This Week in Startups - Oath Keepers indicted from Signal messages, U.S. House subpoenas tech platforms + Alex Masmej: selling a personal token | E1361

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

First, Jason covers the how Signal messages led to the Oath Keeper sedition indictments (1:47) and how Google, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter are being subpoenaed by the House committee investigating Jan 6th, 2021 (15:32). Then Producer Rachel has an "OK Boomer" segment where she talks with Alex Masmej a French entrepreneur about his experience raising $20K from selling a personal token, $ALEX (27:10). (00:00) Jason intros the show (01:47) The FBI arrested 11 members of the Oath Keepers on sedition charges (09:25) Ourcrowd - Check out the deal of the week at https://ourcrowd.com/twist (10:49) Jason's take on Jan 6th (15:32) House Committee subpoenas YouTube, Meta, Reddit and Twitter (19:59) Indochino - Get $50 off any purchase of $399 or more by using code TWIST at checkout https://indochino.com (21:49) Jason introduces the OK Boomer Segment (24:46) Interested in building a startup? Enroll at https://course.founder.university (27:10) Rachel chats with Alex Masmej (29:43) Bubble. Get one month free of a no-code plan at https://bubble.io/twist (31:18) How Alex launched his social token (35:32) How Alex shares his financial information with his token holders (46:02) The future of NFTs FOLLOW Alex: https://twitter.com/AlexMasmej FOLLOW Rachel: https://twitter.com/_rachelbraun FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

Okay, Molly is out again today. She got the Omicron, but she's doing great. Nothing to worry about there. I'm going to break down on today's show, the Oathkeeper indictments from the January 6th insurrection. They were caught by having their encrypted signal messages compromise. So I'm going to explain how that happened because nobody seems to know. And is there a back door? I don't think so.

I'm going to explain to you my theory. And I'm going to read some excerpts from the indictment, which are read like a homeland reboot. They're insane. And then I'm going to talk about Google, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter being subpoenaed by the House Committee investigating the capital riots and are they withholding information or is the House Committee being a little too broad in their requests? Are they responsible? We're going to go take a look at that and do a deep dive and then an awesome OK Boomer segment stick with us. It's a great episode.

This Week in Startups is brought to you by Our Crowd. Our Crowd helps you invest early in pre-IPO companies alongside professional VCs. If you're interested in investing, you can join Our Crowd for free at OU-R-C-R-C-O-W-D.com slash Twist. Indochino makes custom-fitted suits, shirts and casual wear at affordable prices. Shop for your next best look or book a virtual style consultation at Indochino.com. Right now, you can get $50 off any purchase of $399 or more by using code Twist at checkout. And Bubble empowers people to design and launch their own. apps, marketplaces or tools without needing coding skills or pricey engineers. The first 500 listeners

will get one month free on any of Bubbles paid plans from $29 a month up to $529 a month at bubble.io slash twist. All right, everybody, in our first story, and there is a tech angle here. On Thursday, the FBI arrested 11 members of the oath keepers on sedition charges. And the indictment is, just to use a word, insane. The New York Times reported the leader of the far right organization, Oathkeeper, steward Rhodes, was one of the people arrested. He's the person with the eye patch who you see all the time at Trump rallies or protecting Trump, etc. Prosecues said it was a wide-raging plot to storm the Capitol on January 6th to disrupt the certification of Biden's win. Important note for this story, a portion of the oathkeeper's communication occurred on signal.

Now, of course, if you're listening to The Speaking Startups, you know that's an encrypted chat app. That is not supposed to have any backdoors, and it's not supposed to keep any user data. But according to the indictment, just two days after the election, Rhodes said the following on Signal, we aren't getting through this without a civil war. Too late for that, prepare your mind, body, and spirit. A month after Election Day, Rhodes wrote the following on Signal. It'll be a bloody and desperate fight. We are going to have a fight. That can't be avoided.

So let's pause on this and just digest. The oathkeepers were caught because somehow the government obtained their encrypted signal messages. Everybody who is in the press is trying to figure this out and there's hand ringing. It's pretty obvious. According to the CNBC article, it's not clear how investigators actually got access to the encrypted messages. So does the government have a backdoor signal? Of course they don't, right? It'd be very unlikely that they do.

