Unchained - Amy Wu on Why FTX Is So Excited About Web3 Gaming - Ep.345

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, everyone. Looking to Unchained, you're a no-hype resource for all things Crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto six years ago, and as the senior editor at Forbes, was the first mainstream media reporter

Starting point is 00:00:18 to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the April 26th, 2020 episode of Unchained. This episode of Unchained is brought to you by Beefy Finance, the multi-chain yield optimizer. Beefy is the easiest way to earn more from your crypto. Deposit funds into Beefy's secure vaults to auto-compound yield across 12 blockchains. Got crypto? Choose Beefy.

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Starting point is 00:01:22 Link in the description. Today's guest is Amy Wu, head of FTX Ventures and Gaming Initiatives. Welcome, Amy. Hey, Laura. You went from being a partner at Lights Feed Ventures to heading up M&A and ventures at FTX. Tell us what it is that you do for FDX. So I started at FTCX at the beginning of this year. I actually had the pleasure of meeting Sam, Bagman Freed, our CEO, earlier last year,

Starting point is 00:01:55 when he was raising his first institutional round. And, you know, was just honestly like so compelled by him. vision and everything that FTX is doing that I thought it was a really unique time in the company's life cycle and was thrilled to join. And, you know, similarly to almost everybody at FTCX, I wear multiple hats. You know, I spend a lot of my time playing a leadership role with FTX ventures, but then also our global M&A efforts. And, and then also our gaming business, you know, we've been, you know, I was talking with almost all the largest gaming companies in the world and seeing how we can support them as a technology partner as they're launching into Web3.

Starting point is 00:02:38 And so that's been super exciting as well. And you're really into gaming from what I understand. Talk a little bit about your background and your journey and how you got into both gaming and crypto. Yeah, I've been a gaming investor actually longer than crypto. So first time got into gaming, well, first of all, I was a lifelong gamer, really grew up playing first-person shooters and a lot of other games with my little brother. And then professionally first started covering gaming when I was an investor at Insight. And this was almost like eight, probably eight, nine years ago.

Starting point is 00:03:14 Now, when we were sort of majority shareholders in Jagex Rootscape, and also looked at a number of other large gaming companies at the time from an investor lens. And then subsequently, I also covered gaming, e-sports when I was an executive at Discovery, the global media company. And so then naturally, when I was a partner at LifeSpeed as an investor, I led her gaming investing and had, you know, supported companies like Fortnite, Epic Games, 1047 games, and a number of other studios. And so that's kind of like a long history. And on the crypto side, you know, actually my really good friend Paul from Pantara got me into the space. We were angel investing together back in 2017. And then I led crypto investing for LifeSpeed

Starting point is 00:04:02 from like beginning of last year. And, you know, obviously I spend most of my time covering crypto investing in particularly Web 3 now. So in February, FTX US announced that it is launching a new gaming unit to help gaming studios incorporate NFTs into their games. And at the time you tweeted, at FTX, we offer an end-to-end solution of our core product to launch NFTs and tokens, a custodial wallet with non-custodial integrations, primary and secondary trading, compliance, and licensing and more, all white labeled and in-house. Can you talk about what it is that is that vision of that product that FTCS will be providing to gaming studios? Yeah. So, I think I'm going to try to bring this to life with an example.

Starting point is 00:04:51 So say you're a gaming company and you have your own gaming account, let's say. And a player who signs up for one of your games, actually, the first thing they do is they spin up an account that's owned by the studio. And so the idea is that if the gaming studio wants to launch by three elements, you know, fungible or a non-fungible token, a lot of pieces of that, let's say the, the marketplaces, I would say fairly commoditized, but what is not is the compliance around that. So, you know, as FTCS, like we actually, so we support something like around $16 billion, so transactions, cryptos transactions per day. We're also in over 160 jurisdictions. We spend up north of a billion dollars last year, just acquiring companies to acquire essentially

Starting point is 00:05:43 licensing fiat crypto onramps across the globe in order to facilitate. crypto transactions and a compliant environment. And that is actually kind of the hardest thing for, for, you know, public trade company or a large company to be able to do on their own. And you can imagine, in this case, you're a player and you just, you just grind it in the game and you're collecting an NFT item. Well, potentially, when I collect that item, it actually drops into a white-labeled FTX custodial wallet. And as a player, I have no idea I'm actually working with FTX. At this point, I just think I'm literally just collecting items in the game.

Starting point is 00:06:24 However, that gaming studio now has a compliant environment in which to hold those in-game assets. And then the item can then subsequently be potentially transferred into like an open marketplace in order to trade either within the walls of that gaming studio or like a fully open NFT marketplace. And so there's a lot of different ways to implement those user flows, but this is sort of an illustrative way of, you know, how to compliantly offer WebExter Elements as a gaming studio to your player, but also in a way that doesn't disrupt the natural flows of a player that's just like, you know, use to play games. And the alternative is, you know, you can have them download a non-custodial wallet and then maybe go on FCX or Coinbase and buy.

Starting point is 00:07:13 tokens transfer it to their wallet, then integrate that into your game. The friction is just so much higher in terms of onboarding. And, you know, one of the core pieces that we have is that the majority of players are actually just going to play the game rather than actually interact and trade an in-game item, like on-chain or not. And so therefore, like, you know, those are the players that, you know, a studio should be catering to. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, that'll make sense what you said at the But one thing that I have to admit is, like, at first, I kind of didn't understand the compliance for just like NFTs. What are you talking mainly tokens? Or, like, what are the compliance parts for NFTs?

Starting point is 00:07:54 So it turns out that one of the most regulated parts of operating crypto is this conversion from Fiat to crypto. So if I'm a consumer and I want to actually pay a dollar, I want to put my credit card or debit card, or transfer USDA and convert that into a cryptocurrency or asset of any sort, that is actually one of the highest, most regulated parts of that transaction. And depending on what jurisdiction it is across the world, there's different licensing and banking partners that you need in order to facilitate that part of the transaction. There's also money transfer licensing that you need in order to transfer assets of value.

