Episode 14 - Into the Ether

Jaime: 0:00

The hosts of Two Bored Apes are not registered investment advisors. The podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only. Nothing said on it should be construed as investment advice.

Roy: 0:11

On today's episode of Two Bored Apes, we discuss the big ENS token AirDrop, as the news of the week, Jamie gives us a trip report on his time at Ape Fest in New York City. We also discussed the big news regarding Universal Music Group signing kingship, a band made up of four apes, that's the apes themselves, not for humans behind the apes, that's big. We also touched on artblocks. They had a recent curated drop Edifis, which it's been a while since we've had one of those. We get to a ton of Twitter q&a As usual. And then we give an update on our projects. My one eth challenge, Jaime's abstract of the day. And then I break down a lot to do with ZenAcademy and the recent launch. Hope you enjoy

Intro: 0:54

Two Bored Apes, talking NFT's, De-fi, and some random stuff! uh uh uh uh Two Bored Apes, talking NFT's, De-fi, and some random stuff! uh uh uh uh

Jaime: 1:13

Welcome to Episode 14 of Two Bored Apes . I'm your host Jamie and I'm here with my friend and co host Roy. Roy. How are you?

Roy: 1:20

I'm Well Jamie very well, how are you?

Jaime: 1:23

I am well. I'm I'm busy. I'm I've been jet setting. And I'm continuing to jet set. But I am good.

Roy: 1:30

So you just got back from Vegas last night, right?

Jaime: 1:33

I did. And I'm going to Connecticut today for a wedding. And then we're there for like two days. And then we're flying down to New Orleans. And then after that I'm coming back and then I'll actually just finally be a normal person again at my house.

Roy: 1:46

Yeah. Wow. That's a lot of travel in a short, short span. It is how was Vegas?

Jaime: 1:53

Vegas was good it oh, actually. And right before Vegas, of course was. Yeah, we got more travel. Yeah, Vegas was good. I went there for the World Series of Poker main event. And also just to see friends who have not seen in a long time basically since just right after my wedding. In 2019, I went for the World Series. And that was the last time I saw most of them. So it's very cool to see them again. And we watched the UFC on Saturday, which was had some amazing fights and eat some good food. That was all fun. But I did not do well in the main event, which was a bummer. But that's kind of what happens was the time in tournament's right. Mm hm. Literally 85% of the people or something just you don't cash. That's what happens.

Roy: 2:42

Yeah. And then even those that do cash like, unless you get top three, you usually a bit unhappy when you bust.

Jaime: 2:49

Yeah, sort of. I mean, the main event is different. It's like one of the few that you can get pretty far away from the final table and still make a lot of money. Yeah, and the field is also just so full of people that are amateurs and are basically playing like way outside of their bankroll just for this one special tournament that if they just, you know, 5x they're buying or 7x They're buying they're like very, very happy.

Roy: 3:14

That's true. It is a bit of an exception. Yeah,

Jaime: 3:18

I love that event. It is really great.

Roy: 3:21

I so much fun wise. Yeah,

Jaime: 3:24

there's so there's so much good feeling in the air. People are so excited to be playing it and they're by and large, so bad at poker, that if you're good at poker, it's also so theoretically profitable.

Roy: 3:34

How many entrances did it get

Jaime: 3:37

actually haven't checked, I think it was like a little over 4000 after my day, which was the biggest day so far and then they had two more that one E and A one F and one F I think was just yesterday so okay, I check actually I can pull it up very quickly. Let's see here.

Roy: 3:55

pretty respectable numbers especially given COVID Yeah,

Jaime: 3:59

there was talk of it it breaking the all time record but the international travel basically just got lifted one and a half days ago or something and so they added those last two day ones just to give international people a chance but it was like it's still very difficult for them. Yeah, because it basically got lifted and then you had to be at the rail like 18 hours later. Yeah thing.

Roy: 4:22

Let's I mean, I might have been playing if there wasn't an international travel because it would have come for NFT.NYC, Ape Fest and I would have been like, right then I was like, I might as well go play. Yeah, it's true poker. Yeah.

Jaime: 4:33

I'm not as good at navigating pokernews.com as I used to be when I was a regular poker player. Let's see. I think one f is probably the day I want to click live updates. You should you should do something while I'm doing it.

Roy: 4:49

I was just about to say and now on Two Bored Apes as Jamie is browsing poker news.

Jaime: 4:54

Here we are 6650 entrants. So I think that puts it in probably the top or something, but yeah, it's it's not a record Jamie gold's here had more.

Roy: 5:04

Okay. Um, all right. Well, that's a should we should dive into the news of the week.

Jaime: 5:10

Yeah, definitely. Let's get into it. News news of the week. So you, you prepare our outlines for these episodes most of the time. Your News of the Week had three minor stories with question marks after it. And then I mentioned to you hey, what about the actual biggest news of the week? In this space? And you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, that was to us. ENS token? Yeah,

Roy: 5:33

that is big news for everyone in sort of the crypto the eth space. Yeah, it's, you wanna give a rundown of what it is and what happened?

Jaime: 5:43

Sure. So Ens is the etherium naming service, I believe it's called like that. And it basically just, I'm sure most of our listeners have seen this. But people have names. It's almost like a domain name like.com. But instead, it's.eth. And it basically just represents an Aetherium wallet address. But they also do it for other cryptos as well under the same same name. But anyway, so instead of me having to copy and paste my wallet address to you, if I was having you send me something, I could just tell you, it's Jamiek.eth, and then you can just type that in. And it integrates with, basically, any web through website that wants to utilize it, it's very easy for them to just add integration of ens. And most of the big ones do it. And it's, it's that's basically the base level level of it. But you know, there's a lot of stuff that people can sort of layer on top of it. And because it's all sort of composable, the way that the crypto space is kind of meant to be there's there's other stuff that you can do with it through what they do and through what other people will be able to build going forward. And so they basically announced about a week ago or something that they had taken a snapshot, and that they were going to be dropping a governance token to basically every address that contained one of these, one of these .eth addresses. And just for the record, they are NFT's. So you buy the NFT and then you can set it up to also be your thing.

Roy: 7:16

Yeah. And a lot of like, a lot of people in this space have used the service and have these addresses, a lot of people in NFT's and crypto generally got this airdrop of it was sort of prorated depending on how long you had it for and how long it was sort of set up for because it's sort of like registered for one year, three years, five years. 10 years. And yeah, basically, those went into determining how, how many tokens, you got to airdrop I think most people for single wallet address got somewhere between like 100 to 400. I want to say,

Jaime: 7:50

Yeah, that sounds about right. So I think I registered basically all of mine for three years. And I got like 100 in one of my wallets. I have two wallets. And one of them I just happen to have one of the addresses in and I got like 90 something in that one. And then my other one, I got 200 and some 201 I think, um, I think I just had one that was in there that was older. When I had I had a ton in that. But again, they didn't they didn't give you preferential treatment if you had a lot all in the same address, because I do have a lot of ens names in that one.

Roy: 8:22

Yeah. And so the price of the token pretty soon, like once it was released, it sort of stabilized between like the 20 to $30 range, but then it just sort of like quickly and steadily started climbing. And short of a couple of dips, it's been climbing and I think last I checked was around 70 or $80.

Jaime: 8:40

Yeah, it's it's I think it's in the low 70s, maybe high 70s Right now, which I think gave it a fully diluted market cap of about eight and a half billion, which is a lot. That is a lot. I mean, the distribution was 60. Okay, guys, I ended up selling two thirds of mine yesterday, because, you know, it's a governance token. So it's not officially ownership of the project. So I guess, in order for it to be truly valuable in the way that I think a lot of people are valuing it, the DAO would have to basically vote to give people in the DAO ownership of it. And that also I think is something where it starts to be much more legally Gray, and I'm not sure how feasible that really is.

Roy: 9:27

Yeah. Yeah. And just everyone's been talking about it all week. Because, again, for most people 100 to 400 tokens at say $50 each. That's that's a lot of money, five grand,

Jaime: 9:41

and the ens names are so cheap to register unless you're doing a three or four character long one. Like I think I was spending like $45 on most of mine when I bought it to register them for three years.

Roy: 9:55

Yeah, the largest cost came from gas. So if you registered when gas was low, which You know, it hasn't been low for a couple of months. But you know, back then when a lot of us were registering, like you said, he got several years for 3040 50 bucks. And now we just thankfully, luckily, fortunately, our air dropped you most people, five figures, some people, six figures worth of this token. It's just crazy. Yeah, it's amazing. We have one friend who's just obsessed with wallets and ENs tokens, I think he had like, over 100, but he had maybe 20 registered to different wallet addresses. And he got like four and a half 1000 ens. Yeah. Which is stupid.

Jaime: 10:34

Insane. It's also I wanted to mention just it's very old if the project is earlier than crypto punks. So that's a very long established project. And they took no no VC money ever, which is kind of amazing. Oh, that's sort of what allows them to kind of do this sort of thing and get so much of the value, theoretically into the hands of the actual users of the product.

Roy: 10:58

Yeah. Have you looked into the economics of it? Because I have not. All I

Jaime: 11:03

know is that it's a governance token. I mean, when you say token omics Are you also talking about like, how it was distributed? I did not I chart of it.

Roy: 11:12

Yeah. I'd be curious to know how much the, I guess the team has themselves and how long it's vested for it. And that kind of stuff.

Jaime: 11:19

I can't remember all the the things that I can remember that 50% of the tokens are in the treasury. And then I think there's more of the tokens that get vested into the treasury over 40 years, perhaps. And there was like, what, like translators got half a percent. So I guess they have some translators that they've hired, and they got a bunch of tokens. But yeah, I wish I I can probably actually pull it up pretty quickly, let me say.

Roy: 11:51

Yeah, I mean, because obviously, they are going to retain a good amount of them. And when the value goes up, then that's just an excellent way for them to raise capital. At least on paper, eventually, they would have to start selling some off to fund whatever whatever they're wanting to build or do but or the people who want to hire. But yeah, the community seems to really love it. I think perhaps because historically, that similar airdrops have gone on to do very well, a lot of people. And also, because recently there was the border AirDrop, which a lot of people in the energy space sort of immediately sold. And then they saw there went on to the well, people were like, a lot more reluctant to just immediately dump these tokens, right. It

Jaime: 12:37

has has crashed a lot since then. And I think a lot of those people that are going I'm not going to do the same thing. I haven't actually checked at the prices probably possibly below what are they sold? Oh, here we go. I got the pie chart. Finally. I think the most comparable one is probably the uniswap token, right? That's, I think the one that's the most comparable to me. Okay, so the distribution is the community Treasury has 50% 19% goes to the core dist, core contributors. 25% goes to the airdrop, which is basically what we're discussing. And then there's just a bunch of tiny little percentages for launch advisors, future contributors, external contributors, translators, select integrations, key holders and active discord users. All of those are between like point one, two 5% and 1.2. Point 5%. So yeah, cool community Treasury 50 core contributors, 19, AirDrop, 25, and then a small smattering of other stuff.

Roy: 13:38

Yeah, seems, seems well thought out. And like it's gonna do well. I'll continue to do Yeah. Yeah.

Jaime: 13:48

And it's I also actually saw, yeah, I saw a tweet today that they crossed over, I believe it was 50% have been claimed, and only 18% of those claims have actually been sold. So 72% are still holding 100% of what they Yeah. Which is pretty impressive. Because, you know, definitely like in the stock market and stuff when you see spin offs and stuff like this, which is largely, I would say an equivalent to this, just in terms of market dynamics. And the way it's sort of free. They just get sold by tons of people immediately. Yeah. Same thing, like you were saying happen with the bottom.

Roy: 14:27

Yeah. Have you claimed iOS?

Jaime: 14:30

I claimed mine on my main wallet, which was the 200. And then my vault has like 90, so I claimed the 200 and then sold them like a day later, once the price was hitting like 89 Because again, I have trouble figuring out how, like I just think in general, a lot of these governance tokens people are confusing them with basically just straight up equity and ownership, which I think they're not even though they share some characteristics and power possibly in a future where the laws are more friendly to all this interesting stuff, they could basically be turned into ownership. I think right now they're not. And so it's it's maybe not as valuable as people think. But also, that doesn't really matter so much in this space. You know, a lot of people on Twitter have been like comparing it to Doge. They're like, Well, yeah, you think maybe it's worth a lot. But if Doge is worth 30 billion, of course, it's worth more it's like, yeah, but if you compare everything to Doge, you know, everything in the whole world is a buy as long as value.

Roy: 15:33

Yeah, pretty much. How about that GM meme token?

Jaime: 15:37

Yeah, that's that's been catching on like crazy. And it seemed obvious to me that it would Yeah, but I just I can't I can't bring myself to buy that kind of stuff. It seemed obvious to me. I'm on the sidelines, watching it to rocket. Yeah, I everyone on Twitter talking about it.

Roy: 15:52

Yeah, I finally bought in today, just because, again, it seemed obvious to me that it's gonna do well, and I was sick of, again, watching everyone talk about FOMO, you got the FOMO. I got the firmer, but also like I literally woke up. I sent out this tweet about our Twitter q&a segment asking for questions. And then the immaterium like GM, and I'm like, I'm, I'm literally saying GM every single day. I should just buy the freakin token. And yeah, have some sort of interest. So yeah, it's less. I mean, it is Pharma. But it's not from the sense of, I want to buy in, because I think it's gonna 10x or 100x. It's from the perspective and because I want to make the money. It's from the perspective of the emotional agony, I would feel if it did 10 or 100x. And then I, like had all these thoughts and knew about it, quote, unquote, early and was just like, nah. So

Jaime: 16:45

yeah, like, because you connect with the meme of it. It's exactly one that you are less wanting to miss out on. Yeah. Whereas some of the other ones, you just go? Well, it's just it's not for me.

Roy: 16:56

It's also a case of like, I first saw about it, I think, like 30 hours ago, or something it launched maybe like, what 40

Jaime: 17:04

You're about to say three years ago?

Roy: 17:07

No, no, no. Yeah, like, the start of a why

Jaime: 17:10

they're 30.

Roy: 17:14

But because last couple of days have been so insane. Like with my launch and everything. It was just like, I kept seeing it. I was like, I look into that, oh, I should buy it, but I'm just not gonna buy right now. And the prices kept going up. And then I was like, maybe I'll wait for a dip. And then I just pull the trigger, like, after? Yeah.

Jaime: 17:30

Yeah. All right. That covers our news of the week though. The ens token, right. Yeah. Oh, let's talk about it just to touch more. There's another thing that they have, what is it called delegates. So because it's a governance token, you know, it's about voting for proposals and steering the project. And so they're having basically delegates where you can let them vote on your behalf. And of course, you can also just have your you can make yourself a delegate and then vote your own. But that's sort of an interesting thing. And people are sort of just explaining what they think about the project and why they think they'd be a good fit. The guy I picked for to delegate, for me was, I think he basically was the coder of the very first implementation of it in 2017. So he seemed like a good early proponent of of the principles of it. Yeah, but there's there was a there was a bunch of them. Yeah. Coinbase is a big one.

Roy: 18:31

Yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll do mentioned that it's he got listed on Coinbase. And by that, well, I don't know if Coinbase but definitely by Nance and no yeah by Nance, but not Coinbase. So yeah, by Nance and I think FTX and COO coin and other exchanges very, very quickly in terms of how

Jaime: 18:50

often a Bitcoin was.

Roy: 18:52

Yeah, but I guess because the project is establishing has been around for a while and had was gaining so much traction by Nance just says that, basically, if there's a coin that's tons of people want to trade, we will add it and then you know, they added Sheba really, really quickly, I think when it was when it started taking off. And yeah, I saw someone a funny comment someone made about how these exchanges were adding this coin, but if you wanted to withdraw your eth, you have to put your full ether address and you couldn't use an ens. Yeah. Hopefully they change that soon.

Jaime: 19:27

Right. Yeah, I don't I don't see why any places wouldn't integrate with a dot F.

Roy: 19:32

Yeah, it just takes like the I mean, I guess the actual Aetherium solidity code doesn't work with it. So you'd have to just convert the dot F to the ether address, but that takes like, probably one line of code.

Jaime: 19:46

Yeah. And they have a st they have that line of code written for you. Yeah, they just go here, implement this and you're done.

Roy: 19:53

You know. Although, as someone who recently launched a project, you is terrifying to add any line of card just because you're uploading it to the Ethereum blockchain, it's there forever, if there's an issue, he can't take it down. It's immutable. You can't change it. And so I understand these massive companies like being slow to change, if it's significant, but this isn't significant. This was just sort of a tangent. But yeah, I It's terrifying. Like any sort of any, any change, really, when it comes to smart contracts?

