Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 234: The Canklehorse Economy

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

We spend most of the episode discussing the new NFT initiative planned for our great state of Kentucky. Pictured: canklehorse NFT Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Well, now it's in progress. Well, now we're in progress. Let me tell y'all what I've been doing. I've been interviewing people for a job to try to look like I've been taking notes and taking the process seriously. But here's my notes. What is that?

Is that a throne? Is that a horse? That's Secretariat as rendered by me. Does he have a quilt on his back? That's just racing silks. man. Does he have a quilt on his back? That's a race in silks. He's got a little more, I gave him a little more cankle than he probably really has. That's a cankeled up horse, man. He don't look like he's ready to break the record at Churchill Downs, does he?

No. Dog. Wait, wait. That's him in retirement. Did you guys see that article going around about how some web company in Louisville is trying to make the equivalent of the Bored Ape, but it's like horses, they're trying to make NFTs.

That that you drew could be an NFT, bro. That put me down, man. That really did. That NFT. Now we got that. All you had to say dad horse yeah this is dad horse i'm selling this for 145 000 if anybody wants it there's only one of them the nexus of non-fungible culture and y'all star culture was enough to i mean i make the joke about walking in oncoming traffic but it crossed my mind because it's the surest sign that things are not getting better i called terrence yesterday and i had i had a meltdown about like just fees in society

i was like yeah man it sucks i didn't let it get a word in edgewise i was just going full bore yeah it was just ranting for 30 minutes is this uh in any relation to the barnacle or the expired license ticket not well i was just doing my tag i was working on my taxes here now i don't believe that one bit sexton i was working on my taxes. I was working on my taxes. Now I don't believe that one bit, Sexton. I was working on my taxes, actually. If you're working on your taxes in January, I'll kiss your ass. Well, I was just taking an inventory of my finances yesterday, more than anything. Trying to get my financial house in order.

And I looked at it, and I have given the city of Lexington almost $3,000 since I've been here. Just in, like, different fees, parking shit, whatever, whatever. What? It's like, how? How? Them motherfuckers saw you coming. They have milked your ass. They've keyed on me, man.

They used to... Man, my goddamn truck was broke down. I literally wouldn't start i couldn't move it for like months and months and months and they just piled on the fucking tickets oh my god you just sitting in your house scared of coronavirus and your trucks being littered with parking tickets every day i'd sit out there somewhere just drinking my coffee and when they'd pull up i'd just wave to them it's the new paint job it's like you know you show up at a at the club and your car is covered in tickets like damn look at his whip it's time

this is the most redneck shit tom i love this i'm so sorry you're you've done this well i i finally figured out the pickup broke down on near uk and they fucking stuck it gosh damn it sat out in the damn uh burlington coke factory parking lot for about two and ten had to come help me jump it wouldn't move my damn control arm went out lost the love of my life i mean i had a really bad start to 2020 like i mean just horrible but ferocious yeah anyway yeah that's i when i finally got it lined out i said because i knew they come check me out right like this guy hops out that that Lex Park bag. I said, I got the damn sticker, bro. Okay, I was just checking. It's like they knew they got me for $30 a day out on fucking Hollywood.

God damn, it's $30 a day? Yeah, but I would subvert them sometimes. When I finally got moving, I could just go park in the Kroger parking lot for about a week at a time. There's so many people in and out of there. They can't tell. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I know. Usually when you hear stories like this, it's people who went up to the hospital because somebody's up there dying.

And they come home. I went about a grand in parking tickets okay nobody know how to park in lexington it's just the fee grabbing this ass city man the way they treat panhandlers here it's just fucking sick it is sick it's like god damn man it's like well you got to penalize a motherfucker for being down on their luck i don't know anyway well i told him to move back here move back home because um you won't pay not one parking ticket not never no you will be not here you will be harassed for your political views online at a court at a fiscal court hearing by the sheriff who promises to lay down his life for you but you will never pay a parking ticket

i will say that bad i'm gonna be honest it ain't that bad a little side eye from the sheriff well healthy i think when i moved to a big city i moved to austin the whole idea of paying for parking was so foreign to me i had my truck towed like three different times because i just couldn't fathom the concept you know growing up in like a rural small town you can park fucking anywhere it's like the idea of paying to put your shit somewhere like yeah yeah it's fucking I don't know I'm just fucking foundered out on fucking getting in a man's pocket over fucking

ain't nobody else on the goddamn street you know what I'm saying it ain't like I'm fucking taking goddamn uh Henry Clay's parking spot at his parking office they reserved for him him last 260 years there's not a parking issue on your street Tom I've never seen it full yeah we gotta do that to keep down on game day traffic so nobody's trying to walk from

my damn house to the football field it's close but not that close you guys want to you want to read this article on the nft um horse racing yeah i i took one look at the headline and just made a let's get really get into it and see how bad it is um the article it's in um biz journals i don't even know what that is um horse racing they started biz journal to put out this article it's a startup this is their own blog they just bought a domain good for them as reported in biz, the paper of record. Horse racing, bourbon, and dot, dot, dot, NFTs? Inside the plan to put Louisville on the map for Web 3.

What's, okay, well, I got one question already. What's Web 3? It's like the new web. It's the new web tanya new web like www they're calling it just web 3 now like web 1.0 would be like the space jam website web 2.0 would be like i guess what we're in now and web 3.0 is when we finally all go to online to the metaverse and like our entire physical corporal social experience is just outsourced to the internet because really if you think about it because mark zuckerberg made a

website so he could have a better chance of having sex in college um web 3 is defined as um it's the idea for a new iteration of the World Wide Web based on the blockchain, which incorporates concepts including decentralization and token-based economics. I love my token-based economics. I have another question, or should I hold them all to the end? No. Go for it. Let's front load the questions.

Give them to me. for it let's let's see yeah why not let's front load the question for me i'll bet what's blockchain okay so the blockchain as i understand it as we as we talked about on our patreon episode from two weeks ago based on the uh the new proprietary Trillbillies cryptocurrency. The blockchain is basically just a record of all the transactions of a specific cryptocurrency. So it's just a really long algorithm, I assume. Just a receipt.