Possible but not probable. what really is going on here? And you know this because you probably have people do this in your life or have thought about it yourself. There's a mole inside the Oathkeepers, obviously. And they're obviously screen recording or sending screenshots to the feds. And according to the indictment, Oathkeeper specifically recruit former military and law enforcement personnel. So if you were to recruit somebody in law enforcement or the military, and that was your target, it's possible that one of the people,

them would have put themselves out there to be recruited. In other words, I work for the FBI, I formally, or I'm a CIA person, whatever, I'm a spook, you know, in whatever context. I'm a double agent. So I start posting two Oathkeeper's message boards on Facebook, yada, yada, I'm active in a subreddit, wherever they're hanging out. And that person is either flip or they set themselves up to be recruited. You get the idea. So through their lawyers, members of the Oathkeepers facing charges are claiming they were part of a secure. detail hired to protect conservatives like Roger Stone. Now, I'm going to do a little reading here. And again, I don't want this to be political left versus right. This is just about a group of

crazy people. Full stop. These people are nuts. And, you know, there have been many left-wing crazy organizations. You may be too young to remember them, but we had the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground and the BLA. So all these organizations were violent left-organizations. They sought change through violence and overthrowing the government, in fact, was part of the left's agenda in the 60s. These radical groups, which made it into the 70s and 80s, literally had on their agenda, we have to fight the government. That's how crazy they were or inspired if you believe that our government is a tyranny and needs to be stopped. I do not think that. I think there's a pretty great democracy here that's worth protecting. So let me just read you what is in this Essentially, Homeland Season 5 or 6, like this is literally the reboot of Homeland. Beginning and this is from the indictment, from the Department of Justice, beginning in late December 2020, via encrypted and private communication applications, roads and various co-conspirators, coordinated and planned to travel to Washington, D.C. on or around January 6th, 2020,

the date of the certification of the Electoral College vote. Some members of oathkeepers believe that the federal government has been co-opted by a of elites actively trying to strip American citizens of their rights. They explicitly focus on recruiting current and former military law enforcement and first responder personnel. The organization's name alludes to the oath sworn by members of the military and police to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. They coordinated travel across the country to enter Washington, D.C.

This all checks out, right? We all saw this with our own eyes. And we saw them trying to fly home and getting, you know, deplane because they didn't want to have terrorists on planes. Wow, what a radical concept. Equip themselves with a variety of weapons, don combat and tactical gear and were prepared to answer Rhodes' call to take up arms at his direction. I'm reading literally from this indictment. Some co-conspirators also amassed firearms on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., distributed them among QRF, quick reaction force teams. So these are military people who were amassing firearms, putting them outside of Washington, D.C.,

just out the outskirts so they didn't get caught, so they were ready to do quick reaction forces. They were basically making their own seal teams, their own strike team, and plan to use, back to quoting, and plan to use the firearms in support of their plot to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power. Now, let's read some quotes from the indictment regarding the day of the insurrection. Around 2.30 p.m., I'm quoting now. members of the oathkeepers, many of whom were wearing paramilitary clothing and patches with the oathkeepers named logos and signet. Yes, we saw that. Marched in a stack formation called Stack 1 up the east steps of the Capitol to the outside of the Capitol rotunded doors.

At the time, the doors were closed and guarded by Capitol police officers. Stack 1 joined the mob of people, some of whom attacked officers and tried to enter the Capitol. As a side note, I tweeted these videos. Like they literally beat cops within inches of their lives. The cops did not draw their guns, right? I'm not quoting him. I'm just giving you some color commentary. These cops are heroes for not drawing their guns and shooting these people. Because if they had, there would have been dozens of people dead because they had plenty of firearms to fight this fight. And these brave cops literally let themselves be beaten to not have to shoot Americans who were beating them and hitting them with pepper spray and bear spray and all kinds of stuff. So let's continue reading. They yelled, among other things, take their shields and our house.

attackers assaulted officers using pepper spray flagpoles and numerous improvised weapons and projectiles. They also disarmed the officers by stealing their shields and pushing them away from the retundered doors. At 2.38 p.m., the doors were breached, and stack one stormed into the Capitol alongside the mob. During the attack on the Capitol, retunered doors and surrounding facades suffered damage worth thousands of dollars. Another quote from the indictment, while certain Northkeeper members and affiliates outside Washington, D.C., breached the Capitol grounds and building, others remain stationed just outside the city in QRF teams. Again, QRF, quick reaction force. It is a military term from an armed rapid response unit used in developing situations.

Back to quoting, the QRF teams were prepared to rapidly transport firearms and other weapons into Washington, D.C., in support of operations aimed at using force to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power. And we've seen Big Tech not comply with government requests from time to time. Remember in 2016, the court case of the FBI wanted to unlock the San Bernardino's those terrorist iPhones and Apple declined to do that. FBI used a third party, I believe it was an Israeli company. And related, Big Tech is getting called out by the government over the January 6 attack. It's time for another R Crowd deal of the week.