Jaime: 20:31

Yeah, I think I think going forward, bug bounties are gonna have to just be such a big thing in this space, that are really implemented and rewarded very highly, in order to prevent Blackhat hackers from just making tons of money and losing confidence across the market, from all the participants in various protocols that have tiny exploits that get found.

Roy: 20:54

I think they are already quite significant. Like, yeah, they

Jaime: 20:57

are and I think they're gonna have to keep getting bigger as more and more money flows into the space. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like, it's just it's not going to be practical to keep the say, we'll give you a million dollars. It's like you're managing $38 billion. Yeah, you're gonna give me 1 million if I find something I can drain all of it. Yeah, exactly. It seems it doesn't sound fair.

Roy: 21:17

Yeah. There's, yeah. Um,

Jaime: 21:21

and probably 38 billion. That's like, I mean, that's. Yeah, there's gonna be much, much bigger protocols that have potential weaknesses that yeah, we're gonna want to find out ahead of time.

Roy: 21:32

Yeah, absolutely. trillion dollar protocols. Probably someday.

Jaime: 21:35

Yeah. All right. That's That's it news.

Roy: 21:38

News of the Week News.

Jaime: 21:43

Club. Okay, so what what how do we want to do this? Right, there's a lot, right, cuz I was just at a fest. So that's yeah, I

Roy: 21:52

want to hear about a fest. Like, tell us what it was about, like what you express tell us.

Jaime: 21:58

Okay, so my plan going into Ape Fest was to do the yacht party, and then the merch pop up. That was the next day, because my schedule was tight, and I had to fly out to the World Series of Poker like immediately after, I was not going to get to go to the warehouse party, I was not going to be able to even try for the charity dinner. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So I did go for that. And as I think we heard in the last episode, you heard about me waiting in the line and I did get my wristband and then I showed up later with my wristband to get my real wristband. So basically, we did like four and a half hours of waiting in lines, and then I got to go to the party. And I got to tell you, number one thing, there's a lot of great dancers in the Bored Ape Yatch Club. I was watching the dance floor I was participating a little bit but more so watching and there's a lot of people that are fantastic dancers the the DJ was James Murphy of LCD sound system and he was phenomenal. That was excellent. And the views of the city were awesome. It was it was a good time.

Roy: 23:07

The audit itself was I saw you post something about it like the largest yacht in North America or something like that.

Jaime: 23:15

I forgot exactly what the quote said but I I can probably pull it up relatively quickly. But it was basically a cruise ship a smallish cruise ship. Let me see Yeah,

Roy: 23:30

because when I think of 1000 people and yacht it just it does not really compute like yachts in my mind have kind of like a bunch of rooms but the rooms are still like you know for 30 or 50 people not hundreds of rooms that's crucial to me

Jaime: 23:49

keep talking I'm searching for

Roy: 23:51

Alright, so I mean I saw some photos and videos from inside of and yeah, like it looked like those this is sort of like centralized area with the dance floor and then these these levels with like balconies that look overlooked and tons and tons of people were able to fit Yeah, there was

Jaime: 24:07

there was basically three storeys and then the roof deck up top for for a fourth. And basically each one the bottom floor had the dance floor. And then all the three levels had a bar and it was basically yeah, like a big oval with just chairs and tables and places to hang out. And then you know, again on the bottom was the dance floor and all the other ones were just basically an empty space where you can look down at the dance floor. And there was like fucking sweet dance battles and there was Limbo going on. But I have figured out where I can go to find that thing

Roy: 24:44

that I wrote about battle details. You

Jaime: 24:48

okay, here we go. The Majesty which Cornucopia Korn you copia Majesty was the name of the ship. It's the largest luxury party yacht in the Northeast 30,000 square feet Wow. 95 dining rooms an atrium with a glass enclosed elevator observation deck and can accommodate up to 1200 guests.

Roy: 25:10

Yeah, that, that sounds awesome. I mean,

Jaime: 25:14

yeah, it was, you know, ultimately though it was like a bunch of strangers and alcohol and dancing, which are mostly not things that I'm into. But I think I made the best of it anyway. Nice. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So and then the other thing I wanted to do was to go to the merch pop up the next day. And I woke up. And again, there was an enormous line. And then I heard people tweeting that they had been in the line for literally over five hours. And I was like, I don't I can't justify it. I'm sorry. I have seen I had seen the merch, and there was some of it that I definitely wanted, but none of it that I wanted. Six hours waiting in line worth. So I ended up canceling that plan, which is kind of a bummer to go to eight fast and NFT NYC for like two and a half days and only only actually do one thing, but that's alright.

Roy: 26:10

Yeah. It's, um, it sounds like tons of people had a great time. Yeah. NFT NYC,

Jaime: 26:19

I had, I had a great time, just literally in in that first line, just with the four people next to me. Who were just all waiting in the line together for three hours. And you had clearly very similar interests, but also, like, slightly different takes on it. And like, how did you get into it? How did I get into it? Like, why are you crazy enough that you believed in this? Because this is why I'm crazy enough that I believe all that sort of thing? And yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Roy: 26:48

Yeah, it's kinda reminded me. You go on.

Jaime: 26:53

The people were going down the line with giant, giant grocery bags of bananas, just handing out bananas. And it was like lots and lots of just strangers trying to go like what the hell? What is what is yes? What are you all here for? Yeah, cops were gonna shut us down because they didn't have a permit for that many streets to get blocked.

Roy: 27:11

Yeah, it was. It kind of reminds me a little bit of, I guess, the early online poker days, but maybe any any sort of poker days where if you're in the like, it's very, it was very difficult to relate to anyone not in the community. Because, you know, we're at the time dealing with like large sums of money and you like by like losing money, but not really caring about it, because it's poker and it's chips. And then yeah, it is it is pretty similar to that. Yeah. And we're like NFT's is like, Yeah, okay. So my real life friends don't get it. Maybe my family doesn't get it. But but the this community, the NFV community gets any, we have this common thing to bond over, which is really, really cool.

Jaime: 27:55

Yeah, and also kind of that, that parallel goes a little bit further into that. We've seen a lot of poker players who have also found NFT's and crypto to be a legitimate thing in a proportion that I think is much greater than the population at large. Oh, yeah, for sure. And that there was also the thing where it's just like you have all these sort of screen names that you may or may not have like pretty big relationships with and you have no idea who the people are, you're actually meeting the people behind the name. So we definitely experienced a lot of that in poker. And that was also happening for sure. At in New York. I don't even want to say it eight fest because there was also just so many other events and NFT NYC was going on at the same time. And a lot of people were going to all sorts of different events even even though for me, I ended up just going to one specific one for mate fest.

Roy: 28:44

Yeah. It's very exciting to imagine the future like this was like year one of a fest. And you know, I mean,

Jaime: 28:52

theoretically, in Miami, they're just gonna have something that yeah, year round for forever. Or like she

Roy: 28:57

had just a permanent Yacht Club, like, yeah, that sounds amazing. Yeah, it's very cool.

Jaime: 29:04

I would love to

Roy: 29:05

go and hang out in the Yacht Club in Miami full.

Jaime: 29:09

I will do it for sure. At some go for

Roy: 29:10

a holiday go to Orlando get to Disney World and then pop on over to the Yacht Club. And yeah,

Jaime: 29:19

sounds good. Yeah. We also wanted to talk about kingship now, right? What's kingship?

Roy: 29:26

kingship? So this was news that just you just posted to me, like group chat like an album?

Jaime: 29:31

I think it the actual news story dropped three hours ago, basically.

Roy: 29:35

Yeah, so kingship is a band and the band members are for apes. So the band is made up of

Jaime: 29:46

NFT's not, not the humans behind the apes that we are actual

Roy: 29:51

virtual apes. So yeah, it's like the these characters these apes effectively are members of the brand of a band and importantly, that the big news is that they have been signed by the largest record label in the world. UMG. Who I mean, I think they signed Taylor Swift. They sign Drake like they

Jaime: 30:14

they are a big deal right there. Yeah, there's basically just three big record labels. I control all the music, and they're one of them slightly, slightly bigger than the other two. i You say they signed them, but I think they created them. It's not I don't think it was like, the owner of the Apes had the idea to make a band and then the band was signed. I think it was like a collaboration with

Roy: 30:36

Yeah, make a bit more accurate. Yeah. So the owner of either way, it's for apes is It is insane. The owner of the Forex Jimmy he is creative avatars. He's been in the NFT in crypto space for a while.

Jaime: 30:50

Huge gold ape sale very recently. My Yeah, record I think. Yeah. Or maybe around. I'm the sandbox one. Yeah.

Roy: 30:58

And he is I guess, working with them to convert his his NFT's into this this band. And then yeah, and then presumably, the record label represent them. And it'll just be this, just this new thing that is now happening with NFT's that are creating bands out of the Apes now.

Jaime: 31:17

Yeah, it's it seems to me the biggest a, like, sort of mainstreaming corporate use of them since the Arizona iced tea news. I can't I can't really think of anything else. That's, that's more significant.

Roy: 31:31

Yeah, I think that

Jaime: 31:34

we're talking a little bit off the air beforehand. This kind of thing is not unheard of, as far as I know, like in Japan and South Korea, they have pop stars that are not real people. They're just basically holographic characters that are very popular. They have concerts and everything. And people go, they love them. They're there. They sell tons and tons of music. And they're just not even, you know, they're not real people. So the concept is not unheard of. But I guess it's the first time really that it's been NFTs, which brings this whole other level to it.

Roy: 32:10

Yeah. And they're talking about, you know, that the band will play in the metaverse and, you know, they'll have their 3d avatars. And I mean, I don't know where the music will come from, whether they'll partner with other musicians or they'll use I don't know what to create the actual music, but it's the possibilities are endless. Really.

Jaime: 32:30

Yeah. And they said that people in the Yacht Club are gonna have sort of preferential access and stuff like that.

Roy: 32:38

Makes sense. Yeah, I mean, huge news. And I think we're going to continue to see stuff like this over the next well, forever, but like, let's say over the next six to 12 months, as it becomes more mainstream, speaking of mainstream, I think it was Jimmy Fallon last night said he had an ape.

Jaime: 32:58

On on he had people on his again Yeah, and people's I guess I didn't actually watch all of it. I did see that one tiny clip where he said that but I guess people was mostly on to just talk about the big auction. He just had it at Christie's I think it was

Roy: 33:13

Christie's and Sotheby's did the same one or two, I believe it was no offense to them. Yeah.

Jaime: 33:19

And Jimmy had told him that he just got his first day now. Yeah, he went through the same company that the baby did to get his so I guess I don't even know how these exactly work. But it seems like they're basically giving these celebrities very high value and fts. And then you know, them just talking about it is like their their version of advertising and then the compensation is the NFT itself. I don't really know how it happens. But what does it Moon Moon pay is what it's called.

Roy: 33:52

Okay, I've actually not even heard of that. But that doesn't make sense. She got

Jaime: 33:55

Jimmy was saying it's like Pay Pal for for crypto and NFT's or something. Okay. I'm sure is what they told him to say. Yeah, but yeah, they they they've been getting apes into the hands of celebrities lately.

Roy: 34:08

Interesting. Well, I mean, it's still good for the WHY WOULD visibility? Yeah,

Jaime: 34:17

yeah, for sure. I kind of want to go back to the AFS thing just to talk about the warehouse party even though I didn't go to it because the lineup was fucking sick. Tell me. It. They had Questlove they had Aziz Ansari, they had Chris Rock. They had the baby. They had the strokes. And I think one other musical act that was significant whose name I can't remember right now, but

Roy: 34:44

that's a hell of a fuck. That is insane. I did not know half like most of that, like, Yeah, it's crazy, living under a rock honestly, but

Jaime: 34:52

TMZ had a story about what Chris Rock was talking about, which is

Roy: 34:58

what was he talking about?

Jaime: 35:00

Well, he I guess he just gave shift to anti vaxxers or whatever. Like, Chris Rock takes down anti vaxxers like, weird concert that we don't.

Roy: 35:10

Yeah. Any publicity is good publicity, I guess. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, really possibilities are endless. This is just the beginning. A lot of people came out of Ape Fest and NFT NYC extremely bullish on mutant apes because basically the IRL benefits. Were basically the same whether you had an original ape or mutant ape. And from that perspective, people were saying, hey, mutants are for eats and Ape Yatch Club of 30 to eth or whatever. But you could that it's just as good value in mutants, basically, because you're in the system.

Jaime: 35:49

I agree. Right about that. Yeah, yeah. Also a couple apes were being salty. Like, how come I have to wait in the same line with all these? It's like, Fuck, yeah. Also, I just, I just looked it up. The other act was back. Wow, pretty

Roy: 36:03

fucking huge. Yeah, yeah. That's, that's massive.

Jaime: 36:07

I know. And I'm a big fan of Questlove. Also, who is part of the band for the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. So I wonder if they had any conversations about that?

Roy: 36:18

Yeah. Good things, good things all around happening in the app world. I mean, despite sort of the general NFT market is very bearish. market sentiment is low. You know, all sorts of stuffs happening the but it's

Jaime: 36:34

like, s price is so high. Now. I was really like, apes are like 7% off their all time high in US dollars or something like that. Wow. Which is kind of crazy. When you see how far they are off of it in F prices.

Roy: 36:48

Yeah, that that's something that. Yeah, it's really good to think about in terms of how well they're holding up their value compared to USD Now obviously, if you sold at the top and then held the eth, that's, it's gonna be that would have done better bond

Jaime: 37:05

spectacular. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, if you buy everything at the bottom and sell at the top, but that doesn't, exactly, you know, exactly. Very hard to do.

Roy: 37:15

Yeah. But yeah, the blue chips, especially holding the value really nicely in this bear market in us. Yeah. Even

Jaime: 37:23

earlier, but they've been dipping more lately. And I saw some punks tweeting that they feel like NFT NYC and the events around it and larva labs complete lack of a presence there is really damaging to them, and is making the concept of apes being superior or flipping them. Or just considered the blue chip more feasible than they had sort of previously thought. Yeah, I mean, it's so it is such a different thing. Like their approaches are so different. Yeah.

Roy: 38:00

It's also getting to the point where we might be at one of the closest ratios of eighth floor to punk floor. I think it's like, like to

Jaime: 38:10

sell for 70 the other day.

Roy: 38:12

Wow. Yeah.

Jaime: 38:16

Yeah, it's I think it's gotten to about 50% before just for a hot second. Yeah. When

Roy: 38:21

apes were at like, 60 or whatever. Right.

Jaime: 38:24

I also heard like, during a fest some some punks were basically saying almost the exact opposite. Just because, like they, they seem like they want to stay totally digital. And they're like, Well, when you bring it into the real world, do you look like nerds or or just kind of that sort of FUD about it? Yeah, you know, cuz like those, there was a video of the line and people like, Oh, my God, look at how whatever they look, which is very stupid. I don't I was I was hanging out in that very long. Yeah, so maybe I should take offense to it. But everyone's in the hole nice to me.

Roy: 38:57

Yeah. I don't know. Is this always gonna be fun?

Jaime: 39:01

Yeah, there is. Fog or non bags in defense of your own bags is exactly Oh, yeah. But that's why I sort of thought it was noteworthy that you actually had punk specifically very easily saying the exact opposite and talking about how this seemed bullish for eights and bearish for pokes Yeah, definitely. Yep. Also, I'm just gonna keep going on this concept. Um, it sort of makes sense to me for larva labs to just let punks be punks. But the me bits it seems like there there should be more news and more building. I would think if they were trying to make them as much of a thing as they really could be. Because you know, when they made punks, it was so long ago, and it was just sort of a fun experiment. And this concept of community and NFT projects that have roadmaps, all that that that was Nothing, of course. Yeah. But by the time they released the me bits, we were a little bit more into that. And I don't know, it was just it was a much more modern NFT market at that point much more mature. And they haven't they haven't said a peep since they dropped them.

Roy: 40:15

Yeah, it's the silence is really done damning. The there's like the me bits Tao now which is doing a here cool things. I'm not really involved or aware of too much of that. But it is very different the approaches, obviously, that that they're taking, and I guess time will tell what the market.

Jaime: 40:37

Yeah, I wouldn't be shocked if in in three weeks or something. We get like an enormous update on me bits from Marvel labs like that wouldn't shock me. Yes, the media to themselves came out of nowhere, as far as I remember.