Starting point is 00:08:39 And that's another regulatory layer on top of that. And so, you know, I think, you know, we like to think at FTX is that we have actually the biggest network of licenses around the globe, U.S. and also outside the U.S. in order to help facilitate this specific, this transaction. And, you know, most of the large gaming companies are actually global. And so this is something where down there at some point, their G.C. and their compliance team are going to be asking, all right, are we allowed to do what you want to actually do in game? and that's where I think we can provide the most value, since as a global crypto exchange, compliant transactions is actually sort of our core value that we provide. So FTCS is also spending $100 million with Lightspeed,

Starting point is 00:09:25 your former firm and Solana, to spur integration of Solana into video games. In general, I'm noticing like this, you know, huge focus on gaming as a category. Why is that? Gaming has really captured a lot of people's, you know, or imagination as one of the biggest potential sources of onboarding mainstream audiences into crypto. Because today, I mean, we're still, you know, we're in sort of like the millions of

Starting point is 00:09:51 people that are holding crypto and we still have another sort of billions of billions of people to go around that. I do think we need fun, entertaining, and also like real use cases in crypto beyond just trade crypto and having a bestore of value. And that's finally coming online this year. And we're really excited about that in ventures. But specifically for gaming, you know, some stats are kind of $200 billion industry revenue industry last year, two to three billion gamers globally. If he includes our mobile platform and then now kind of up and coming like browser platform as a game as well. And so therefore, it's just such a huge number of people to potentially onboard, especially if you consider that gamers have

Starting point is 00:10:35 essentially valued digital assets longer than almost anybody. with buying and trading, grinding for in-game assets. And so originally, you know, people in Web3 and Crypto have thought, well, you know, owning that asset is just the natural next step in terms of that in-game item being, you know, an NFT. However, you know, obviously there's been a huge backlash in the gaming industry. Gamers from particular against this concept of Web3 and NFTs. And so it's been pretty fascinating.

Starting point is 00:11:07 I was recently at GDC largest gaming conference this year. And it's feeling that tug and pull, you know, most gaming companies, obviously at least at the CEO level typically are very excited. Large gaming companies always have like, you know, dozens of experiments that they're working with, right? They have dozens of titles, some of that are huge in others in production. And so therefore, like, you know, most of the large gaming companies that we're talking to have some experiments or innovation sort of brewing in the Web 3 space because, you know,

Starting point is 00:11:43 if this does become a massive sort of trillion-dollar industry, then they don't, in games, they don't want to miss out. And so therefore, like, it's just been an area of intense interests and a lot of activity that a lot of partners, vendors, you know, like ourselves, are spending a lot of time with. So, yeah, I definitely want to talk about that backlash, But first, let's just talk a little bit about this history that gaming has around incorporating like money or objects of value into earning or into play. Because as far as I understand, like before crypto came along, there was this concept of free to play games. And players kind of resented those. I heard you say they often seem to be designed more as pay to win games.

Starting point is 00:12:26 But then that evolved. And then now there's been this new evolution of like play to earn. and yet again, play to earn, I think, you know, initially there was kind of like a lot of promise around it. And then now there's people are kind of aware that there can be problems where many of these people that are playing the games are more like mercenaries, just wanting to earn the token or earn whatever the money is and then, you know, not really interested in the game. So, yeah. So how do you, like, what do you think is the kind of best vision of how games can incorporate blockchain-based tokens or assets. And do you think, like, play to earn is dead,

Starting point is 00:13:06 or do you think it should be revised in some fashion? My pieces around gaming monetization paradigms is that I personally think that Web3 is an evolution of free-to-play gaming rather than in itself a monetization strategy. So if you look at the evolution of of free to play. Essentially, like, gaming 20 years ago, the predominant gaming industry was really like premium games, right? I go to the store, I go to GameStop, I buy, I pay 40 bucks for the latest, you know, PlayStation game. And that is pretty much the end of my monetization for that game as a gamer, right, until they came up with like the sequel. And then I might, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:51 buy that. And so like, free to play is this concept that instead of having this activation, of like $40 or whatever that is, 20 bucks or whatever, in order for me to even start playing the game, it's free to play to begin with. And then essentially the monetization happens in game, right? I can accelerate my progression. I can, in various ways, I can buy certain things. Like, I can buy skins, cosmetic items in the game. And so essentially, it's like, and actually it's the gaming industry, I think, adopting a lot of the mechanisms of consumer internet, which is that you monetize players, depending on the segmentation of players, you're going to have player whales. You're going to have people that will never spend a dollar in your game. However, you can monetize them via ads,

Starting point is 00:14:39 right? And then you'll have people in between. Or you have people that you're not even monetizing ads, however they're adding to the overall player base. And so it is adding to the overall experience of all the players, if it's like a social sort of multiplayer game. And so this concept of segmentation of players and then optimization of the life. time value by segmented players actually just has a given birth to this to this sort of crop of evergreen games much larger from both the player base and also a monetization like total revenue perspective than ever seen before and sort of like all the largest games like in the world now are pretty much free to play whether it's um league of legends riot game and then or like fortnight

Starting point is 00:15:24 or you know genton impact and and others and then within In that, you know, it's a free, like web three or having kind of like tokenized in-game currency or sort of NFT, which is really just like another iterative, another type of like in-game item is just like adding what is an open economy to previously closed economy, almost like, it's like simulations of open economy. Right now is like actually full economy because a player, and just trade that token openly on exchange or trade that NFT openly in exchange. And it adds a level of difficulty for game designers and game economists to balance the various

Starting point is 00:16:11 parts of that game economy because it's now so open. But it also potentially makes, for example, an open world MMO game feels even more real. And it also allows like new innovative ways of gameplay now that it's totally open. And also it helps, it unlocks a few more lovers. For example, we have seen, for example, parallel life, like in others, that even before the game is launched, you know, how do you actually engage and start building the community around that game before it launches? Well, if you launch an NFT collection that people know that they can then utilize and gain later, but it immediately has some amount of, like, value. And then there's, like, ways that they can start interacting with the community, then you're essentially building this. pre-built, like, passionate community that has skin in the game because they've actually bought

Starting point is 00:17:01 something in your game far before your game has actually launched. And it's a way of then basically dropping a active community into your game on day one. Now, there's definitely a backlash. Like, this is part of the backlash where some gamers are like, wow, you're literally selling me these NFTs on this future promise and you're going to deliver me a great gaming product. And are you actually going to ever launch this gaming product? products. When are you launching this? A lot of times the products have made at times like, you know, $50 to $100 million or something like that on, you know, NFT drops and and some of them get distracted because of that. And, you know, they're less focused on making the game and things like

Starting point is 00:17:40 that. And so, you know, I understand why some players are frustrated with, you know, the introduction, but at a peers or conceptual level, it basically just adds so many interesting levers for a game studio or consumer brand, you know, a consumer internet company to play with like player and user reward and retention. And what do you think about play to earn? Do you feel like that model is broken or do you feel like it's not like just there are a lot of questions about it? I feel, you know.