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Let me give you my take on this. Obviously, this was all coordinated online, and they were using Signal. And a lot of the information from BigTack hasn't been given. over yet, but to just make this not political, we need to assess this as Americans, and I'll just, you know, for those of you who care about my position, I think most of the people who stormed the Capitol were caught up in basically mob behavior, group behavior, and they probably did little to no damage. So anytime you bring up what happened at the Capitol in January 6th, there's like, oh, it was like a party, it was like an out-of-control party, some people

say right, other people say insurrection. And we got this big debate over terms. Okay, two things could be true. The majority of people there were probably just caught up in mob behavior. And yes, some of them might have walked between the stanchions, the velvet ropes, and done no damage. And some of them might have done silly things like steal a lectern or, you know, do very little damage. Other ones, you know, were doing serious damage and it was gross. And then obviously there was a lot of criminal behavior, 700 arrests to date. And now this, the insurrection charges basically.

But the second idea that you have to be able to keep in your head is that there were a group of people who had a very dangerous plan who drove across the country, acquired weapons, set up a military operation. And they were willing, like Ashley Babbitt is her name. She died on January 6th. Most of you have seen this video, tragically, and she was a military person. And Secret Service had their guns drawn on her, and were begging her to not reach the capitals, like, third doors. And the rumors are there were politicians that the Secret Server were protecting,

potentially Pence, potentially Pelosi. And they were searching for Pelosi and chanting for Pence and Pelosi's names. This woman was so deranged and had such conviction that she literally took a bullet in her neck, I believe, and died. And when you have people acting in a mob, they can get so fermented with rage that they stopped thinking clearly. And literally, this poor woman, Ashley, jumped through that window and took a bullet and died. With the Secret Service, pointing multiple guns at her. seen the video. That's how crazy this was. And if you're willing to beat up cops and take a bullet, you can be certain that they would have beaten and potentially killed politicians. And we would

be looking at this saying, you know what, this was, you know, more than just a riot. This was more than just the Atta control protest. And what we have to think about is when did this happen and who are these people? This is a terrorist organization, earthkeepers. This is a radical terrorist organization, no different than the weather underground on the left, no different than al-Qaeda, we could debate their abilities. We could debate if Black Lives Matter and the riots we saw during those protests were justified. I don't believe they are. I don't believe any violence is justified. But this is serious, serious, dangerous stuff. And for me, I just look at this and said, well, they had an option here. These individuals could have taken an option to do a peaceful

protest. In other words, the oathkeepers who were coordinating all of this and who were obviously protecting Roger Stone and Roger Stone is besties with Trump. This whole group of people could have said, you know what, we're going to take a peaceful approach here. And we would look at this to a completely different lens, had those people said, we're going to surround the Capitol, we're going to sit down, we're going to lock arms, we're going to handcuff ourselves to each other, and we're not leaving. And we're going to chant and protest and bang drums, just like all the hippie-dippies do

when they're protesting an oil pipeline or they're protesting to save the whales or wrapping themselves around some old growth trees. This is what environmentalists do. By the way, this is what Martin Luther King did. Peaceful protest. If you cannot be peaceful, do not join the protest. Stay home.

That's what Martin Luther King instructed people to do. These people took an opposite approach. Just like the weather underground takes an opposite approach on the left. And this approach is, let's go there, let's seize the building, let's have weapons ready, and let's beat cops and let's go find these people and do physical harm to them.

And that's really what's disturbing about this. And we need to be able to look at this through the lens of what were the options these people had to protest if they really felt passionate about it and what options did they choose? And they chose violence. And that's never acceptable. And it really did, you don't have to even, you could be a Republican and say this is shameful. You could have voted for Trump and say this is shameful. You could be against the Black Lives Matter protests and the violence we've seen.

seen there and still think this is shameful. I think you have to be intellectually honest about this. That's what I tried to do in summarizing the speech for all of you, which is violence is immoral and violent protest is immoral. Okay, in related news, the House Select Committee investigating the attacks on the U.S. Capitol, this is different than the criminal charges, the DOJ is pursuing with the FBI. They issued subpoenas to tech companies that provided inadequate response to their request for information, as I mentioned above. I believe this is these small group of people, people, the oathkeepers, which I think there are 30,000 members, 40,000 members in this group, and who knows how many were there, probably hundreds or not thousands. We'll figure that out

over time. In a statement, the committee said YouTube, meta, Reddit, and Twitter did not provide proper information and records on the spread of misinformation, efforts to overturn the 2020 election, domestic, violent extremism, and foreign influence in the 2020 election. Committee chairman, Representative Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, said in the statement, and quote, two key questions from the Select Committee are how the spread of misinformation of violent extremism contributed to the violent attack on our democracy, what steps, if any, social media companies took to prevent their platforms

from being breeding grounds for radicalizing people to violence? It's disappointing that after months of engagement, we still didn't have the documents and information necessary to answer these basic questions. The Select Committee is working to get answers for the American people and help ensure nothing like January 6 ever happens. Again, we cannot allow our important work to be. delayed any further. So we really don't have enough information here. And we don't know exactly what the platforms didn't give or if the requests from our government and from this committee

are so broad that they're impossible. So if you said, hey, explain to us how people got radicalized online, that seems very general. Now, if you said, hey, here is an oathkeeper's group. And we know these are, it's an oathkeepers group because the DOJ identified these 10 leaders and six of them are in this group and four of them are in this group and we know they're involved in these groups, give us that information. That's a pretty easy request for information. Here, the path to radicalization seems like very broad, right? And then what do they do to prevent it?

