#422: Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster on Digital Art

Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster are the founders of Nifty Gateway, which was recently acquired by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss’ Gemini crypto exchange. The Cock Foster twins are two of the most knowledgeable and experienced people in the digital art world. In this conversation, we discuss the digital art world, why digital art is better than analog art, how you can invest in digital art, what the Nifty Gateway tech stack looks like, and what the team’s future goals are. ======================= Want to sell your wonderful internet business? Tiny partners with founders to give them quick, straightforward exits that protect their team and culture. We’ll make an offer within a week, close the deal within a month, and keep your business operating for the long term. Get in touch at tinycapital.com, and we’ll let you know within a couple of days. ======================= LVL is a new crypto investing platform that I'm an investor in. They allow anyone to trade an unlimited number of times per month for only $9. If you buy or sell more than $500 in Bitcoin on any exchange, you're spending too much on trading fees. Use LVL to save money and trade as many times you want, but only pay $9/month. https://lvl.co/ ======================= Crypto.com is the only all-in-one platform that allows you to BUY / SELL / STORE / EARN / LOAN / INVEST crypto all from one place. Join over 1 million users currently using the Crypto.com app. Download and earn $50 USD using my code ‘pomp2020’, or use the link https://platinum.crypto.com/r/pomp2020 when you sign up for one of their metal cards today. =======================

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

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Duncan and Griffin Cockfoster are the founders of Nifty Gateway, which was recently acquired by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss's Gemini Crypto Exchange. The Cockfoster Twins are two of the most knowledgeable and experienced people in the digital art world. In this conversation, we discuss the digital art world, why digital art is better than analog art, how you can invest in digital art, what the Nifty Gateway tech stack looks like, and what the team's future goals are. I really enjoyed this conversation with both of them, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into the episode, though, I want to quickly

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:48Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:33Anthony Pompliano?

  have an awesome URL, but that's the place where mass adoption is happening. Go check out Crypto.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Duncan and Griffin. I hope you guys enjoy it.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:09Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Duncan and Griffin back for round two. Here we go. We're going to talk about NFTs, digital art, all the great stuff. Thank you guys so much for doing this.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Hell yeah, thanks for having us.

• 4:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, absolutely. So as everyone already knows, they're twins, which means that they think alike and they're probably gonna talk at the same time on the remote recording, but we figured it out. We've done a whole logistical test. We're ready to go. Let's start with just an overview of the traditional art world. Maybe Griffin, you take this one and kind of explain, how exactly does the traditional art world work? And then we'll get to the digital art.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. It's a great question. It's something we've been researching a lot since starting NFT Gateway, because NFTs are the first time the real art world has faced disruption. The internet didn't really like disrupt or change much about it at all. But the real art world is all about desire. It's all about creating a scarce object, then marketing the hell out of it, but telling everybody, but also you can't have this, you know. Basquiat is a great example. You hear so much about Basquiat. He's this tortured genius, and he was a genius, you know. Obviously, he died when he was 27. He's not making any more paintings. All everybody does is talk about him. Those are his collectors talking about him. They're playing up like how big Basquiat was, how much he mattered. And like, they're just telling you, like, his paintings are so worth owning, but you can't have one. And the supply is always limited, and it always will be limited.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  And that's exactly how the art world works. They tell you, like, you should want this, you should want this, you should want this, you can't have this, over and over and over. So by the time it does sell, it sells for $100 million. This is why billionaires have, you know, like 25% of their net worth in art, because it's an amazing store of value. Art can never be replicated. It's scarce, and some of it is just like insanely significant. So it's been really interesting to learn about and see and think about how to create those dynamics in the digital world, because NFTs, you know, are the first, like, real disruption to that, and it's something that can challenge it.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  There's also a huge element to it of owning a piece of history. I mean, if you're a collector in Basquiat, a collector of Basquiat in the 80s, when he was selling his work on the primary market, you know, think about how you're doing now. Almost like a lot of physical art collecting is centers around that. It's like, okay, who's, who are going to be the artists that 15, 20 years from now are the ones in the permanent collection of the MoMA and the ones where, like, you know, they're widely recognized as historically significant artists. The art game is all about trying to figure out who those artists are and then collecting their work and holding on to it for 15 or 20 years.

