SotN #35: NFT MANIA! Are NFTs the Future of Art? Nifty Gateway Founders Griffin and Duncan

Guests: Duncan & Griffin Cock Foster We bring on the Cock Foster Twins, Co-Founders of Nifty Gateway, to the Bankless State of the Nation to discuss all things NFT and the roadmap to the metaverse. ----- 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: http://bankless.substack.com/​​ http://bankless.substack.com/%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/​​ http://podcast.banklesshq.com/%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B ----- 💪BECOME A BANKLESS PREMIUM MEMBER: Lock in $12/month for life before March 1! http://bankless.cc/membership​​ http://bankless.cc/membership%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B ----- GO BANKLESS WITH THESE SPONSOR TOOLS: ⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave​​ https://bankless.cc/aave%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B 🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMP https://bankless.cc/go-gemini​​ https://bankless.cc/go-gemini%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B 💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith​​ https://bankless.cc/monolith%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B 📱 DHARMA - MOBILE ONRAMP DIRECTLY INTO DEFI https://bankless.cc/dharma​ https://bankless.cc/dharma%E2%80%8B ------ 📣LATTICE | NEXT GENERATION OF HARDWARE WALLETS https://bankless.cc/gridplus​ https://bankless.cc/gridplus%E2%80%8B ------ Relevant Links: Nifty Gateway https://niftygateway.com/​ https://niftygateway.com/%E2%80%8B Duncan on Twitter https://twitter.com/DCCockFoster?s=20​ https://twitter.com/DCCockFoster?s=20%E2%80%8B Griffin on Twitter https://twitter.com/gcockfoster​ https://twitter.com/gcockfoster%E2%80%8B ------ Don't stop at the video! Visit the official Bankless website http://banklesshq.com/​​ http://banklesshq.com/%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B Follow Bankless on Twitter https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ​​ https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B Follow Ryan on Twitter https://twitter.com/ryansadams​​ https://twitter.com/ryansadams%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B Follow David on Twitter https://twitter.com/TrustlessState​​ https://twitter.com/TrustlessState%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time we may add links in this channel to products we use. We may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. We'll always disclose when this is the case.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, welcome everyone to another episode of State of the Nation. We're super excited about this. We're going to dive deep into NFTs, which is super timely because we just had Mark Cuban on, who is giving us the bullish case for NFTs. Here's what we do every week. At 2 o'clock on Tuesdays, we talk about what's happening. We've related to the big picture stuff and then we drop some insights and action items for you. So it comes out on YouTube Live and then also on the podcast. David, before we get to NFTs, well, actually, maybe you could tease this article, tease this.

• 0:48David Hoffman?

  Episode, yeah. Yeah, so NFTs are the hot topic, right? And the thing, the cool thing about NFTs is how much possible surface area there is, right? We have, we have, you know, the CryptoPunks, which are a lot of very similar NFTs and there's like one set of them. But then there's other kinds of NFTs, which are lots like high labor, high energy, like costly to produce NFTs that are really, really, I would call them luxurious NFTs. Art, digital art, like high quality art NFTs. And these are different kinds of products, right? And the NFTs can almost do anything, but that's, that's what we're going to be talking about on this specific episode of Bankless State of the Nation is high quality art NFTs,

• 1:33David Hoffman?

  because that is what Nifty Gateway really excels at. So if you guys, the audience will likely have heard of Beeple, Beeple dropping these massive drops on Nifty Gateway. RAC, one of my favorite musicians, dropping NFTs on Nifty Gateway. And like they're fundamentally different than some of the CryptoPunks or Euler Beats or CryptoKitties types of NFTs. They're, they're specifically, they're extremely rare and they're hard to produce, right? Like, you know, art is hard to produce and that's kind of the NFTs that you see on Nifty Gateway. And so it's a different end of the spectrum that we're going to explore on this State of the Nation.

• 2:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright, awesome man. Let's talk about what's new. David, you want to talk about what just happened this morning? Because like, I'm still wrapping my head around what just happened.

• 2:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and the reason why NFTs are in the cycle is people like Mark Cuban think that they're awesome, right? There's a ton of people that don't really care about crypto, don't really care about Bitcoin, don't really care about Ether. Like, they don't really care about the new monies of the world. But there is this world of people that really care about digital art, right? Digital art and natively scarce art. And so that's pretty cool.

• 2:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright, so this is almost turning into like NFT week, you know? Where we're doing some articles on NFTs, we're talking about NFTs with Cuban, now we're talking about NFTs with Nifty Gateway. And we've got some articles coming out this week too, so stay tuned to the Bankless Program to check that out. David, we've also got some stuff going on in Clubhouse? So what is Clubhouse? And what are we experimenting with on that?

• 3:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Clubhouse is this new social media app. And it's a drop-in, what they call it, a drop-in chatroom, which is pretty fantastic. And what that means is that there are these rooms that can be created. And anyone can hop in and start listening to the conversations. There's different ways to moderate these rooms. Some people are speaking, some people can't speak. But there is, it's, I really like this quote from Naval where "Podcasting is like the studio album, but Clubhouse is the live performance, the live show." And so Ryan and I and the Bankless Nation are trying to get into Clubhouse. And so if you guys want, if you guys are Clubhouse members, you can follow both Ryan and I on Clubhouse, Trustless State, the MyNormal Twitter handle, and then Ryan Sean Adams.

• 3:57David Hoffman?

  Ryan's Twitter handle is Ryan S. Adams, his Clubhouse handle is Ryan Sean Adams. So make sure you follow the right Ryan Sean Adams there. But I think this is going to be a great community generation tool that we're going to leverage.

• 4:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely, man. All right. Well, we're going to get to the episode. Of course, I got to ask you the question, but before we do that, a special shout out to Lattice. We're doing a lot with security, hardware wallet security, ever since we talked about Hugh Cart. Oh, is that your lattice?

• 4:22David Hoffman?

  That's my lattice.

• 4:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Look at that big, beautiful display screen, guys. The big screen is cool because it allows you to double check a transaction, a crypto transaction, before you send it. So, Lattices are back in stock. We'll include a link to the show notes. Pick one of these up if you are interested in doubling down on your crypto security. David, now let me ask you the question I ask at the start of every one of these State of the Nations. What is the State of the Nation today?

• 4:48David Hoffman?

  The State of the Nation is collecting. We are collecting things, right? There was a tweet that went out not too long ago where DeFi people and cryptocurrency people are all about wealth and nifty people, NFT people, are all about status. And NFTs are, the meme is that NFTs are about like status signaling, right? Signaling that you have these cool NFTs and people like to signal their status and NFTs are a way to express that desire to have status, right? I have plants and those are kind of my unique NFTs, things that I like to signal that I think plants are cool.

• 5:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's your status symbol?

• 5:27David Hoffman?

  That's my status symbol, my plants.

• 5:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I thought it was.

• 5:30David Hoffman?

  And digital art and NFTs are a way to, for people to convey status and people like to collect them. So, this week in the state, in the Bank of the State of the Nation, we are collecting.