Starting point is 00:18:09 Yeah, I think it's a challenged model. So I think when people say play to earn, what they mean is completely supplementing people's income with, you know, revenue that they're going to make in game. So the reality is that a type of. play to earn has existed in gaming for the last 20 years, right? As in, you know, people in Western markets have paid people in emerging markets to grind for items, for gold, etc. In game since like about 20 years ago, since, you know, the old riskade days or like, you know, World Warcrafts, right? Gold farmers. And there's some people that can earn a living doing that,

Starting point is 00:18:52 but that population of earners have always been dwarfed by the population of actual game players. And so in quote unquote play to earn, which is essentially borrowing that terminology from what was previously a gray market, right? Or black market in games, you could still have absolutely populations of people who are earning a living, playing games, grinding for items, etc. But personally, I always think it's going to be smaller than the actual player population. and buy a very large margin. And so you'll have an industry there potentially, but I think it's going to be somewhat limited. So obviously right now with crypto entering kind of the gaming area,

Starting point is 00:19:36 we are seeing that it's bumping up against some really basic facts about executing transactions in crypto right now, which is that there's a lot more demand for block space than there actually is space. And so fees can be high. And gaming is one of those things where potentially you could have a lot of transactions. So how do you think games can kind of incorporate crypto now in a way that isn't either cost-prohibitive or just something that is completely not fun as a user? Yeah. So lots of different ways incorporate Web3 elements to it.

Starting point is 00:20:12 On the one hand, you can essentially just drop some cosmetic NFTs, which is no different from like a game like launching skins. for a character, which many free-to-play games I have today, but that those skins can actually just be traded outside of the confines of the gaming studio. And that's all that is. And empty skin. And on the other end of the spectrum is what if every single gaming transaction is actually carried out on chain? And I would say that pretty much today, that's like virtually impossible,

Starting point is 00:20:46 like there is no public blockchain that has the throughput. and that can sustain that kind of transaction volume for one of the major games. And that's totally fine. I mean, today games are starting with minting NFTs items on Jane. And then I think promises that in the future, like as public blockchain scale, you know, and L2s are helping with that, like Arbitur on Starkware. And then you already have, for example, some of the alternative L ones like Solana and Polygon are able to,

Starting point is 00:21:19 be a lot cheaper, for example, than running transactions on Ethereum and also a lot more environmental friendly at the moment. There are a lot of different ways that games can incorporate Web3 elements today. You can also, games can launch a token as well. Game Studios, you know, obviously there's legal complexity with that. And so in terms of how do you launch that is one consideration. But then also a practical consideration is that actually it's a lot more easy to control and manage NFTs in your gaming environment, than if you actually tokenize your in-game currency. Because once you do that,

Starting point is 00:21:57 then you are essentially going to be actively balancing that currency. Otherwise, it's disrupting actual gameplay. And so we kind of encourage gaming studios to start with launching NFTs, and then before launching their in-game token. But, you know, we have partnered with, for example, comtes, which is a publicly traded Korean, based gaming company that launched Suminus War, one of the largest mobile MMOs in the world, they've launched C2X on FTCX, and they are embedding the C2X token in 10 games they have in

Starting point is 00:22:34 their pipeline from here to the end of the year. They're also using the C2X token as part of their game's launch pad, which is partnered with Terra blockchain with. And so a lot of utility for that token, and we think that's like a really terrific, way to embed a lot of utility right now and something. And we'll see how it goes, right? It's still like super early in the experiment and in the roadmap. But early on, it's gotten a tremendous amount of user interest. That is so interesting. One thing is that just the way you described it, at least, I think in the U.S., that might be considered a security because there would be kind of like a centralized company that would be responsible for the success of that. But it sounds like

Starting point is 00:23:19 in Korea, that's not how a security is defined? Currently, they structure in a way that they think is compliant. But there's a new administration currently in Korea that's actually very crypto-friendly. And so there's a lot of ongoing conversations around how to stay compliant at all times. And that's the thing. Compliance is like an ever-moving target. And it involves like regular conversations with the right regulators in order to always, you know, stay in locks up. Yeah, yeah, and I think it's confusing because different jurisdictions have different laws.

Starting point is 00:23:53 But, yeah, Doquan was on my show and talked about just how friendly the South Korean president is to crypto. So, you know, at the moment, you know, as we discuss, they're kind of scaling issues when it comes to crypto gaming. But I think there are also other issues. And you've kind of talked about some of them. But are there any other kind of user experience type issues that you feel that gaming needs to improve when it comes to. to adopting NFTs and other blockchain-based assets into games? So I'll give me actually a really tangible example. At GEDC, we also announced that FTX had acquired Storybook Brawl,

Starting point is 00:24:31 which is an auto-battelor card game in sort of like a similar genre as Heartstone. And very beloved, you know, like a lot of people play it at FDX, actually Sam's childhood friends with Matt, the CEO of Storybook Brawl. And that's how we got introduced. And when we announced the announcement, actually, there was quite a lot of, of, you know, public sort of negativity around, oh, now it's sort of a brawl is like selling out. They're, you know, they're going to, they're going to ruin the game by launching NFTs, etc. There's just essentially this immediate visceral reaction by a vocal minority within the gaming community that NFT equals bad, like crypto equals bad, because, you know, there are actually scans and money grabs in the space, but there's also, like, like really good teams and people trying to build something great for players.