A really, really long receipt, yes. Like a Rite Aid receipt. Yeah, they want you to submit a survey. They give you $2 off pampers and fucking douching kits. Yeah, the cashier circles at the bottom where you have two and a half gas points. Take the survey if you want, like, whatever. Free chicken sandwich. Right.

Yeah, some technologists and journalists have contrasted it with Web 2.0, wherein they say data and content are centralized in a small group of companies, sometimes referred to as big tech. The term was coined in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, and the idea gained interest in 2021 from cryptocurrency enthusiasts. What is Web 2.0? Oh, wow. We've got one of those cloud, word clouds.

Web 2.0 is a word cloud that they use in those, like, economic development seminars. We're like, let's just throw out some ideas. Equity inclusion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Okay. Anyways, that appears to be Web 3. It's based on the blockchain.

What if horses went to the Kentucky Derby as spectators to watch the humans race? Well, now this sounds like a PETA perspective. This sounds like we're getting into a PETA argument, which I can get behind. You know, I'm no apologist for the Kentucky Derby. Fuck them. Oh, I agree. I'd be like Haru Araru, the Japanese racehorse that went 0-116 in his career.

I'd be the poor bastard 99-1 every race. Hell, number 9, I think he's still trying to finish the race. I actually wouldn't even be that. I'd be like the horse that the bugle player rides on. To signal him to the gate. The concept is pretty funny. I mean, their whole idea for revamping the entire web and currency system. I mean, it's like, what if you went to the derby but instead of watching the horses race the horses watched you race so the metaverse is just

going to be like going to a modern art museum but like you know like you go to like 21c or something and like the art's like really kind of shitty but like i hate modern iron i'm sorry oh i love it it's so messy and sexual they like think they're making like profound political points and like if you read in it it's almost always like and this is a rebuke of communism coming from somebody that lived under it. It's like, oh, okay. You're right. I'm just saying the CIA definitely funds modern art. And it's just a hot pink canopy bed behind a red rope.

Yeah, a hot pink canopy bed with a Chinese McDonald's ad laying in the center of it. A bunch of pillows. Stuffed animals. The artist said that living under communism was a horrible time and that moving to the United States opened up a sexual awakening that wasn't available under communism. Just some bullshit. No coming under commie. Okay, what if horses went to the Kentucky Derby as spectators to watch the

humans race? It's a silly notion, sure, but it quickly evolved into a concept that aims to merge the in-person tradition of the Kentucky Derby with the unestablished and largely virtual Web3 world. Party Horses LLC, a new Louisville company, will soon launch a collection of 10,000 non-fungible tokens,

NFTs that will have tangible real-world benefits, such as access to rare bottles of bourbon and exclusive events. I called it. Called it. Our buddy Sarah Miller has that podcast called Didn't Read It, Didn't See It, Didn't Need To about movies. We're going to do the same thing but for articles. Didn't Read It, Didn't Need To.

It's just like the sentence will have tangible real world benefits it's like okay what do you think of as tangible real world benefits ending childhood poverty raising the literacy rate they're here they're just like you'll have some nice don't discount don't discount rare bourbon as a real human immunity. Man, they've done fucked the bourbon game up. It ain't even worth participating in anymore. That's such a crumunch. It is. Man, you ever try to go buy a goddamn bottle of Weller?

Me and Terrence used to go to fucking Rite Aid. Kate Drake. Me and Terrence would go to Rite Aid and get a goddamn handle of Weller for $32, right? And we could drink on that, well, in the day, about two days. But now it lasts about three months. And now

you can't do that. Now it's like $600 for a fucking handle of Weller. It's like, what? What? Yeah, it's not even fun. I feel like Buffalo Traces stayed about the same. I mean, you know, those shelf brands for sure. Shelf brands. It's all part of a larger vision that aims to put Louisville on the map

in the wild west of Web 3. In the wild west of Web 3, a decentralized ecosystem powered by blockchain technology that is projected by its proponents to be the next evolution of the Internet and shift the conversation around NFTs from novelty to utility. Okay, here we get into some. Now we get to meet some characters the derby is like a great moment of gravity for Kentucky said Justin Delaney co-founder and CEO of Party Horses it's a moment in time where everyone kind of looks to Kentucky comes to Louisville and sees what it's all about and for us yeah everyone is fully engaged in the Kentucky... Everybody I know from Louisville hates Derby Day

because it's miserable. They just Airbnb out their house and leave fucking town. Yeah. For us, we felt like if we're going to bring DeFi, I guess that's short for decentralized finance, into tradition and tradition into DeFi. Jesus Christ, dog. It made sense to do it during the Derby when all eyes are on us to show that this can be a place of technology,

to show this could be a place where you can teach an old horse new tricks. So what they're doing here is they're bringing DeFi into tradition and tradition into DeFi. You can see this like at a round of investment, like asking for investment money. It's like what we're doing is we're bringing tradition in DeFi and DeFi into tradition. I'm curious like how this shit gets funded.

You know what I mean? I'll tell you. It's right here. Okay. This is perfect for your didn't read it, don't need to, because the characters that will come up, well, let's just say I can already see the reaction on your face. We've met them before.

We've met them before. You know we've met them before in past episodes. Serial entrepreneurs in an intrepid don't say it don't say it don't say it if a mic is a gun he did it folks he finally hung himself on air well we're without tom just me and tanya now just he went out like that word jumped out his one-story window yeah

late last year delaney founder of minguin it's. Wait, hold up. Wait, the beef jerky? I guess. What the fuck is Mingwin? M-E-N. Minga? No, no, no, Mingwin. It's a... Oh.