• 5:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, awesome, man. Well, we're going to get right to that, but before we bring on Duncan and Griffin to talk about NFT, Nifty Gateway, we want to tell you about those fantastic sponsors who made this possible. Guys, we've entered a bull market. Now is the time to start building your crypto empire and you should do it on Gemini. You already know Gemini is the world's most trusted crypto exchange, but now you can do even more than trade. You can earn. You can take one of your crypto assets and park it in an interest-earning Gemini account where you can get up to 7.4% annualized. There's nothing more satisfying than earning passive income on an asset that you're already bullish on. This is a Crypto native superpower. You know what's coming soon too?

• 6:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  A Gemini crypto credit card. Yep, that's a credit card, not a debit card. It gives you rewards in hard money crypto assets, not something inflationary like airline miles or hotel points. Gives you up to 3% cash back in crypto. The card is coming in Q2, but you should get on the waiting list right now and we'll include a link. See what I mean? This is more than just trading. Gemini is your bridge to crypto for the bull market. Open a free account in less than three minutes at gemini.com/go-bankless. Get $15 in Bitcoin after you trade your first $100. That's gemini.com/go-bankless.

• 6:59David Hoffman?

  Aave is a borrowing and lending protocol on Ethereum and just recently released Aave version 2, which has a ton of cool new features that makes using Aave even more powerful. With Aave, you can leverage the full power of DeFi money Legos, yield and composability all in one application. On Aave, there are a ton of assets that you can deposit in order to gain yield and all of those same assets can also be borrowed from the protocol if you have deposited collateral. Here you can see me getting a 200 USDC loan against my portfolio of a number of different DeFi tokens and ETH. I'll choose a variable interest rate because it's a lower rate than the stable interest rate option,

• 7:40David Hoffman?

  but I could choose the stable interest rate option if I wanted to lock that interest rate in permanently. One of Aave's V2 features is the ability to swap collateral without having to withdraw your assets, trade them on Uniswap and then deposit them back into Aave. Aave does all of this for you, all in one seamless transaction. So you don't have to repay loans in order to change the collateral you have backing them. Check out the power of Aave at ave.com. That's A-A-V-E dot com.

• 8:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright guys, we just had Mark Cuban on this morning. He gave us the bull case for NFTs. Now we're going to talk about how they actually come to market, how it gets done. NFTs are absolutely going to explode in popularity this year. We've got Duncan and Griffin, who are the co-founders of Nifty Gateway. This is a marketplace for NFTs, in particular, art NFTs. Most noticeably, as David said in the intro, mainstream artists are starting to use this. Beeple is one. RAC, you know, fantastic musician, also released there. Duncan, Griffin, guys, how you doing? Are you bullish NFTs or what?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  I don't know, is the Pope a Catholic? Oh yeah. Thanks for having us on, guys. Delighted to be here.

• 8:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Dude, Griffin, we gotta ask about that background. Like, what's going on in that background? Is this an NFT? It looks awesome.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, you nailed it. Coincidentally, it is an NFT. This is a way to express my pain. So this is an NFT called Last Stand of the Nation State, which originally sold on the primary market for $40. It was an open edition. It was open for 24 hours and I bought 10 of them. And then I gave away seven to my family and friends to like, spread the good word of NFTs. And now they're trading at $20,000 each. So I'm going to be living with a lifetime of pain on this one.

• 9:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  When did you do that? When did you first like, buy that and give it out?

• 9:30Speaker 02

  It was in October, yeah. And the artist who made it is named Slime Sunday, and he's an incredibly talented artist. He's one of the best artists that we work with. And he, you know, he just came into the NFT medium and just absolutely knocked it out of the park. So I think this is an NFT that people will still be talking about 20, 30 years from now, maybe even 100 years from now. And I will be living with regret the entire time, thinking about what could have been, so.

• 9:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's a lot of ingredients here, where like, we can resonate with the early Bitcoin story, where like, we were talking before we started recording, where Bitcoin would not be what it was today if a lot of early people didn't give Bitcoins away. And there were a lot of early people that gave Bitcoins away, not knowing and/or not thinking that the number would go up, the value would go up. And the similarity between this story, and I've heard other stories of this nature, similar to NFTs, the reason... The the fact that these stories are similar makes me bullish, right? It's like, well, we know that this pattern exists. We're seeing it. We see it. We saw it play out with Bitcoin, and now we're seeing it play out with NFTs. You don't even need to like, really be bullish on digital art to understand and put all the pieces together that like these same

• 10:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  patterns are existing both with NFTs that we saw with Bitcoin.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. You see it all the time. Like with Bitcoin, everybody is like, wow, the Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin is so high. I guess it's a little too high to buy. And then two years later, it's like, you know, ten times as high as it was then. And I mean, most of my net worth is in Bitcoin too. And you see the exact same thing with NFTs. Like they're scarce and they'll always be scarce. And I I gave away a lot to spread the word of Nifty Gateway just three or four months ago. And I think I must have given away almost a hundred thousand dollars worth of NFTs, maybe even three hundred thousand now. And it's just crazy to think about.

• 11:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's what's crazy is, um, you know, Bitcoin Pizza was a long time ago, right? Like everyone remembers that story, like 2012 or something. Um, but what you're talking about has just now happened in the last like four months. Like, it feels like this, these are, this is NFTs moment. It's about to, it's about to blow up in a big way. And you've, all that appreciation you're talking about, that was just since October. I mean, guys, can we start here, though? Because some people, to be honest, still don't get it. Like, they don't understand NFTs. Maybe, maybe Duncan, in your words, how do you explain NFTs? Why are they a thing?

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah. Um, I totally understand. Honestly, it took me a while to grasp the concept as well. I think it takes everyone a while to to grasp grasp the concept. But if I just had to explain them really simply, basically what I say, would say is like, NFTs are digital items you can truly own. You know, like we, there are lots of examples of of digital items, like a Fortnite skin, for example. But if my Fortnite account goes away, or Fortnite, the game shuts down, like that item disappears forever. That's a really weird experience for me, because like, I'm used to, say, buying a pair of Nike shoes. Imagine if you buy a pair of Nike shoes and then Nike shuts down and your shoes disappear. That just doesn't make any sense. That's not how like we we view the stuff we own.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Because NFTs are are based on a blockchain that's like permissionless and decentralized. For the first time, it means that You know, whoever made the NFT could shut down or completely disappear, but the NFT still exists, which is actually a crazy important concept for us because that's as humans, that's how we understand ownership. Like, I wouldn't pay so much for a pair of Nike shoes if Nike shutting down meant those shoes go away. And it's partly why digital items could like never really be valuable beforehand. But NFTs have allowed that to happen for the first time. Um, and that's, that's really what I think the bigger picture is here.

• 12:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Duncan, can I ask you a question because um, some people who are kind of critics of NFTs ha- have told me that, hey, but here's the reality, guys, like, users don't care. They're still buying Fortnite skins for a lot of money, like, like billions of dollars a year. And Fortnite is completely centralized. Fortnite can inflate the, the value of, of skins. There's no, no concept of scarcity outside of like the, the, what the game studio explores. Do users really care about having blockchain-based uh, you know, property settlement layer that enforces scarcity, or are they just gonna just go on to a centralized platform, not really care?