• 6:43Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And Duncan, maybe give a quick overview of like, how does this change in the digital art world, right? So everyone knows that I've been investing pretty heavily in the, in the digital art world. I've gone ahead and started commissioned pieces. My partner, Jason, has been buying a bunch of stuff. We're pretty convinced, but just give maybe that quick overview of like, what exactly is digital art? And how does the digital art world work differently?

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Well, here's what I like to say. I mean, people are amazed that people are spending, you know, $50,000, $100,000 on NFTs. What I like to say is, it's actually amazing that they're spending $50 million on a Basquiat painting, when like, you frankly have, have no real idea if it's authentic or not. I mean, like, someone could have swapped that out 30 years ago with a, a perfect forgery, and you have no idea. Digital art is, the, the really significant part about NFTs is, it allows collectibles to be, you know, 100% guaranteed authentic for the first time. Authenticity is a hugely important aspect of, of what makes a collectible valuable. If a collectible isn't authentic, it isn't valuable. With the physical art world, you're always taking a gamble that what you're buying,

• 7:51Speaker 02

  like, isn't really authentic. That's, I think, the main improvement that digital art has over physical art. Like, you know it's going to be authentic. Plus, because of that baked in authenticity, I think it really raises the, the number of art artists that are like, actually collectible, and that are actually going to be, you know, their artwork is actually going to hold value. With the physical art world, there's such a high overhead cost. So, you know, the authentic, authentication, selling stuff at Sotheby's, it means that, unless you're paying $50,000 or above for a work of art, it's really hard to consider that, you know, investable, or consider that a, a good store of value. Because below a really high price tier, you're just not going to be, there's just not enough money to pay for the authentication infrastructure. With NFTs and with digital art, authenticity

• 8:35Speaker 02

  is like baked in, which means that any tier of artist, like, you can always go back and find their work, you can always know it's 100% authentic. And it really expands the number of artists who are, like, you know, who make work that can be considered like a, a true store of value, and like, have a shot at being a piece of history.

• 8:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And Griffin, maybe explain a little bit as to like, why you guys are so convinced that the digital art world is the future, right? Do you think it's a thing where it'll kind of coexist with traditional art and be the same size? Is it the digital art world will be bigger than the traditional art world? How do you think about that?

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it'll be much bigger. I think the right analogy is Facebook and magazines, right? Like before Facebook, if I wanted to reach every carpenter in the world, I'd have to put an ad in a magazine dedicated to carpentry. And now the internet comes along and there's special groups, there's forums, like it connects people in a way that just like wasn't possible before internet technology. And, you know, magazines still exist, but they're a fraction of what they once were. They don't generate nearly as much ad revenue. And, you know, most importantly, they don't have as much power. Before, like that was the only way to distribute information really was print. And now like the internet came along and radically improved on print in a number of ways. And it just, it didn't fully eliminate print, but it just made it much less relevant. It's the exact same

• 9:55Speaker 02

  year. There's like a technological breakthrough, which enables a new behavior that was never possible before. We're already seeing all the same disruption patterns emerge. So it's not that it'll fully replace the traditional art world. It'll still be there. It'll just be way less relevant, way less powerful, and yeah, much smaller.

• 10:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think that's part of what got me so interested in this is like, when a piece of traditional art is sitting on the wall, the only way that it changes is if somebody goes and takes it off the wall and puts a new piece, right? But now all of a sudden, if I put that screen there, and now I put a piece of digital art, I can have it change, it can have motion, it can have sound, it can change by the hour, by the season, just by the lighting in the room. I mean, there's all kinds of new possibilities. And that's inside of like, the micro level of just the room in which the art exists, or is being displayed. But then when you look at it from like, the internet, okay, now all of a sudden, you're saying, I don't have to actually go to the physical, you know, auction, or I don't have to be a member, or I don't have to have access to Sotheby's, for example,

• 10:56Anthony Pompliano?

  to bid on something and have $50 million. Instead, I can simply go on the internet 24/7, any time of day, and I can use a marketplace, just like the internet has used for decades now, and I can buy a piece of art and be anywhere in the world. So you're like, expanding both what's possible with a piece of art, but you're also expanding the investor or collector base as well, right?