Roy: 40:50

Yeah, it was just this random thing and massive hype and like, they were cool looking in terms of like the 3d voxel avatars that was like, not really a thing at that time. And then nothing.

Jaime: 41:06

Yeah, I think this is this has been the Ape Yatch Club update, right? I think so. Let's talk about artblocks, right? Artblocks, art blocks.

Roy: 41:21

It's been a bit a little while since we had an art book. second segment, I think few weeks. It's been two

Jaime: 41:25

episodes. Two episodes. Yeah. There was not much to talk about last week. So we just skipped over. We had so many Twitter q&a is. But we got another curated drop. It's called Edifis. It's by Ben colback. Is that correct?

Roy: 41:38

That's how I pronounce it. Yeah, Kovac.

Jaime: 41:40

Yeah. I thought this was a very cool project. I had enough in my wallet to mint at the 1.7 s level of the Dutch auction. I was hoping to be able to do it at 1.2. But I had enough to do it at 1.7. Unfortunately, it's sold out at 2.4, which was the the level just above 1.7. And I didn't get one. But I liked the project a lot. I think they look great. And I'm I'm kind of vaguely shopping on the secondary market. I've already figured out which palette I like the best. So I'm kind of searching for them. And what do you have anything to say? But I could I could go more into like, what it looks like and stuff like that. But what do you have to say?

Roy: 42:23

Yeah, I? I agree. I really like it. It has. Yeah, I guess I'll just jump right into what it looks like a bit. It sort of has this mix of fidenza vibes. We'd like Meridian palettes and maybe a little bit of something else like scribble boundaries mixed in.

Jaime: 42:44

But the look is I don't see that. That's interesting that you see that?

Roy: 42:49

Like the some of the little details within the tiny panels like scribble Oh,

Jaime: 42:54

yeah. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So let me say this. It's I think it's supposed to be evocative of architecture. That is deteriorating, right? Yeah. Or have you not even read that? Yeah. So that sounds right. Yeah. So the place the basically the places where like, you're sort of seeing where the brick has been eroded away by weather or whatever, those are sort of the spots where you're talking about seeing the the scribbles boundary, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay, I see that for sure. But overall, overall, the image is certain No, nothing

Roy: 43:27

like that. Yeah, yeah. Um, I meant to true at the 2.4.

Jaime: 43:33

It's either yours the couch palette, by any chance, I can check I might have to. That's, it's the one though. It's basically kind of like a lot of green and yellow, kind of an all the green and sort of a golden, golden, type yellow, let me check one that is my favorite. Yeah, it's also those are not colors that I tend to gravitate towards, which is also interesting. In that it's, it's, it's just very attractive to me with colors that I normally don't find attractive. So that that's an interesting thing to me.

Roy: 44:06

Um, no, I do not have the couch color palette

Jaime: 44:09

bomber. It's the second most common palette too, though. So it should be relatively easy for me to find. Yeah, I think I tend to like the the ones without curves more in this project. Interesting. But it's, it's it is one of these projects that really has such a diversity in the algorithm that you have a just like very intricate ones that have a lot of sort of structure and then ones that are super spare with like, three big shapes and almost nothing else and like, sort of everything in between. And you have you know, again, like you have a lot of ones that are very curvaceous, and then a lot of ones that are just rigid and straight angles everywhere.

Roy: 44:54

Yeah, I can definitely say that, like op locks is in a massive bear market. You know, even bigger probably have better luck than the regular crypto market. If this had dropped a couple months ago, it I can see this just rocketing up in full price and being massively hyped and wanted. Not just

Jaime: 45:13

like if it dropped geometry runners drop Oh, yeah,

Roy: 45:15

really, but even like, closer to like, sculptors like sculptures, how would you pronounce it?

Jaime: 45:23

fragments or sculptors? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, sculptures. Yeah. Um, but those were, I feel like the bear market was already kind of there then. And those were just kind of temporarily shaking it off. And yeah, I've given a false hope that the other people will continue. Yeah. And you can sort of see that with where their prices have gone since their peak. Sculptors happened quick, you know, it was like nine and then yeah, back down kinda

Roy: 45:50

to like true or three. And I think it's been hovering around that for you. Yeah, but it's cool. Like, five? Yeah, that that was crazy. But they went up to like, 40. Yeah, I don't think so. At least between 30 and 40. For

Jaime: 46:07

that you have a floor I think got up to Oh, man. That was crazy.

Roy: 46:11

Yeah. Anyway, it's, it's cool to see another curated drop. It had been quite a while. Five weeks or something I want to say.

Jaime: 46:21

Yeah, it's I think it's the longest break since I can remember. Yeah. Because they had already taken the break. Or had the break, break plan. But then they also canceled the last one by the guy whose name is escaping me right now.

Roy: 46:36

Yeah, I can't remember off the top of my head. But yeah, they've dropped this. There's another one coming next week.

Jaime: 46:41

It's I have not seen previous the next one. So no, I mean that. Yeah, I did actually make a the day after it. I've got an NFT five loan offer that I made on one of these accepted. So theoretically, I could have an edifice in a couple days if this person is not able to repay the loan.

Roy: 46:59

That's exciting. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just generally the blocks market is, again, bearish. And there's just a ton of open projects on the website now, which,

Jaime: 47:10

yeah, I was actually looking at all the open factory projects. Yeah, just last night, and thinking of which ones I want to mint because I just got a little bit of an influx of eth by selling the ens tokens. And then I also had one of my bigger NFT, five loans repaid. So I have a bit of money now. So I'm planning on doing a little bit artblock shop and I still want to buy a dreams. I've been looking a lot at Joshua Bailey's dreams. And I'm, oh, oh, that's another update. I got a winter frag the other day. So and I'll yeah, I've three out of the four seasons. All I need is an autumn and I have my full set. I'm very excited about that. That's very cool. And I I went through literally every autumn the other day and made a list of all the ones that I would be happy to own. So I can I can kind of just consistently make bids on those ones until

Roy: 47:54

I get one. Yep, that's really cool.

Jaime: 47:57

Yeah, I'm fucking excited about that. Yeah. Get them printed and framed and stuff. Oh, see?

Roy: 48:03

Yeah, there's, um, yeah, there's like 20 open projects now, which, as a collector, as someone that buys that wants to buy just for the art, that's just an awesome thing. Because you don't have this rush way. It's just like, if there's an opolis project, you have to min within an hour after drops? Are you just going to miss out and not get the opportunity to meet? Now you can just go to the website, say, I'm interested in buying some art, what are my options? What are the different prices? What do they look like? What are some of the previous minutes take your time by and then you get a, you know, surprise, the output is you don't know exactly what it's gonna look like. And that's, it's just cool. I think, you know, a lot of people are complaining about the oversupply or the flooding of the market. And, yeah, I mean, there is more supply now than obviously, the demand is there for

Jaime: 48:50

that's kind of what the factory was always out, though, is just allowing more generative artists, yeah, work out there. You know, what else is nice about these open projects, too, is that they don't have like three or four minutes, you know, they're they're deaf, they're selling dozens, or like low 100 numbers. It's like, these artists are getting paid. And they're not feeling like, oh, that my project is a total failure. It's just not the mania that we had a couple months ago where everything was minting out almost instantly, you know, which is, I think it's working out good for the artist. And it's just

Roy: 49:25

a healthy ecosystem now. Which we you know, we've seen it before, like four months ago. I don't know how long ago it was, but the same sort of situation was there when there was maybe like 3035 projects open at once. So you could meant they were on the factory projects. And like not insignificant number of playground projects. I think there had even been the case or some curated projects were open for like a week or two. So

Jaime: 49:50

bubble, blobby Yeah. outline for curated.

Roy: 49:54

And yeah, I think that it's just a healthy evolution of of the market and our blocks are just a continuation. And I think what we might see which would be also really cool is people who are dropping their projects now to, it just became the standard for the last few months to drop editions of 1000, because they were selling out. But now I think people might be like, Hey, I'm just going to drop 200 or 50, or 125, or 500. And if the algorithm can support that, like 1000, which perhaps some of them couldn't, and they were just doing it because they thought they could sell out. But also just I think we might see people experimenting with lower prices, which will be great for people for newcomers trying to get their foot in the ecosystem, which is wanting to buy some cool art. Because again, for the longest time with Dutch auctions, and with the mania, that was selling out like point two 5.1 5.1. But with eth going up, and with so many projects being open, I can see project dropping, like a point oh, three, five min price again, which is still I mean, what's up, like 150 bucks. And

Jaime: 51:05

the problem with that, though, is the gas right now makes that difficult? Yes. But certainly, like people are picking up pieces on the secondary for point oh, eight and point one and stuff like that. So you know, it's it's it's a lot more affordable to collect than it was during the meetup for sure. Even though people are less excited about how they're going to instantly profit a ton, because every day everything goes yeah, 15%

Roy: 51:30

that was that? Well, it's worth mentioning that was crazy. The gas is also affecting our blocks very significantly, because the the the gas involved to mint and our blocks piece is more significant than say minting just a regular NFT project because it has to because the code is stored on chain, it's just a more intensive process to run that even if it runs on a browser it the code is on chain. So it's just it does cost more. And

Jaime: 52:02

it's it's as somewhat complicated. Yeah. Direction. Yeah. But yeah, edifice new curated project that looks good. This guy also I don't know if I mentioned this. But as I understand it, he's one of these generative artists that's really been around for a long time before NFT's sort of thing considered sort of, you know, an OG of generative art. No,

Roy: 52:26

I've heard that true. So that's,

Jaime: 52:27

I think, I think I saw Dimitri chatting about it. So

Roy: 52:31

I love we love them, they're probably going to do well, in the long run, because it's curated drop that looks great by a renowned artist.

Jaime: 52:40

I'm going to try to purchase one with a couch Yep. palette at some point.

Roy: 52:44

And yeah, that's been up looks anything else when

Jaime: 52:48

talking about that's it ah, blocks are blocks.

Roy: 52:56

Twitter q&a,

Jaime: 52:59

as a very slow Twitter q&a by yours was soft,

Roy: 53:04

fast and soft. Mine was slow.

Jaime: 53:07

That's what she said. Okay. Okay, first question comes from Dan Jackson. Dan says, in your experience, what were some of the key elements slash dev decisions that contributed to the most successful projects that sustained an increased value after launch? It's an interesting question. I just want to point out, he says, sustained now, of all the projects that I've ever got into the oldest one in all of existence is like 10 months old. So the definition of sustained is interesting in the NFT space, because it's all so freaking new. Yeah.

Roy: 53:44

But also like, what it means a great question. But yes, go back to saying it's sort of relative where, you know, prices can drop 50%. But it's too like, can be considered sustaining a good floor if it's

Jaime: 53:58

up enough in Arabia. Exactly.

Roy: 54:02

Yeah, it is a good question. It's difficult to, I guess, pinpoint too many exact decisions that directly lead to an increase.

Jaime: 54:13

I think a lot of it is the tail wagging the dog in terms of the community just becoming excited enough about it keeps the devs going. And it's I feel like a lot of this stuff is not all what the developers do, but it's what the developers do and what the what the owners do with it. themselves. And so I think a lot of it is just there's like a special something, you know, that the the secret sauce, so to speak, that isn't really an element or dev decision that has so much to do with the success, sort of in other words, it it seems like there's a lot of noise in determining whether or not a project is going to be successful and there's a lot less signal than We would like to believe in terms of being able to pick out a project ahead of time that's going to succeed.

Roy: 55:06

Yeah, I think that's quite accurate, and especially so far with, again, the market being so young still like, assuming most of the projects we're talking about launched over the last six to 10 months, or sooner. It's it's a case of yes, we're seeing projects that have, quote, unquote, poor decisions, or no decisions or like, haven't been excellently thought out and delivered on rocket up to grade floor prices, because the community is hyping it up and building off of it. And we may well see them come crashing down, because there isn't a strong team behind it. In some cases, I'll probably sustain the floor based just on the community. But yeah, I think over time, it will hopefully, the projects that have a good team that are building a good product and communicating well with the community about their intentions, so everyone understands the vision, and then the roadmap and and all that. And if they're just they're building, and just generally being competent at what they say that they're going to do. That is where value is, sort of comes from and where people are less willing to say sell their NFT's at a lower price. And so that results in the full price going up. And then people from the outside looking in, like, hey, the community is strong, the team is doing well and good things I went in, and then again that that they're willing to pay up a little more, and the full price tends to go up based on on those things in an ideal. Yeah.

Jaime: 56:40

I think there's something also to like the speed with which the floor goes up. Because I think some of these ones, where they just kind of rock it up massively, very quickly. And I'm sort of specifically thinking of on one force and makeovers right now, that creates a community that is is about the floor price, and is about flipping so much. And then when that stops being, you know, when the floor stops going up when the flips stop being profitable, what what do you have left for a community at that point? Yeah. So I think there's something to the projects that have a more reasonable growth rate have more potential? Because the people that are that are there aren't as specifically there to make a quick buck? Yes, I think and aren't expecting to in the same way that they are on these ones that were to go, Whoa, it already went from one to four I'm going to get in before it hits 10.

Roy: 57:40

Yeah, exactly. And that's where some of the stability and sustainability of a decent flow price, I guess comes from the strong core community members who are there for the duration and aren't just going to run away if the market turns a little bit, it gets bearish like we are now. I need to just do

Jaime: 58:00

something different to Yeah,

Roy: 58:02

I agree with that. Like there's,

Jaime: 58:04

there's so many common roadmap items that have been copied. And like just in terms of like, even the the naming and the art and the, like somatic elements. There's so many people that literally just tried to knock off the Ape Yatch Club in like, the most bland ways possible. And it's just that's already been done. And you're just you're copying literally everything about them. It's, it's tough to see why any of those should succeed. And I think we've seen most of them not, whereas you have other projects that you know, something like dead fellows or whatever, or cool cats stuff like this. It's like, it's not just animal, location, tribe or whatever. And then just, you have to do something different, I think and like creatures is another one or it's just like that art is very different. It's like there are people instead of animals, which is actually quite unique in the space for the most part. Unless, unless they're just like wacky sci fi traits and stuff like that, which I guess you can see with various human projects. I don't know it's again, it I think it's so noisy and and not something that you can really know ahead of time. You just have to strike lightning in a bottle.

Roy: 59:30

Yeah, I think that exactly. Everything you said is right that like, what I think the reason that we are seeing so many copycat projects continue to pop up is that for a while, it was the case that if you copied the Bored Ape Yatch Cluband just chose a different animal, you could still sell out and do very well

Jaime: 59:49

sell $2 million worth of NFT's. Yeah,

Roy: 59:52

yes,

Jaime: 59:52

you'd have, like the the devs would sort of be the same thing as sort of the flippers that we were talking about where it's They're just there to make money because it seems easy to make money. Whereas you have other development teams that are going, we want to make a thing. And it happens to be an NFT project, instead of just going, we want to make $2 million. Let's make an NFT project to do it. Like if you can sort of suss out who's in it for one instead of the other. I think that's going to have a lot of impact on on how much they keep trying, after the initial minute, because it's very easy for people to just make their two and a half million dollars and go alright, we did it. We're gone.

Roy: 1:00:34

Yeah, I think that's an excellent point. And a good way of thinking about it. Like the people that want to build a thing and can use NFT's to add value to their entire proposition ecosystem, much more likely for long term success. Those who want to sell an NFT because they want money, or just the whole project is just selling an NFT very unlikely to be long term success full, I think. Yeah. All right. Zombie bits, who is the creator of our theme song, so shout out to him for everyone who has a song stuck in their head more than us, right? Yeah. No, they love the theme song. We had someone say that they they skip it now. Because if it doesn't do it, it's stuck in their head for so long. Yeah.

Jaime: 1:01:21

It's so good that they have to It's like heroin to them or something. Yeah.

Roy: 1:01:26

Anyway, he has a question. Let me also shout out he also made like the foundation of our logo. So the Yes. thing you see on the whatever your podcasting app is the center part he made, and then the top and bottom parts is art that you made. Yes. Yep.

Jaime: 1:01:47

talented individuals.

Roy: 1:01:49

Indeed. He, his question is, am I crazy for getting into erm, just now? Arm is Olympus Tao Olympus coin. And we've spoken about it before on the podcast. It is a How would you describe it a protocol, which is attempting to be sort of like a reserve currency?

Jaime: 1:02:11

Yeah, they're trying to make a decentralized reserve currency for the crypto space. Yeah. And they're doing it in a sophisticated game theory way that is very similar to fractional reserve banking, but also with like the interesting staking mechanics and stuff available to crypto.