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Look, it, it really depends, honestly, you know, like, if I'm a Fortnite gamer, I'll buy a skin for ten bucks, twenty bucks, whatever, it makes my character look cool. If I'm buying a, a work of art for a million dollars, like, yeah, one hundred percent I care. And, you know, it's, it's actually, it's really very interesting. This is a very little-known fact, but there are competitors to Nifty Gateway that are essentially centralized versions of digital art ownership, where they'll basically issue you a certificate of authenticity for like a work of digital art, but it only exists on their platform. Those, those platforms all failed. None of them really broke out. You know, the idea didn't catch on at all for precisely the reason that I was talking about. Our collectors were, our collectors said like, well, I,

• 14:15Speaker 02

  I can't, you know, spend so much money on a digital item when your guys' platform going away means that digital item will just disappear. And that's why it took uh, a decentralized, truly permissionless system like blockchain to make digital art work. Um, and you know, it's, it's really exciting. We, we've seen this sort of like happen slowly and now it's, everyone is figuring this out all at once. That's really exciting for us to see. It's just very, very cool.

• 14:41David Hoffman?

  And that reminds me of a article that I read recently about the spectrum behind NFTs. And that I really want to, we were going to talk about this at the, towards the end of this livestream, but I want to kind of get into that now since it's topical. There's, there's a different spectrum of trustlessness with NFTs. And this comes down to where the, where the art is actually hosted, right? You can put everything you want onto Ethereum, but the bigger the data is, the more expensive it is. And NFTs are media and sometimes GIFs can be multiple, multiple megabytes large. And if you get to be larger than a single block on Ethereum, you can't put it on Ethereum. Right? And so there's a spectrum here of like how on-chain some of these, this art is.

• 15:26David Hoffman?

  And so maybe you guys can talk about how you think about the NFTs on Nifty Gateway. And like, do you guys have aspirations to try and be a totally like self-sovereign, on-chain, like trustless, censorship resistant, uh, NFT platform? Or how do you guys think about, about this industry? And do people even care about this conversation?

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Look, 100%, I think people care. And 100%, this is like what we're, what we're moving towards. And we're actively, we're actually like, you know, rebuilding our, our minting and our deployment system right now. The goal is like, if Nifty Gateway shuts down, then the art lives on forever, period. That's why it's so important to build on top of a blockchain that like is going to live on forever. I think, you know, like Ethereum, because like if your blockchain shuts down, then your NFT shuts down, no question. And then, you know, our, our updated system is going to have as much information about the work of art on-chain as, as is possible. You're right, you really, you can't store image files on-chain. Some of the, some of these artworks are 200 megabytes.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  It's, it's simply impossible to put those on a blockchain. But what you can do is you can, you can store a hash that, you know, provides like an immutable way to check that a provided image file is the correct image file for a, you know, for a particular NFT. And then what we're going to do is we're going to give the artist the ability to like, to take control and to, to upload their own. Own image URL if Nifty Gateway shuts down, you know, there's a number of different decentralized file storage solutions. We're just gonna say like, okay, we're gonna let people put images wherever they want. Because you're right, that is the, that is sort of the difficult part that you have to navigate with NFT art. Is you can't put a hundred megabyte file on the blockchain, that's, that's just simply impossible.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  So you do have to, you know, get creative when it comes to making it truly permissionless and like living on forever. But absolutely, that's our, that's our goal, that's our, that's our north star with the NFTs we create. I think the NFT ecosystem over the past few years has really figured out ways to, to make this information better and to put more information on chain to make the NFTs themselves more survivable. And I think eventually, excuse me. Eventually we'll see people start to, to like really care about that as they realize that this does have an impact on the, the value, you know, like putting the name of the artist on chain is important, like putting the, putting the addition number, et cetera, et cetera. Like, you know, people, as the market matures, more and more people will wake up to that.

• 17:54David Hoffman?

  So with, with NFTs, it like, it comes with a file, like a media file, one megabyte, half a megabyte, thirty megabytes. And so the thesis is that, you know, maybe the centralized hosting database that hosts that information goes down. But there's still an NFT with a hash that provably links to that file type, right? So the file type goes through a hashing algorithm, out comes a hash. That hash is very, very small, this is how blockchain works, digital signatures. And then that hash makes its way to the NFT and that's what you own. And so the media file can circulate as any other file does on the internet, except it's the hash that can verify that this hash goes with this piece of digital art.

• 18:37David Hoffman?

  And again, if with NFTs, this, I, I think this is kind of hard for typical, the newbies to get in, get their minds around is like, the art isn't scarce, it's the ownership of the art that's scarce. And that, and so the art can be on any, any and everyone's computer, but that doesn't mean you own it. You own the certificate, you own the legitimacy. And we could even go into the conversation of something like this decentralized storage. How does decentralized storage fit into this conversation?

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think decentralized storage. Or sorry, go ahead, Duncan. Yeah, one thing I want to highlight there is like, a lot of people think this, this sort of like owning a certificate of authenticity concept is, is new to NFTs. But it's actually been common in the physical art world for almost a hundred years now. Where, you know, Marcel Duchamp, he sold a, he sold a work of art that was just a commercially produced urinal. It, to make a perfect physical reproduction, all you have to go do is buy the same urinal. But that's still like a, a very valuable work. It's held in a, a few different museums. The difference is the authenticity. And like this kind of thing is very common in the, the physical art world. NFTs are just taking this concept that has existed and mainstreaming it and bringing it to a much larger audience.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  So I think a lot of people don't really understand, a lot of people who are skeptical of NFTs have not spent, you know, a ton of time in the, the physical fine art world. Which isn't that surprising because it's a, it can be kind of a very niche world. But yeah, this concept of sort of owning the, owning the authentic one, despite the fact that there are perfect reproductions out there. That's like, that's been around for a long time. So yeah, I just wanted to highlight that because I think a lot of people don't really, I think they miss that when they talk about NFTs. And I think RAC had a really good tweet on this too. He was like, the concept is polarizing, but like, of course it is. Some people care about owning NFTs and other people don't. The people who do care are going to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for an NFT. Or maybe they'll pay $20,000 for an NFT that I gave away seven of or something.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  But you know, the people who don't care, people who don't care don't want one. So like, they think it's stupid, but it doesn't matter. Like if half the world thinks it's stupid and half the world's willing to pay a million dollars for it, it'll be worth a million dollars. And that's kind of why the concept is polarizing. But we're also just seeing just insane growth, you know? I mean, the growth in the NFT space over the last three weeks, you know, between top shot, between the numbers we're seeing, between all the NFT platforms. It, it's just something that like, it does remind me of the early days of Bitcoin. Because it, you know, to the early observers, it almost doesn't make sense. Like it's mind boggling to see. They always believed in the concept, but when these things hit at the scale. The internet like they take off like crazy and that's just where NFTs are at right now. And you know, it's crazy to be a part of.