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, you totally are. What I like to say, it's like a Harry Potter newspaper versus a regular newspaper. The Harry Potter one is way better. It's magical, you know? This is like Harry Potter art versus regular art.

• 11:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. So let's talk about the Nifty Gateway platform that you guys have built. Maybe Duncan, you can give us just an overview of like how the platform actually works.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Nifty Gateway is a curated art platform. We try and form a thesis about all the artists that we launch. We really want to bring on artists that are prominent and have like strong career prospects. And we want to act as a partner to them to help develop their career.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  That's really important to us. We think that, you know, curation is a really strong, it's a huge part of the the physical art world. At first, I didn't really understand why that is, but as I've gotten more into NFTs, I've come to understand that curation naturally develops in any sort of collectibles or art market. Because on some level, like it's it's a great mechanism for for figuring out who's like really serious about it and who's kind of just, you know, experimenting. Like being a great artist, it's not a it's not a part-time gig. It takes years and years of dedication, extremely hard work and like blood, sweat and tears. You know, just like being great at anything.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  And like, as you know, as as curators, we can, we have insight into like, who's really like working extremely hard. And again, I'm not trying to say that like we have every single great artist or that they're not great artists, not on Nifty Gateway. It's more like the value we can provide is figuring out artists who are promising, who are up and coming and who are going to and who have great careers ahead of them. And then presenting them to our audience. We release content in drops. So, you know, we we get together a few really prominent artists and then we help them, you know, we help them ideate and brainstorm on their collections. And then the collections all go live instantly. A bunch of the drops sell out really quickly. We have a few different collection formats.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  You know, sometimes we have packed projects where you buy a piece and you get a a random, a random piece from the collection. But yeah, drops are our bread and butter. And lately, we've been doing a lot more, you know, one of ones, which I think is a, you know, we're trying to move more into the to that direction than to to like really appeal to.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Long-term to like long-term value into like really like great artists. So yeah, that that's basically like a a quick overview of Nifty Gateway. And it's taken us a while to get here. We've learned a lot about how to develop a great art platform, about how to pick the best artists. And it's something that we're only getting better at, you know, steadily. Yeah, yeah, we accept like fewer than 1% of the artists who apply. And it is like very selective. And we do, like Duncan said, we try to partner with great people. We we don't always get it right. There's some great artists who apply and like we turn them down. And it turns out like they are great artists, which is inevitable. But we do try to say everyone who comes on the platform is awesome. And we really partner with them. We work with you, we help you build your career.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  We like run ideas past you. We're dedicated to working one-on-one with the artists. Whereas like all the other NFT platforms, you know, they're they're that they're platforms. They don't want to be involved. They don't want to like work with the artists. But we're committed to engaging with them.

• 14:44Anthony Pompliano?

  And so maybe Griffin, help me understand, one, like if I'm an artist and I want to apply, what can I do to increase the odds of being accepted?

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great question. You know, one thing, one thing you can do is kind of like give us something that shows you're legit. Give us something that shows you're committed to being an artist for the long term and that you have the right mindset. Reaching out to Duncan and I directly can help. We're happy to like talk through your work with you. And then also having a sales record showing early promise is something we really looking for. We're really looking for or a large audience. You know, we try to identify who the promising people are and bring them on board. And if you have some sort of proven track record already, then that's a really great positive signal that we look for. That's probably the best way. Yeah, I think, I mean, as I said, part of our our promise of the platform is that we really want to bring in artists who are dedicated to it for the long term. So honestly, the longer that you've been making art, the the better.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  I I think it's not too dissimilar from startups like look at art as a as an artist, like you will face a lot of rejection. It's kind of inevitable. And and Griffin and I, when we first started Nifty Gateway, we faced a a ton of rejection. I mean, like every every single VC we pitched turned us down at first. But you got to be dogged. You have to stay after it. You have to like get small wins and have the small wins add up.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  You know, slowly like you'll acquire traction and like your standing will improve. You'll get more followers on social, you'll, you'll get more fans. And then like eventually, once, you know, once you, you reach a certain level, then like we'll sort of become interested in working with you.