Roy: 1:02:30

Yeah, and his question is, am I crazy? Getting into it? Now? I don't think so. Um, I think we both are very bullish on the long term prospects of it, it's, it seems like the product that building is going to be very demanded and used and wanted by a lot of people. And

Jaime: 1:02:50

it's just expertly designed to me, and a lot of people have been forking it lately, which is theoretically a problem because, you know, people can just chase the newer API's because basically, in theory, if these forks became as successful, if you moved your money to them, you're basically just getting in at home at a earlier time. But I'm not so sure if it's going to be that easy for all of these forks competing against each other.

Roy: 1:03:22

Yeah, arm has such a huge, like, first mover advantage. It has people that have been building on it for six plus months now. And that is a long time in this space. So for a fork to just come along and say, Hey, we're gonna start now. Especially if 20 people are doing it trying to bootstrap the same thing and offer people right 1,000% API's? Yeah,

Jaime: 1:03:46

if 20 of them are doing it, probably like, four of them end up being ruggs which scares the people and the other ones. Yeah, whereas ohm already has a ton of money in the treasury and yeah, not robbed. And I guess that doesn't mean anything to some people because I go just because it hasn't doesn't mean that it won't or something. But the way it's designed means that they're sort of ragging themselves since they own their own liquidity like it's it is it is a project that you should really read about if you haven't because it sounds very crazy and very Ponzi like but it's actually quite sophisticated. And and one other thing that I when I'm talking to people about it where you know, it's like almost every cryptocurrency out there doesn't have anything funny any financial products backing it whereas home does. Now it's not backed at one to one at all. It's like, I think the market cap right now is maybe five or six times or so the value of their treasury assets but that is literally an infinite percentage more than is backing a cerium or Bitcoin or Doge or literally like any other coin can think of basically, in terms of, you know, other than stable coins? Of course. But yeah, so just in terms of what they're trying to do, they're sort of saying, like, they want to be something that people can hold that has a similar job as stable coins, but is crypto native rather than being just what? Like, if we're trying to get away from Fiat wire? Why are we trying to have our safe asset in the space be something that is just pegged to that? So yeah, they're trying to sort of have that space. But it's also designed in a way that the number is meant to go up over time, rather than stay exactly stable.

Roy: 1:05:44

Well, I thought the numbers kind of meant to go down,

Jaime: 1:05:48

like the number of the price of home. Yes, but in terms of how the value of what you're owning it should, yes. If you're taking, which is yes,

Roy: 1:05:58

the proper Yeah. So you currently get like, I don't know, I haven't checked like, eight 8,000% AP. Why APR? And, I mean, that's obviously a ludicrous return on your money. But yeah,

Jaime: 1:06:14

that's because that's assuming that their own price stays constant. But yeah, theory it should slowly trickle down. Yes. slower pace than the supply of own goes up, which your exact part in that increasing supply. If you are staking your own.

Roy: 1:06:32

Yeah. And so then that value of of staking some is, will at least we think it is a value, valuable proposition. Now you bought some like, a few days ago.

Jaime: 1:06:42

Yeah, I bought a couple more when it dipped down to like 850 or something anymore.

Roy: 1:06:48

So clearly, you think it's still a good time to be getting in? And I Yeah, so actually,

Jaime: 1:06:53

it's interesting, because I, I basically almost just did exactly what I was talking about a minute ago with the stable coin thing where I had had some big NFT sales, and I knew that I was going to have big, taxable a big tax burden next year. And I wanted to make sure that I had money ready to pay it. And I was sort of just looking for, where can I park some of this money? That seems wise to park it for me, so that I'll have money ready for the taxes and all ended up being a big part of that answer to me. Yeah. When I looked at what were my options,

Roy: 1:07:32

alright, bullish on ARM,

Jaime: 1:07:35

even though we don't give financial advice? Nope. Nope. That we just we literally just have opinions and we share them. Yep, for travel. X f, has the next question. They said, What makes Dow's such a legal minefield that you don't want to touch it? And I guess he's specific or they're specifically talking to you. Because you had talked in your NFT project about not wanting to they said, I'd be super intrigued to see what Zenda would go and do together?

Roy: 1:08:09

Yeah, so the biggest issue is that for the most part, legislation has not really yet caught up to what Dows are attempting, and in some cases doing in terms of being these decentralized autonomous organizations that are effectively run on and live on the blockchain, and have ownership split around the world in various jurisdictions. In a financial product. There's just not a clear law, like if, if it's a traditional company, you have like LLCs. And there's ways to protect the members of the company from say, litigation. But that framework isn't quite there yet for Dows. So it's a case of, well, if you have a Dao with 2000, members, you know, who is liable for if something goes wrong, if assets are lost, can someone Sue or come after every member of the DAO is they're limited to the liability that each member has is a it's the law just hasn't caught up in that respect, as well as other respects in terms of like, tax and all that kind of stuff, but that it's just a situation where I don't really want to get involved with trying to be at the forefront of the litigation or the regulation and figuring it out. Like, there are people doing it, and there are people who do it in consultation with lawyers and tax advisers, and, you know, there's people who have set up the Dow's in like the Cayman Islands and stuff like that, too. You know, because of these reasons just to protect themselves in the members. There are people who set it up in the US, but they cap the member list at 99 Because once you hit 100 It It just changes the console migration or Yeah, you can't have like a five or a three C one or something type legal thing. There's the state of why or anything

Jaime: 1:10:10

leave? Yeah. Why is the one state that has made some sort of official legal recognition of Dows? And literally like beyond that sentence, I don't know what it is that they're allowing or or how they're classifying it. Other than that, they're acknowledging Dows are a thing. And we believe they have some legal status and value. That's like all I know that they done, but surely there's more to it to some degree. And that would probably be a great place if you work to try and roll the dice on such a thing at this point. But yeah, like you were saying it also like, you know, if you have a doubt that you set up in Wyoming or whatever, but you have members in Japan and Canada, like, they don't necessarily care about what Wyoming's laws are. And so you might just leave in the state of Wyoming's opinion, but that's there. They're not the only opinion that matters. In a deep, it's decentralized, right? You'd have to be centralized within Wyoming. For it to be totally okay. That way. Yes. Okay. Right. That's, it almost defeats the purpose of it.

Roy: 1:11:14

It's so crazy and insane. And it's just complicated that it just hasn't been figured out. And it probably won't be figured out for a while, until a case gets to I don't know, but even if it gets to the Supreme Court of America, it's like, again, Japan doesn't have to honor it. It's like, right, yeah, it's, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know where it's going to be or what the landscape is going to be or how they will, legally, and, you know, efficiently run in the future, and I don't want to risk. Again, like you said, rolling the dice on setting up this thing, it would cost a lot of money in getting legal advice to begin with, and then figuring out how to set it up, and then structuring it in a way that based on the information that we know, protects, not just myself, but other dowel members. And then you know, in the future, anything can happen. Like, we don't know what the legislation is gonna say, and there's going to be, we don't know where the rulings are going to come down. And it's just again, it is a minefield, like I said, it's just, it's not something that I particularly want to touch.

Jaime: 1:12:17

I think a lot of it too, right now is like, people are sort of setting them up because it's the thing to do. But they're in a lot of ways, not that different from just a group discussing things and deciding democratically like what to do with a project, which is something that you can sort of do without actually having an official bow, right, you can you can just kind of go, Hey, I propose this what do people think? And then just Yeah, to consensus, like, there's they're there. A lot of the doubts, I think, are not actually daos they're decentralized organizations, maybe but they're not that are automated. And when you officially make them organizations, that's when you're sort of opening yourself up to these weird things that you're, you're maybe making what the legal system in some jurisdiction would call a corporation or just something that is going to be treated in a way that you don't want to be treated when you're trying to just do this decentralized, almost utopian thing where anybody can do whatever they want. And it's permissionless

Roy: 1:13:31

Yeah, I think that also exactly what you said that you can basically have a dowel without it being a dowel. And yes, like there will require some level of trust involved if that's the case, because not every decision will be living on chain and require members to vote and then have say a multi SIG wallet where X number of members have to sign for any financial transaction but a lot of projects that call themselves Dows right now don't necessarily have that anyway, like the legit DAOs they for the most part been established for a longer time and they've gone through rigorous right stage like Like I'll give an example there's a beats DAO which is a DAOthat is attempting to sort of so that in the treasury they have a few Euler beats your beats are unable to how to pronounce that. Alright believe EULA and they want to be like a music, music Tao and they want to help onboard artists and like serve as a launch pad and release the music and you know, by potentially by other music assets and bring that into the treasury. They they had the idea in like February, and they launched like two months ago and like the founder or one of the founders has basically been working on it for for that long going through with lawyers finding members that that want to be part of it. Having members fill out like extensive legal work I know because they wanted me to be a part out of it. And eventually I became a part in terms of like a strategic partner where I get a tiny amount of the tokens. But I'm not like a fully fledged down member having to fill out all this legal paperwork to register and all that kind of stuff. And it's just an elaborate process, which takes time and a lot of yeah, a lot of paperwork and regulation to to sort through to get set up in a way that is sort of, like, legitimate well, like, you know, right properly done. You anyone can start a dowel, you can start a doubt tomorrow, you can just create an ERC 20 token or whatever, send it out to a bunch of people create a multi SIG wallet and just say, hey, here's the money, we're gonna just start buying some assets. But it's not that you leave yourself up open to all sorts of future potential legal issues.

Jaime: 1:15:50

A lot of the things that people are doing right now that are they call themselves doubts, it seems very similar to just an investment fund. And there's, you know, there's a lot of regulations surrounding those, and you can't necessarily just make a hedge fund, but say, where I doubt not be exempt from the laws that hedge funds have to follow. And it doesn't work like that, even if the crypto utopians wish that it did.

Roy: 1:16:16

Yeah. And it could be the case that for the next three years, everyone during it is going to be fine and get away with it. And like the law doesn't catch up, but it will catch up. So it's just not something that I personally want to touch. Yeah. Oh, one last comment. Zen doubt. It sounds fun and awesome. I would love to do it like really, but it's just, again, just the amount of work and issues and legal. I just don't want to touch it right now. Maybe in three years. If it's figured out, then then we can reconsider it. Yeah,

Jaime: 1:16:46

you have a community of people, you can cooperate and accomplish goals without forming a doubt

Roy: 1:16:50

exactly like we get, we definitely gonna do things within the community that will have a similar purpose. But without officially being a Dow or having this investment fund type. Dynamic. Alright. NFT Port says thoughts on whitelist format versus the good old gas was

Jaime: 1:17:10

I haven't fairly taken part in any of this whitelisting. I know it's become very popular lately. And people are are having backlash to it. With like, how it sort of makes non organic communities and stuff like that. But I I honestly have taken part in it so little, that I don't have a good point of view on it. Really? I mean, I know I don't like good old fashioned gas wars. I was always like, what do you think? Yeah, I

Roy: 1:17:41

think that there better than the gas was because nobody really liked the gas was the issue with the whitelists. So they sort of became all the rage like two months ago, and they were working well projects would have a white list and sell out and they'd have a public sale and there'd be maybe a little gas will for those. And then most people were happy with that. But then it got to the point where they became so common, every single project had one. And the ways for getting onto whitelists were like, invite five friends to the server level up by chatting in the server retreat and following posts on Twitter. First 1000 people into the discord, you know, meme contests, all of this stuff, it basically became a case of people were very quickly understanding how to get on the whitelist communities reforming where someone will find out about a whitelist share it and then like 200 people would join the discord. And you do that a bunch of times and get all these people joining lots of white lists. And it became a case of people would join the whitelist for the option of purchasing if they wanted to in the future. Not because hey, I liked the project, I want to buy it I want to invest in and he was like, I'm gonna get on the waitlist and then later on the side, and then you have a case where if the market is a little bearish like it is now a project can have 5000 people in a whitelist but still struggled to sell out 500 minutes because everyone is in basically saying the same thing. But you're like, Oh, the markets were bearish. I'm gonna wait and see what other people do. I'm gonna wait and then you get this bystander effect where everyone's on the waitlist, but they don't want to MIT because they don't really want to meet the project. They just want the option of minting without gas. So from that, that perspective, it has sort of become not a great thing. But I still think it's like I still think whitelist a good because it gives people that option to buy without gas. I just think that it's sort of a case of if, if the project would otherwise have sold out in a gas war, then you'd always prefer to have a waitlist because those people who want to buy in the project don't have to pay the gas. If you wouldn't go

Jaime: 1:19:59

I'm sorry. There It's just, you can't necessarily say that I think, though, because you're not going to end up with exactly the same crop of people that would buy in the one scenario versus the other. Yeah, because you're attracting sort of a different crowd with sort of different goals. Yeah. It's you still don't you still don't want people paying a bunch of gas, even if

Roy: 1:20:22

no, you don't, you don't. But sort of like the gas was the born out of hype and FOMO. And people finding out about a project missing out quickly, and like, hey, I want to get in, I want to get in. Or there's just a ton of hype build up beforehand. And then, because there's a public sale, and there's people saying, If I don't meet now, I'm looking to get it. And then people watching how many pending transactions there are. And pending transaction goes up, and then more people met, and then it's just this snowball effect.

Jaime: 1:20:49

Yeah, you know, what's interesting, though, like, the overall market sentiment is sort of sufficiently bearish, that you almost maybe don't need them as much anymore, because people aren't going going every single NFT. That means is something that I'm easily going to three Exxon or whatever. So there's just, there's not that crazy demand for every single drop anymore. Yeah, absolutely.

Roy: 1:21:11

I think I think you could even largely do away with whitelists at the moment, especially for like 10,000 jobs is still so high. It is yeah. Yeah, I think the white lists are an interesting tool that projects should consider using in some situations, I don't think that they are the the final solution, or the best solution. Yeah,

Jaime: 1:21:33

that's don't say the final solution. Um, that is sort of where I come down on like, a lot of this stuff that gets talked about just that it's a tool, like, do you like this? Or that is, is this a good idea or bad idea? I think it's great for just more and more ideas to come out. And for people to think about the specific goals of their project and stuff like that, and implement whatever works best for them. And I think, you know, there needs to be less of an idea that there's a one size fits all for any of this stuff, because there's just there's so many different things that you can do and so many different ways you can do it. I think we need to explore all of it. And I'm glad whitelists are a part of it, even if they're not a perfect solution to every single project. Yep, I agree. All right. Our next question comes from 0x. Bassett, they said, Do you think the current revenue model for NFT projects are sustainable? And I'm guessing they basically mean a huge influx up front? And then, you know, like a two and a half percent royalty in perpetuity? I'm assuming?

Roy: 1:22:44

Yeah, that's basically the revenue model for most projects. Mmm

Jaime: 1:22:49

hmm. I think it's sustainable. As long as the demand sticks around. There's also like, you know, if you look at Bored Ape Yatch Club, for instance, they they have that revenue model, but because it was a sufficiently successful project, they've had lots of other ways also to get revenue at this point. The the mute ins being sort of the main one, but they're also selling tons of merch at this point. Yeah. At at not super low prices. So I think it sort of the answer is basically yes. If the project is successful, and no, if it's not. Yeah, I faced this answer.

Roy: 1:23:29

I think that that's a good answer. I think I would like to see more projects, experiment with other revenue models than just, again, big sale front and secondary market revenue. percentages, like, I'm a huge fan of the data, the nouns dowel system, whether they auction off one NFT every day. And then that brings in revenue. And it's like, we've seen, we've seen projects, I'll use the agency example. Again, they dropped 10,000 in one huge, go great. And then, you know, six months later, they dropped 20,000 mutants or 10,000, again, for public sale, rather. And we've seen lots of projects, say, Hey, we're going to launch and we're going to have a companion drop or future job. But especially now we're seeing that it's a lot of projects struggling to sell out 10,000 minutes in one, just one fell swoop, maybe experiments selling out 100 or 500. And then say it say like 500 a month for the next 12 months. That's ongoing revenue. It's enough to keep you know, depending on your goals and your roadmap and your plans and what the actual project wants to do. It should be enough to keep you going. it incentivizes the, the team to keep building because the future sales are predicated on this project, doing well and then sticking around and you can find some way to incentivize the early holders. Maybe the price goes up maybe it's an auction. I don't know exactly that. There are lots of things to think about. But it's, it's just another idea. And I would like to see more projects experimenting with with more systems like that.