I'm not sure people talking about the fact that they believe the election was stolen or there might be voting irregularities. I don't think you can police that because that's a valid discussion. Like, we probably have had the discussion here on this week and start as many times of Are these voting machines hackable? That's a completely valid discussion. So I'm going to give the tech companies a little bit of the benefit of the doubt here because we don't know exactly how broad these are.

But in the statement, the committee reported YouTube had live streams of the attack along with conversations pertaining to the planning of the attack. So those should be public. If there were live streams, they should be publicly available. All you have to do is say, give us everything on this IP address, on this day, January 6th, from this hour to this hour and this geolocation.

Very simple. Meta platforms, that's Facebook, were used to share messages of hate, violence, incitement, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories. We're used to coordinate stop the steel movement.

Stop the steel, as you know, is the far right, or maybe conservative movement, supporting the conspiracy theory that there was massive vote of fraud in the 2020 election. Reddits are the Donald community was the origin for the website,

the Donald. Win, which hosted discussions and plans for the attack. So, you know, it's, it's pretty hard to talk to these platforms, just like it would be very hard to go to Verizon, you know, or to Moleskin, if people were taking notes in their books and say, hey, can we get the notes on how these people were radicalized? It's like, well, we're Verizon or we make, you know, journals.

This is like one step more detailed. So in the example of YouTube, as I explained, they could find the information, but it's kind of hard to find a discussion in people's Gmail or on a message group about this. Twitter, of course, was used to communicate about plans for the attacks. That's no surprise. Everybody coordinates on Twitter and to amplify all these things. So in looking at this, I think the framing by the committee or these Democrats, I think the framing is probably to make tech look like bad guys here. But the truth is, it might just be hard to give them what they're

asking for. It's very easy to give them very specific things. Give us all the activity and DMs between this group of people on these dates. That's easy. Give us every, everybody whose IP addresses and were posting from the capital building, pretty easy. And they did. And that's why 700 people have been arrested or have had charges against them. I think they settled a lot of those before they got to be oathkeepers. In 2022, let Indochino take care of your new wardrobe. With Indochino, you can customize everything, from your suits to your shirts, to your chinos and bomber jackets, and you can do it all at surprisingly affordable prices. I have a number of Indochino suits. I love them. And the process,

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them 15% of his salary for three years. Fascinating. So if you were to make $100,000 a year, that would be $45,000. They paid in for $20,000. I guess they would double their money. So he's basically selling his future income, like an income sharing arrangement, which we've seen before,

AISS like Lambda School does and other nursing schools do now. You can get a free degree or a discounted degree and then pay it back from your salary. The price of the Alex token as of January 13th was 11 cents and the total market cap is unknown since the token is unlisted. He raised 20,000 in about four days. So I think this is fascinating. Rachel, what was the conversation like?

The conversation went extremely well. This actually has to be probably my favorite conversation I've had thus far. I found Alex from Twitter if you're asking everyone, who's the best Gen Z in the NFC community. And he was recommended time and time again. He was recommended quite a few times. Overall, he was just really well-spoken, absolutely knew his stuff, and was able to explain everything to me in really simple details,

which I loved because I think some of this stuff was a little over my head. So I hope everybody enjoys this. Amazing. What a great idea. I, for one, love the idea of young people, maybe not selling in perpetuity their future earnings, but what a clever way to pay for school. or pay for expenses.

I think people want to take the risk of betting on a young person and being involved in their mentorship through voting. What a great experiment. And a person could always just go work at DoorDash and make $60,000 a year and pay down their $20,000 advance pretty quickly. So great job getting this one. And congratulations.

You have now moved out of your parents' basement. Don't say where you live. Don't say where you live, but congratulations. We can hear the horns blaring. so you're not in the boondocks anymore. You're in a major city, and congratulations on a new look and feel for your studio. No more dogs, unfortunately, in my background anymore.