• 16:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And Duncan, maybe talk a little bit about if I'm an investor and I see these drops going on. Like I've been on the platform, literally things sell out in seconds. What can I do to either one, increase the odds of, of success? Uh, or two, can I do to kind of make sure that I position myself to get the pieces that I want?

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we actually, we have a guide. If you Google nifty gateway tips for buying from a drop, you can see our guide. The, the key is so like, you gotta have your payment method loaded in advance. Uh, make sure you're logged in during drop time. Uh, make sure you have the piece that you're looking to buy selected and make sure you're on that page. Changing your computer clock to seconds can really help. Um, and like making sure that like as soon as the, the clock hits seven PM, like you're on it. And then honestly, you know, a lot of our platform, we've, we've done a lot of drops. We've seen the, the upsides, but we've also seen the downsides. Hype can be sort of a double edged sword where, you know, like on some level,

• 17:21Speaker 02

  uh, if you have a really hype drop, it, it can attract a lot of flippers. People who are not really there to collect the work long-term, who just want to buy it and immediately resell it. So really we're doing a lot of work to develop the platform and like add more stuff in addition to the drops. The drops are great because they really shine a spotlight on a particular artist. And we've seen it happen many times where an artist comes on the platform, does a successful drop. And immediately the, you know, they see their work on other platforms sell out. And it's really like a great thing for their career, but we're really expanding to help artists sell work beyond just the drops because it can be kind of a frustrating experience for collectors. So that means like more one of ones, for instance. Um, you know, if, if you're a collector, you can always go bid on a one of one, which are all, they're usually auction based.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Some of them have list prices. But they're almost always auction based, so you can bid on one of ones. Then we also have some other really cool collection formats we've been experimenting with, like open editions. Open editions basically mean the artist puts out a piece of work and anyone can buy it at the list price for a period of 24 hours. It's great. There's no, there's absolutely no flipping. It's just people who want to collect. And often it can be, I mean, it's, it's an investment in the, the future of the artist long-term. And, you know, like that, that should always be your mindset, buying art, I think. You should always be willing, you should always be investing in the future of the artist long-term. You should, I think if you, if you come into it and you're expecting to just immediately flip a, a few minutes later,

• 18:51Speaker 02

  you know, it might be, it might be difficult for you. And that's not sort of like a, a healthy aspect, just, just the same way that if you're like buying into a, a stock or if you're buying Bitcoin, like you, it's much healthier if you're a long-term holder, you know? Like, uh, you want a Warren Buffett, you don't want like a, a high-frequency trading firm. So those are really my, my pieces of advice. And yeah, I, I would say like, don't get too hung up on the drops because a lot more stuff is coming. We really see our value prop as developing artists. And like bringing on artists that we think are promising and then helping them build their careers for the long-term and really being a partner to them. And, and when you're a partner to the artist and you're building their careers over a five to 10-year period,

• 19:34Speaker 02

  naturally you become a partner to the collectors as well. Because the collectors are, you know, we're all in it together. The collectors want to see that artist's value grow over that five to 10-year period. So like, it's a very virtuous cycle.

• 19:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Griffin, maybe talk a little bit about what makes an NFT so successful? Like, like the ones that you've seen, right? There's, um, obviously the Trevor Jones piece that sold for $55,000. Um, there's been a number of other ones that, that have really kind of grown in value. What makes those successful?