It's like a tuxedo. I thought you were going to say this is the air. It's a tuxedo ring. I thought you were going to say it was the air to Mingy Beef Jerky. If there's any justice, if there's any justice in the goddamn world, one day we'll look at the phrase serial entrepreneur the way we look at serial killer, serial, all the bad cereals. Were you going to say something, Tanya? were you gonna say something tanya no but imagine getting to rebrand yourself as a complete failure because all your businesses fail all your ideas are terrible and getting to rebrand as a serial

entrepreneur serial entrepreneur actually does have a negative connotation it actually does suggest that you're shit at business yeah you fucking suck that's why you had to keep redoing it bitch fucking go home retire just for chalk it up okay the the problem is in that world you're like applauded for like failing and then failing again failing over again yeah well they got these platitudes about how you learn the most from failure smartest the people who failed have all the life secrets okay um anyways uh delaney founder of menguin was kicking around a handful of ideas after departing from his role as ceo of buff city soap he used his longtime friend chris come Come on, man. Come on. You're not serious.

You're fucking with us. My man failed his penguin business. He failed his soap business. Everybody needs soap. Come on. He disrupted the soap space. He used his longtime friend, Chris Viedmar, or Viedmar, I don't know,

who was working on his own startup at the time as a sounding board. The duo kept coming back to cryptocurrency and Web3, and Vidmar quickly pulled Isaac Pratz, a senior engineer at Facebook, into the conversation. They all got together for what was supposed to be an hour-long lunch at Drake's in St. Matthews and ended up talking for four hours. I think we all kind of looked at each other like, hey, this is a talented team in our

own regards. Let's put our heads together and see what we've got, Viedmar said. Meanwhile, Delaney was having conversations of his own with Brooke Smith, an active investor in Louisville's startup ecosystem. Uh-oh! Uh-oh!

I should have got the eight foot mic cord here because too much with the three footer yeah you need more footage on that cord brother yeah um brooke smith and zach jenkins yeah yeah um he was having conversations of his own with Brooke Smith, an active investor in Louisville's startup ecosystem, and Zach Jenkins, a local designer and expert on non-fundable tokens. And here the article breaks and it says, whoa, wait, what are NFTs? And then it kind of explains it in a way that doesn't... I mean, did you see...

What does it say? Give me the official explanation. No, I do want to hear the official. It's just images, right? Am I fucking crazy? Did you guys see the clip that was going around this week of Jimmy Fallon explaining to

Paris Hilton? Listen, I love Paris Hilton's bimbo character. Let her live. I support it. I support her as a bimbo taking a turn to something completely fantastical and nonsensical. Jimmy Fallon, however, can eat shit.

Wait, okay. NFTs or non-fungible tokens are cryptographic assets that are stored on a blockchain and cannot be replicated according to Investopedia. Unlike cryptocurrencies, which are fungible, NFTs cannot be traded or exchanged at equivalency. The most commonly found examples of NFTs are digital artwork like Party Horses and CryptoPunk, but the technology has several use cases. CryptoPunk, but the technology has several use cases. Okay, so you are telling me that these people actually think that we believe that there

are digital items that cannot be replicated when we have literally figured out how to print illegal money. How to replicate the U.S. dollar currency. Well, the thinking is, Tanya, on this, that's actually a great analogy. They have a receipt they won't

have a receipt yes that's the thinking on this the thinking is that there is a receipt in the blockchain that proves it's owned by somebody and the thing with all these things can't wait to hack into the blockchain the blockchain listen the blockchain clearly shows that I own this Tobey Maguire interview from the Spider-Man press junket in 2001. Hands off. It's just a fucking scam wrapped in a fucking scam, man. It is a scam. Okay.

For sure. It's certainly that, but it is strangely, like the more we talk about it, it is strangely colonial. Like just obsessed with divvying up property and owning it. Yeah. It's, I think someone even made that comparison on Twitter. I wish I remembered where I saw that, but I saw a kind of like viral tweet going around that like property, private property was the first NFT.

It's like this thing that everybody used commonly. And then someone said, no, that's mine. It's like white. Yeah. Yeah, that is a good comparison actually. The difference, and this is the thing with cryptocurrency too it's like for these things to have value we all have to agree there's two options right we either all agree like collectively with the social contract and constitution and all

these other things like that with the words this note is legal tender for all debts public and private exactly but the but that's one option the second option is if not everybody agrees at a certain point you have to back it up with guns and armies like there's no other i mean and that's what you know private property was it's like not everybody agreed to the enclosure movement so eventually they were like well you're going to or we're going to kill your entire family. You know what I'm saying? Right, yeah. It's like, yeah, sign on the dotted line or else. It's like, yeah, the crypto people have to understand that at a certain point,

they're just going to squash you out because y'all better start using all that fucking crypto wealth to build a paramilitary arm that's greater to or equal than the U.S. military. Otherwise, guess what? They're going to shut you down. I guess the government could start getting into NFTs. We're just absolutely addicted to imperialism. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just cannot.

Mainline it into my arm um okay um that that clip by the way that was going around with jimmy fallon and paris hilton was extremely bizarre and uncanny it was like very surreal it made me very depressed um just because like they're both of them are talking about it in a way that's like they obviously don't know what the fuck this is and they're and they're you know they they've been sort of instructed to i don't know sort of play it up and i don't know people like brooke smith or whatever have gotten in their ears and said like no this is what you need to say this is where the next frontier of uh of investment is because as people have pointed out there are no physical frontiers anymore

we've exhausted all of them and so it's like we have to just start making them up now yeah it's like this is like this is the brink of capitalism because it relies on growth and there's nowhere else to go so we are we have to create some artificial value worth of shit you're exactly right tanya we're down bad boys we're down bad down bad for growth in at the nft the board eight thing is kind of like uh pampered chef or quick star or lula for famous people and influencers i feel like oh yeah it's like leggings yeah come here like come to my tupperware or my pampered chef tupperware party yeah i will say though like obviously that clip of them was bananas.

But have you watched any Jimmy Fallon lately? Every time I watch one of those late night shows, I get so depressed. I'm like, this is so sad. This is what they're like. These people are making so much money and that this is what people think is funny and entertaining. It's sad that Jimmy Fallon actually has a show just fucking just a bumbling stumbling buffoon it's just very i mean a lot of the clips are like that honestly where it's just

very awkward bananas situation this next quote is so fucking hilarious. Brooke owns a lot. Brooke Smith owns a lot of racehorses. And we were like, that would be interesting to put racehorses on the blockchain and allow people to basically buy tokens and horses. Delaney says. We sat down and we were talking about how to do that. And by the end of it, we decided we were going to do an NFT and throw a massive party at the Derby.