Jaime: 1:25:06

Yeah, that kind of goes back to what we were saying at the very end of the last one. It's it. I think the current model is sort of sustainable for the projects. Like, it's, it's weird to say, but it's sustainable for the projects in which it is sustainable. Yeah, but there's just there's so many other ways that you can design things. And it would be interesting if people were more creative. And again, thought specifically, not about what what are people doing, but what is the best design for our specific project? And you can definitely find there's a lot of other models available.

Roy: 1:25:42

Yep. I agree with that. Alejandro Roho. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Sonata good. says, What are things we can do to avoid scams or hacks? If we get a ledger? Do we have to pay gas to move our assets to the ledger? Or how does that work? Yes, if you get a hardware wallet, and you want to transfer your NFT's, to that, that wallet or to an Aetherium address connected to that wallet, you do have to pay gas for each NFT transferred. That is just an unfortunate fact of life, I guess if okay, but now

Jaime: 1:26:19

let's I'm sorry to interrupt. But we've talked about these these layer two roll ups, is that a thing that someone that knew what they were doing or talk to somebody that knew what they were doing could somehow do that? Or no, I don't exist on layer one. It seems like no, but I it the way,

Roy: 1:26:38

technically, and theoretically, it would be possible. But but there's probably just not a easy system in place for someone to do that right now.

Jaime: 1:26:49

Because they're actually thought that sort of just applies to stuff that is happening on layer two. And then you're just you're just putting it down on the Etherium main net, to track it on layer one. But this is something where we're trying to actually move layer one asset, so I kind of don't think it does work. But again, this is something that we should probably learn more about. Yeah. But yeah, you do have to pay right now, with the regular way to just move stuff from one wallet to another. Now, if you, if you like, I'm not sure how much they know. But if you're getting assets, NFT assets that you don't own yet, and you want to have them onto your ledger, it's you're doing the same thing as you are normally doing right now. It's just that the wallet address that you're buying on is something that's accessed through the ledger. So it's not extra expensive. It's not like you get the the NFT. And then you send it to the ledger, you know? Yeah, I'm not sure if they're confused about that concept.

Roy: 1:27:54

Yeah, and then sort of to answer the first part of the question, what are things you can do to avoid scams or hacks. Having a hardware wallet is just an excellent way to secure your assets. And you can like store your high value assets there. So the in the case that you do fall victim to a scam or hack, you know, when you're transacting day to day, most of the time you want to be using your your sort of your cold, you started your hot wallet, which is just like your regular meta mask, not not your hardware connected Wallet. So that's like sort of a safety mechanism to protect your assets in the case that you do fall victim to one, but in terms of how to avoid falling victim to them. I think sort of the number one thing I say is to just be like, be hyper vigilant and understand that when you're paranoid, basically, when you're dealing with anyone in this space, just just as sad of this to say, assume that they're going to try and scam you. Like if you get a random message or DM if someone reaches out and replies to you on Twitter, your guard should be up if there's a link that someone sends you to click on. Basically, if you don't know them, don't click on the link be just be completely even

Jaime: 1:29:03

if you know them, I would I would say yeah, be a little bit careful just as a for instance, it could be an imposter and that screen name is slightly different and you didn't notice one, or a malicious actor could have taken control of that account. That way you previously controlled by somebody that you did trust, but now it's just somebody wearing basically the the social media skin of that trusted person. So you need to be aware that that is a possibility as well. I would say another thing when you're contemplating clicking on a link, you can hover the mouse over and see the URL you're going to and so sometimes you'll see like a fake open sea bass. Yeah, it's not actually open sea.io It's open c.com or something like that. Yeah, that's that's a way to get a preview of whether or not something is is bullshit or not.

Roy: 1:29:56

Another good practice is to so one of the most common scams people fall victim to is buying from like fake collections on open sea or scam collections. So when a project launches, basically their collection will show up on open sea. And and what scammers will do, they'll create a collection that looks basically the same has basically the same name, same images and NFT's. And so if you search for it in the open sea search bar, let's say you put in Bored Ape Yatch Club, though there might be other like Bored Ape Yatch Club with an extra space in there or with an extra.or, like just a slightly different spelling of whatever it is. And if you click that you look, the images look just like apes, the prices will usually be a lot cheaper, and you're like, hey, it's good deal, and you get quickly swept up in any buy. And so always like double, triple quadruple check that you're buying from the correct collection. So one way to do that is to, if it's a verified collection, you'll have a blue checkmark. But with this, you have to be very careful because scammers got creative and they started in the the avatar for the project putting like a little blue checkmark in the corner of the actual image, right. So you check ensure that the blue checkmark shows up in the search bar when you're looking for it.

Jaime: 1:31:11

Any and you can if you're on the project's website, and you put your mouse over the blue checkmark if it's like a real one or it'll it'll have the pop up that says verified collection rather than it just being part of the Avatar.

Roy: 1:31:23

Another thing is just always try and get the official links. So every legitimate project will have a channel in the discord saying hey, official links, this is our open sea. This is our contract, this is a Twitter and all that. So try and use those links to navigate. Now obviously discord can get hacked and people can post you know, malicious malicious happening. Links. Yeah. So you still have to double and triple check, even if you're clicking on quote unquote official link. But um, another good way to check is just to see how much volume has been traded and see if like the story adds up if the Bored Ape Yatch Club, and it has 12 eth of volume. That is obviously there's something wrong there. Yeah, if it's one of your club and has, I don't know 100,000 ether volume. That's probably the boy club. Yeah, yeah.

Jaime: 1:32:15

But even even like, I mean, I haven't seen this, but with the way that people are able to do flash loans. Now, I wouldn't be surprised in the future. If somebody puts up a fake project and is able to instantly, basically instantly have it say that they've done a million dollars in volume or something like that, because of a sophisticated flashlight. That's a good point. Yeah, that that will probably happen at some point. One other thing you can do is you can look up what different smart contracts you have given what different permissions to with your wallet, and basically old projects that you allowed to spend your F A long time ago, because you're using them to trade or whatever on you can go back and revoke those privileges by interacting with the Ethereum blockchain. Again, I we can put a link to explain how to look up these things. That's something that you can kind of do intermittently to, to kind of prune previous potential avenues that you open yourself up to, to future hacks, if, like the keys to one of these, one of these contracts get into the wrong hands or something like that. Mm hmm.

Roy: 1:33:24

Definitely good practice to do that. Um, yeah, I think just generally, being very careful. Like, it sounds easy, but it's, it's also easy to just let your guard down and to get swept up in if like, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. And yeah, just double, triple quadruple check. Whenever you're going to sign something with whenever you're going to connect your your Metamask wallet to a website, whenever you're going to click on a link just

Jaime: 1:33:54

Oh, yeah, let's see. One other thing is when you are looking at a potential transaction on meta mask, look at the top and look what it says because, you know, it'll tell you what type of interaction it is like mint token, for instance, means you're actually minting. But if you think that you're minting that, and it says something like send or whatever, you are about to probably just send eth somewhere rather than actually minting a token, and you're about to be scammed, that kind of thing. Yeah. So you need to be better at actually kind of reading what mme, what meta mask says. And understanding how the Ethereum blockchain works and how meta mask is interacting with it. And then you'll have a better idea of what you're actually doing when you're signing transactions. Yeah, absolutely. And that kind of thing. A lot of times goes out the window if you have big FOMO because you're trying to you're trying to win the gas or you're trying to get one of these last spots and that kind of thing. And that's when you're kind of more susceptible.

Roy: 1:34:49

Yeah, absolutely. It's like it's it's the Wild West and there's a lot of it's very user unfriendly at the moment the web three lands Escape the NFT game as it is it's just user friendly it takes time to learn these nuances learn what scams are out there learn you know what to look for in a transaction that you're signing. But it's it's very worth spending the time I think on Yeah. Familiarizing yourself with all these these things.

Jaime: 1:35:22

One of the people I was in the line with for the wristband at the at the eight fest said she makes a new solando wallet every single time she meant something every single time she connects to a new site to make new all new Well, yeah. And it's easy enough to do that's probably not a bad idea. And it's so like on a theory that's kind of impractical, because every time you send you're costing yourself a not completely insignificant amount of money. Whereas Ilana you, you literally can do that. And it's probably actually a good practice.

Roy: 1:35:55

Yeah. And then you just consolidate the NFT's back to or whatever back right. I mean, well, later on,

Jaime: 1:36:01

although even that like I guess if you read the smart contract of NFT, maybe that is opening you up to a vulnerability possibly.

Roy: 1:36:09

Yeah. Yeah, hoping we

Jaime: 1:36:13

don't know much about so on and Dewey. Yeah, no, not

Roy: 1:36:15

that much. Alright,

Jaime: 1:36:17

let's that's a good answer, though. I think right? Yep. Dan Chan. Do you have something to say? Nope. Okay. Dan chan says there's a lot of hype around NFT games, and metaverse. Do you think this hype is overlooking the sleeping giants that are the games industry? The likes of Ubisoft, Blizzard and CCP with established games, communities and development teams integrating NFT's into their worlds? I think the metaverse already exists amongst games like EVE Online. Wow. And fortnight giant community spent hours and money in these games. Don't these establish this? By the way? This is a lot of questions. And yeah, don't these established companies have an easier path to successfully integrating NFT's versus NFT? First businesses building games? Wow, there's a lot there.

Roy: 1:37:00

Yeah, um, let's see.

Jaime: 1:37:04

I can just start. Yeah, jumping into it, if you want. So I do think there is a lot of people getting overexcited about NFT game projects in general, and underestimating how difficult it is to build a great fun game that people actually want to play. And that sort of has to do with that last question there. But in terms of the integration of NFT's, I think it's very difficult for companies that are super successful with their existing business model, to transform them so thoroughly to this new paradigm, that could be NFT. Gaming. So I think it's not going to be as easy for a lot of them as as one might think, because just the idea of giving so much power back to the users is difficult. Now, it's definitely not impossible, because in gaming, in general, the the business models have changed a lot, there's a lot less spending up front, and there's a lot more small transactions happening over time for users. So gaming companies have been able to change the way that they monetize their games, but changing it to a crypto NFT thing is a big, big change that I think a lot of them are going to be resistant to and only get dragged into kicking and screaming. So I'll start there.

Roy: 1:38:31

Yeah, I think I agree with all of that. It's it's just it's yeah, as you said, very difficult to imagine them. At least in the short, even medium term, being able to a come up with a good model that they're happy to transform to and then sort of logistically speaking, actually transforming their system because sort of the infrastructure isn't really there yet, for like your average fortnight player or average video game user to have their own wallet set up to hold the NFT assets. It's just like they used to clicking a button, and it just being contained within the ecosystem of that game and not actually having to have ownership and control and security over that these assets. And it's going to take a while for like education to spread mainstream adoption to happen and user interfaces and and just things like devices, programs and platforms to become more user friendly. And I don't think that they will easily be able to integrate the current models or ecosystems with NFT's until that happens.

Jaime: 1:39:45

Yeah, I was. I was thinking more concerned about the companies having trouble dealing with it. But yeah, you're you're right, in that the customers also have a big learning curve.

Roy: 1:39:56

Yeah, yeah. It's both I think, and I think that's where and why we're seeing projects like gaming projects that are NFT and crypto native, that are sort of building from the ground up saying, hey, our community already understands the NFT side of things. We're going to build the game afterwards, or like from it or like we're bootstrapping the community, and we're building alongside, you know, in conjunction with NFT's and evolving with the space. Why a lot of those projects are cool and interesting to me. And some of them are very likely to do well, but exactly what you saw at the beginning, it is tough and expensive and time consuming. Very good game, like triple A games take 10s of millions of dollars, all the way up to the super extreme cases of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Jaime: 1:40:41

The GTA games all cost at least hundreds of millions. Yeah. And

Roy: 1:40:45

like yours to make, which is a long time in in time, but in no time. It is a long time. So it's

Jaime: 1:40:53

literally the entire history.

Roy: 1:40:55

Yes. So in terms of making these triple A titles, yeah, I wouldn't hold your breath. That's going to happen anytime soon. And if a project is saying they're gonna come out with a great game in six months, be very skeptical. But I think that what we're gonna see it like these iterations of kind of like what we saw with the gaming industry a bit in, in and of itself is like these. Easier to make lower effort games that can still be fun. Yeah, exactly. Indie games,

Jaime: 1:41:25

for instance, was like that game does not take as long to make at all but if a game does not need to have a super complex engine and super complex graphics planned, and a giant three dimensionally rendered world to be fun and entertaining at all. And so I think the NFT projects where you have an NFT and crypto native team, and customers that are able to also just go we're not trying to make GTA we're trying to make a fun game that you like, there's going to be some like that that are successful. For sure. Yeah. Now, did you hear what the CEO of EA said the other day on on their conference call or going around? It basically just said that NFT gaming is like a huge deal. It is the future. And were like highly looking into it. How nice at least at least one of the big companies gets it to some degree. I think I remember a lot of people sort of complaining about the way they've really pushed into that pay to win format. People are not as happy with all their stuff. I am quite out of the loop on all that.

Roy: 1:42:34

Yeah, I'm also out of the loop. But um, yeah, exactly what you said indie games, like, that's where I think we're gonna see a lot of the early success from NFT projects come from and it's cool, exciting, it's fun. And it's, um, it will be interesting to see how these games that are born out of say 2021 can compete and what sort of communities and size they have when these big giants do enter the arena, because they will enter the arena as is evidenced by the thing you just sent said about the EAA.

Jaime: 1:43:09

Eventually they acquire some of these NFT project. Yeah, to like the teams behind them. Just yeah, that crypto understanding. Just like

Roy: 1:43:17

I saw an interesting Twitter thread. Yesterday, I saw the same one, I think, yeah, about predictions for 2022. And so on. So that's what get Yeah, get acquired be the first major entity product to be acquired. And, yeah, it made me think like, hey, yeah, we'll probably we'll see more of that going on going forward.

Jaime: 1:43:36

Right. I agree. Cool. I'm just gonna scan over all these questions, because there's so many now he's one of the things he says I think the metaverse already exists among games like EVE Online Wow. And fortnight trying community spent hours and money in these games. I think that, you know, again, we've talked about this specific definitions of Metaverse before, but definitely in the way that a lot of people are sort of just describing it as a immersive VR style game that people spend a lot of time in, though, with, like its own economy and all that stuff. There's definitely a lot of truth to that in terms of EVE Online having a very big economy that that people are spending big real world money within it to play and compete and are getting paid for work and stuff in it. And like wow, gold farming as well as some more and fortnight in terms of the interoperability has a lot of that as well, where people are playing in fortnight with avatars of all sorts of different intellectual properties that fortnight does not own, but it's just allowing to be inside of them. And these companies are allowing them to exist inside the fortnight world because it's just it's mutually beneficial for both parties. And and the customers want to do it. And a lot of that, to me is very similar to what I think of when I think about the metaverse.

Roy: 1:44:59

Yeah No, I agree with all that. Now I'm scanning, seeing if there's anything else. Don't these companies have an easier path to success? Integrating NFT's? Yeah. I mean, I think we've covered that. It's okay. These audiences, but it's not like necessarily an easy path.

Jaime: 1:45:20

Yeah, I think it's not an easy path for them or for their customers. And we've also seen a lot of times when, like, for instance, with the the discord thing recently, but just also lots of other stuff when sort of mainstream people that aren't, that their whole personality isn't sort of crypto and NFT native, talk about getting into it, there's a lot of backlash from normal people. So I can see a lot of people being just not into the idea of them getting pushed into this. If these companies try to do it.

Roy: 1:45:51

Yeah, I think we're gonna see a almost like a battle ahead of us where Lou, the mainstream sort of needs to be convinced that NFT's are just a thing that they want in the world, or they want these massive companies to integrate with,

Jaime: 1:46:08

they actually have a use case and they aren't actually destroying the environment. Yeah, or aren't destroying the environment in a way that nine tene different activities that they do on a regular basis are already also doing. Yeah, I don't have a problem with should I had something else to say and I think I just lost it.

Roy: 1:46:28

I'll quickly tangent on to while you think the there was news this week, that discord was going to integrate web three into the platform, basically sort of like a verification system where you can connect your meta mask wallet or Aetherium address and like confirm that you have NFT's or tokens for special roles sort of in a way that there are bots that let you do that. Now, collab land is the most well known one. And they was talking about how that they had built the functionality like internally to be able to do that and looking into it, but and she had like a screenshot of what it would look like. And then yeah, they just received a ton of backlash from the community and basically backtracked and said, We hear you, we have no plans to actually integrate this anytime soon. We'll be monitoring it closely. It's

Jaime: 1:47:17

funny, too, that the original tweet said probably nothing. And then afterwards, I guess it wasn't. Yeah, I remember what I wanted to say was that excellent. I think a lot of these companies are or, I don't know, a lot, I can foresee, where these companies basically just make their own blockchain and are doing sort of crypto light, or sort of cosplaying in the decentralized thing, almost in the way that xe Infinity has done it with, they just had they made their own running chain. And so people will be able to be doing this sort of gaming that involves NFT's and ownership and stuff like that, but it'll be sort of just a proprietary chain.