I know everybody absolutely loved seeing the dogs and hearing the dogs bark, but now you get car horns and constructs. Now you're going to get car horns, ambulances, and people, derage people. Yeah, you will get the yellers. We have one local yeller down below. Somebody who spent time in the city where you're now living, noise cancelling headphones, sound machine, air purifier,

you put two or three of these things together and you get a good night's sleep. That's all. Black out curtains, you'll get there. All right. Thank you. Great job, Rachel, and enjoy the OK Boomer section as we have on Friday. Okay, everybody, quick plug of something we like to do to help the founder community. Both of our founder dot university iterations are coming up in February.

We do two types of founder universities. One is a two-day intensive course. This one is for female founders only. women founders only, you'll get lessons on running and optimizing your startup, free legal advice from our friends at Wilson Sincini, candid feed pitchback for me and more. It's February 14th and 15th, and you can apply at intensive.com founder.com university. Apply at intensive.comfounder. Dot, university is our two-day intensive. Again, we're trying to meet more female founders so we can invest in them. And by having a dedicated event just for women, we do other ones for

underrepresented founders and just for everybody. to see a little more change in the ecosystem, and this is how we are able to find and recruit more women to invest in. Then we're going to have our 12-week cohort number two. You may have heard me talk about. We created a 12-week course. It's essentially free. I'll explain that in a moment. We just finished our first founder U cohort, and I've invested in some of the companies. So now we're doing cohort two. The first cohort, we had 100 people start, I think 94 finished or 95 will finish. This time, we're going to try to double it to 200. A cohort one had a company accepted until launch accelerator before even completing the course,

which means we put $100,000 into that company. The deadline to apply is February 14th. It kicks off two weeks later on February 28th. You can apply for the 12-week course, which happens at night. It's twice a week. You can do it if you have a full-time job is course. Dot Founder.University. Course.

Dot Founder University. You can find out more about both programs at founder. dot university and please follow twitter.com slash founder uni and we're really starting to up our social game founder uni is pretty active and for the 12 week course we charge people seven hundred dollars to reserve their spot and if they come to all 12 weeks we're having excused absence for a week or two we just charge them back there seven hundred dollars happy to report i think in this last class 96 out of 100 people completed the course so i think or something like that so we'll charge like five people for burning the spot on the course and not completing it. And so if you complete it,

it's free. It's on me. If not, we charge you. It's just basically a way for us to make sure people don't apply and not show up. Okay, great job to the team at Founder University. Good job. Charlie and Jackie. Thank you so much, Alex, for coming on the show. So I first met Alex MassMash after doing some research on Twitter asking people for the best Gen Z who knows about the NFT space and your name came up time and time again. And similarly to a previous guest we had, Aerefili, Goonery, he's an international founder and he also lives in London. And originally, he's from France, where you are right now, currently, right? And that is awesome. You've done quite a lot of things and I want to dive into a ton of them because I think they are all very relevant.

I went to Art Basel and everybody was talking about NFTs there and I met a bunch of young people interested in the space, so I thought it'd be really fun to have someone on our age talk about it. I actually saw you when you're in the media for raising $20,000 on Ethereum by tokenizing yourself. And the catch was that investors could vote on your life choices. And I thought that was so crazy. But I also saw that you were the co-founder and CEO of the Web 3 Social Network Showtime. I guess let's start off with your social token. So Gen Z is all over a monetizing their lives now more commonly by like vlogging or TikToking, not necessarily by making a token of themselves. You're just doing it in a really different and cool way.

Can you explain to everybody what it means to tokenize yourself, I guess, first? Sure. Thanks for having me, Rachel. So, yeah, I guess a year and a half ago, I was in this bedroom in Paris that I am right now. And COVID just had happened. And like, most of my civics in crypto went down. and I had basically no money to fulfill my dream of being a Gen Z founder, especially in San Francisco, raising money, finding a co-founder, launching a startup. All of those things I felt like were taken away from me because of COVID and my little savings.

And so what I did is I was part of the Ethereum community for maybe six months at that time. And I had a lot of people. And I had learned, so that was in 2019. I had learned about DAWs, NFTs, DFI, DFI, basically two years before this massive wound that we're saying this year. And so I was like, cool. It seems like I could try to do something innovative. And I originally had created like a token for someone to fly me out to a conference a year earlier.

It was kind of crazy like a stranger sent me money because of a tweet. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that was so crazy. Okay, everybody, I want to tell you about one of the original innovators in the no code space. That's Bubble. Bubble empowers anyone to design and launch their own apps, marketplaces or tools, without any coding skills or pricey engineers. Mary Fox is a launch portfolio founder. She's amazing, and she quit her six-figure job after she discovered Bubble to build her professional coaching startup, and that's called Marlowe. Bubble offers a digital editor and cloud hosting platform starting at just $29 a month.