If you would have asked him last year, Brooksmith would have told you that he was against investing in cryptocurrency or anything remotely Web3 related. Instead, you should invest in Appalachian communities and out-of-work coal miners. Now, he's the chairman of party horses and his partners with Delaney to purchase other NFTs via a fund called partner horses vault LLC dude this is hilarious when Delaney started talking crypto I was like no

effing way I love you buddy you're amazing but i'm not going to do a crypto project with you smith said but as i started thinking about it and learning about it i realized it is here to stay and it's still really early you know what's the sick thing these guys are gonna make a ton of money and there's going to be so many dumb guys lose so much fucking money to people like this. That's so sad. The fund has purchased about

50 NFTs for roughly $1 million so far, including a $319,000 fedora-wearing CryptoPunk, as well as a Bushido? I don't know. I guess that's another What? They are using the fund to build credibility

In the marketplace but the team has Bigger plans for that digital art collection too One thing that I have said during the Project which is a mantra of mine is Be foolish Smith said That doesn't mean reckless but that means Don't be afraid to look foolish because if you Don't take the risk you're never going to get anywhere.

Oh, I love that they're using the word fool because Christians have such a big to-do over a fool. Man. I mean, the Kentucky Constitution says that fools can't vote i've broken that a number of times myself i'm gonna use that next time i go to the polls i'll say jim ain't you ever read the constitution? You shouldn't be here. In like blue states, like live blue states

the Constitution says, fools don't vote. Yeah, that's right. Oh God. Oh my God. Shit. Fools and felons in Kentucky.

That is so fucking goddamn funny. I mean... No way. No way. Man. Like, what we're talking about here at the end of the day is people investing millions of dollars into a digital... Basically into the cankle horse that Tom drew on a piece of paper,

but like on screen and like, can we put this as our cover art? Please. Yes, please. You know, and like, you see the way it works in their minds because they're like,

no effing way. I'm getting into that, bro. That looks stupid. But then like enough people talk about it and like gin it up you can easily see how these like speculative bubbles arise because it's just like at the end of the day they just they're impelled by market forces and they just have to put their money in places where people say that's beneficial for them and where their money will grow

they're rich people these people live in such a fantastical reality that they can be talked into literally anything literally anything yeah literally anything it's that is the thing about it it's like you know it's as has been the case time and time again you don't have to be too brilliant to amass a fortune but it's like these guys like it's almost like i'm reading this one or two ways either this is like some sort of like scam cooked up by both of them or like you kind of have to give this delaney character little props for like talking somebody like brooke smith into like buying shit like you got to respect the hustle like at least somewhat if that's the case but i don't know man i just if you're gonna spend your money on anything immaterial you should spend it on podcasts let's just call it what it is

that's my take on it well it's like tom said in one of our group chats earlier this week. Like, you probably could. I mean, we couldn't because we've already got the, like, naysayer label. Like, we've been put in the stocks in the public village and, like, had the naysayer sign hung over our necks. So, like, we couldn't do it. had the naysayer sign hung over our necks so we couldn't do it but like one of these guys in one of these like east kentucky economic development non-profit world whatever really probably could go up to pine mountain like take out a large chunk of some mineral rare earth mineral or something like that and then like convince them that this is the next thing

that they have to sort of invest in that will bring them millions and billions of dollars. And that they would do it in the name of helping this area out. Because that's the thing. They all use this. But it is funny. At the beginning of this article, they didn't even take that route. They just basically said,

eh, it's not going to do anything except get you some good bourbon and maybe some vip seats it's like well i don't know man i want to tell y'all something the day i draw the goddamn line because this is the natural progression with that louisville bunch the day i see a goddamn muhammad ali nft is the day that i i do go by the eight-foot mic cord and hang myself live on this program. Oh, I hate. You know we're in Oracle, Tom. You've put that out. You know what's going to happen now.

I'm sure this is what they've got dialed up next. Something like that. Okay. Off to the races. The Party Horses team brought on Louisville artist Robbie Davis to make the generative NFTs. Generative means that instead of designing 10,000 individual horses, Davis created 50 different attributes like various hats, clothes, and other accessories that then get put through

an algorithm to determine each horse's rarity dude this might be the thing this might be the thing that does it i mean i might this might thing be my whole life i've been like when's when is the padded room coming when is the straight jacket and padded i mean because you know like miss the cow in that video up against the wall like when is it happening and this might be it just like like instead of instead of designing 10 000 individual horses created 50 different attributes it's like it's what it is it's like, instead of designing 10,000 individual horses, create 50 different attributes.

It's like, it's what it is. It's like the select your costume screen, or select your character screen on a video game. But they've given that, they've imparted millions of dollars of worth into it. It's completely. But here's the thing. I'll tell you what.

Here's the thing about all this shit that doesn't make sense that this is where it kind of veers off into like scam territory for me like obviously we know that like the story of capitalism is ascribing like artificial value to things but we do understand there is like a finite amount of gold in the earth and and it is desirable to enough people that it like is could generate some value right people want it like where a where is like your demand coming from and b like how do you just describe these like values you know what i mean like how like we spent a million dollars on these invested a million dollars in these nfts but it's like where do you get that figure from is it based on like did you like just poll everybody in

the fucking country and say how much would you give for a fake cartoon horse no because they're not i just don't even think they're interested in i mean obviously we don't i mean the word market is just feels like just rubbish anyway it's just very fantastical but they're not nothing is on a balance anymore because of how far behind we are on minimum wage like nothing makes any sense well yeah i think you're right like the traditional way or the marxist way of understanding value right it's like how much labor was put into it's just it's a kind of like a sophisticated equation between the labor and the amount of fixed and variable capital and all these other

things that are sunk into the thing but like what is actually sunk into this commodity it's like a guy just spent a couple hours on a computer you know picking out 50 different hats and sunglasses to put on a picture of a monkey like i mean like how does that then scale up to tens of thousands of dollars i guess that's where the whole crypto aspect of it comes in right just where they are just assuming that on faith that people will look at it and say nah this is worth 330 000 like yeah i want to see robbie who was the artist robbie day davis robbie davis i want to see robbie davis's billable hours on this to put these things together well he's because you can kind of say like i was talking to my

friend the other day and we not too long ago we stood in line for a goddamn bottle of uh four roses i guess it was like the 25 year or something like to celebrate the opening of their visitor center and i was like man and we and bought this bottle for like $125, and as soon as we walked out the door, we sold it for $2,000 a bottle. And I was like, I could actually kind of get this in a sense because there was people's labor hours poured into making this whiskey over a period of 25 years, right? Like they put shit in the barrels, whatever, whatever.