• 21:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's funny. It goes back to a conversation David and I were having actually earlier today where he was like, hey, at first I was kind of bearish on NFTs. But then the market proved me wrong because like the ultimate validation of any idea is the open and free market and there is no. There the the most open and free market in the world is DeFi, right? So the fact that NFTs are going for these amounts of money. Doesn't matter what you think, like somebody's paying for them. So you can no longer deny that there's value here because what sets value for anything, whether it's stock or gold or ETH or Bitcoin. It is what the market is willing to pay. I want to get back to this question because this kind of came up in our Mark Cuban conversation too. Which is like something that you were saying Duncan and maybe Griffin, you can riff off of too.

• 21:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just like the platform that the NFT is issued on actually matters. And this is interesting because we were talking with with Cuban about, hey, like mainstreaming NFTs and he brought up up a flow. Right? And what it's doing with with with collective with collectibles NBA top shops. Like it it kind of strikes me and you guys tell me, but like if you're doing, you know, $5, $10 sort of sports cards. Right? Like maybe you're fine having that in a in a in a centrally managed.

• 22:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, solution, basically chain that doesn't have the decentralization, credible neutrality and like property rights. Guarantees that something like Ethereum has, but if you're doing something with a, you know, million dollar art pieces plus. Then you have to have the strongest settlement guarantees. Is that kind of what you guys were were talking about? And if that's the case, will we will we see basically? The big amounts of capital and the high value NFTs on something like Ethereum. Where, you know, we'll see lower value, smaller economic transactions on all of these these centralized like side chains. How do you see this this shaping up? And is that mental model accurate?

• 23:15Speaker 02

  I personally think it's accurate. I mean, that's that's my thesis. We, I mean, we we choose to release our our NFTs on Ethereum, largely for the reasons that you've outlined. You know, it's it's very incredibly neutral. It's extremely decentralized. It's truly permissionless. And, uh, you know, if you if you have an asset that is worth a lot of money, as as some of these NFTs are now, tho- those attributes become really, really important. And certainly, I I think that that would definitely be a factor in my mind, where if I'm spending millions of dollars on an NFT, I would really want it to be on a a truly permissionless decentralized network like Ethereum,

• 23:54Speaker 02

  as opposed to some of the other, you know, as as opposed to some of the other chains out there. That that would definitely be a really important factor in in my decision making. Um, I I do think, you know, like, it might take a while for the market to figure that out. And the thing about decentralization, right? It's like, it's the sort of thing that that, uh, doesn't matter until it does. So sometimes it takes that event where it matters before people wake up and realize they're like, oh, crap, I I really want my NFTs on like a a truly permissionless network. So, you know, there that that's kind of the way I I think about it. And yeah, we it might take a while for people to figure that out, as it has in the past with other like, you know, with other decentralized applications.

• 24:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, you don't know that Robin Hood is centralized until they pause your like GameStop trading, right? Like, Griffin, what would you add to that?

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I I would totally add to that. And then what I would say is, I think people don't realize this, but Ethereum is scaling, like it is happening. And it has such a lead, like, I'm highly confident Ethereum is going to win in the end. You know, it has all the network effects we've seen before, and to me, it seems like a no brainer. And we're, you know, we're releasing a new minting system on Ethereum, where we'll be able to cut down our gas costs to like less than 1% of what they currently are. And we'll be able to mint NFTs on Ethereum for like cheaper than they are on Flow or Wax or any of the other competing blockchains. And that that tech is happening, you know, it's all getting built. So. Right. And Ethereum like has never compromised on like the core values of decentralization and permissionlessness. And in my opinion, like it's by far the best store of value.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  And I think Duncan's right, the market's going to wake up to that. Uh, you know, and it'll just happen slowly than all at once, which we see all the time.

• 25:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you know, that's what's funny. David, uh, should we get into like explaining Nifty Gateway because we haven't yet? Or should we go down this track of layer two? What do you want to do?

• 25:41David Hoffman?

  I, I think Nifty Gateway first because then we, then we can ask about how we come to cut the gas cost down by 99%. Because that, that was, that was huge. I really want to get into that. But first, let's talk about Nifty Gateway and how it differentiates itself from other NFT platforms, right? Because Nifty Gateway is quite unique. The, the NFTs you find on Nifty Gateway are not the same kind of entities you would find elsewhere. So what is Nifty Gateway? And, and what are the unique characteristics that it brings to the table?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great question. I can talk about Nifty Gateway. Yeah, okay, nice. Pulling up the website. So Duncan and I started Nifty Gateway about two years ago. And when we, we, when we begun, our mission was all about accessibility. Right? Like, we wanted to build a, um, we wanted to build a website where people, anyone could access NFTs. That was the idea. That's why we called it Nifty Gateway, you know? Like, buying NFTs before was a very difficult process, especially on Ethereum. You had to get a MetaMask wallet. You had to, uh, you know, load Ethereum into that wallet from, after buying it on, on an exchange. And it was very, very difficult. So one of the core tenets of Nifty Gateway has always been accessibility. Just making it really, really easy. Yeah, there's Last Stand in the Nation State, god damn it.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Making it really easy for someone, for anyone to buy an NFT and then custody it. Uh, and that was all built on top of Ethereum. So the original product was actually a credit card purchasing portal where you let other people buy NFTs from other projects with a credit card. But then we realized the real demand is like taking NFTs mainstream. It's finding people who are like already famous in the world outside of NFTs and making it really, really easy that for them to launch NFTs to their audience. And as well as market it. And that's kind of like Nifty Gateway in its current form. Do you want to talk about that a little bit, Duncan?

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. So we we got acquired by Gemini and that that gave us access to technology that we didn't have before. And that that sort of let us realize our our full vision, which was which was twofold. The first part of the vision is that you never have to be onboarded into cryptocurrency to to sign up and start trading. And the cool thing thing that we find is like, it's a really good, you know, entry point into into crypto. It's it's, I mean, we literally called it nifty gateway, where people are interacting with the blockchain without even realizing it. And then slowly they pick up that knowledge and they get more and more curious. And they're sort of onboarded into the the way that like blockchains work without even realizing it, which we think is really, really powerful.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  So that's tenant one. You can sign up, you can buy NFTs, you can sell NFTs, and you never have to be onboarded into cryptocurrency, which just makes it so much easier for a a person to get started. Tenant two is all about, you know, emphasizing creators and like people who are making NFTs that we think are really, really strong. So there's a huge curational aspect to this. You know, Ryan, you were talking earlier about the platform that you release NFTs on, Mattering. A lot of the NFT platforms, including Nifty Gateway, have a pretty strong brand behind them. So when we put an artist on our platform, we're basically endorsing their work. We're saying like, hey, this, we think this artist is going places. We're we're really proud to offer the work.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  It's a similar value proposition as as top art galleries have with the artists they they present. So that's really aspect number two, where we we curate, we really build a lot of excitement. We we put a ton of effort into marketing every single artist that we release with. And, you know, the end result of that is, I think, collectors are are comfortable buying from us because they know a nifty gateway endorsed artist is like, is going places, they have a strong career. And yeah, so we we sort of play a similar role to the the role that galleries play in the physical art world. Except we play it at a much larger scale. So sometimes we call ourselves like an art gallery at the the scale of an internet, the scale of the internet. So it's really those two things. It's really easy to access for new people.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  And then there's like a curational element where we select artists we think are awesome and and endorse their work. And I will add on to that, or sorry, no, go ahead.