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Bubble is offering you one month free on any of their paid plans, and that ranges from the entry-level $29-a-month plan all the way up to the $529 a month plan, but acts fast because they're only offering this deal for the first 500 redemption. So head to bubble.io slash twist and snag one of those 500 coupons. B-U-B-B-B-B-L-E-D-I-O-S-T-T-E-O-S-T-T-E. And so after that, like, a company called ROL, which is the OG social token company, which is out to me and say, wow, like, you created your own cryptocurrency for, like, sending you to the U.S. That's crazy because we're pitching this to creators every day, and you're doing it yourself way before anyone.

And they were like, why don't you create your own token called Alex and make it more general? And so, you know, I thought about this, but to me it was never necessary until I have no money. It is COVID. And like, there is no other opportunity right now unless I create my own. And so that's when in March 2820, basically the last ever conference before COVID shuts down is luckily in Paris. It's called ECC Paris. And I'm given main stage because, you know, I'm French.

I know the organizers. And like, maybe it was too much for my presence at the time. But I got main stage. And so I was very excited. And I was like, okay, this is now or never. I have to do a splash with social tokens and be the first person to raise a tiny bit of money so I can afford lawyer and visa

and also go to San Francisco, start a company. And so I did. I did to rent viral, which is super cool. We went on like Bart's Tool Sports and I got an article in Forbes. And like, it was very funny to be like a public figure for like a few months going on tons of podcasts and stuff. So anyway, yeah, the initial pitch is $20,000.

against a tiny bit of my future salary. So I think it's 15% of my future salary disbursed in the next three years. So I'm still doing this right now. It's like, I think halfway in at this point. And I was like, yeah, like, helped me get into the US. This is the Alex token and I'll do a ton more of experiments later on. And the other one that kind of got viral was basically a very famous influencer in the Ethereum community is Austin Griffith who's like a famous developer. And he was like, let's do like,

you know, voting based on a token. And why don't you be the example, Alex, like a lightweight example. And he was like, let's do something kind of fun and crazy. And I thought of controlling my life. For one month, you can pick one habit of mine. So this was July 2020. And I let people choose between like eating red meat, no, sorry, being vegan for a month or waking up at six am or running three miles a day, like most of the week, like five times a week. And then, or solely living off cryptocurrencies. Like, I can only spend money in cryptocurrencies. And people picked running three miles.

So it's literally running almost every day, like five times a week, three miles for the entire month of July 2020. That was kind of a crazy month. And I guess they kind of, people chose the most painful thing. Anyway, so that's for the Alex token. And then it helped me get unique insights that I think I'm applying to short time today, my startup. And so I think it was super helpful for me and life-changing, really. I guess that's a good way to hold yourself accountable because having other people to decide that for you.

Is that overall experience, I guess, still going on? Are you still having to spend all your money in crypto and run through miles a day? Or is that project kind of died out? That was just like once for one month. But I think because it kind of went viral and this was like the other use case after the income sharing agreement of $20,000, I think people still like poked at it. I think I was inspired by Mike Muriel, who is the original person who did this with Fiat, with dollars 10 years ago. And now he has his own show on Amazon Prime. But like I just got inspired.

This was a one month gimmick. Nothing more. That is actually crazy. So congratulations. That sounds really, really cool. I actually did listen to it. a podcast that you were on after this. I think it was Pomp's podcast while you were on this whole media run. So everybody else gets there. What is that? Their five minutes of fame and you get your,

it feels like six months of fame. I feel like you were all over the news when that first happened, which is very cool. And you mentioned that they would get part of your salary. So first off, that is a pretty big chunk of your salary, right? 15% is what you said. Do people just have to like trust that you're giving them the accurate salary? Or do you have to like put out your own financial information for people to see because I feel like that is very not intrusive, but I don't know how much I would feel, how comfortable

I would necessarily feel putting information like that out there. So this is the number one question I go on every time I hopped on podcast, etc. And this is so fascinating because this is where, this is why I started showtime. Because it was like, wait, there is no way I have to give out my tax returns.

Also, like full disclosure at the time when I created my token, I had zero jobs. I only had worked at that. who gave me grants. So I was literally living in like the crypto Web3 native bubble before anyone else. Showtime is my first job, basically. It is so funny that essentially I was just getting some tokens. And when I cashed out to Fiat, 15% would go to my shareholders.

And I would just, I'll drop that in crypto. So it was a very conkey message system. Now I have, I'm a CEO. I have a salary. And so it's much easier to disbors my income. and tell them how much I'm making. But it is not on chain. It is not something that I cannot cheat on.

Like, it is a smart contract and I cannot cheat on. This would be the ideal way. And this is when after I did the Alex token, I was like, wait a minute, NFTs are booming. And this is a way to be sure as a shareholder in someone that this is the money they're making and that this is my fair share out of that money they're making. And so this is why NFTs are so fascinating and why I'm starting Showtime because it was like, NFTs solved this problem.