Starting point is 00:25:23 I will say that interestingly, I mean, because we like, you know, are part of the same team now, like that the announcement essentially like even though there was a negativity, it virtually did not impact the play, kind of like engagement and player base in the game. In fact, some of the most local people like we know continue to play the game. And so that's and actually like storybook and we got a lot of people saying, hey, love this development, I'm really excited to see the innovations here. I'm not going to post anything publicly because I don't want to get torn down by people on Twitter. And so I come back to the fact that it's like a vocal minority.

Starting point is 00:25:59 And again, we totally understand that the proof is on the crypto and gaming community to actually create fun experiences for gamers. And rather than like not fun experiences for gamers where it's kind of like a token money grab, that responsibility is definitely on the developer side. But, you know, I think, and so I don't want to like make light of people's nativity, but I do think it's still the minority. Actually, we've got a lot of support and a lot of people that are really excited to see, like, you know, where that team is going to take the innovation. Yeah, I've experienced something similar where you have like a large group and then there's one small vocal minority that like cares a lot about one issue and they make so much noise and frankly will attack anyone who doesn't agree with them. so then you end up getting flooded with private messages of people who disagree with them.

Starting point is 00:26:51 We don't want to say it publicly. So that is something to me. It's interesting how that happens. And at the end of the day, these are like developers that are pouring their, you know, heart into making great products. And, you know, it's just hardening for them to see the negativity online. And so, you know, I really hope that over time that we're just going to launch great experiences. And then people will just see that as proof in itself. So in a moment, we'll talk more about this backlash against crypto and FTs by Normies,

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Starting point is 00:30:14 Request your Fiat-on-off-ramp solution now at crossriver.com slash crypto. Back to my conversation with Amy. So I actually want to just kind of give listeners a sense of what this pushback has looked like. We've seen when companies like EA and Team 17 have made announcements about NFT, then they've had to pull back from their plans. There was a company Ubisoft, which definitely faced quite harsh criticism, but they actually didn't reverse course. There was Valve, which owns the online game store, Steam,

Starting point is 00:30:51 and they decided to prohibit blockchain games that use NFTs. And then the head of Microsoft Xbox said that he saw NFTs as exploitative. So, you know, I actually thought before I kind of looked into this deeply that most people were just upset about the environmental impact of crypto is, you know, what they think of it or NFTs, you know, without, because they seem to not be aware of the nuances between different consensus algorithms. But I actually read in this one New York Times article about this backlash that actually some of this stems from kind of some users protesting that video game companies have been trying to nickel and dime them for a long time. And so they view

Starting point is 00:31:34 NFTs is just another manifestation of companies trying to do that. So how much, as you're kind of navigating this world, how much of this do you think is a negative response to crypto or NFTs themselves versus kind of protest that stems from the past behavior of gaming companies? I think it's a mix of all of that. Gamers have historically been very sensitive to any like disruption or vast utilization. of their beloved products. You know, in MMOs since the dawn of time, you know,

Starting point is 00:32:11 when like the game maker has kind of made a pretty big, like, change and introduce, I don't know, like new economies and new markets into some of these games. Like, you get absolute, like, rioting. You know, actually when I was at Insight, we had like a bomb scare from like the Roomscape players because we had done something on the monetization side that people really, really hated.

Starting point is 00:32:32 I mean, players are hyper passionate about, like, you know, people not messing with their product. And so, therefore, it's like, you know, it's not surprised that they're worried about bad players in the crypto world and the money grab and the scans, et cetera. And, you know, I really feel for that. And there are, I think, like, just right ways and wrong ways of implementing, like, some of these, like, web through components. for example, you know, in the true spirit of free to play, I don't think it should cost like a few hundred dollars for somebody to start playing. Like anyone should be able to start playing a game. Like it shouldn't cost like two Eath to buy an in-game and a key. It should be essentially affordable to absolutely everybody.

Starting point is 00:33:17 And maybe there are some rare items though that you're pricing differently. And quite frankly, like even today, you know, as a player, you can grind for a rare item or you can like buy a rare item from like a in-game marketplace, right? I don't think that's crazy at all for like, you know, for the NFT version of that item to have a similar type of like marketplace. And I think following this kind of ethos, like allowing players to be able to grind their way to like get their NFTs, which for example is like what Ubisoft had done with their NFT collection, I think are all like really equitable ways of offering that to players. And so I think like that's one way to potentially start bridging that. but it's actually got to the point where like, you know, game makers and game executives that go out publicly against NFTs and crypto.

Starting point is 00:34:08 This is kind of like the populace view right now. And just like free to play mobile gaming, I am personally pretty bullish that as soon as there's such a pipeline of incredible games being built right now. And it seems unlikely that one or a few or a few of them aren't going to be absolute breakout hits. And when that happens, like, you know, I think people will see, oh, like, actually it's kind of convenient to be able to grind for my items and then be able to openly trade them as well, like for the people who want that. And for people who don't, they can literally keep playing the way that they have always. I find it really interesting because, you know, at F-6 ventures, I do a lot of Web3 investing. So I also, for example, an investor in Hugo Labs, I'm on the board of the A-Coin Dow. And then I look at a lot of sort of NFT projects. And also, like, with my FTX hat, also talked to large consumer brands and internet companies in their kind of exploration of Web3. And the negativity is like way less pronounced. I would say across other parts of consumer, at the intersection of consumer internet and Web3. I think that there's like this particular thread of pretty deep vein of negativity in gaming right now that I think it's like a

Starting point is 00:35:23 moment time, or at least I hope it is. That isn't actually shared by some of the largest common brands in the world that are interested in experimenting with NFTs and Web3 as a means to provide like, you know, rewards and engagement because they see it as like just part of the cultural zeitgeist of what's happening right now. And like I think that's literally what it is. It's less about the technology and more about it capturing the consumer imagination, cultural imagination, celebrity imagination. And that's what makes. this movement cool for a lot of people. So a couple of things.

Starting point is 00:36:00 So the first thing is you said something like about how you don't feel that it should cost two E's to buy one of your in-game assets, which sort of seems like a little bit of a knock against Axi Infinity. And I wondered, you know, generally do you feel, because obviously now we have these different guilds that try to help people with that. Are you sort of like down on that whole model or what's your? I'm not so much down on them as in like it was hugely innovative, right? Like X infinity had two million DAUs.

