie or Tupac? Oh, Tupac. I'm West Coast. I figured you were going to say that. Rakim or Big Daddy Kane? Oh, it's got to be Rakim.

He just looked like a cool dude. We found one then. All right, we're good. I can live with the Tupac day, man. Well, thank you for the conversation. Always a pleasure. We're going to have to keep having you come back so we can see the progress of what's being built, man.

Thank you so much. Thanks, Dan. This was fun. come back so we can see the progress of what's being built man thank you so much thanks and it's a fun let's go