They tend to all of it whatever and like it feels like even in this era of like sort of like these immaterial sort of get rich scams like you know crypto to some degree which lost like a trillion dollars in assets a couple days ago and even this stuff they're like the shit that people still like go for is like the shit that like takes time to make that is like like carefully poured after and all that kind of stuff and that's where the like this whole disconnect is for me like i could kind of see like i heard of like damien hearst selling like nfts and it's like that's kind of beneath you it feels like even though i think damien hearst sucks but like you can see how like an artist of like that stature you know like could maybe get into this because it's like the shit is like deemed good by enough people that it's like worth it but it's like now it's like i don't know it's just it's just i just i i'm yeah i just keep going back to where is the value derived from?

And it seems like in the case of like Board 8, the value is derived from, well, we got Post Malone to buy two of these. We got DaBaby to buy one. And we got Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon to buy one. So like... It's almost predicated on the idea that it's like an exclusive club.

And if you can get enough cool people in that club you can ascribe a value to it right i mean it's like yeah but did you guys see there was a story going around that like picasso's heirs were selling off like several million dollars worth of nfts of his like unreleased artwork like not not the pieces of art themselves but the nfts which is kind of brilliant in a way because like you can like picasso was so prolific like he did so much bullshit that like you could actually buy a real picasso probably for like not what you think you would pay for a Picasso. You know what I mean? Like, John Pellegrini has several Picassos.

And then I thought, oh damn, man. Pellegrini must be rolling in the cash. And while he is, it's not that. It's just that Picasso also did a bunch of B-tier shit that's just sitting in a closet somewhere that somebody found and you could buy for a couple thousand bucks or something.

See, I didn't even know but that's hilarious that like they're selling like the copies of the b shit i don't know it feels like this is all moving toward even darker shit i mean the metaverse is dark enough but like it's almost like saying what if horses watched humans run it's almost like saying the quiet part out loud like this like obsession with ownership and i mean we're in a never-ending pandemic these fuckers have to be thinking about how they live well in the future while we all continue to yeah expose ourselves for their benefit so just imagine just imagine a digital fucking arena where it's all different your nft horse it's all these rich people in the comfort of their own homes but they are the nft horse on the screen watching humans run or or race or fight or whatever because like they they they own people now it's like you

know it's like derivatives in the housing market it really is just something that only other rich people can afford and then they just swap back and forth with these financial instruments and it gets more money nothing but it means nothing like there's seasoned finance people that cannot explain how the derivatives market work and that's how i feel about the nft and like to some degree the crypto shit i i was talking to terrence about this the other day and i cannot thread this needle but maybe somebody smarter than i out there can thread this needle but i feel like you can draw a straight line from like occupy to like this moment we're in now because like occupy we had all this like sort of energy that was sort of mediated through social media and stuff that like got people out in the streets

that deposed several you know leaders in the middle east and stuff you're talking about the arab spring and all this stuff and out of the ashes of that i felt like is when sort of crypto and stuff started ticking up you know with like like like, like I was telling you, Terrence, like, I feel like, like you can, like the, the, like the anonymous bros and the crypto bros, there's only like three feet of difference between them. And then, so as time goes on, I feel like those of us that were more interested in sort of material reality kind of got into sort of the nascent Bernie movement and,

you know, the, you know the uh you know dsa movement socialist but whatever you want to call all this all this sort of stuff and then the other guys out of occupy kind of split off and became crypto nft guys because like their founding purpose was supposed to be like what they're going to like subvert the u.s dollar or whatever and we're going yeah it subvert the u.s dollar or whatever and we're going yeah it was all centered around wall street right right taking aim at that stuff and now we know it's just like a fucking like cash grab for like you know just like the lamest people alive but it was it was the convergence of two things it was the convergence

of two things that are sort of, or two forces that are endemic to the modern era. The first is the lack of political alternatives and everybody's realization of that and that there's nothing to be achieved in the political material realm. And so it was, it was that. And then it was, as we've established already, the exhaustion of all physical finite resources, frontiers really, in investment and innovation. And those two things collided.

And what it came up with is, yeah, these just completely abstract financial instruments that are just traded among other rich people, but they assure you at every moment that, no, this is good. This is going to be great for people i mean like you see this thing i sent tom a tech a tweet a couple weeks ago that i saw where someone was like yo like um i'm really putting all my money into this nft thing like um you know like i'm living out of a hotel room i've got got nothing left. Like this is my last big chance.

Like, you know, this is going to be the thing that does it for me. Like I'm finally going to make it or whatever. And they really do build this shit to people that are like down on their luck and like really need an out for whatever reason, you know. And so they church it up with all of these sort of idealistic and utopian like trappings you know and and rhetoric and everything and say like no this is the way of the future this is going to be like what we can all do so that we can skirt around the big issue which is obviously capitalism and needing to end it it's like nah let's just um you know i don't know it's

i don't know it's just another way of them like we were tom and i were talking about this weekend like everybody knows like on your deathbed pretty much on everybody's deathbed with the exception of like a few maybe like buddhist monks who have like come to terms with it i feel like most of us on our deathbeds you will probably be bargaining like no no no no it's not my time like i'll do this i'll change this i'll do this i'll live this way i'll do this but all of us know it's coming and that's kind of how we are as a species right now it's like we've just completely destroyed the planet with capitalism so it's like no no we'll do this we'll do that no we're in the bargaining

phase you're right we're in the bargaining phase we know it that the big one is coming whether it's climate or um an epidemiological catastrophe whatever but none of us want to like actually do the thing which would be you know transforming the mode of production to communism the only thing that could save us and then i mean this is just as a practical matter this is evidenced by the fact that you know continuing to juice the blockchain is devastating to the planet to like yeah like these facilities are insane power sucks i didn't even realize right like i heard people say that i'm like well you know, if it's this, this, or that, if it's more or less fine.