Roy: 1:48:02

Yep. We're gonna see all sorts of crazy things happen. And it's gonna be a wild decade, really. But yeah, for sure. Exciting. Is it my turn to ask you? I think it is. Yeah. BK NYC says, most likely a question for Jamie. Well, I'll ask you. But how do you go about calculating taxes US based? Do you use a program or service? And if so, do you have a recommendation for a particular one?

Jaime: 1:48:27

Okay, so this is an interesting question. So how do I go about calculating taxes? So far, I have not. I have, as discussed on this podcast before only gotten into NFT's within this year. And all the stuff that I did in crypto previously was stuff where I would make, you know, maybe 2030 transactions at most over the course of a whole year. So it was relatively easy to do. I'm trialing some software, I believe it's called Zen ledger, which hopefully will make it very easy, but from what I've read of their instructions, it's it's not the dreamy, easy thing that I was hoping for, you just stick in your wallet address, and it spits out everything. And it also seems a little bit more like it's for coins, then NFT's because they spend a lot of time talking about connecting to all the different exchanges that you've used, like Coinbase and Kraken and stuff. So I'm not I don't have any specific recommendations of software or services that are good. But I do know that if one comes out, that's great. They're going to make so much goddamn money because it's a ton of work seemingly to get all this information together. And people are going to be you know, specifically people that have made a lot of money in NFT's are going to be happy to spend a small fraction of that to save themselves a lot of time and headache. Go Going back through ether scan and collecting all this data by hand themselves.

Roy: 1:50:05

Have you used NFTbank.io?

Jaime: 1:50:09

I have not I haven't used I think zapper Fi is another one maybe?

Roy: 1:50:13

I think so. Yeah.

Jaime: 1:50:15

I've had some have not done anything.

Roy: 1:50:17

Yeah. NFTbank is one, which you could also look into. I don't know if it's, again, the dream scenario, or how well it works for us or anywhere taxes, but it's just one that I hear people talking about. And yeah,

Jaime: 1:50:33

yeah. And when I was back, when I was a bachelor, I would always wait until April to do my taxes. And then if I had done poorly enough in poker that year, I would just get an extension on it. Because the the interest on zero ended up being zero, basically. And it was not a big deal. But now I'm filing jointly with my wife, she likes to get it done much earlier. And so the clock The clock is ticking. She likes to get them done in January. So I got to figure out which software or or groups of software I'm going to be using and get my shit together. But no, unfortunately, BK NYC, I do not. I do not have a good answer for you, other than so far, I've kicked the can down the road, hoping that it would be a great easy to use solution for me. But yeah, I do have an account on Zen ledger that they're extending to me to try out. And so I'm going to try it out. And and I'll get back to this guy. If it works out. Well for me, this person if it gets if it works well for me. Cool. NFT ninja says do you think OpenSea will maintain its lead as the number one marketplace for NFTs? Well, that could theoretically let us talk about something that we considered talking about, both for the Bored Ape Yatch Club and for the news of the week, because they had a little bit of controversy recently. Oh, yeah. About that. Theoretically stolen eight, but it seems like it wasn't stolen.

Roy: 1:51:59

Yeah, I don't know too much about that. Well, I know pretty well. On the the overall question, then you can dive into that specific situation. I think for the I think it's super hard to know, like, it's obviously there's a ton of backlash, community backlash against open See, just based on the fact that for many reasons, it's like very often it's down and there's issues with like, just how often is running and how well it's running. People will take issue to the 2.5% royalty that they have insisted on for even private transactions

Jaime: 1:52:39

there when they added that to the private people did not like that at

Roy: 1:52:42

all. Yeah, there is there have been a few controversial things happen such as the nature Steen who was employee there and would front run basically buying things that he knew would be listed on the front page and then selling them for profit. And yeah, and then obviously the one that there was them delisting Dow totals and just the confusion on like, just the lack of communication from open sea has generally been a trend. Right. I'm gonna pause

Jaime: 1:53:11

you right there. Yeah, our our podcast is like, it's it's a very historic, we're tracking the history. We got all these things we have.

Roy: 1:53:21

Now cool. Now we're, um, yeah, you're gonna tell us about this recent controversy.

Jaime: 1:53:27

Yeah, so basically, what happened recently is somebody was making bids on apes. I don't know specifically, what they which ones they were bidding on in general and stuff. But anyway, the point is, they made a 40 eth bid on a trippy ape, and the bid was accepted. Now, that is strange, because the floor right now for trippy apes is 175. And after that one, the next ones, 265 etc. So the market value stripy it's way, way, way more than 40 eth. So theoretically, it's slightly suspicious. So when it came up on Twitter, the the Bored Ape Yatch Club sales bot mentioned that a lot of people were like, What the hell was this hacked, bla bla bla bla bla, and open seats. And now we're getting to the part where I'm not 100% sure on the details, but I'm pretty confident. My understanding then is that open seats contacted the seller and asked them if the sale was legit. And I guess at that point, the seller said no. And so they then froze all the open sea, I should say, then froze all the NFT assets of the buyer. But if you look at basically the ether scan of the sellers wallet, there's nothing to indicate that a scammer had gotten hold of it. So they basically theoretically just accepted a bid that was the was not properly valuing their NFT. And they just didn't know any better, essentially, and sold it and then got seller's remorse, once open sea basically said, Hey, you sold this for way less than it's actually worth. And so people were very upset, understandably, if that's actually what happened. And then, you know, there's just all sorts of talk about how it's supposed to be decentralized, we're not supposed to do this. And all all, people have all sorts of sort of opinions on it. But in general, they're generally quite negative towards open seas behavior. And so the the guy got some of his assets on frozen, because all of his assets were frozen, not just the AP purchase, he made a big threat on Twitter, and it got a lot of traction in response to that open sea has unfrozen all of his other NFT's. But I believe that eight is still frozen. Very interesting. There's also one other guy, I'm sorry, that had his wallet got compromised, it seems like and he's been kind of like blackmailing people, because again, he got open see, to do the same thing, but also like wearable and all of the big ones, to not allow their assets to be traded, and is now trying to sort of play very hardball with the the people that theoretically gained access to his wallet and did this stuff. And people are really upset about it. Because, you know, people aren't, aren't having the personal responsibility, and are then punishing buyers have these assets that are completely legitimate and didn't know they were stolen in the first place. But I think also people are digging into this guy now and thinking that, and when I say this guy now, I mean, not the trippy one, the other guy who I've brought up, maybe is doing a very sophisticated scam in some sort of way. Because he's just rubbing people such the wrong way, and being so sort of douchey in his interactions with every single person on Twitter that that he talks to about it. And like is sort of making deals with the people and then reneging on them. And going well, I'm actually not going to allow open sea to unfreeze your other assets until I get these other ones back. Even though I said I would unfreeze yours if I got this one back. That kind of thing. Yeah, it's

Roy: 1:57:20

it's a complicated set of situations for sure. Yeah, when you say they froze the assets, is that just mean that they freeze trading on open sea, right? Because,

Jaime: 1:57:29

of course, because that's the other thing is people are getting confused. open sea cannot stop you from sending an ERC 721 in your wallet to another wallet, full stop. They can't, they cannot do that. And they also can't stop you from doing it. In exchange for ether. They can't stop you from doing it on open sea, though. And because open sea is by far the biggest platform for NFT trading. That is an issue for the people that end up with these assets. But it's it's not quite as big of an issue, maybe as it could be. Because again, they can find deals privately and do them in it still in a trustless manner, even though it's private.

Roy: 1:58:11

Yeah, I don't really have too much to comment on this specific situation, because I don't I haven't been following it other than it's it's just another issue that people have with opensea at the end of a string of other issues. It's I think, before we started recording, you were sort of saying that it's very likely that you know, if the same thing happens on Coinbase, that they would also freeze the assets because you know, they have regulation to adhere to. If they suspect a good assault stolen, then it's right or something. Yeah.

Jaime: 1:58:47

Yeah. A lot of people in the Twitter response are we're going I can't I can't wait for Coinbase marketplace. And I was going i i can almost promise you that they are going to behave the same exact way.

Roy: 1:58:56

Yeah. So getting back to the original question, do you think we will maintain as leaders number one marketplace? I think for for the foreseeable future, probably obviously Coinbase is this looming, enormous potential competitor coming up, and that there's definitely some percentage that it does just swamped the market. But I think what a lot of people are forgetting is that to begin with, it's just for US residents or citizens. So it's not like Coinbase, like I wouldn't be able to use Coinbase, for example. So I think at least he'll, at least Yeah, for the foreseeable future. I mean, obviously, they said that they plan to unroll it out to everyone. But for the foreseeable future, I do think open sea will remain as number one. A lot of people have been saying, like hoping for like a token that people think when token and that potentially could help them retain market share if they give ownership of the platform or like governance of some of it to holders of value to holders. early supporters give some goodwill that you Yeah, that might help. I think there are other competitors popping up like a universal XYZ is one, which is attempting to be sort of a decentralized marketplace. So instead of having open sea, decide whether or not to freeze assets, whether or not to do this, that the other, the governance is controlled by the community by a Dow. And, you know, I've been hearing about them for like six months, they still haven't launched the marketplace. Because, you know, it takes a lot of time to do a marketplace and Dows, as we mentioned before, complicated entities at the best of times. So it's exciting in the sense that a decentralized marketplace sounds potentially awesome. But it comes with all sorts of issues and time delays and stuff as well.

Jaime: 2:00:44

Yeah, I think I could see a scenario where they maintain their number one position, but their share of the market goes down drastically, because there's so many competitors that are catering to some type of collector, some type of buyer, some type of seller, some type of creator, and are just eating into little pieces of them. So right now, let's say they're 95%, or something of the Etherium NFT. I could see a situation where that goes down to 40. And they're still by far the biggest but yeah, you know, to go from 95 to 40, is pretty bad. Um, did you see that archetype that sold for point four, four the other day? No. It's like some new marketplace, I guess. I don't know a ton about it. And I barely saw it. But basically, they put it up for auction there. Without a reserve, and so few people were using the marketplace, excuse me well, or aware of it, that it went 4.4 For ether. Crazy. Yeah, but but I think there's going to be kind of more of that. And I also saw something recently, where somebody basically developed a product that allows you to do four bids on an entire project. Yeah. And then allows people to sell but again, just completely going around open. See it's not, it's not through open see that you're making all these four bids. Yes. Through its own thing.

Roy: 2:02:10

I think that's lucky traders, or something.

Jaime: 2:02:14

Okay. Yeah. But like that's, that's a feature that people have wanted on Open. See? Yeah, open see has not provided it. And now people have just gone around them and done it themselves. Yeah. And so I think I think open seas definitely going to lose their percentage of the market, but I'm not sure that they'll be losing their number one spot anytime soon.

Roy: 2:02:37

Yeah, I think that's actually a really accurate perspective and prediction. I think what I can easily see happening is that we get like other marketplaces popping up that target specific niches. We've already sort of seen this show you trying to be like this marketplace for high end fts. I could see a world where a marketplace pops up. And their entire focus is on gaming, NFT's gaming assets, and all that kind of stuff. And then another one, four could just be art. It could be generative art.

Jaime: 2:03:14

Yeah, I feel like super rares doing quite well.

Roy: 2:03:16

Rare. Is that for like, high end one on ones? Yeah, yeah. And then the next natural evolution is to have a marketplace aggregator come in, and really be the go to place where you anyone that wants to buy or sell any NFT can go there type in what they're looking for. And it will either direct you to the marketplace or on the interface itself, you'll be able to buy and sell and interact with these other other marketplaces and their contracts. And then the next next evolution is having them be like multi chain and then be able to buy and trade and sell and in Solano and tasers and all sorts of other things. And that's where we'll eventually end up but we're obviously a long way away from that particular eventuality. Alright, investor tanky says, what are good questions to ask in a projects AMA, when deciding whether to buy into it? I'm at this is a good question.

Jaime: 2:04:15

I would I would say it like what do you want to know about the project? Right? I mean, yeah, that might be a stupid thing to say but like what? What matters to you?

Roy: 2:04:27

Yeah. Um, obviously that yeah, that that's the most important thing to ask you. Ask yourself and then you base that on the questions that you want to ask some suggestions for things that I like if I were going to be asking you a project about what what they're going to do and was in there me? I would want to know how they're planning on spending the money that they're raising. Yes, yes, they're going to be raising a ton of capital if they're selling out 10,000 whatever it point or five, let's say or more at And I just want to know what they're gonna do with it. Yes, they have a roadmap, okay. 10% a charity, you know, and they're going to design the game. But I want to know specifically like, are they going to hire people? Are they going to spend money on marketing and promoting? Are they going to hire? Spend money just paying the current developers to do more developing? Are they going to be paying artists? Like, where is this money going? If they're building a game? How are they going to fund the game? How are they going to manage the Treasury to survive a potential slash likely future bear market? Like we currently see? Now? If, if a lot of if their answer is we're going to spend 50% of it sweeping the floor? Just to keep the floor price up? Well, then, what are you really buying into? Like, where's that money going? And sort of to add to that aspect? What are they going to do with the money? I want to know where they see the project in like, one, two and five years? For instance? Yeah. Yeah. And like how

Jaime: 2:06:01

we're gonna do with that money is, is very relevant to me for sure. Yeah, I'm, I'm also curious, like how native to the space they are. Because you, we've definitely seen a lot of people coming in, that are just trying to take advantage of the NFT bull market that was going on, where it was so easy to just make $3 million. With one week of work with a couple solidity. devs, and a couple of artists, you could just crank out something that was gonna make you millions of dollars, almost for sure. Yeah. So like, what makes me think that you're not just trying to do that? And what makes me think that you are actually trying to build something new and interesting and different, that is going to stick around for a while, rather than just grab $2 million in bounce.

Roy: 2:06:54

Yeah. And sort of expanding on that, like, just generally, knowing that background and like the people that they are, where they're coming from what they've worked on in the past, like at the selling of gaming NFT? Have they worked for gaming studios before they have experienced in their field? Or they're working with others who have that experience? If they're planning to launch comics? And, you know, animated show and that kind of stuff? Are they do they themselves founders have a lot of experience in that area? Or are they just looking to, like, they have an idea, and that is to hire other people? And like, it's a little more like wishful thinking type of thing. Their experience? Yeah. Yeah, I think those are, those are the main ones for me. Yeah.

Jaime: 2:07:46

Again, though, like, if you are in a project, ask me anything, and you want to know like, what a good question to ask in it. It's, I guess, because you already have some level of interest in the project. But ask yourself, What? What kinds of things do you want to know about it that will make your decision between I'm going to get into this project? And I'm not going to get into this project? And what kind of things do you want to know that'll make you go, I'm really into this project versus Yeah, I'll take a flyer on this project. Yeah. And ask them those like, you have to, you have to have sort of your own opinions and things that you care about. Because again, like we've talked about this before, for instance, I care a lot more about the art than you do on most projects. So what is a good question for me is not necessarily a good question for you. So yeah, I would I would advise this person just to think about what they care about, and then ask questions related to that. In addition to the specific ones that we gave,

Roy: 2:08:48

pineapple pizza says, I noticed that there are quite a lot of poker players who decided to get into crypto into the crypto or NFT space lately. Would you share a bit about your poker career and or careers, I guess and tell us more about how you can apply the same soft skills to NFT's? Thanks a lot. Yeah, um, we both got into poker, I think roughly around the same time 2004 2005.

Jaime: 2:09:15

I was in it. Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by in it, because I knew how to play five card draw. From the time I was like a very, very young child. But in terms of playing regularly, that would have been probably like 2002, my friends and I started playing a lot of dealer's choice. And then in 2003, when Chris moneymaker won the sort of the first big world series main event and it was televised on ESPN with high production values that made this this poker boom happen. And my neighbor Ryan, who was one of the kids I always played dealer's choice with was very into it. He had a lot of fun watching it. And so then when we were playing dealer choice, instead of picking all the fun games with wildcards and stuff, he would always pick No Limit Hold'em, which to me had always been so boring. Yes. There's no wildcards. You don't get to exchange any of your cards in new ones. Like, there was just nothing interesting about it to me at all. But I was so competitive with him. I was like, I got to figure out how to beat him at this game that he wrote that he insists on picking every damn time it says. By the way, just as a quick aside, at that time, I had no concept of picking games, where position was more important. Yeah. Which would have obviously been the thing to do. But anyway, so I went to a bookstore, which is a thing that used to exist before amazon.com. And I bought books on poker and started reading them. And it sort of just snowballed from there.