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great question, Pom. Honestly, like what makes an NFT successful and valuable is the same thing that makes any other object successful and valuable, the meaning behind it. You know, I think with the bowls, with Trevor Jones's bowls, those kind of like hit at the right time. Trevor did an amazing job explaining the meaning behind the piece. He brought in an art historian to talk about its significance, which I thought was like a fantastic move. And yeah, there's just like a whole lot of meaning. Those NFTs like have firmly earned their place in NFT history. And we actually see bids on those all the time. But you know, no one is selling a silver bowl for less than something like $50,000 right now. So I don't know, those ones are getting crazy. But yeah, it's all about the meaning behind the project.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Good visuals, good story, and like just explain why it's significant. That's something physical artists always manage to do too. You know, they always create some sort of movement and create art that makes you question like reality in a way that has meaning. So. Yeah, what I like to compare it to, I mean, I hate to be a ecclesiate tech person and quote zero to one, but in zero to one, Peter Thiel, he's like, the next, um, the next Larry Page isn't going to start Google or isn't going to start a search engine. The next Mark Zuckerberg isn't going to start a social network. The difficult part about being a great artist is there's no formula. Like the only way to be a great artist is to break the mold and to create your own formula. So like the next great artist is not going to be like Banksy.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Banksy was like, he was unique. Well, I guess maybe it's a group of people. I don't, I don't really know, but like what Banksy was doing was very unique at the time they're doing it. No one else had done it before. And that's why it worked. It's because they, they didn't just follow the formula. They didn't just release what Andy Warhol released. They didn't just copy Andy Warhol's career. It's like Banksy broke the formula. So yeah, it requires like true creativity and like you really have to have. Passion and you have to work at it constantly for years and there's really no shortcut. But unfortunately, I mean, maybe it'd be, I guess, like, that's, that's true of like all the difficult to obtain things in life, right? There's just no shortcuts.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Totally, yeah. And one final thing I would say is there's a proof of work element to borrow another, you know, tech or originated concept. It's like if you have a piece that can't be replicated, it's shown that you worked on it for a long time. Like there's things that you can only establish by like working hard. Eugene Wei has a really great post called Status as a Service where he talks about how that's what gets attention on social. And Mr. Beast is a great example of this. Like he has a video where he sat down and read the dictionary, read an entire dictionary like front to back like, I don't know, that's maybe not the best example, but like something that can't be replicated, something that proves you put in the effort and the time, you know, that can usually only come with months or years of dedication and learning. So.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I also think it's a lot about the right partner. Um, you know, a lot of artists, when they're just starting off, it's, it's kind of scary building an art career and we, we've seen it a lot. It, it can be very delicate. I, I do think, I do like comparing it to a startup because, you know, similar to a startup, like you get traction, but like there's a ton of uncertainty at every step along the way. What, this is where we really see ourselves like adding value and what we really want to be good at is like, we want to be a partner to the artist that we're working with. Almost like a co-founder for them on their art careers where it's like, we don't just see the, you know, an artist, like they see their own career and maybe they have friends, but we see the careers of like a ton of different artists.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  We have access to all kinds of like data from running a platform that helps us figure out like what, what the best thing to do for an artist is. And we've, you know, we like can talk directly to collectors. So, yeah, I think the right partner can be an extremely, extremely important part of the, the right art career, which is also what you see in the, the physical art world. That's why like the best galleries end up, you know, that's why the best galleries, like how they, how they got to where they were, they became really good at. Partnering with artists and being that co-founder to artists. And that's what that's what Nifty Gateway is becoming as well.

• 24:09Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. Talk a little bit Duncan about the tech stack that you guys have built and kind of how you as a company. You kind of are taking the best of both worlds, right? You've got the art gallery type. Structure and model and you can kind of learn from those that came before you in the traditional art world. But then you marry that with technology and really being able to kind of usher in this digital art world. How do you think about that from like a tech perspective?