But no, this is like weird death cult shit. That's how this links up. I guarantee you the same people in this article, like Brooke Smith and stuff, and we're a few months out from them being like, now we're investing in the blockchain, crypto mining facilities in eastern Kentucky. Like, they're just able to, like, you know,

spread their tentacles all over the various parts of the state that they... Yeah, exactly. It's like, remember when we read that Adam Edelman article in the New York Times about the solar farm? That solar farm is dressed up in this, like, window dressing of Appalachia's economic future, but really it's just to supply energy to crypto fucking uh mining you know because all those facilities are moving from places in the

northeast that they're getting ran out of to places like down here where everybody's just so starving for any sort of economic activity so they say okay we'll hire like 10 out of work coal miners to come check on this facility like twice a day it's just, I mean, it's so sinister that I can't even get a laugh out of it anymore. I know. You're right. It's sinister, and it's also banal, and it's also kind of, it's like tragicomic in a way. It's like, I can't believe this is happening. Like, nobody could have seen that the future would

be this fucking stupid like we all knew it was going to be pretty stupid it's like it is it is in a sense it is like sort of the tech utopian gen x sort of uh liberal archetypes version of alexander the great Great sitting down and crying because he had no more lands to conquer. I feel like the blockchain is sort of the last cash grab of like Grift. I think after this, where does Grift go? You just go back to traditional schemes.

You know what I mean? Check cutting, whatever else. I guarantee you, though, after the 2008 crash, people were probably saying the same thing. Like, oh, that was preposterous. We'll never do anything like that again. Yeah, that's true. And it just keeps getting more and more absurd.

Absurd, yeah, yeah, yeah. Once this one crashes, in 15, 20 years, we'll have something just as equally, if not more so. You're right. I shouldn't say this is the last frontier. I will say this is like the beginning of, like, the grifts from here are just going to get more and more absurd. You know what I'm saying? It's like, just like, this is like the kickoff of, like, just the absurdity and grift era.

Well, yeah. You're right. This is like the kickoff of just the absurdity and grift era. Well, yeah, because one of your friends from college is going to pop up in 20 years and something more ridiculous than this is going to be the thing they're going to try to sell you on, you know? Yeah. Well, yeah, the derivatives thing was the classic example, right?

Again, no frontiers left. It's just like, we'll just bundle these things together and sell them off again it's like junk assets that they know right just like these are these nfts are junk assets but listen to this this is the this is probably the best fucking thing about this this is a phenomenal paragraph um tanya you'll you'll appreciate this, Tanya. They were thinking of the women. They had to get feminist. They were thinking of the women.

Recognizing the lack of women in the NFT and Web3 space, Party Horses also brought on Danish supermodel Helena Christensen, a former... Oh, my God. A supermodel. A former Victorious. A supermodel. A former Victorious. A supermodel. A former Victorious.

They're doing feminism. Bye. Okay. Listen to the job title they gave her. My jaw dropped. I can't handle it. My jaw dropped when I saw this. This is incredible.

Also brought on Danny Supermodel, Helena Christensen, a former Victoria's Secret angel and clothing designer, as head of Empathy and Human Design. Stop it. Stop it. Human Design? Empathy and Human Design.

Just when you thought human resources couldn't get any worse. Don't shove this back down the throat. Oh my god. It hurts. Empathy and human design. Empathy and human design.

I just think about what a million dollars you spend on some cartoon fucking horses could have done for somebody. I just love that supermodels really, are they known for their empathy? How do you even hire for that? Tell us about your empathy, Helena. Oh, wow. Notably, half of the NFT horses will have female traits,

and the other half will have male traits. What's a female trait in a horse? I'll give you two guesses, Tanya. What's female tendencies in horses? What are male tendencies I mean I am absolutely terrified of horse dick if you've ever seen a big horse dick dragging the ground it's fucking terrifying

I can imagine a crypto guy getting like a female horse I'll give him that nah this is female traits trade me guy getting like a female horse. I'll give him that. No, this is female traits. Trade me. Yeah. Does the Newman Claw... It's jewelry. Does the Newman Claw Washington guy get

an NFT? A horse NFT? They should give that dude. Too bad Ken's not around to see this. There are five different tiers of party horses based on rarity. Enfield, paddock, backside, turf club, and trillionaire's row. These motherfuckers cannot even do a scam without making a class system. Trillionaire's row is obviously the rarest, with only 400 to 500 of the horses falling into that

category the infield will have roughly 4300 party horses in addition to the horses themselves the team has created 2000 pre-game nfts based off drinks including lily, champagne, mint, julep, neat, and old-fashioned. Those pregame NFTs, which will launch in the coming weeks, will come with guaranteed access to purchase party horses before the public mint March 15th. Delaney said the first duet. The goddamn public mint. The public mint, bro.

That's when they're minted. that's when they're given value right now they just float in the ether without value but as soon as they're minted in other words as soon as someone clicks a button on a laptop that's what they get I gotta say something I just have this is on my heart to say this. I know that we, I know people out there think, oh, we're a bunch of killjoys and we just, like, get on this program and shit on things every week and, like, we must be joyless and have nothing going on in our lives to try to tear down others constantly. And while all those are fair criticisms, I have to say, I have to say, for the first time maybe on this program, I'm blown away by the cross-section of the banality, the audacity, and just the hopelessness of this.

I'm with you, brother brother i'm absolutely with you i mean this is this is damaging me in a very real way this is this is terrible i joke all the time about things being whatever bad or oh this is the one's gonna put me down man but this is really this is really i'm on the brink man tom i've never seen you try to kill yourself this many times in one episode it's uh yeah same i've not either um i mean because it also i feel like there are also implications for culture here i mean because at the end of the day we're talking do what say it ain't the day, we're talking about art, quote unquote, at the end of the day, right? Like, we look at it, we know it's bad and shitty and stupid as fuck.