Starting point is 00:36:33 That is like one, that makes them one of the most like the biggest like gaming like games titles in the world. However, I think that like if you look at like high spending, you know, traditional kind of like Western audience or broader like gaming audience, like there's just like a very like a, if it's going to cost you like $300 dollars in order to start playing a game. You are very much tapping your total addressable market. And that's why the predominant model in gaming today is actually free to play,

Starting point is 00:37:05 rather than like premium games. It depends on how big you want your adjustable market. And in general, how do you think the crypto community or the NFT community or the gaming community, like the heads of these gaming studios that want to incorporate NFTs? How do you think that those people should address this animosity? or try to kind of like, you know, lessen, lessen than backlash that we're seeing from Normies. Yeah, I think because of this kind of backlash, more gaming studios are like, I'm not going to announce anything.

Starting point is 00:37:39 I'm just going to launch a great beta. And then people are going to discover that they can actually own their assets, you know. And I think that's pretty clever. Rather than like what I had mentioned before, which is you can also just launch your entities early and ride that wave, I think more. studios are like, I'm going to launch great product first and show people that I can launch great product and then sort of, you know, announce like the web three components to it. And then other people are using and like, you know, in crypto, we kind of have like a brand marketing issue.

Starting point is 00:38:10 You know, what does NFT really actually even mean? We can just call them like in game items or something like that, right? Like I think that the names and the terminology itself is like causing some like hard burn for a lot of people. And so some studios are getting like very creative around that. And also like, so I would say like a lot of people are worried about nickel and diming. But I would say like, you know, the way that economics work and incentives work with Web3 is that it can be actually a lot more equitable, right? So like, for example, today, if you're an artist and you create an item that generates a billion dollars of revenue for a gaming company because it's like the number one gaming skin or something like that, you're, you're, you're,

Starting point is 00:38:52 are probably going to be paid like $50,000 as an artist for that gaming studio or however amount. Versus like imagine if you actually can get like some sort of royalty or some sort of cut in perpetuity of that of that item being sold. Well, like, you know, a Web3 token is like can actually like create that incentive model and a lot more, a lot more easier than traditional model today. although, I mean, there's obviously like regulatory issues, you know, that you need to work through with that. But, you know, I think that's like super interesting. So now let's talk about mergers and acquisitions since that's obviously a big part of your job. In January, FTX raised $400 million

Starting point is 00:39:35 and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said that most of those funds would go toward M&A. So what's, what's your vision there for deploying those funds? Where are you concentrating and why? Yeah, we're looking at a number of areas on the M&A funds. To date, we haven't done like a large transaction yet, but definitely have the capital and very interested in exploring. And they're across the different areas, right? One is just like we are in so many markets globally and in some of those, some of the biggest crypto markets, we are looking to buy partner sell strategy into expanding our market share in those markets. And then also, you know, we are seeing this opportunity in consumer right now. And so whether it's consumer fintech or consumer internet companies that have tens of millions of users

Starting point is 00:40:29 that have a management team and founders that are super web3 curious, super crypto curious. And we just see a lot of like strategic and vision alignments with what we're also trying to do. That's also a great opportunity for us, you know, whether it's in the U.S. or globally. we also have a product roadmap, you know, with our own sort of core sort of infrastructure software. And as we see opportunities accelerate that roadmap, like we will also like look at, you know, strategic opportunities there as well. You know, we have dozens of conversations, you know, around the globe happening. And, you know, at the highest level, we're looking for sort of vision and philosophical alignment. And at the end day at FTX, you know, we would like to

Starting point is 00:41:14 power as much of the world's crypto transactions as you can. And that's, you know, hopefully going to be across the exchange and FTCS pay and our into marketplace, et cetera, and also kind of white leading our product. And so in that vision, like we're looking for strategic alignment partnerships. So FDX has been pretty affiliated with Solana, which is a newer smart contract blockchain. It's obviously taken off hugely in the last like year and a half or so. And so a number of the partnerships and investment so far that you've made are to push things in the Solana ecosystem or get more people into Solana. And yet, you know, obviously still the Ethereum ecosystem is pretty dominant. I was curious to hear what you think the future of layer one will look like. Do you think

Starting point is 00:42:01 it's going to be multi-chain? Do you think there will be one dominant chain or a few of them? And kind of what do you think is the future for Ethereum? Yeah. So we are, We're cross-chain platform FTCXs. Solana is one of our closest partners. The team is phenomenal. You know, they've built a product that is cheap and also much more scaled today than others out there.

Starting point is 00:42:29 You know, we're also really close with the Ethereum community and, you know, our investors in Arbitrum and Starkware and Layer 2s. But then we're also close with other L-1s like NIR and Polygon, Avalanche, et cetera, and constantly exploring, you know, like new layer one blockchains. Although right now, I mean, when I think about the blockchain ecosystem, a couple of thoughts come up. One is that we're still at a time when right now, like some of the best teams are exploring blockchain technology and are starting to build consumer and enterprise products on chain.

Starting point is 00:43:12 and that is going to drive the next phase of evolution. You know, like mainstream adoption of crypto. It's going to take killer apps built on blockchain, essentially. We saw in the first way, we had Defi summer, and then we have a lot of games being built on chain right now. But I think, you know, we've seen some amount of stalling, I would say, in the DFi space across chain. And so we're also kind of on the lookout for more innovative products in the space.

Starting point is 00:43:42 I would say that probably like the AIDS lending protocol is like less exciting than than like something that is truly innovative. And, you know, if you're doing kind of like complex or derivative yield protocols on chain, well, that's a specific, I mean, I think it's like a more niche like audience that you're going to be addressing large funds though. So like these protocols could be large. But again, like from a total number of adjustable users to smaller. And so we're really looking for innovative use cases.