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Right, well, yeah, I think Griffin kind of nailed it earlier when he said he was talking about Facebook versus a. A magazine, the internet enables you to do. You know, so many different crazy things that you weren't able to do before the internet and so does blockchain technology.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  I mean, the what you can accomplish in the creative medium of digital art is just one small example of that. We, you know, that's, that's like the, that's the first example. And I think that's like. The the most salient thing we're seeing where it's like before you couldn't really sell digital animated artwork. Now you can sell digital animated artwork, but the second order effects are also. Massive. And I think over the next few years, they're only going to play out more and more where like.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  For example, like if you're an artist, the logistics of shipping a print to a hundred people are ludicrous. And not to mention the expense. It's something that's only available to a very like small, select group of artists. Now artists can connect with their audience instantly and they can send out work to a large group of people instantly. There's there's stuff like the open editions, doing an open edition for a piece of physical art. You know, you maybe could do it for a print where you like deliver all the prints afterwards. Still really, really complex with NFTs. That's that's really simple. We also have a lot of other projects, you know, we do pack projects that have a redemption element. Where if you collect a certain, you know, set completion is always. A thing present in in collectibles.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  But like with our platform, if you collect a certain number of pieces from a drop, then you can automatically redeem that for a prize nifty. And it's all like, it all just happens automatically. So really like, yeah, we're just beginning to witness the second order effects of what it means to have internet native art. I think we're still in the early stages of discovering those. And, you know, like, we're always looking to take advantage of that and always looking to build features that make it easier. We're also, yeah, we also have a lot of cool stuff that's a little further down the road where, you know, we're going to be doing things like for the collectors who are who are great holders and are really strong patrons of an artist's work.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Maybe we'll work on a way of programmatically rating them and and figuring out how to like reward the best collectors and how to like disincentivize flipping. You know, we're working on discovery aspects that use machine learning to help expose people to like different artworks. There's a lot of really, really exciting things that you can do once art becomes internet native. Uh, yeah, and I think like over the next five to 10 years, we're going to see incredible advances. And, uh, yeah, Griffin's Facebook to magazine analogy is really going to play out in full time.

• 27:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, Griffin, anything to add to that?

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I was just gonna say, um, our platform too, we're focused on shipping like crazy and we're focused on the end user, you know? Like, we went fiat native. And that was kind of like how we launched. And we also have a centralized exchange and a platform built on custody, which, you know, we actually have gotten some flack for on Twitter. Uh, there's a lot of people, especially, you know, that the blockchain and decentralization enthusiasts to object to that. But, you know, our platform really isn't for anyone who's super enthusiastic about the censorship resistance and like all those aspects of blockchain necessarily. We cater to them too. And, you know, we support purchasing with MetaMask and everything. But we want to make a platform for everyone where anyone can come collect and do it as easily as possible.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  That's why we make it super easy to show up and buy with a credit card. And you know, that's we we're catering to, we're trying to get that those billion users on the NFTs. And you don't need full decentralization to get people collecting NFTs. And so that's like, why we built it. It wasn't ideologically driven. It was just, how can we make this as easy as possible for users? And that's what, you know, we're staying focused on. Because we want to give our artists access to the largest markets possible. And NFT, the word is spreading. People are starting to understand it and it's a counterintuitive thing. But once people understand how the tech works, they get really excited about it. And our customers, we see a massive amount of average monthly spend. Because, you know, once they get into it, they love it. It's addicting as hell, as anyone who's bought crypto art will tell you.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  So I was just gonna say, yeah, our tech is built end to end to be as easy for the customer as possible. And to bring as many people as possible into collecting NFTs. And we're committed to doing that. You know, we're not going to make decisions based on ideology. We're going to make decisions based on the customer.

• 29:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Have you guys ever thought about creating some sort of drop where when you buy it, you can't sell it for a certain period of time? Like, I heard you talk about the disincentivizing flipping. Like, it'd be really interesting to almost have like time lock purchases where, hey, when you buy this, you got to hold for five years. Or is anything like that?

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Totally, we've totally thought about that. And that's something our platform enables, like because of the tech trade offs we've made. Our platform is much more flexible in a number of ways than any other platform really can be because of the way it's built from the ground up. Which is why we have the pack projects. We can also do one of ones. We can also do open editions. Yeah, something like that would be awesome. And what we're focused on right now is building the infrastructure. So that like our artists can launch with as many different types of projects as they want. We want to like, leave it up to them and the producer that they're working with. And if they want to have that option, they should. And anytime we build something for one artist, then it means like any artist can come along and use it in the future. So yeah, we have the the largest number of different project types on Nifty Gateway and we're only focused on expanding that. We think the more choice, the better.