• 29:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, just a quick question. Are tokens, are are NFTs on Nifty Gateway fractional? Can you participate in a fractional NFT if you if you can't buy all fifteen thousand dollars of a token? Can you get a piece of one?

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Not on Nifty Gateway, no, but other people have, uh, other people have created fractionalized services. And you know, all the NFTs on Nifty Gateway are ERC 721s and can easily be withdrawn and turned into a fractional ownership. Beeple, for example, this is a really cool project. When he sold, you know, his Everydays as one of ones and they all went for about a hundred thousand dollars, a hundred thousand dollars each, which is a huge event in the NFT world. The buyer of those took, withdrew all 20 of them and has fractionalized them into something called a B20, which is now tradable as an ERC 20 token on Uniswap. And it's just like an insanely cool project because you can get ownership of like,

• 30:29Speaker 02

  maybe the most important drop in the history of crypto art. Although it's also interesting, like just last Thursday, we had an artist Mad Dog Jones sell $4 million in a single five-minute open edition window, which like passed people's primary market. And then we have Grimes coming up on Sunday, which, you know, I mean, we'll see what the numbers look like. We're upgrading our servers because it's just going to be an absolute bonanza. So we'll see. New records are getting broken like every day.

• 30:55David Hoffman?

  Just for the record, Grime, we're talking about Elon Musk's wife, right?

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:00David Hoffman?

  Who has a name of, by herself. She's a fantastic artist. And she's also Elon Musk's wife. Like, wow.

• 31:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I wonder if he's, I wonder if he's going to be pumping this a little bit.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wonder too. I wonder what Elon thinks about NFTs. Like, we don't really know yet, but I feel like he would love it. It's practically made for Elon.

• 31:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Elon loves memes and that's a great place, that's a great jumping off point.

• 31:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, it's interesting because we're talking so much with Cuban, like about the, just the surface area of this and this being sort of the gateway to decentralized finance for, for everybody. So can you talk about some of these, these like big things that have happened? Because I mean, I bet two years ago when you started this, this would be kind of like dream scenario. You get artists like Beeple. I mean, that was absolutely massive. And now, now Beeple is, um, what's the big auction house?

• 31:49David Hoffman?

  Christie's.

• 31:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Christie's. Beeple's on, he, like, you guys mainstreamed Beeple to NFTs essentially, and by extension mainstreamed him and introduced him to, to DeFi and everything that we're doing in crypto. Can you talk about maybe some examples of this? Like some of the most exciting, I guess, artists coming on that are more mainstream accessible and, and you know, how that's helping crypto, how that's helping DeFi and NFTs in general?

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Totally, yeah. Honestly, when we started last year, it was it was such a such a mission to pitch artists. And we'd go in there and they would just have these like blank stares on their faces. And it was like, what on earth are these guys talking about? Like, I can screenshot it, but I still own it. It was just like, and then we look at now where we basically, we have just so much inbound interest. Like, we have the opposite problem where we need to to figure out how to like, select the people who are reaching out to us. It's really been like such a monumental shift over the past year. Honestly, I think one good example is Trevor Trevor Andrew. He's known as Gucci Ghost. He's like a pretty, he has like a strong following with, you know, some specific art collectors. We pitched him in March of last year to try and get him on the platform.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Took us seven or eight months to convince him of like, you know, just following up repeatedly, being like, hey, this is the future. This is really, really cool. And then he released his work. One of his pieces sold for $30,000 on the secondary market. He's about to come back next month with a huge new release. And he's like posting on Instagram. All my friends are sending me his Instagram posts where he's like, I just got a cut of my secondary market digital art sales, like NFTs of the future. Yeah, it's it's really like, it's honestly really crazy for for me to witness. Because like, we've been here for for years, like pushing this idea, trying to tell people like how cool NFTs are. And now it seems like people are finally waking up to that. So. Yeah, for for Trevor Jones, if things keep going how they are, you know, he'll probably make millions of dollars from his next drop.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  You know, and like, that's probably more than he would make in multiple years in the art world, maybe. The thing is, sorry, Trevor Andrew, yeah, Trevor Jones is Trevor Jones is one of the biggest crypto artists in the world. And he's actually dropping tomorrow. And that one's gonna be bonkers.

• 34:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you guys remember in, do you guys remember in 2017, there was like this crypto meme? That was like, the institutions are coming, right? Like, right near the top. Where we're like, oh, you know, Bitcoin hit all time highs, ETH hit all time highs. But it's probably not all time highs because the institutions are coming. And this was beginning to mean. But like, it really feels like the artists are coming, right? The, you know, the celebrities are coming, the the the creators are coming in a big way to NFTs. And what's what's crazy about it is, I feel like no one's still talking about it in in just general crypto, right? Like, we're all very excited about Bitcoin price and ETH price. But like, in our the non crypto bubbles.

• 34:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Everyone's starting to talk about this, NFTs, and it's like, it's spreading, it's going viral. Is this the year that the creators come to NFTs and DeFi? Are you, are you feeling like we're about to be hit by a tsunami?

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Dude, it's already happened. Yeah. Okay. I wish I could share some of the names we have like lined up. But I would just say, I would just say good.

• 35:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can, you can if you want.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  We'll, we'll share them. Just go to niftygateway.com and sign up for our mailing list or follow our Twitter. Like you'll see them very soon. Like, believe me.

• 35:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Fair enough.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  But yeah, like 100%, like this is absolutely the year. I think the comparisons to the early days of Bitcoin are really poignant. You know, the comparisons to the early days of Facebook too. Like what we're seeing with NFTs is really remarkable and it is kind of a once in a generation shift. And like creators are starting to realize it and the numbers just speak for themselves. And I have so many friends from college now who are just like totally into it, like they never cared about crypto before. Like, but now they're just like going gaga over NFTs and buying all of our drops. I, I do think all the other crypto infrastructure has paved the way for NFTs. And this is something we continue to see happening with crypto, right? Like first Bitcoin happens and then Ethereum happens and builds on top of that and enables smart contracts. And then DeFi happens and then NFTs happen.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  And every time like the system just gets more and more mature and everything just grows and builds on top of it. So I think that compounding is going to continue and like, you know, it's exactly like the internet. Where we're going to see steady growth for the next few decades until blockchains basically rule the world. It's awesome to be a part of, I'll say that much.

• 36:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  What are some of the cool stats that you guys have seen? So like, tell us, tell us some things that'll impress us, right? So like you're throwing around numbers about like big sales being in the millions of dollars. Talk about that. Talk about how many people are in this space. Like, I don't know what the metrics are that you're looking at, but tell us some metrics.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  I can, I can share some metrics and I'm sure Duncan has some too. But Nifty Gateway launched about 11 months ago, right when COVID hit, incidentally. And we've grown around. We've grown around seventy percent month over month, every single month since we've launched. We've actually never had a single down bump.