Roy: 2:10:40

Yeah, um, I guess I had a slightly similar story, but a little bit later in, I think it was 2004 2005. I was the very first time like, yeah, when I was a kid, I would play five card draw. I knew how to play but it wasn't like a thing that I was super passionate about. It was just, I always loved playing cards, and one of them exactly one of many games. And then I think it was, in my last or second last year of high school. It was at a friend's house for a halo gaming night. I think there were four, eight of us. You know, playing Halo all night eating pizza. And then

Jaime: 2:11:19

I used to love that shit. That was so great. Was that? Yeah,

Roy: 2:11:22

we should do that again. Like, if we could we could do that. Eat pizza and play Halo. Yeah, we could do that. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So in one of these pizza breaks, so we've turned the TV on and poker was on the TV. And one of my friends Glenn was, he sort of explained to all of us that the rules of Texas Hold'em how it worked. And, you know, we all thought was pretty cool. But obviously, I was especially fascinated by it. I was like, Hey, this is it seems like a fun game. I like games. And then I just sort of it sort of stuck with me. And then we, as a group of us, we would start playing little home games among ourselves, like $5 tournaments. And it sort of like grew to a few other people would join in. And then my competitive nature as yours took over. And I was like, hey, I want to get better. Let me download articles on the internet. Let me buy books online. Let me yeah, do all this stuff, join some online forums, and just just witches. Meeting. Yeah. And then I just spent all my time learning about poker and getting better at poker and finding out more about it, and I was like, Hey, you can actually make decent money. But 50, like, started the traditional story. I think a lot of people who have been successful was like, deposit of $50, and then never looked back. And that was kind of the case for me, and just ran it up. And actually my deposit,

Jaime: 2:12:41

like three times, I've lost it all. Yeah, first couple times. And then the third time it kind of just took off.

Roy: 2:12:48

Yeah, that's sort of I mean, people have various versions of the same story. But, um, I was like, say, I was 17. At the time, I didn't have a credit card or any any way to deposit. I remember, I asked my dad and he was like, no, no. We wish he had my own sense.

Jaime: 2:13:03

Yeah. And my friend my own art somehow was able to get money on it. And yeah, to me,

Roy: 2:13:07

I actually remember I did play some free rolls and like, I won like a 5000 person free rolls one on like, for like, $20 or something. Yeah, didn't really amount to much. But the$50 I deposited I think, to Party Poker, and was either playing, like $5 Sitting goes or like 10 cent, 25 cent, or whatever, maybe five cent, whatever, the low stakes, cash games, and then just being a nit. And in those days, you could just get away with playing strong hands and being a low variance. And yeah, that kind of playstyle and eventually had$1,000. And and, yeah, rest is history.

Jaime: 2:13:44

We I guess we just kind of talked about the start, even though that's not really what they asked about their career and how that applies. So do you want to talk about what happened later in your career or just skip right to the soft skills

Roy: 2:13:57

I'll give it like a 32nd rundown of the rest of my 15 years in poker I basically just started playing online as, as my profession. Tons of I played all sorts of games, but online PLO cash games was like the bulk of my, my bread and butter. And I was sponsored by PokerStars for like three or four years. So I had that side of it. And then occasionally we play some live tournament tournament, but yeah, mostly online cash games. And yeah, so some of the skills that I guess might be applied to NFT's I've never really consciously thought of it in the sense of what poker skills can I apply or like, what can I use or this poker knowledge is now applicable to this but I think just generally sort of the the mindset and and like approach that you take that you learn being in this poker space for so long, is very well suited to the crypto an NFT space. I think I've spoken about it before. One of the big things is like this healthy disassociation towards money. And it's like, if you are so invested in the financial aspect of the NFT, or the crypto coin that you're in, when when the price goes up, you're going to get euphoric. And you'll want to sell or take profits. And when it goes down, you're going to get depressed and just really unhappy and afraid and scared and panicked. And and you'll be your emotions will be taking over and making your decisions rather than the logic at logical side of your mind and thinking of reason and facts. And being in poker for so long. You start to you have to to survive and be successful for a long period. Just separate the money from the Think of money more is a tool, I guess, to, to play with, in the same way that you can kind of think of etherium or ether or that as a tool.

Jaime: 2:15:52

Yeah, and risk management is such a big part of money in poker, we call it bankroll management. But like, if you see the best poker game you've ever seen in your entire life, it's right there. But the buy in is all of the money you have, you just you shouldn't play it. Because if you get a little bit unlucky, it's gonna go bad. And, and you can apply that same concept when you're working in crypto and NFT's where you just you can't put everything into one thing, because you could be wrong or unlucky or both, and then you're gone for so you need to be able to to manage your risk to reasonable levels. And poker really teaches you how to do that. Yeah, as well as the emotional stuff that you're talking about, as well. And it's your story. Thank you. Yeah, sure. Sure. So I told you about how I got into it. And once I started playing online, basically the first thing that I had success at was actually also plo Omaha cash games. On Party Poker specifically, I started doing well there. And then after that, I fairly quickly transitioned into playing limit Hold'em cash games. And I did well at that for quite a bit longer than I was into the PLO stuff.

Roy: 2:17:07

But okay, sorry to interject. I like how you went from playing these home games with wild cards exchange cards being and the no limit Hold'em being too boring to like, let's go play limit Hold'em.

Jaime: 2:17:16

Right. Yeah. Well, again, I had to learn how to boy, the first time I got one of those books. It was a revelation to me. I got the first one I got was low limit Hold'em by Lee Jones. Yeah. And he was like, You should fold bad hands before the flop. And it was I'm not kidding you. It was a revelation to me. Because I just I would have a seven and a queen and I go well, what if there's a seven and a queen on? Yeah, I can't focus now. And it was amazing how much my results improved instantly when I did that. He started posing Queen seven offsuit Yeah, yeah, nevermind the worst stuff like Queen seven was that's like middle of the road. Yes. Worse stuff. I was fine. But anyway, after that, I read super system. And that was like, hey, after the flop, if you miss and you're the preflop raiser, you can still bet and I was like, Wow, that's crazy. And then I did that. And my results improved a lot again. Yeah. And then like, I read one more book. And at that point, I was almost an actual poker player. But yeah, so I went from PLO cash games to limit Hold'em cash games. And then I did that for a while, until I had I ran my bankroll up to about I remember it was like $20,000, which was amazing at the time, and then I kind of stagnated there for a while before getting convinced I should start playing No Limit Hold'em cash games, because people were just saying it was it was more popular game it was juicy here. So I slowly transitioned to that. And then made a lot more money there and stayed there for a long time before the excitement of tournament's captured my imagination, and then I started playing a lot of those. And that was, that was pretty much the last thing that I really did. A few years ago, I was playing a lot of that that short deck Game Six plus, that became very big for a little while before. Most people knew how to play it. Well. I had already learned how to play it well because I had some friends that were were into it quite early. So I did a bit of that. But for the most part, I've been playing normal Hold'em tournaments for the last six years as my main thing with a little bit of cash games on the side.

Roy: 2:19:25

Yeah, you had you had some pretty good tournament success.

Jaime: 2:19:29

I did. I did. I got deep in the World Series main event a couple times I got 47th Place the year that Ryan Reese won and then I got I think 62nd Place the year that Tony miles got second I apologize for not remembering the name of the guy who got first John Linder. Something I want to say but I think I'm thinking of Chris Lynn who knocked me out the year that Ryan Reese won, anyway, yeah. And I want to W coupe events, which was exciting in the same way We're in 2000 hours of online poker. Yeah, on PokerStars. That was the that's the biggest online series basically, or it was at the time. And I had final table, the main event of that the year before. And that was, that's still my biggest score. I got fifth place in that for$480,000, which was just insane. Yeah, I only had 60% of my own action, and then after taxes, but it was still a fucking huge windfall. Yeah. And the funny thing about that is, so instead, I had 60% of my action, I had sold 10% of my action to four different friends. And on PokerStars, you could just send money to other screen names. So one of my friends had the screen name, Kenny G nine. And so I owed him $48,000 After I cashed in this, so I went to send it to him, and I accidentally sent it to like Kenny G eight. Oh, and I had a full blown panic. And I emailed PokerStars I was like, Oh, my God, did. You have to and, and they responded, and they were like, Listen, this person has not seen this new money. We're going to reverse the transaction. But please, for the love of God. Pay more attention. Before you send$48,000 to some random screen name. We are not going to do this for you again. And I was like, Oh, thank god

Roy: 2:21:15

PokerStars was the best company in the world for like, the first six years

Jaime: 2:21:19

was it really was

Roy: 2:21:20

and then it just became awful.

Jaime: 2:21:22

It did. It did decline quite a bit, but I was basically not allowed to play on it by the time they started becoming shitty. Yeah. Because of Bill Frist and Sheldon Adelson. Yeah, not Sheldon Adelson. Is it Sheldon Adelson? Yeah, I think it is the Yes. I got confused is Sheldon Adelson and Sheldon Cooper. Sheldon Cooper's an actor. Or a character rather?

Roy: 2:21:45

Yeah. Yeah. All right. I think we spoken about poker enough.

Jaime: 2:21:51

We did on our NFT podcast. Yeah. That was though this is that was the last question. Yeah. Yep. Twitter q&a. Right. Tell us about your one eth challenge.

Roy: 2:22:07

F, if at all. I think it's easy. It's easy. Yeah. You sir. Yeah, it's easy. You say F though

Jaime: 2:22:18

I do usually say F,

Roy: 2:22:19

you do. So yeah. Okay.

Jaime: 2:22:21

The thing where I forgotten which one? I've said that with

Roy: 2:22:23

this? Yeah, Yeah, same. I have that happen all the time. Now where there's a word I'm like, I don't know how I usually I don't know should pronounce

Jaime: 2:22:29

which one is who says archetype? And who says archetype? And what is no you say off and

Roy: 2:22:34

type? It's supposed archetype. Yeah. All right. Anyway, the 1 eth challenge is going to be a very short update, because basically, I have not done anything associated with the for the last week, because I've been so focused on. I'll just go with Zen Academy. Yeah, that's basically this is a segment router with our projects. And that's basically been capturing all my attention for the last several weeks, but especially the last week. I've been talking about it over the last few episodes about the lead up to launch and all that kind of stuff. And we officially launched earlier this week on Tuesday. And it formulations. Thank you. It was it was nice. It was like a smooth launch. The the website works. It didn't crash, the smart contracts work, there's been no bugs or issues or exploits, no one's really had a problem. Or too much of a problem. minting actually, the biggest issue we had was that with the whitelisted addresses for the three three club, the dev forgot to see apparently, you have to make them all lowercase when you put them into the system or whatever, and they were not so then some people couldn't mean and that like that was the biggest problem we had just because of the whitelist system we use. It's very easy to update and change whitelisted addresses. So um, yeah, so it's been good. We have I think sold out about 1500 of the the point oh, three, three eth tier, and about 15 of the the 3.3 eth priced ones. So it's kind of slow and steady sell out, which is I mean, I'm happy with it, I think.

Jaime: 2:24:15

And you talked about this whitelist thing during the Twitter q&a, where some people will try to get on waitlist just to have the option of some Yeah,

Roy: 2:24:23

I'm seeing that. Some of that. Yeah, yeah. So basically, I had like 1500 people apply to be on the whitelist for this 3.33 eth price membership 333 club and ft mn. So I picked 320 of them because 13 were given away for various other reasons like to the dividends and stuff and giveaways and so 320 whitelisted. And then I basically launched and published the whitelist and said if you're on this you can amend and then I realized what I should have done is what I did after is I should have messaged everyone on the whitelist or on the potential whitelist and just double check to see you They actually wanted to follow through with minting partially because of the fact that it's inexpensive meant it, and what I'm promising and just just to verify, but also, it had been like three or four weeks since I first published the Google Doc, and the landscape has changed a lot. eth has gone up, boom, the bear market has hit and just generally people aren't as liquid or as willing to fork over that amount of money. And so yeah, I reached out to I spent the night of the min IDM, 320 people on Twitter, which that that takes a while. But um, and then, yeah, I started talking to people asking, you know, basically just seeing if you're still interested, if not, I will contact someone else on the application list, because there are a lot of people that are interested, and some of them genuinely still want to buy. And so I've just sort of been going through that process of just chatting with everyone that applied. And yes, many, many people are basically saying, Sorry, changed my mind or not as liquid thought I would have more II thought, etc. And then a few have also just said, cuz I've given people seven days to decide they're like, I'll just see how it's going on the weekend and then decide then. But yeah, we've got about 15 people who have mentored and I'm pretty confident that we'll continue to get some more I, I'm not sure if it will, all 333. Like in the next week or two even but I'm pretty happy and content, just to have like a slow and steady sell out. It's, it's a lot more manageable in terms of the time that I can dedicate to individuals.

Jaime: 2:26:38

1800 people is quite a significant number of people also just for the regular tier two. Yeah,

Roy: 2:26:45

I'm really happy with that. People. It's 1500 minutes. I think it's like 1000 people, because I've mentioned multiple, but one person then mentored 100 of them. That was awesome to see. But yeah, I'm really happy with that. And I think that that one is going to continue selling out decently well, I don't really have a strong prediction of how many will sell at the end of

Jaime: 2:27:04

and it's you're saying earlier, you plan to have a just a two week or one week open, man? Yes.

Roy: 2:27:10

It two weeks was the period we launched on Tuesdays. So it will close on? Let me just pull up the date on the 23rd. of November. And then. Yeah, and then that will be it for the public sale for that one. The higher tier one, I think we'll just remain open, I'll probably make it public. At a certain point. But yeah, it's going well, it's really exciting to, to do all of it like just from the standpoint of actually I had to deploy, it's exciting and terrifying. I had to deploy the actual smart contract myself. So that's I copy pasted the code into this website called remix. It's like a environment where you can compile the code and then basically submit it to the Ethereum blockchain, and pay the gas transaction and and the reason is that it needs to be me that does it and other devs because the wallet address that uploads it has ownership over the contract. And the only person that can withdraw funds from the contract, for example, is the person who has control of that. So I had to set up like a special hardware wallet to have that and yeah, it was just lots of double, triple, quadruple checking, you know, when I copy paste, I didn't accidentally change something. And then there were a few additional fields I had to fill out for, like, the metadata and stuff like that. And yeah, it was fun and exciting to do. And to be able to interact with a contract from like a project or in a contract or in a perspective is just a new thing for me. And it's really exciting. And I'm from it, it's funny

Jaime: 2:28:41

when you're copying pasting something that's so important that you're, you stop trusting copy and paste, like, yeah, possible that somehow they're adding or subtracting letters here. Yeah, exactly. And, and it makes no sense. But you have to check it anyway. Yeah.

Roy: 2:28:57

But it's also the case that, so I was copy pasting it from GitHub, which,

Jaime: 2:29:04

like, formatting issues and stuff, no, no

Roy: 2:29:06

formatting issues, but effectively, with GitHub, anyone can potentially change the code. So until they lock it and make it not able for public access, and I had shown the contract to maybe half a dozen people and developers that I know or people watching projects, asking if they could just have their devs to look it over and make sure that there's nothing wrong. And yeah, this was like, just like a last minute concern or a thing that one of the other

Jaime: 2:29:34

way to make that read only for them. No, it is it is but

Roy: 2:29:37

it's something that you do that it's like you have to do it. And then then make sure that the code is good, but it wasn't brought up to like three hours before we were launching. One of the devs was like Hey, make sure that you've made it read only and that no one has tinkered with it because it was Yeah. So that was something we did last minute and went through and check that. Oh, we we may have found a bug In the ERC 1155 standard contract code, which is kind of mind ball crazy. Yeah. Because because this is something that so many people have used,

Jaime: 2:30:09

right that the open sea shared contract isn't ERC 1155. So the most common thing in all existence for NFT's are probably the open see storefront ones.