• 30:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Maybe Duncan, you can talk a little bit just about like, what's the goal here? Walk me out 10 years from now, like, what are you guys trying to build? What is the vision and kind of how do you think about Nifty Gateway a decade from now?

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Right, well, when I think about businesses long term, I always like to think about the the sort of the question of like, if we get really good at this, like. What then will win like with I'll give an example like Amazon their their obsession is like customers. Right. Their obsession is like quality customer service and from a very early stage, they basically said, okay, if if we get really good at. You know, quality customer service, we deliver things on time, we make it easy to return. You know, we like two day free shipping, all that kind of stuff, then we're going to win because like that. Obsession with the customer is going to like it's so ingrained in our culture that it's going to uh. Propel us to victory for Apple. It's like an obsession with building products.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  It's like, okay, if we're obsessed with building the best possible hardware products and like the software to go alongside them. And like every single thing we do is making products that are great, easy to use. And like if we do that, then we'll win the market because we have such great products. For us, that thing that we have to get really good at in order to win the market. Is supporting artists and like developing their careers. Again, this is something that we see in the the physical fine art world where. The you know, the most valuable platforms with the the galleries that. That do the best and that add the most value, they're really, really good at developing artist career. And they're really, really good at being that partner to artists.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  You know, maybe it sounds simple, but it's actually incredibly difficult and incredibly complex because managing an art career is so. You know, there there's many different facets to it. So I think if we get really, really good at developing artist careers and at like being a a good supportive partner to the people we work with. Then that'll be the the driver of success for our business long term.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think what Duncan's asking is like. The question we ask ourselves is like, what are we going to do better than anyone else in the world, which is something that every company should ask themselves. Like, what are you going to do that no other company in the world can do as well as you? Because if you don't have something like that, you're not going to survive. And for us, like, it's making good NFTs. That's what we want to do better than anyone else in the world. Just make awesome NFTs, partner with fantastic artists, partner with great people. To build NFTs that like matter and just make NFT like launch NFTs that are the absolute. Best. That's what we're laser focused on. Yeah, and we've been in the space a long time. I've seen a few different NFT cycles, if you will.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  If people, this is not like, it's not widely discussed, but right after CryptoKitties, we saw a ton of projects that were just trying to cash in. Really like low effort stuff. Because it's, it's actually not that hard to make NFTs. It's never been that hard to make an NFT. Like, all you have to do is deploy a smart contract. If you know what you're doing, it's like pretty simple. The only NFTs that survived were the NFTs that like had original thought, had quality, where they had done something to distinguish themselves. And I think that's still just as true today. It's easy to get like, it's easy to lose sight of that because there's way more noise around the scene now. But again, this is like, this, this is a game about owning a piece of history.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Unless you're releasing stuff that has a chance of being a part of history, then uh, you know, you're like, you're not going to be around for the long term. And that's, that's what Griffin and I are like, as Griffin said, like making great NFTs and helping our artists like, launch great NFTs and develop their careers. That's the thing that we think that we can be the best at. And that's where like a lot of our energy is going.

• 33:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Where can people go to uh, to kind of see everything that's in the secondary market and also to see the upcoming drops?

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Dot com. And then click on the marketplace and see everything we have there. Twitter is also really the best way to connect with us. That's where we put the most of our, you know, most of our marketing energy at the moment. And that just comes from Doug and I being so addicted to Twitter in the first place, really. But yeah, like go follow us on Twitter. That's my best piece of advice. Go to niftygateway.com, sign up for our mailing list. We'll keep you posted on everything there. We try to let everybody know about all the drops on our mailing list on niftygateway.com. Yeah, we're about to, we're about to. Push out a pretty cool product feature. We haven't really talked too much publicly about it, but it's basically a discover page. It learns as you, as you go. So like you can flip

• 34:51Speaker 02

  through every, every nifty that's on our site. You tell us what we like, and then we have an algorithm that like learns your interests and like serves you up more nifties that you like, kind of like TikTok inspired. It can be very, very cool. I, I really enjoyed playing around with it. It's just a fun place to spend time. You really get to see like, you're just hit with all this creativity and cool art. So I'm really excited to watch that.