NFTs is a traceable source of income for creators that I could not do myself. And I had to like do this like awkward thing. It's okay for me because it was just $20,000. It was a very tiny amount. And this was filled by 30 people. Most of them I know. And others were just like Twitter fans, I guess. That was a question that was kind of hard.

And so my answer is like a Fiat, this poor thing, thing. but it was not perfect, but NFTs make it way better. So I guess at first I thought this was like an insane idea, but the more and more I think about it, the more I can kind of put this to what Gen Z's already doing. I think I mentioned like TikTok a few minutes ago. So you know how TikTok you get that monetization platform. I kind of feel like it's very similar where the audience is controlling their lives

in sense of the content that performs the best is the stuff that will probably go viral and in turn give them money. So I don't think what you, you did was very far off than what's already happening. And I think yours is a way better way of transparency, like you said, with being able to track and see where everything is coming from and going to. I think that's a very, very interesting place to be. And I've seen a bunch of other people definitely after you. I think you were the first person I saw who did a token with like the dollar sign in their name and their bio. Now you see a ton of people doing that. I think Nick Cho was the

one after your Korean dad is his name on Twitter. But I saw he did it after you. So I can see this catching on, especially in the influencer space and in the content creation space. I saw you mentioned a Web 3 social network, which is what you call your startup. I want to pivot over there because, as you said, that is your first job, being a CEO, which is not very common. That definitely was not my first job out of college.

And in the description, it says a Web 3 social network. What is a Web 3 social network? And how does it differ than the social networking that we're doing currently? For sure. So I guess I call this because, you know, my audience on Twitter is like tech savvy. And so this is what like Web 3 is like this common word to differentiate. I guess a Web 3 social network is a social network where you are financially independent. And I think like social tokens play a part in that because, you know,

know, as you said, like on TikTok and other platforms, like, you are basically like subject to the platform's discretion to, you know, monetize on your behalf. And so it's very futile. It's kind of like a monarchy where you don't own anything. And as weird as it sounds, creating your own token means like you are owning your micro economy in a way. And so to me, a Web Thys social network is a social network that's based on things that you actually own. And what you actually own, you can sell online and you can profit from and actually getting the fair share of the work that you put online. So in a Web3 social network, your profile ID is your Ethereum address, your content that you put out is NFTs, and maybe some sort of rewards to your fans

is social tokens. So the entire social graph that we know is getting replaced by blockchain primitives by Web 3 primitives. But to me, that's extremely exciting because it means that now you are economically independent. You are free to do and monetize your work as you wish without a platform taking 20%. The same way that in real life, you own a pair of shoe. If you sell it to your friend or to a stranger, like you don't have to give like, you know, a private company a massive amount of money. Like online, this is not the case.

everything that you do either is monetized on your behalf or you have to pay massive fees. You cannot exit the system. It's hard to give to people. So you don't have this sense of ownership. And ownership is everything in the world. It's how investors get wealthy. It's how you actually get rights on governing or profiting of anything. And so excited to bring that concept online.

I think NFTs is an awesome way of owning content. So to me, also social media. content in the future will be NFTs. And I guess Showtime is trying to play a little part in spearheading that new movement. So, you know, we don't have social tokens yet at Showtime. But Showtime is starting with NFTs as the content. And so every NFT on Showtime, you can like, comment, share, you can follow creators and follow all their NFTs on all blockchains.

That is the primary value proposition today, but lots of exciting things to come very soon. That's awesome because we're already kind of seeing that, how you said, owning something physical in real life and then also seeing it over on the web. So the first thing that comes to mind is that recent news with Nike. So just imagine like owning a pair of Dordons in real life and then having something digital kind of

almost represents a, not only like a cool asset to have like in the NFT world, but like an authentication portion of it. And even going previous to this, I feel like this is going to get really big because not only have we

grown up necessarily in a digital world, but a lot of things I feel like secretively were already like this. So obviously, you didn't grow up in the States, but there used to be these things called Webkins. And the first thing I think about, when I think about having something digital versus having something in the real world and having them kind of be connected is a Webkins. It was this toy that you had when you were little. You bought a stuffed animal, right? Had a QR code or like a bunch of letters, right, on the tag. you got to upload those letters on the tag and like your stuffed animal would come to life over on the computer. And it's funny because that existed back when I was a kid. I was in elementary school.

And now that we're seeing things like this, it's kind of like it's just going bigger and bigger and bigger. So I definitely see the growth in this space. I think my problem with NFTs initially was seeing like that utility aspect of it. I'm sure a bunch of people come to you and say, okay, like NFTs are really sexy right now, but what will the longevity be of them and what is the actual utility? Can you speak to that? It is true because the original utility of an NFT right now is just that it's beautiful and it's art, just like traditional art. So sure, you may think that if you're not a fan of traditional art, you would not see value in digital art.