Starting point is 00:44:12 in crypto, sorry, in mainstream applications that are interested in building on chain and really leveraging the blockchain technology in order to provide faster transactions or more secure or like more, you know, permissionless and like there's different reasons to build on chain, you know, utilize incentivization model of a token, use token gating, et cetera. And there are dozens of layer one block chains right now because it turns out that it's easy to raise money for a layer one and also, you know, the token around a layer one accrued value quickly. I think it's fairly unsustainable. You essentially need the long-term sustainability of any single blockchain ecosystem

Starting point is 00:44:53 relies on having a deep community of strong developers building useful and killer apps on top of that. And so I do think that over time we're going to have a few winners in the layer one space. And of course, like Ethereum is still like the largest ecosystem, you know, in a T-Sy, but then also in D-5. And I think there's room for, you know, a few chains to have dominance. And then you'll have a over time, and we're already seeing it this year, a rich ecosystem of infrastructure and dev tooling on top of these blockchains in order for a developer to, for example, build their product on one ecosystem and then potentially go cross-chain in a safer and faster way. Although, currently cross-chain bridging is one of the most vulnerable parts of crypto. I mean, pretty much all of the major exploits have happened on these cross-chain bridges.

Starting point is 00:45:48 And so we will see, like, you know, as there is innovation in the space, like, you know, ways to fix the problem of rugpools and hacks in this space, which I don't know, I probably argue is probably the single most reason that some of the biggest companies. in the world are feeling a little bit, maybe like not going all in on building on chain yet, although most of them are experimenting. So like, yeah, those are some thoughts. That makes a lot of sense to me because I do agree with you that it feels right now, like there's so many vulnerabilities and they're constantly being exploited and we even have North Korean hackers going after some of these projects. So clearly, yeah, there's a lot of a lot of interest by nefarious actors. One thing that you talked about in there was about mainstream adoption.

Starting point is 00:46:44 And I know that you guys recently sponsored the Coachella Music Festival. Can you talk a little bit about that strategy and what it is that you get out of doing these types of sponsorships? Yeah. Some of my colleague Tristan, who's head of strategy for FTXUS, really led that project for us. He's been working on it for the last year, along with you. you know, other folks on the FTX team. And, you know, we were, we're a sponsor for a partner with Coachella for the next couple of years, including this year.

Starting point is 00:47:16 I was just there. It was Week in one. It was amazing. And what we had was NFT activation where, you know, people on the ground at Coachella grounds can, can actually collect, tied with actually like a unique code on the wristband, a unique, you know, Coachella NFT and some of them are able to get, you know, rare NFTs. And we did that in collaboration with, like, you know, a few awesome artists. And we also had done a drop with, like, Coachella Keys that did really well,

Starting point is 00:47:48 where, you know, people get, like, lifetime membership or tickets to Coachella if they own one of these, like, limited keys. And so really awesome experimentation. And Coachella is one of the largest music festivals in the world. I mean, something like 150,000 to 200,000. thousand people will attend over two weekends. And so if you imagine, something like 80,000 people were at, um, we're at Coachella week one. And we had something like 30,000 people, um, sign up for our NFT, I think like midway through weekend one. And so it was,

Starting point is 00:48:21 I think like one of the largest, um, activations for NFTs in the world, like ever. And it was just awesome to see people with such a positive reaction, um, to it. And they were just having a lot of fun with it. And so we see this as like a really awesome example of a really like mainstream interaction with Web3. And we're really excited to continue working on that with Coachella and with some of our other partners as well. And I also have noticing, you know, along this adoption theme that you've also been doing a lot of deals involving, you know, other countries. Like you have had a number of announcements involving India, such as a partnership with Yield, Gil Games India and with something called Super Team Dow, which is to help foster Salana projects in

Starting point is 00:49:08 India. And you also have a partnership with, I guess it's Aza Finance in Africa, or Aza. I'm not sure. It's headed by Elizabeth Rosiello, who was the first podcast guest ever on Unchained. She's amazing. Oh, my God. You need to have her back, actually, because Elizabeth is amazing. People have requested her back. Yeah, she's so fascinating. But I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you see these opportunities around the globe and how that's affecting your strategy. Yeah. Every market is so different. I mean, some markets I'm spending a lot of time on right now include, you know, certainly India, like you mentioned, Japan, Korea, Indonesia. And then, you know, we have a whole team about what it is about those particular economies that interest

Starting point is 00:49:55 to you? I mean, I'll give Korea as an example. I mean, Korea essentially has one of the deepest crypto penetration sort of in the world, right? It's one of the top three. It's one of our top three markets and it's one of the top three markets for crypto in terms of total volumes traded, like in the world. And also just Korea is interesting. I mean, I'll put my gaming hat back on. consistently Korea is probably five years plus ahead. I'm going to speak for gaming because I know other industries less than from an new tech innovation perspective than almost any other market. There is a deep adoption and acceptance of new technologies.

Starting point is 00:50:38 I'll give an example. Next on one of the gaming studios, they had acquired actually like two Korea exchanges four years ago. And if you look at, if you look at actually Pan Asia, you know, you've got line games, you've got more like lines like Japan, but then you've got other teams that actually have been building blockchains themselves and wallets, et cetera, for years. I mean, this is how far ahead they are, right? And so as a result, it's an extremely important market for us. And it's also a heavily regulated market so that only a few entities actually.

Starting point is 00:51:19 They have banking licenses so that Korean consumers are able to buy crypto from fiat currency. And so, you know, it's important for us to partner with multiple players there. And so we can spend a lot of time. I'm going to create it myself like later in May. Super excited to meet some of our partners. And so that's an example of a market that is like super distinct and has very deep adoption and has a rich ecosystems of partners that we can, you know, work with. But, you know, take that and then you take Indonesia, you take India.

Starting point is 00:51:53 Every market is distinct in itself. It has a distinct, like, history of regulatory, you know, development and a distinct ecosystem of, like, large players in the space that are doing really interesting things in the market. You have, for example, in India, you know, you've got players like Dream 11 that are, you know, experimenting in the space. and they're probably the largest fantasy gaming company in the world. I mean, they have hundreds of millions of users. And so, like, a company like that is just like, you know, I'm super fascinated to see what they end up doing in a space because these are the companies that are going to bring mainstream adoption in crypto.