• 35:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. I'm gonna wrap this up with each of you giving a pitch. Duncan, I want you to give the pitch for artists and Griffin, you the pitch for investors or collectors. Griffin, why don't you go first? Kind of what's your guys pitch to investors and collectors as to why they should come use nifty gateway?

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, great question, man. Look, we're, we're laser focused on hosting the best artists and launching the best NFTs on our platform. The NFTs that you should care about will live on nifty gateway. Do your own research, find an artist's story, make sure they're in it for the long term. But billionaires have 25% of their net worth in art for a reason. Digital artists porters to be one of the best stores of value in 21st century. And nifty gateways, laser focused on being in the forefront of that and in the center of that. So if you, if you're someone who's trying to buy art, collect art, and you know, invest in it for the long term, it's a platform that you just shouldn't be missing out on.

• 36:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Duncan, what about the pitch to artist?

• 36:14Speaker 02

  I think artists have their choice of platforms nowadays. There's more NFT platforms than ever.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  And like, that's the reason that we decided to orient our platform around like being a supportive partner. You know, I don't think there's, there's anywhere else you can go to get the sort of like partnership and mentorship that we're offering. And like that part of the company is growing incredibly quickly.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  We're really in it in the long term. We're aiming to find like long-term partners. We're not aiming to like have short-term relationships and we're not aiming, we're not thinking on a short-term timeframe. We're really aiming to like bring on partners that we are like, we are going to promote for the next five to 10 years and we're going to be there every step of the way. I think having an art career is scary. It's, it's very delicate. It's not, it's the kind of thing where it can easily go wrong.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  And that's kind of just the reality of, of building an art career. It's a highly uncertain industry. What, what we're really developing and what we're really getting better at is helping mitigate that uncertainty. Becoming a true partner for artists and helping them develop their careers over the long term. Using our unique tools that we have access to, you know, which is like our platform, the data that we see. The, the wide variety of different collections that we see. And then a lot of the expertise of the, the people that are bringing onto the team, which is also something we'll be saying more about. But yeah, that, that's I think where, what we do that, that sets us apart.

• 37:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Griffin Duncan, you guys are leading the, uh, leading the charge on NFTs and, uh, I'm, uh, I'm in. As everyone knows, uh, I'm a believer in, uh, in digital art. So anyone who's interested in, uh, participating in the drops, seeing any of the secondary marketplace. Uh, or checking out all the cool stuff these guys are building, go to niftygateway.com. Any last words from either of you before we wrap this up?

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Did you get those digital art screens hung up in your apartment? I saw, I saw Polina tweeting about it.

• 38:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Not yet, but, uh, I, I am, uh, working on it. We're recording this during a week where Polina has left me here alone. And I've told her I'm going to do all kinds of things from buying a PlayStation to ordering Domino's every day to getting screens installed. So.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Well, let us know if you need help. Yeah, I actually have about three or four screens up in my place. It's pretty awesome. Not going to lie. It's really like, uh, it's a great thing to have in your apartment. Like friends come over and you can show off. Again, it's not just like one piece of art. You can cycle through all your different art and you can talk about each piece. And, uh, you know, maybe some of my friends are bored when, when I'm just like sitting there talking about my. Collection, but some of them, some of the others are like, wow, this is actually really cool. And they like learn about NFTs for the first time. It's really a cool thing. So I love having screens up.

• 39:00Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. I think everyone will eventually have a screen in their house. Don't worry. All right, guys, everyone go check out niftygateway.com and we will have to do this again in the future. Thank you guys so much for joining.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Thanks, Paul.