But I think even if you're not a fan of art and like you don't buy it just because it's beautiful, at least what's objectively true is that the NFTAs. FFT space created digital art as a viable industry. Before digital artists would just not make money, they had to either do prints or sell to a company, but they could not live off their digital art. And that changed. However, yes, it is true that there is no utility behind besides being beautiful to look at and to showcase it to your friends.

But to me, it's a little adjacent to the attention economy of Web2, because if you have a famous digital artist that's releasing to their fans. And if their fans understand Web3, they can actually sell for a high price, meaning that the more popular you are, the more likelihood of selling your NFT it is. So it is kind of similar to like the advertising model of Web2, where it's like the more impressions, the more valued it is by advertisers. So this is the current system. But it is true that there are a lot of startups currently starting that are about

rewarding people for earning an NFT. because the NFT is sort of a password, basically like, I own this thing, and I can prove it that it is mine, so I can access a bunch of different things. And to me, like the three big things that NFT can access is a discount, an exclusive community, so like a Discord group chat or a telegram group chat that is only for those holders. And if you sell your NFT, a bot will kick you out of that group chat. So it is very exclusive. And the other thing is exclusive content. So maybe like you get a VIP video, a high result. solution photo or accessing a website or something that is very new.

But to me, yeah, it's like the utility of NFTs is as wide as websites. So like, I'm not sure what will be the next killer utility. I think there will be millions. But to me, accessing like, you know, community, content or a discount or a coupon, to me is like probably most of those use cases. Totally, totally. I think the digital art aspect that you put to it, how difficult it was for artists to make money off of their digital art is a good point to make.

I have been seeing that a lot of people have been saying that NFTs right now are just at hype mania and like you're too late to break into the game basically. Like if you buy one now, like you're, it's going to be useless. Like you just, you just put money down the drain. Do you think that like NFTs have a more promising future or do you think right now we're just in absolute mania mode and this is as good as it's going to get? Well, to me, it's funny to say to, to say to, because I feel like the entire planet will use NFTs the same way that everyone on Earth is engaging with social media content.

So right now, I think at most, really at the most, there might be 5 to 10 million people using NFTs. And I still think that it's more than the reality. So it is a mania, like for the tiny amount of people who know how to use Minamask, which is basically no one on Earth. So yeah, there is a micro-microbble. for those people because they're like, oh my God, like if I create an NFT, I can say it for a much higher price than in 10 years when it's mainstream

because I'm one of the few early ones. So those are kind of like the vinyl, vinyl, finial era. It's like the OGs NFTs from like normal Ethereum from like the 2020s. Like it will be a memory in the future. And so maybe that's why they will be so expensive. But yeah, I don't,

shorter maybe like maybe in a month or two crypto will crash because it's quite, cyclical and way more, way too much money have been spent there. But long term, I think if we zoom out, NFTs are in a constant growth trajectory. And this is not ending anytime soon. So yeah, maybe for now, if your NFT has no value, but the fact that it's very early in crypto, I think as time goes on, it will be less and less valuable. And you actually have to have either a very beautiful NFT or a very useful, hence utility

is interesting to think about NFT. So definitely there's maybe a mania for useless NFTs, but I think that's the case for anything in life. If there's no really utility or no one likes it, it won't be valuable. That's very, very true. Like I said before, definitely the utility aspect of NFTs. It's just something I'm really excited to see in the future. And thank you so much for being able to talk so in depth about all of these.

And again, thank you so much for coming along and talking with us, especially when you're on home, visiting your family. That means a lot. Do you have any advice for those young people that are looking to break into the NFT space? I would say try to come up with something that is new and original. I feel like that was my process for the Alex to goodness. Like, okay, I'm pretty sure I'm the first ever person in the world to do this. And because Web3 is so new, it's a blank canvas.

Right now, besides buying and selling, there's almost nothing that was done in an FD space. So try to do something new. and then maybe research a little bit the technology because we're very early. So if you're willing to do it now, probably you should learn about the technology and basically know a few steps ahead of like, okay, like, I probably should not do it on layer one because it's very expensive and slow. So like what are some new kinds of blockchain on top of Ethereum and others that I can do? That will be like more future proof.

Awesome. So be forward looking plus also like do something originally. Awesome. Thank you so much. So I've, I thought for an NFT, so I'm going to have to take it offline. It's going to be steals my idea, but I want to talk to you about it. Thank you so much again for speaking with us. Thank you so much, Rachel. Really excited for Jason to listen to this episode.