• 36:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  What does that mean? Seventy percent growth in what?

• 36:48Speaker 02

  In in total sales on the platform.

• 36:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, volumes, money volume.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Volume, yeah, yeah. And then we've had some months where our total sales went up five or six X in a single month over month period from November to December, our sales, November, our sales, our total sales were about 1.4 million. In December, they were about seven million, I think. And now, like, we're actually in the midst of another, like, five or six X boom. Our total sales for February will probably end up around fifty million dollars.

• 37:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are you kidding me? Fifty million dollars?

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I kid you not. Put that in context, in March of 2020, when we launched, we had thirty thousand dollars in sales. And we were excited about that. We were like, oh, my God, people are spending thirty thousand dollars on NFTs. That was a win for us. On the one year anniversary, we, it's, yeah.

• 37:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  It's not a win for our poor team. There's only fifteen of us trying to keep up with this. So if you want to apply, please come apply to Nifty Gateway, because we desperately, I need help. It just keeps growing way faster than we ever thought it would, so.

• 37:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so like, we we talked about the mainstreaming of it, right? As as being one maybe factor of of growth here. What else explains the growth here? Is it? Is it also, let me ask you, is an element, I don't know whether these people are coming, uh, whether it's kind of crypto natives jumping into NFTs and like crypto natives are feeling pretty good these days with Bitcoin price all time high, ETH price all time high, DeFi summer, all of these things. They've got some cash to spend. Is it more them or is it, are we attracting kind of a new crowd outside of crypto, some combination of both? What are the factors that account for a fifty million dollar month?

• 38:21Speaker 02

  Honestly, you know what it is? A big part of it is just the fact that you've never been able to collect digital art before. Like, this is such a concrete problem that that NFTs are are solving for the world. That there are so many amazingly talented digital artists out there. And basically, what they what they do is they post their work for free on Instagram. And then they get hired to do contract work for like advertisements. They can never sell their work in a gallery. Bullshit. They can never, like, you can sell a print of a digital artwork. And so there was just this. Like huge group of people out there who are so talented. They have a they have a fan base who loves their work on social media. But they hadn't the fan base couldn't collect it and NFTs just came in and like and fit that like a glove. And I think that's a big like a big aspect of what's happening here. And a lot of the.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  You know, a lot of the collectors we see, yes, it's a lot of crypto people. But it's a lot of people who are fans of these digital artists and have been following them for a long time. And have been asking for a way to collect their work. And all of a sudden, here's a way to that that actually works that where you can actually collect digital art. I think that's a huge factor in all of this. And then there's people who are buying it, you know, as an investment and are realizing that like there's this massive shift in the world. Where value is shifting on the blockchains and crypto networks. And like I said, again, we really saw it starting with Bitcoin, but I think that process is only accelerating. And NFTs are such an incredibly awesome and fun way to get exposure to that. That people are just going nuts, like investing money. And I I have some friends from college who are like very risk averse people.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  And like they all texted me about how they're buying like last night's drop. And then, yeah, like our our poor servers when Grimes releases on Sunday and her artist is fantastic. So I I don't know. Tomorrow, our poor servers. Yeah, and Trevor Jones tomorrow, who's one of the biggest crypto artists in the world. Just, you know, a super talented artist. So I sometimes an idea just fits. And like, I think the the numbers really speak for themselves. And yeah, like you weren't expecting this. We would have hired more people if we were. But like, it's it's just been awesome to be a part of. I also think there's a huge element of like, we see a ton of musicians. Like musicians of they like RAC, for example, if you can put his music on a streaming platform. But he can't like sell, he can't really sell merchandise that includes music.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Like we had we had grammatic on over the weekend and he tokenized four or five full length songs. Did over one point five million in sales, just tokenizing those full length songs. That's a year of touring revenue for him. Um, that he made in a 10 minute time period. Yeah, in five. So I think. Yeah, honestly, like, don't underestimate how much like NFTs are growing just because this is a really cool new creative medium. Like, people can put out creative stuff that they haven't been able to before. Like, you know, imagine being there when the video camera was invented. And all of a sudden, someone makes a dope movie and you're like, whoa, that was. This video camera thing actually might work. That's what we're seeing with NFTs. Like, people are making really, really cool stuff. In this new creative medium. That like just could not exist before. And that's driving so much adoption.

• 41:16David Hoffman?

  This is definitely the conversation I want to turn to next because NFTs have historically been like little di- digital little tidbits, right? Digital images. Now we've kind of gotten into GIFs. But we recently saw our first audio NFTs and then now you guys are bringing up how musicians are using NFTs, right? And we have to remember like this cryptocurrency revolution is it's one part of revolution in how humans perceive value. And it's one part revolution in technology, right? Cryptographic money is a revolution. And now we have cryptographic art. And we there's and NFTs, just like when when Bitcoin was super clunky back in 2010, 2011. I expected that NFTs kind of are mashing Bitcoin in their clunkiness at their very beginning.

• 41:58David Hoffman?

  And I expect the ability for artists to for artistic expression to be. This only to be the beginning of the story. And I want to ask you guys about all of that conversation. But first, we got to take a moment to pause and talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. If you are looking for a product that connects your fiat bank account with DeFi tokens and products. You need to download the Dharma mobile app. Dharma is a non custodial smart contract wallet and comes with a bridge that connects you right into your bank account. Dharma is the fastest and most efficient wallet between your fiat in your bank account and any token on Uniswap. Or even any vault in Urn. With Dharma, you can get over $25,000 per week into the DeFi universe.

• 42:43David Hoffman?

  And you can do it non custodially. If you or anyone you know is hot on DeFi and you're trying to get your money into a DeFi investment. Dharma is the place to go. Signing up and going through KYC is an absolute breeze. It took me just under three minutes and after signing into my bank account via Plaid. I am now just one transaction away from any token that Uniswap has to offer. Go to www.dharma.io. That's D H A R M A dot I O. Download the Darma app and get yourself unbanked today.

• 43:18David Hoffman?

  If you want to live a bankless life, you need to get a Monolith DeFi Visa Card. Monolith is a one-two punch of both an Ethereum smart contract wallet and an accompanying Visa Card that lets you spend the money that you have in your Ethereum wallet everywhere where Visa is accepted. When you swipe your Monolith Visa Card at the grocery store or at a restaurant, it actually makes a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain that spends some of the money you hold in your Monolith wallet. It's insanely cool and it's one of the best tools out there for living a bankless but still normal life. Monolith also offers on-ramp services for getting your fiat money into the world of DeFi. So it's trivial to top up your Monolith Card if you ever need to

• 44:00David Hoffman?

  and your deposited money goes straight into your non-custodial wallet. So your money is never held by a centralized intermediary. Because Monolith is native Ethereum infrastructure, the money you hold in your Monolith Wallet still has the power of DeFi behind it. Swapping assets on Uniswap or earning yield in DeFi is at your fingertips. Go to monolith.xyz and sign up to get your Monolith Visa Card today. And we're back. All right, guys, let's dive right into it. NFTs, they are one part art, right? It's one part just digital creation, but the other part is technology, right? This is the ERC 721 or ERC 1155.