Starting point is 00:52:39 And many of whom we hope to partner with in these jurisdictions. Yeah, no, it is interesting. I agree with you about how all these different, economies are so different. And yeah, I, you know, my, I have relatives who live in Korea and definitely sometimes they will come to the U.S. and they will make fun of how the U.S. is behind in technology and my mother will get annoyed. So, yes, we, we know that they're advanced over there. So let's switch at topics and talk about ape coin. You're on the ape coin Dow board. How did that come about. So I was introduced to the community, sort of like the board ape community, you know,

Starting point is 00:53:21 some months ago. And I think they were, as like the Dow was coming together as a way for certainly board ape enthusiasts and NFT holders and community members to come and have a way to, like, create awesome projects and launch their own token and sort of kind of innovate and I space and and find collaborations. Like they were kind of thinking through like board members that were pretty deeply entrenched in crypto, but then also had a passion for the community and, and a desire to play essentially like a helping hand in setting up the Dow and helping sort of guide the governance of it. And so, you know, I was asked to join and was super thrilled to join what was, you know,

Starting point is 00:54:11 kind of like one of the most innovative DAOs like in the world and also just um such such a passionate community and so i mean the idea is that you know i'd have a six six month term and that the board members which also include yatsui who's the founder of annie mocha and alexson janean of reddit and also maria from sound ventures and dean from horizon last um that we would come together and basically help set up in infrastructure and kind of really support sort of core to then hand over like the day to day to governance to the next sort of sort of core contributors of the of the Ape Dow, Aikwendo.

Starting point is 00:54:52 And so yeah, we've been pretty hard at work doing that and meeting regularly. It's been super humbling, scary, like exciting, all sorts of emotions. Because when you have such a passionate and vocal community that have their own opinions about, where to take a Dow and a beloved IP like board aides. And you're constantly throwing that needle between doing the right thing and then also trying

Starting point is 00:55:22 to not have, you know, like certain individuals maybe like kind of overpower the conversation with self-interest. You're trying to guide the conversation to the best interests of the general community. And that's ultimately not going to, not everyone's going to agree with the path. But we've been really trying to thread that needle. and obviously have so much more that we can be doing and a lot that we were trying to do already, lots in store. But it's been like a pretty awesome journey.

Starting point is 00:55:51 You know, Yotsam putting himself out there with like a couple of the seeking proposals. And, you know, he's doing like a phenomenal job with that. It's scary when, you know, when people start attacking, you know, you personally. And I had experiences back when I was involved with at Sushi Dow, like Sushi Stop Dow as well. And but you got to just try to not take this person.

Starting point is 00:56:11 and just trying to do the best and can for the community. If you're interested in these issues, I feel like you should read my book because this was kind of the exact dilemma that played out in Ethereum's early years. But you tweeted that the Board of Ype Yacht Club or that you think that Board of Yacht Club

Starting point is 00:56:30 has become the Disney of our generation. Can you talk about what your vision is of where Board Ape Yacht Club is going and then like how you think that vision will blend with this kind of like Dow ownership and, you know, just how hard it is really to have a community kind of execute on a vision like that. Yeah. So then I'm switching over my hat because I'm also an investor with FTX Ventures in Yuga Labs, which is the holding company for Bordea Yacht Club, IP, also Cryptopunks and MiBits. And yeah, I mean, Yuga Labs is headed up by Nicole.

Starting point is 00:57:10 Munez and then her team. And it's, I mean, they're like visionary in terms of the plans that they have in building sort of metaverse game, but then also other games within the metaverse and then other clads, whether it's like in the commerce space to the, to media, to sort of, you know, shows, et cetera that they have like kind of that they're brainstorming and a lot like sort of like in and process of building out. It's an incredibly expansive vision. And they think about companies like a Disney as like North Star in the sense that, you know,

Starting point is 00:57:52 the company has incredibly valuable IP, for example, or a yacht club that then can be essentially activated in so many amazing consumer products, whether that's in the form of merchandise or a movie or a game, etc., And of course, like now the responsibility is to create these amazing consumer experiences. But I think, you know, it's like an incredibly like hardworking and solid team operating at the helm of Yuga, along with the original founders, you know, that are involved in the creative side day to day as they're building towards this. These consumer products are not built overnight, you know, like they're built over years. and that's sort of like the time frame that the team has in terms of building out this brand.

Starting point is 00:58:42 And then like, you know, what do they see as kind of their purview and what do they see as the Dow's purview? Yeah, I mean, the Dow is, so, I mean, Yuga Labs is building out the business for Yuga Labs. And then the Dow is essentially a sort of like a sister community, right, that is really meant for the community around those IP to take charge, take governance, and also, you know, kind of do what they want with the token to just generate, like, IP and projects, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:59:13 I mean, obviously, like, there's partnership in that, but I think it's pretty awesome. Like, you have kind of like the centralized company that owns one set of IP and then their sister community that is able to actively participate as part of the DAO. So I did hear that some people in the ape coin community felt that there wasn't a need for Bordape Yacht Club to have its own coin, which is this ape coin that we have been talking about or ape. What do you have to say to that? Well, I would say that not everyone can afford a $250,000 NFT. And actually, I think it's very democratizing to have a token that people can buy one of for a fraction of the cost and still feel like they're part of the community and they can vote

Starting point is 01:00:04 as part of the community and vote as part of the Dow and be an active participant and speculate if they want to or use it more as like their and then eventually, you know, as there are more projects that come online that utilize the token that they can, you know, participate in that and build in that if they want to. So I think of it as a democratizing move. And then for eight that itself, like, would have to happen for that coin to rise in value. Like, what, what is the, you know, price indicative of? If you ask that of any crypto token, it's like literally nobody in the world can predict, like, on a short and medium term where the price goes. We can't even predict that for FTT, our token. I mean, in general, in terms of a long-term

Starting point is 01:00:51 perspective, it's generally, you know, it's like if you are generating valuable projects and building valuable projects and partnering with projects that embed the tokens that have a lot of uses. Generally, that should be in line with generating value for the token. And I think we have seen that in like some of the more popular tokens like Ethereum or, for example, FTT and Solana and others. And hopefully that will be the Aitcoin as well. And you can see, you know, like I think some of the prices reacting around the projects that will be launched And then obviously there's a lot of responsibility in these projects actually being great experiences and fun experiences for the community and the user base.

Starting point is 01:01:38 And so, but it's not like a one-time thing. It's like over time, there will be dozens and dozens of projects launched. And hopefully like the overtime, there will be like a very valuable body of assets that the token holders can participate in. And that is all correlated with long-term price. And I think there are also maybe questions about whether or not Ape is a security. What do you have to say about that? I think that, you know, we're all kind of in crypto waiting to see what the black and white lines are that defines a token as a security.