But, like, at what point does this start taking over the larger sort of media industry at large? Like, can entire movies be NFTss is that a stupid question well you know what i'm saying like what well i saw people talking about literary nfts and ain't that just a goddamn book i guess yeah just people refer to remember the wu-tang album martin screlly yeah hey there's like a one of one i think they kind of refer to that. That's sort of like the first NFT or one of the first NFTs in music or whatever. I don't know. And what happens like in a hundred years

when shit goes into the public domain? Do you just like lose your ape to the public domain? By that point, there will be no public domain, my friends. They'll have thrown away with that i mean they're already like you you can't draw like mickey mouse like on a sidewalk you know what i mean without getting fucking sued by disney for copyright infringement you know what i'm saying like we're already heading in that direction where everything is the domain of like six corporations in the world, like even images and ideas or whatever.

Delaney said the first 1,000 Party Horses buyers will get a bottle of bourbon, providing that they are over 21, and another 450 NFT holders will be invited to an exclusive Oaks Night event at the Ice House in downtown Louisville. I'll just go ahead and tell you this. If I'm 19 years old and I spend several hundred thousand dollars on a goddamn horse, you're going to skirt liquor laws. I'm getting my goddamn bottle of bourbon, you greasy fuck. Yeah.

The event, planned by Joey Wagner of J. Wagner Groupagner group promises big name artists as it looks to redefine the derby party maybe they'll get travis scott and they'll just be a stampede and they'll fucking everybody there will just sadly i almost feel bad for the people that buy into this though you know what i mean it's i just i don't know i just you know that clip that was going around the guy with like the eyeliner on that had like was reading off a teleprompter that was about like quit stealing people's nfts i own it you know i don't know if he had like the nose ring and like it kind of looks like a like an extra in pirates of caribbean but like with a flat bill on uh-huh and he was just like

reading off this and it was just such a dark thing to me. And it's like he's easy to ridicule because these guys are fucking dumb guys. But, like, I don't know. I don't know. The premise of this NFT is that it generates real-world benefits periodically, Delaney said. Next year for the Derby, the people have this horse. I guess the people who have this horse will get invited to the party again. There will be new

talent and they will get a new ticket distributed to them. That's kind of the plan is to have that long-term vision. We'd like to do it for all kinds of events like F1 Formula One events in Indianapolis or Super Bowl Sunday and stuff like that too there's also a philanthropic component to party horses smith said they are of course there he is they need a tax break all right smith said they are anticipating that's another thing that's wild to me you're right tanya like they it's like their first rodeo they know what the fuck they're doing they they will sit in the meetings and be like, let's help people. But like they say one thing, but like the part of their brains driven by the profit making algorithm is what incentivizes them to actually do the philanthropic thing.

Not because they're good people or they care about people. Yeah, to them, their philanthropic activity is like it's two things one it's like buying them some goodwill for the public like the dumb public and then the other part of it is it's like their tax for like their hedonism you know what i mean like just the small thing they have to be and even then it's like so half-assed like brooke smith wanted to put a piece of fucking driftwood on a mountaintop removal site as like an art installation and it's cocksucker made a fortune and sure it is like as an industry that is a scam too but it is still like fucking over any like opportunity to the degree that any

economic transition can occur like those like people like that are the number one impediment to the ship um yeah you're right um this is hilarious there's also a philanthropic component smith said they are anticipating that the mint itself will generate anywhere between 500 000 and 1 million dollars for non-profits plus added proceeds from royalty fees during trading a considerable percentage of that royalty fee is going to be going to nonprofits for perpetuity because I think it's the right thing to do, Smith said. And that's the end of the article. Wow, end on a high note. Good God almighty. High tall tale.

Good God almighty, guys. Well, if there's one thing we know it's that everybody that's ever attended a sore conference just has intentions on helping the community they're just they're concerned firstly with doing the right thing and secondly with and you know if they slip on a banana peel and make a fortune that's fine too but like not at the cost of doing the right thing do y'all remember the first sore we like split up so we could go to everything and uh i went to uh god what was it um fucking

uh transportation and waste management or something crazy because and everybody in there were lexington contractors i swear to christ every single person in there there was like a couple mayors that are like desperate to figure out where to put the shit in the tail yeah i sit next and then just like 30 contractors i sit next to paul nesbitt at lexington i remember when i was on the city council iceberg i tried to put a grant proposal together to like fix the water tank that supplied the dialysis clinic at the hospital wasn't enough money in it for him to do anything about it though we could easily got that grant so it's it's not that these motherfuckers would do a fucking uh fucking um what do you call it a goddamn landfill project before they'd do something that actually had tangible benefit if it made them more money

i i went to a i went to a breakout session and proposed that we build a canal from eastern kentucky to the atlantic coast in eastern virgin. So that way we could have beachfront property, you know what I mean? You just get on the Kentucky Canal and, you know, you're in Newport News. You're in Virginia Beach in a matter of hours. There we go, baby. That was really floated? I floated that. People were like, oh, you floated it.

Oh, okay. You just wanted to build a big canal. It's actually just a route for hurricanes. This is a long game of people trying to wipe themselves out. Yes, it was floated, and I'm the one that floated it. That's my idea of copyright. A funny thing for us to do if we ever wanted to just get into that sort of like,

you know, you know, fucking Sacha Baron Cohen-esque like, troll-y journalism stuff is just to go to these things

and float the most ridiculous ideas and see and serious people go, yeah, I'd love to. Oh, yeah. Yeah, in a suit, a man in a suit whatever they say we love it well i mean in classic like in the same way that like everything with trump

and everything else was so literal and you can't parody it anymore this is another example it's like 10 years ago if you would have floated this to some to an investor or something like that i mean they would have nodded sagely, but nobody would have taken it seriously. It would have been a joke. It would have been a funny parody of the derivatives market in real estate. But now the parody has become reality, and we're all supposed to just pretend like that's okay.