Roy: 2:30:20

Yeah. And it was a very minor bug, that wasn't an issue that could cause anyone to lose money or anything. Well, not really. But basically, what could happen. And what happened, we had one of the bug testers figure this out was that they were able to mint a new token or into that collection, or like what appeared to be a new token. So let's say you have the Zen Academy collection on open sea, it's got currently two tokens, the Genesis membership point, oh, three, three eth. And then you got the 333 Club. Each of those has a unique token ID. The Genesis is token one and the three threes token ID one and one, if you want to add new tokens to that collection, like let's say in the future, I want to release a middle tier option, for example, I have the ability to do that with the contract. But we found out that if anyone wanted to, like interact with a contract, put in a new token ID. And if they meant zero to that address, they can effectively have it appear as though there's this token. And so it shows up on open seas or in the collection page, like you could just mint tons and tons of fake tokens, no one will be able to interact with them or buy them. So this sort of goes tokens, but it could just like flood the page or the collection page and make it look weird. And we actually tested it, my one of my devs use it in on Main net and created a fake token for the 888 collection, the inner circle or whatever, and it just popped up on open sea. And then you know, someone made a bid on it. And it was just like, No one can accept this bid. It's a fake token. But it does appear there. And it shouldn't work that way. Like am I the dev on my project, wrote a couple of lines of code to make it so that that wouldn't possible with mine. But yeah, it's just finding that everyone using this standard ERC 1155 contract presumably has this little small visual bug. And then it's sort of a case which it can be fixed, like open sea can decide not to show these those tokens, but it's something that they do have to track

Jaime: 2:32:21

so their tokens exist, but there's just no way for anybody to actually do anything with them. Basically.

Roy: 2:32:27

I don't think the token technically exists. It's like the it's like a ghost token. It appears as though they exist. I don't know what that means. Right? I don't know. Either. It looks like they exist, but they don't exist. It's like maybe like there's some

Jaime: 2:32:41

kind of either scan you wouldn't see it?

Roy: 2:32:44

I don't think so. But it pops up on open sea. It is very weird.

Jaime: 2:32:48

That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, maybe

Roy: 2:32:50

it doesn't wear any skin.

Jaime: 2:32:51

Maybe it does appear I would think that it does if it also appears on women see on open so yeah.

Roy: 2:32:59

Anyway, that was a fun little thing that but again, that was like a last minute change that this time like it was being made to the ERC 1155 contract which like that's been used by 1000s of people bug tested that is robust. We all know that when you changing that contract. That's terrifying, because it's like you're missing a new layer of risk. And yeah, so thankfully, at least so far, there's been no issues with that it was checked the new code by several people. And yeah, I had to trust that they all knew what they were talking about, obviously, because I'm not a dev, and yeah, nobody Yeah, it's been fun and exciting. And it's really cool. Seeing all the new members in the discord in both Discord is actually I set up a new discord for the 333, but also the main Zen Academy discord, it's sort of pumping, it's thriving, it's, I've been like pretty busy with obviously juggling 100 things over the last few days. So I haven't had a ton of time to actually be on the ground in the discord, chatting with people. I've been welcoming people when I can, but you know, we have a really cool mod team. And they've sort of been excellent at just answering questions and keeping. And just generally the community is really nice and friendly and welcoming. And it's just a lot of good vibes. And I'm really excited for like the potential of what we can all do in the future. Like, you know, we all talk about power of community in this space. And now we have a community, I'm going to do everything I can to make it a valuable place for everyone in terms of just the information that is presented, and the contacts and all that kind of stuff, but also like partnerships and deals that I can make with others. Like there was a project that launched that that is about to launch called the littles and it's by this guy will on Twitter, his name is real it's a

Jaime: 2:34:46

who and must have been one of the first people that registered on Twitter if he got well

Roy: 2:34:50

I don't know if it's actually his at will but like his His name, His will His app address different but yeah, he's a super smart and thoughtful guy, I've really enjoyed some of the threads he's made. And I just like reached out to him, I saw that people in the discord were, you know, excited about the project talking about the wireless was close, I just reach out to him and say, hey, you know, I love what you're doing. Can we work together in the future? Let's just keep an eye open. And he was like, yes, definitely. Let's do that. He has as a token, I just want to give 10 white spots to your community. I was like, hey, awesome. That's amazing. Thank you. And it's just like, that sort of connection is something that's possible when you have a community and when you have connections and networks and yeah, and very cool. Yeah. Another one that I'll just announce, because I announced it in the discord last night is that we partnered with mobi.gg, which is this analytics platform. And there's a few platforms out there. There's Nansen. There's mobi, there's IC tools, and some others and effectively, mobi what they're excellent at is getting real time mint data. So people who want to see what everyone's minting right now, what's selling, they can get real time access to that and make like, you can find out about projects before others essentially or before, like as they blowing up. And so you can maybe get in early, effectively. That's one of the things that they can do. They have some of the functionalities, but the thing that really appealed to me about them is that they actually run their own Aetherium node, and they get all their information straight from the blockchain versus other platforms are using things like API's and scraping data to do it, they, there's literally real time we we secured a 33% discount for anyone that holds the one of my NFT's. And so that's just a nice little value add thing that I'm really happy about as well.

Jaime: 2:36:41

Very cool. Yeah. So it's, it's kind of a little bit following the meta key model.

Roy: 2:36:47

Yes, there's definitely there's definitely some similarities there. Obviously,

Jaime: 2:36:50

value comes from partnerships with people just wanting to connect with the community.

Roy: 2:36:57

Yeah. And like they obviously there's I think they launched or established with partners and airdrops and all sorts of other integrations and they're promising a lot more and and delivering on it like they're doing well. And I guess ours is a slightly different approach where it's like we're just releasing it and then we'll just start figuring out the partnership stuff later and I

Jaime: 2:37:20

sort of community first and then yeah, partnerships I think the spring out of it, the price

Roy: 2:37:25

differences are reflected in that like they mean price was point two for each of their keys. And this one's point oh three three so it's um,

Jaime: 2:37:32

yeah, I and it seems it seems like you're not planning on having future drops either whereas they keep adding new additions of keys over time. So

Roy: 2:37:41

I'm not really I'm open to the possibility of say having like a yearly membership in the future as an option but they'll never be these lifetime passes before and I would only do that in a way that added value to the existing holders and figured out a way that to make that a reasonable thing but yeah, it's not not something like that they've said that the literally planning like there's no cap on the end each time and everyone that is every medic he is like the exact same and utility more or less

Jaime: 2:38:14

Yeah, anyway yeah. Yeah, I was gonna specifically get into what they mean when they say they're they're all the same but yeah to

Roy: 2:38:23

um yeah, so that's the one each challenge is definitely taking a backstep but I do plan to revisit it I mean, also the massive bear market is just made as basically frozen in its tracks like I can't in like good sense transact with gas fees as high as they are with a wallet that size with a bank well that size and I don't really want to sell the entities that have in there at the current

Jaime: 2:38:47

price crisis. Yeah, it's I mean, again, you could do like bidding but you've been way too busy well yeah, you're trying to launch this doing stinker bids on your on your tiny little wall. Yeah, challenge.

Roy: 2:39:01

Yeah, so that's my project or projects what is going on with your abstract of the day project.

Jaime: 2:39:08

I'm not much this is the first week since recording the podcast where I basically just haven't been doing them because I've been so busy with the traveling for New York and then the traveling immediately after that, I basically had time to come home, do laundry, repack, sleep once and then fly out to Vegas, you know, the World Series and then seeing all my friends and all that I've just I have barely got to do and so I did one last Wednesday and then I did another one yesterday which was also Wednesday and had none in between. But you know also this is an another one of these projects where it's just the prices are very low. And so with the way that gases right now, it's just it's very difficult to convince people to spend you know, 60% of the price of an NFT on gas for it's just that's a tough sell. So I I've been thinking a little bit about stopping earlier at like day 150 Instead of going to 365 or moving all the future ones to Polygon instead. So I'm still tinkering in my head with the the plans because another thing is I, in kind of sick of the app that I use Autodesk sketchbook, it's just it's too buggy. And there's definitely awesome features on procreate that I want to use, but procreate is iPad only. And I have a Samsung tablet. So I'm thinking about sort of the next phase or the next iteration of the project a lot lately.

Roy: 2:40:40

Have you been? Yeah, so ahead.

Jaime: 2:40:43

I was just gonna say that I quite liked what I did yesterday. But go ahead.

Roy: 2:40:46

Yeah, that was really nice. Actually, I'm

Jaime: 2:40:49

good. I was I had been wanting to create, but I had just been quite busy. And it was it was fun to actually just make art again,

Roy: 2:40:57

pent up creativity, I guess. Have you considered like tasers because there's like a thriving art community there? Obviously, it's got issues. But you know what,

Jaime: 2:41:08

I literally just, it's funny. You say I just considered it for the first time ever today, because I was listening to John on open roses podcast. He's got like 10 days, and then Oh Ha, he's the guy that does the windows still lifes. He was on that. And he, of course, that's all on tezos. On on, HC, not soon, or whatever the name of that marketplace is there. But yeah, but because of the way it is very much. It really is about the art there and the environmental impact is low and the gas prices are super low. It does seem like a good environment for it. So yeah, I've literally had never thought of that until today. I had thought about polygon a bit. A couple of weeks ago, I started thinking about it as gas prices got very prohibitive. But it didn't seem it didn't seem like something I was going to go through with it seemed more like to me, I would, I would quit this earlier, finish it up and then do another abstract project that had its own contract, and was a more premium thing where I had, I would release maybe one every two weeks or something that I put significantly more work into. And it was more curated by me. And then I could you know, price them somewhere where the gas was not so prohibitive to it. Yeah. But yeah, that the the hen, and tezos idea is very interesting to me as of today.

Roy: 2:42:38

Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely worth considering. Yeah, I'm also excited

Jaime: 2:42:44

just about the prospect of like, when I do sort of stop this iteration and move to the next one, just being able to look at the whole body of work and then possibly do something with it, like open up like a red bubble, storefront or something like that. So people can just kind of slap them on mugs and T shirts and get prints made and stuff like that. Yes. As fun as it is to collect NFT's. It's also a lot of fun to bring them into the real world in various ways. I mean, I have tons of tons of art prints myself and ft T shirts and stuff like that, that I've made custom and bought directly from from NFT projects.

Roy: 2:43:27

Yeah, not on that note. That's it is very exciting. We we've been talking about getting some merch done for this podcast to bought apes as well as me from Zen Academy. And I got some samples sent by the people@maddies.co who do auto merge for NFT projects. And I believe that they're sitting at the post office because I wasn't home when they deliver them.

Jaime: 2:43:53

Every episode we seem to record about you haven't shared at the post office drop yet.

Roy: 2:43:59

Last time was my boy your club would actually this could be potentially my mute Nate merch as well. But I think at least one of the things they're sending me like for the the the Matty's much like a mug, a hoodie, shirt, laptop case, maybe a backpack.

Jaime: 2:44:16

It's just their general thing without designs on it, or you have like no type design. I

Roy: 2:44:20

don't think that prototypes. I think it's just like, what a random NFT's they had one of the exes can kind of see the quality of the quality. And now, I am not insanely picky. I'll probably be like, it seems good. It's good enough, but I'm sure Rachel will be like the real decision maker and Tessa checking the quality of it. So if she approves and it's high enough quality, then I think that we could probably get some much out relatively quickly, which is exciting.

Jaime: 2:44:52

Okay, interesting that she has a saying and I don't

Roy: 2:44:55

Well, of course you get to say that as well. Oh, okay.

Jaime: 2:45:00

Some courts.

Roy: 2:45:01

I think I said you could get merged delivered to you, if you want to do.

Jaime: 2:45:04

Yeah, I think you did as well. But yeah, it's not as funny to.

Roy: 2:45:09

Yeah. Um, yeah. So exciting stuff.

Jaime: 2:45:15

Yeah, definitely I'm, and I'm excited now that I'm back to keep creating art. But now that I think about it, I'm literally going to Connecticut later today, and then not even coming home and going straight to New Orleans. So I think probably for the next four days, I'm not liable to be able to crank out one a day, as well. But then, I think by let me look at the calendar here. Today's Thursday, I think I get back Tuesday from normal. And so by next Wednesday, I should be able to actually get back into consistently creating, which I'm fucking excited about because I just love making stuff that aren't that I actually like, I love looking at art, and it's, it's still wild to me that I can

Roy: 2:45:57

make art that I like. Nice. That's all it really is awesome.

Jaime: 2:46:02

Yeah, it's it's kind of like it makes sense, because I have my own tastes. So theoretically, of course, I'm going to make ones that I like, but I don't know. It's, it's still it still. feels cool to me.

Roy: 2:46:17

Yeah. It's all very cool. I mean, and other people clearly like it, too, and will pay for it. So that's like, an extra layer of awesomeness, I think.

Jaime: 2:46:26

Yes, definitely. I think I talked about this a while ago, before, when I was just doing paintings, like, I had a couple people that were literally physically close to me, that maybe like for, you know, Christmas, or a birthday party or a birthday party, a birthday, I might make them a card or something like that. And so my, my art would get into like three different people's hands that way or whatever. And sometimes I posted to Instagram or whatever, where I had 48 followers. But yeah, it's it's, it's very cool to be able to have distribution to lots of people and just see how many people also enjoy it on a level that is unlike anything that I did before and fts. Yeah,

Roy: 2:47:11

I'm actually I'm excited for you for the prospect of you going to tasers? I don't know. Yeah, it just seems like a cool like, the art community there there is like thriving, and it's like, I want to say small enough, but like still big enough that like it's it's more of a community that whereas like launching NFT's on a theorem is just like, putting it out into the ether into the eyes. Yeah, it's also Yeah,

Jaime: 2:47:41

I was gonna say it's also so so much of the buying on etherium for NFT's seems to be about the investment potential of it, which, you know, I'm happy. I'm happy if people buy mine and are able to make money on it. And certainly a lot of them have been able to, but there's also something nice about people just collecting the art because it's art that they like,

Roy: 2:48:05

yeah, that's definitely the culture a lot more on tasers, I think, um, and yeah, that's because, you know, gas is basically insignificant there. And generally things are priced a bit cheaper.

Jaime: 2:48:16

Yeah, and I feels like additions are more common there as well, where people just make additions of 12 or whatever. Yeah, real cheap price, and then more people get to collect it. It's

Roy: 2:48:26

kind of nice. Oh, man, you should do it.

Jaime: 2:48:29

I'm definitely going to look into that. It's so funny. You asked that because I did not mention that to you. But I literally two hours ago finished listening to the podcast. I was thinking about it. Yeah, I guess now it's like four hours ago cuz. But yeah.

Roy: 2:48:44

No, yeah, I was talking to someone else. I had a call with some people launching an art related project and they were contemplating like, immutable X or Selena and I was like, check out tasers because, you know, thriving our community. And yeah, you should pop into the tasers channel in the Zen Academy discord, because we have a couple people that who were like, super well ingrained into the community and probably have some good advice or takes or Hey, I

Jaime: 2:49:10

gotta figure out how to navigate that marketplace too. I have no idea. I do. I do.

Unknown: 2:49:14

Yeah, it is. Yeah.

Jaime: 2:49:18

I do have two tehsils wallets, each with one NFT in it that I've never used aside from collecting those one. NFT's. Yeah. But yeah, that's a great idea. I'm gonna look into that for sure.

Roy: 2:49:29

Awesome. That's about it.

Jaime: 2:49:33

Yeah. Do you want to do you want to do a plug section? Is there anything you want to talk about?

Roy: 2:49:37

Ah, I'll plug Zenacademized Good. Pop culture I'm I've been rewatching I just finished watching Seinfeld. Great show. Highly recommended that. Yeah. Shout out Seinfeld. What do you want to plug Jamie?

Jaime: 2:49:55

I always ask you this and don't have anything. Yeah, mine.

Roy: 2:49:58

I'm like I'm ready to finish. The showing you like plugs let's plug and I bought something dumb and you're like uh

Jaime: 2:50:07

you know what I'm gonna plug Paki hems blog not boring he cranks out so much good long form content you have tech if you're interested in that kind of thing he it's It's actually amazing to me I mean you write a lot of newsletters you know what it's like his are so in depth yeah and he gets one out like every four days it's insane it's it's tough yeah like and and he just he has an interesting way of thinking about stuff and and not dumbing it down but also not get caught in getting caught in the weeds of the technicalities and in a really good way, so

Roy: 2:50:46

check that out. Yeah, link in the show notes. Of course.

Jaime: 2:50:50

This has been episode 14 of Two Bored Apes. Thanks for listening.

Intro: 2:50:56

Two Bored Apes, talking NFT's, De-fi, and some random stuff! uh uh uh uh Two Bored Apes, talking NFT's, De-fi, and some random stuff! uh uh uh uh