• 44:44David Hoffman?

  These are technologies that allow for this art to be expressed under a new medium, under a new paradigm. How does, where does this go? Like, because we have this new technology for digital art expression, what's the evolution of this? I'm assuming we're at the very beginning. Give us the picture of where this trajectory goes.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great question. Honestly, digital is like an incredibly, incredibly open medium. And that's maybe the coolest part about it, right? Like, we're really just scratching the surface of what can actually be done, what could be tokenized with NFTs. You know, art is a way to capture a moment in time. And like, it always reflects the culture and digital is the most like open. Format in history does that really well. We're working with comedians and they're, you know, they're going to be like tokenizing some of their main jokes or some of their biggest lines from stand up, from their stand ups and like making those collectible. And like, that just goes to show like how like really open that a concept this is when you start to think about it. Like when you really start to think about what NFTs could be applied to, like what could be made collectible in a digital world, like your, your head kind of hurts because it's just

• 45:47Speaker 02

  such, such a large market. It, and you know, we're really just scratching the surface. It's like point one percent of the way there, I'd say. Yeah. What, what I like to compare to is the, the invention of the video camera. I mean, before the video camera, people would put on plays, but think about how hard that was to distribute. Like you had to perform the play each time in front of an audience and like maybe a hundred people could consume that play. The video camera comes along, it creates a new medium, but it also, it's a medium that's inherently easier to distribute because you can just like create a copy and send it all over the, the country. I, we're seeing something really similar with NFTs in my opinion, where like, physical art is inherently really difficult to, to send to people. You know, the, the physical, a work of physical art can only be

• 46:29Speaker 02

  viewed by one person at a time as opposed to an NFT which can be viewed by anybody at a time. And so like, yeah, what, we're still in the early days of people figuring out how to use that new toolset to make like really, really exciting stuff. But you ask people nowadays, like, hey, what are those like, what are those cultural things that define your life? Like they're, they're going to talk about their favorite movies. They're going to talk about like ET or the movies that changed their lives. You know, in, in 50 years, like, I think we'll see like a similar displacement with digital art. Well, where it'll be like, hey, what are the, what are the works of art that really like capture a, a moment in time? You know, NFTs are really like moving into that position really quickly. Maybe someone like gave away seven copies of a piece of art when they bought it for only $40 and then like they spend the rest of their life like talking about it and regretting

• 47:13Speaker 02

  it or something. I could see that future. I don't know. Might happen. Yeah. Who would do that? Who would do that?

• 47:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  It would sell so early.

• 47:22David Hoffman?

  What, what I'm, I'm really, what, what makes me so bullish about NFTs is the amount of surface area that they bring to the table. Um, and, uh, we're, we're trying to get Andrew, Andrew Yang on the podcast and the way The way that I think that we do this

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Oh, hell, yes.

• 47:34David Hoffman?

  Is we talk about how much monetization tools, specific Ethereum and specifically NFTs can bring to the table, where all of a sudden we have these tools for these artists that probably wouldn't have been able to make it previously, can monetize their own labor. Talk about like perhaps this renaissance of coming and in both artistic expression and the ability for artists to be their own bosses, to create and produce artistic value without having to sign away their soul and their contracts. Talk about this conversation.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, honestly, that's the coolest part. That's like what gets us and the Nifty Gateway team out of bed every morning. You know, like when we see dramatic posts about the fact that he wasn't able to tour all last year. He did an NFT drop with five unreleased songs and he was able to like make up for all that touring revenue in a single NFT drop. That's the thing that gets us the most excited. Or the like last year, one of our artists twisted vacancy. After three drops with us, he bought a house. He has a family now. He's like living comfortably because he can sell his artwork on Nifty Gateway and other platforms. That's like the coolest shit in the world, frankly. I mean, like these people, you know, and those are just two examples. There's way more artists like this.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  People who can never like sell their artwork before. They have a big following. People love them. But like there's just no way for it to be collected. All of a sudden they're making like literally millions of dollars. And some of them are like achieving financial independence. Some of them are escaping like, you know, bad situations where they're in abusive families. And yeah, like that's that's literally the coolest shit in the world. Seeing artists achieve like financial independence. I agree. And I would add to that something else, which is that like that every era of history is usually most impacted by the newest technology. Right? Like you read about the late 19th and early 20th century. It's clearly most impacted by industrialization, which caused like huge conflict between workers and like very wealthy owners and, you know, maybe led to World War One or Two.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Those were just like times of great shift. And, you know, now is certainly no exception. The internet has like influenced the world, I think enormously over the last two decades. And we have so much new technology coming down the pipeline. I really look forward to a world where NFTs are like one of the most important technologies and a true creative renaissance where people are like passionate about collecting. Where art penetrates at a global scale, you know, where these things like really start to impact the world and, you know, I'm very optimistic. I think the 2020s are actually going to be a time of remarkable technological innovation. I don't know if anyone's read ARK Invest's theory about all these technologies that are coming down the line, but there's huge adventures in biotech and obviously blockchain and all this other stuff. So I'm

• 50:14Speaker 02

  just really excited about, you know, truly a digital renaissance where our culture shifts and the world becomes optimistic. And, you know, it's all captured in this art of the time. And like, you know, 100 years from now, you go to the Reich's Museum in Holland, you see the paintings of the Dutch masters in the 18th century. And like, you can see Holland was on top of the world back then, like just from the paintings, like because they ruled, you know, they had the largest empire and like the largest financial system. I wonder what these digital NFTs will say about our time, like 300 years from now and the internet. And it's just really cool to think about truly impacting the world at scale and artists having such a large impact. So I don't know, we'll see what happens, but it's really exciting to be a part of.

• 50:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Duncan, I know you have to go in a minute. Griffin, if you have some time to hang around, we'd love to ask you a couple more questions, but maybe Duncan, you could just answer this last question for us. So, real quick, Cuban, we asked him, how, what's the size of the NFT market? He said 100 billion or so, and he gave that a time horizon. I have a feeling you guys might be a bit more bullish. How big could this NFT thing get?

• 51:20Speaker 02

  Well, people spend about $60 billion a year on physical art. I think what we've already seen are early signs of like digital artists, because like NFTs are just so much easier to move and send, like people are going to spend more money on them. They're essentially like easier to trade. The same way like people spend way more money on movies than plays, just because it's so much harder to produce plays. So I think on art alone, we'll see a larger amount of money spent on NFTs than physical art. Trillion. And then I think it's like cool days. What I like to say is like, you know, we started Nifty Gateway very much as like a company that was grounded in a specific point in time for the NFT industry. It was always supposed to be a gateway. That's, that's why it's called Nifty Gateway.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  But like, you can never start Airbnb in 1994 because people just had no idea what the, the internet was. Once we penetrate NFTs with like digital art, with NBA top shots, with a few other use cases, then the fun really starts where it's like, okay, why are we sending people Christmas cards? Like, we could just commission an NFT and send them that. Like, why am I like, I could commission an NFT as a Valentine's Day gift for my girlfriend and bam, there's 10,000 commissioned artists. You know, that's like a modern day version of Cameo. So, once, once these first few use cases really hit, then like, then the sky's the limit and who knows what's gonna happen? And then that doesn't even get into like Snapchat adding NFT filters. You know, there's like, there's, these are like, or video game items. I mean, it's like, yeah, the really- The metaverse, like a true metaverse.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, the potential is unlimited. And yeah, again, like, we started Nifty Gateway. It's supposed to be a gateway. It's like, very much grounded in this philosophy of like, people have to understand a single use case of NFTs. And then all of a sudden, it'll be like, people don't send Christmas cards anymore. They just send NFTs. And that's, that's my final thought.