And if you don't, well, then you're a naysayer and you're not on board, and you're going to be poor and broke in 20 years because you didn't well then you're a naysayer and you're not on board you're gonna be poor and broke in 20 years because you didn't invest in this in the ground floor i really have you know it's like the anti-crypto anti-blockchain people like i know people that are really depressed over the blockchain because they're like i feel like if i don't invest in this shit then i'm gonna be broke and penniless in 20 years. But I know it's a fucking scam.

And that was probably how when the stock market was founded, people thought of it too. You know what I mean? Yeah. So people really think they're going to be broke if they don't get in on the blockchain? That is kind of the... They think that's the future of money? I feel like that's kind of the message they're sending

by having, like, Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton talk about it. It's almost like they're saying, like, this is what cool people do who manage their money wisely. And don't you want to be like that? You know what I mean? Like, don't you want to be in on this, you know, this craze that's going to make you a lot of money? I mean... And and then of course people

will buy into that a lot of that will get wiped out once that bubble collapses in a few years people like brooke smith will be fine because their assets are spread out and diffused over a whole other bunch of investments and other things like they're they'll be fine they'll come out on top um but you know it's just like the derivatives market like regular ass people will suffer the consequences yeah yeah it's like man yeah it's i mean like just questioning the validity of systems it i guess we were talking about yesterday terrence like it is it is actually patently absurd, even the system we have, where like our dignity and retirement and old age

is not predicated on Social Security because it's been perpetually under attack for 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, for time immemorial. But like it's instead predicated on the idea that if we loan a significant portion of our income to rich people for decades in advance and they do right by us and do the right things with that, then we can have a dignified retirement in our last years. That is what our system... I think when you think about stocks and investing like that like that is the frailty of this system that like my dignity in my final years on this planet is is going to be based

on what some cunt at fucking uh jp morgan chase does with my money for 30 or 40 years it's crazy yeah i mean it it i don't know ideology it's a motherfucker it really is crazy because you see like the gears turning in these people's heads like they all have excelled in the game of capitalism because they are so competitive and cutthroat and they know what to do and what to say. But at the same time, they have these completely idealistic notions about it that, I don't know, bring it into contradiction with itself.

I don't know, dude. I'm not like a theorist. I have not brushed up on my marxist theory enough to know like really what to say about this other than to say that it's just patently absurd but um i don't know well i guess you know the question is becomes is it the internet or is it beanie babies you know that's the thing that's the scary calculation is that the gary v's and the rise and grinders of the world could be right not because there's any merit to this stuff but because it just gets mainstream acceptance

well that is a good thing a good comparison because yeah the beanie babies thing collapsed and those were fucking massive um it just feels though now like nothing nothing really collapses or goes away there's no finality to anything like we're gonna have covid forever now and we're gonna have all the weird like norms and stuff that have been created with it even though in 10 years it'll be just like the common cold we're still going to be operating on the covid politics that were created in the years 2020 and 2021 because like nothing ever ends now 9-11 didn't even end ever like the nothing none of the forces that that set into motion never ended so it's like maybe maybe nfts won't collapse maybe it won't go maybe it won't go away um we're just

constantly stuck with the detritus that it just piles up year after year and yes i kind of think um little mouse x is concluded in that um but you know i mean i think that there are other uh examples too of uh of that happening to try this well one thing's for certain when uh catastrophe hits and earthquakes and wars take place in diverse places and the end is nigh. When the world's on fire, one thing will stand. And that, friends, is Cankle Horse. I'm going to put this on eBay today.

See if somebody buys my NFT. That's good shit. 101. That horse. We're going to ride it to victory. We're going to ride it off a crumbling bridge yeah yeah yeah but which by the way a bridge did collapse uh this week outside of pittsburgh the same week that bright that biden said bridges don't need weight restrictions so i mean we're oh my god we really are entering a horror world yeah we're entering

a horror world for tom sexton like we're bridge don't even bridges don't even need weight restrictions anymore i was just i was just getting like over my fear bridges and then here we go this had to happen that's not the time tom on the same day we dropped the horse the party horses on the same day we dropped the horse the party horses that's fucking crazy that i mean honestly though a bridge probably collapses in this country every week yeah you're probably had the interstate collapse in atlanta a few years ago it's like but yeah only the bigger ones get me i mean i worked with people in harland county whose bridge collapsed they just couldn't get to their house for months. They had to park and walk through the water.

Is that the one the Soviets, they appealed to the Soviets to build? That was in West Virginia, wasn't it? I don't know. Yeah, it was. It was West Virginia. Bridges fall all the time. That's what I want to start doing. In eastern Kentuckyucky if things

fall apart i'm going to appeal to the vietnamese or the cubans to come help us out i would love to see brooke smith carry groceries through a creek i'd love to see it. Well, you know, it's also been a sad week. The Mighty Mighty Boss Tones broke up. So it's just devastating news left and right. It's just not. Were they still performing? That's one of those, like when you find out a celebrity died and you're like,

damn, like when you said a few weeks out celebrity died and you're like damn even like when you said a few weeks ago is Meatloaf still with us and then a week later he actually died yeah I know that was wild damn

Oracle we can't say nothing too like we're manifesting hard we don't even know it hopefully no more ska bands break up you know the world needs Oh, we're manifesting hard. We don't even know it. Hopefully no more ska bands break up. You know, the world needs as many ska bands as possible.

Yeah, we can't afford that. We can't afford to lose any more ska bands. Horns are bringing home the savers, honey. Not again. Every band that comes out now has to have a mandatory brass section. Yeah, I agree. Unironically. Okay, if you would like to go invest in the Trillbillies

as a fungible real-world product or whatever, I don't even know what the fuck. Go to patreon.com, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash trailbillyworkersparty. Please give us $5 a month so we can read more about NFTs and speak intelligently about them. Because I can already hear people sending me messages correcting me about how I don't understand it. correcting me about how I don't understand it.

A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones. Right. To bring them back together. That is correct. So anyways, please go support us on Patreon, and we will see you next time over there, I guess, eh? Sounds good. Bye.