Starting point is 01:02:15 And I think that the team that launched the token has done pretty much everything in their power to try to align with like the latest or guidance that they have around it to have not be a token. But again, there's not that much hardline regulations around that. And so they'll adjust as there is. Yeah. And obviously, Gary Gensler has the head of the SEC now might have different views than even predecessors. So in an announcement video, Yuga Lab said the other side, which seems to be this like metaverse that they're launching, will be coming in April. We are recording this on April 20th. Should we be expecting something imminently? Or, you know, kind of what can we expect?

Starting point is 01:03:00 They do have some imminent, I think, activities that people are discussing today. But in terms of like the metaverse game, like what I would say is that a metaverse theme is a multi-year endeavor, right? Like at, like, you know, you guys are going to be launching components of it continuously. But it's not like a huge game is going to launch all like a like a, like a, like, So like really the beauty of an open world type of game, which is what this like, you know, other side vision is, is that experiences and games within other side are going to launch over the next number of years. And that's what's like we're most excited about. All right. So we're a bit more than a quarter of the way into 2022. What new developments or

Starting point is 01:03:50 trends are you watching for the rest of the year? I think that NFT, have done better than we expected. It is an asset class within crypto that has taken a life of its own that's quite separate from the hardcore defy community. And it's being increasingly coming up in conversation with the biggest brands in the world. There's hardly one that's not thinking about it. And so I think we're within, let's say, 12 to 18 months of very, awesome, creative, you know, and not, you know, like experiments and brands like launching

Starting point is 01:04:34 things in the space. And what I'm super excited about is utility, like just PFP projects, less interesting, I think, for everybody now, right? Like utility much more interesting, whether it's like, you know, membership gating, um, access to experiences, et cetera. Like, that's so much more interesting. So, you know, I saw most of my time web three and I will continue to, there's so much activity going on, like across the world and across like new companies building the space to like large large companies building the space. And whereas the beginning of the year, I was sort of like, kind of like regretting how most of the space is actually just picks and shovels plays in the NFT world. Actually, we're like seeing amazing projects launching.

Starting point is 01:05:19 I mean, Moonbirds, obviously, you know, Kevin Rose's project recently and, and others, sort of like in pipeline. And I would say that, you know, at the beginning of the year, I figured, I think we all sort of predicted that it was going to be a bigger for blockchain infrastructure. And that will continue to be like an area of intense, like, of intense interest. Like some of the strongest blockchain developers right now are building in sort of like the picks and shovels infrastructure space. And so we're really excited about that.

Starting point is 01:05:51 although what this space needs is more killer apps. And so like, you know, kind of like, that's what I'm really excited about finding and investing in is like really strong traditional teams for me, particularly in consumer, that are looking to build the next like dating app or social network or, you know, other sort of consumer apps embedding Web3 elements like, token, fungible and non-fundable tokens in really creative ways, like, live streaming shopping. Like, I'm interested in those use cases because I think that's what's really going to bring, like, the next like 100 million to billion users in crypto. And that's what I'm most excited

Starting point is 01:06:37 about still. I don't even know what that means, live streaming shopping and like how would that incorporate NFTs or crypto? So like hypothetically, I mean, obviously live streaming shopping is huge in Asia. I mean, does that literally mean, like, I, I walk around from shop to shop and I live stream myself shopping or I don't get what that means. Okay. So the core use case would be you are logging onto a website and watching an influencer like essentially. It's like basically modern QVC, right? You're watching an influencer like sell items.

Starting point is 01:07:10 Like a lot of a lot of which are like collectibles, right? And it's like as a form of entertainment. Basically it's like imagine if I'm watching YouTube or streaming, but now I can like buy the item as well. And that's basically like live stream shopping. And it's huge in China and some other Asian markets. And there's a couple of companies like Pop Shop Live and others in the U.S. that are that are earlier stage that are trying to make that happen here. And so like imagine if like if one of these platforms can incorporate like a token as a means to essentially like rewards membership, maybe you get free shipping if you launch, if you like own the token that

Starting point is 01:07:50 that the platform has launched. The influencers can sell NFTs as well, like on the platform. They're already selling a lot of collectibles. A lot of them are selling like sneakers and mystery boxes and things like that. So I think it's like, I'm just giving that as one example. Another use case that I just haven't really seen yet that I would love to is the intersection of like Web 3 and dating app. Like, you know, how do people incentivize maybe like friends introducing their friends' dates,

Starting point is 01:08:17 utilizing tokens in some way? that would be super interesting. And so, yeah. But like how would you incorporate that? Maybe you can get rewarded more tokens if you introduce a friend to a date where they go on a third date or something like that. You're incentivizing great date's referrals. I'm just throwing that idea out there. Yeah, or you get like 10 times the amount of tokens if they actually get married.

Starting point is 01:08:45 Oh my God. Yeah, or like 100 times, right? That's priceless. I actually know some people who are extremely good at this and like have, you know, set up multiple couples. So. Yeah. So then it's like, if you get cred, you know, you are a hyper connector of people on dates and high

Starting point is 01:09:05 quality dates. So therefore, maybe you have like a higher score. And so you can, like, collect like you get dropped like more valuable entities or something like that. I don't know. Like there's a lot of ways to potentially get that. I think I had to read about this once, and then people were like, no, this sounds like, it's a terrible idea.

Starting point is 01:09:25 And I'm like, honestly, I'd love to see this in practice. Yeah, I don't know. It's one of those things where, yeah, it depends on the implementation. I could see it going wrong, but, you know, it could also work. Well, this has been super fun. Thank you so much for coming on Unchained. Where can people learn more about you and FTCX? See, so both FTCX and also myself, we're a very very much.

Starting point is 01:09:48 very active on Twitter. So you can find me at Amy Tongwu, my handle on Twitter, and my DMs are open for folks that want to reach out. Perfect. All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks so much, Laura, for having me today. Thanks so much for joining us today. To learn more about Amy, FTX and Gaming, check out the showness for this episode. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Anthony Yun, Daniel Ness, Mark Murdoch, Shishonk, and CLK transcription. Thanks for listening.

Unchained - Amy Wu on Why FTX Is So Excited About Web3 Gaming - Ep.345

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