• 53:03David Hoffman?

  I did not think about that use case at all. That is absolutely base melting. Duncan, thank you so much for, for being with us on the state of the nation and, and yeah, cheers. Thanks for being part of the conversation.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Thanks, guys. Bye.

• 53:17David Hoffman?

  And of course, we're sticking around with Griffin. So Griffin, I kind of want to-

• 53:21Speaker 02

  I got a few more minutes.

• 53:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, cool. And, and I think this is gonna be a final, a great final piece of the conversation to, to end on is, I want to ask about, what is your perception as to the role of NFTs in the bull market, right? We're quote unquote, in a bull market. Today doesn't look like it. We're a little bit down. But over the grand scheme of things, I think we're gonna be in a bull market. What role does NFTs, do NFTs play in this bull market?

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great question. My main answer would be, I don't know. I think we're gonna find out. But I think NFTs are really, really compelling. And when I was talking to Justin Blile, the DJ, who's very into NFTs, he thinks a lot of the reason there is such a bull market is that everybody like doesn't want to hold on to the dollar. Which I do think there's a lot of truth to that. And it's really interesting. I don't know. I sometimes wonder if official measures of inflation are doing a bad job, truly measuring how much inflation is happening. Because there's huge inflation across all sorts of like elements of life. And everything certainly feels more expensive. And I think it's a large reason why people are fleeing to these safe haven assets.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  But I think NFTs play an incredibly important role because they're like unique stores of value, the same way that art is. They're just like 10,000 times better than art at being a store of value. The default with a piece of art is that like the provenance is almost impossible to like actually certify. Like I was talking with someone in the art world and all the committees that formed a certified artworks by Andy Warhol had to break up because they kept getting sued. Because Andy Warhol's artworks are like prints of Campbell's soup cans on paper and they're so easy to fake. So like it was so easy to fake them and like the committees that tried to like actually authenticate them just literally couldn't do it. So NFTs, it's the opposite. Like the authenticity is the default.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  And that actually makes them an incredibly good store of value, which drives the prices really high in like counterintuitive ways. People always see the prices that NFTs are going for and like it seems strange at first. But when you think about it on like that systems level, they serve that function very well. It actually kind of starts to make a lot of sense. Because authenticity is what stores value in art and NFTs have perfect authenticity by default.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  And yeah, and then the other thing I would say is NFTs are also a great way to like take some gains and flex and like buy something amazing. And people are really starting to do that. And you know, it's just like, it's honestly so fun. I would caution people against getting started because it's just seriously addicting. And you spend money like you didn't think you were capable of spending money. And it's happened to a lot of my friends, actually. Like I kind of worry about some of the financial decisions they made, but you know, they're all doing pretty well now, so.

• 55:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Griffin is an NFT dealer, it sounds like, and watch out, this could be the gateway drug into NFTs into crypto. Hey, Griffin, I know you've got to run, but we left one thread hanging. And I just the TLDR for this, because we don't have time to get into a technical discussion. But you said you could do Nifty Gateways, issue NFTs, 1% of the gas fee. You know, make it more efficient. How are you doing scaling? Is L2 involved? Are you guys going to solve this? Can you do this in like 30 seconds or less? Give us an explanation and then come back when we talk about layer two from a technical perspective.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. I'm happy to come back and talk about this anytime. It's too bad Duncan left because he knows more about it than I do. But long story short, we're switching our minting method. So I think the new standard is called EIP 2309, and it was pioneered by another NFT platform named Cargo. And we're able to get away with minting all of the editions with one single blockchain transaction. Instead of right now, every single NFT is minted with its own transaction. But right now, like if we sell like 2,000 open editions, we'll be able to do all of that with only a single transaction on Ethereum. I wish I understood the technical details better, but Duncan has always been the one in the weeds, coding and solidity. So he would know much better than I do. As far as L2 goes, I think L2 has a lot of, you know, it's definitely the future, but Nifty Gateway itself is centralized.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  You know, we're a centralized NFT exchange, the same way Coinbase and Gemini are. And like that, for us, serves most of the purposes of L2, you know? Anyone can send an NFT to anyone else on Nifty Gateway for free. Anyone can put it up for sale, you know, with no fees, because all of that's happening off-chain. And I really think the future of Ethereum is like some sort of hybrid like that. Everything that's on-chain needs to be on-chain, and then everything that doesn't need to be on-chain isn't. And L2s are also going to get much more advanced. And by the way, the centralized approach, not everyone is a fan of it, but you know, our thing is always like, we give you the option of custoding your NFTs if you want. You can custody them with us and like trade them on our marketplace, or you can custody them yourself. It's about giving you a choice. So that's how we see it.

• 57:52David Hoffman?

  And plus, there's so much other infrastructure that you guys shouldn't be responsible for building, that you guys can tap into once it is built, right? Decentralized storage, L2 technologies. These are not, these are not NFT-centric platforms. Somebody else should build those things. When they're ready, you can tap into those. And I do believe that like the NFT platforms that win are the ones that do

• 58:17David Hoffman?

  give the strongest assurances about the redeemability or the link between the token and the art. And you know, that requires some sort of decentralization and decentralized storage. But there's no reason why we need to wait for those things to come about. Like, let's get these, this NFT revolution underway. And it's already underway. So, so thank you for what you have built with NFT Gateway. And thank you for pioneering this conversation into the mainstream.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  Cheers, guys. Thanks for having me. This was a blast. I hope to be back soon. Once we hit our first $500 million month, I'll come back.

• 58:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, so we'll see you in April, man.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Our poor team, the poor engineers, oh, whatever.

• 58:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Awesome. Well, guys, this has been, yeah, fantastic. You guys are doing great work. Thanks for keeping us up to speed on this. It's happening faster than I think any of us in maybe Bankless thought it would. And this is definitely an exciting year for NFTs. So we've just had Griffin and Duncan on from Nifty Gateway. Guys, action items, you can check out Nifty Gateway and what they're doing. Check out some of the artists. We'll include some links in the show notes of this. Risks and disclaimers, we should say, NFTs are risky. The valuation of them is anyway. So is ETH, so is crypto, all of DeFi is. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but thanks for joining us on the Bankless journey. One last thing I forgot.

• 59:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Nifty Gateway is a wholly owned subsidiary, I believe, of Gemini. Gemini is also a sponsor. It's not why we had them on. We had them on because Nifty Gateway is awesome and NFTs are dope. But just wanted to disclaim that, guys. Thanks a lot for joining us on another state of the nation.