SotN #37: Justin 3LAU - The Frontier of NFTs ($12M drop SOLD, A Token Renaissance in Digital Art?)

Justin Blau, known by his stage name 3LAU, is a DJ turned crypto-entrepreneur. At the end of February, he auctioned collectible NFTs for his 'Ultraviolet' album for a record-setting $11.7M. We look under the hood of 3LAU's story, diving into what this means for crypto and the disruption of the music industry. ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ GO BANKLESS WITH THESE SPONSOR TOOLS: ⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave 🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMP https://bankless.cc/go-gemini 💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith 📈 KWENTA - DERIVATIVES TRADING WITH INFINITE LIQUIDITY https://bankless.cc/kwenta​ https://bankless.cc/kwenta%E2%80%8B ------ SotN #37: 3LAU | The Frontier of NFTs Justin Blau, known by his stage-name 3LAU, has been experimenting in the crypto space since 2014. From February 25-28, he auctioned a total of 33 NFTs commemorating his album 'Ultraviolet', originally released in 2018. 3LAU discusses how he applied his knowledge of game theory to optimize the auction mechanism. The sales totaled $11.7M. 3LAU's biggest takeaway from all this is that the music industry is ripe for disruption. NFTs can remove intermediaries and bridge the gap between fans and creators. Transparent, immutable digital goods are increasingly accessible to the public. These tools promote direct-to-consumer transactions, democratization of data, and self-distribution. The argument here is that given the technology of distributed ledgers, record labels are now obsolete. With an investable layer, fans are able to contribute capital and hold equity in an artist's work. 3LAU is pioneering how decentralized tokens can be optimized for medium-dependent art spaces. The future of art is decentralized, allowing infinite collaborative possibilities among fans and creators of all forms of media. Justin on Twitter https://twitter.com/3LAU?s=20 3LAU Website https://3lau.com/ 3LAU NFT Auction https://nft.3lau.com/#/auction ------ 📣REGISTER FOR COINDESK CONSENSUS 2021 AND SAVE $20 W/ BANKLESS http://bankless.cc/consensus2021​​ http://bankless.cc/consensus2021%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B ------ CATCH UP ON BANKLESS: 🗞️ Weekly Rollup (3/5): https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/-rollup-3lau-and-grimes-nfts-paypal 🧢 Weekly Action Recap (3/6): https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/weekly-action-recap-177 📈 Market Monday (3/8): https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/eip-1559-on-the-horizon-market-monday 🎙️ Podcast | Bankless 2.0 (3/8): https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/-welcome-to-bankless-2021-edition 🐦 Follow Bankless on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ ----- 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 I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

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

• 0:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Welcome everyone to this fantastic episode. We are super excited to bring Justin Blau, who just set a record-setting NFT sale. If you don't know what NFTs are, how they can empower creator communities, creator economies, and disrupt the entire music industry, this is the episode to watch. David T. up this episode for us.

• 0:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Justin Blau has been experimenting in the world of crypto for years now, and one of those experiments landed really, really well, selling over $12 million in these NFT things. We get into what that process was like and what these NFT things are with Justin. And I think the biggest takeaway that I got out of this episode was how Justin thinks these NFT tokens on Ethereum represent tools of emotional connection between an artist and their fans, and how this feedback loop can be established between these two groups of people, the value creators and the value consumers, that really just this intermediates a lot of the legacy platforms that we know as the platforms that historically have allowed

• 1:09David Hoffman?

  artists to distribute their art. But now, things are changing because of this new revolution in NFTs.

• 1:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, before we bring you this episode, want to give a special shout out to the sponsors that made this conversation possible. Gemini, check them out. Ave, Monolith, and Quanta, Exchanged by Synthetic. Thank you to these sponsors for making this episode possible. Okay, let's get into the conversation with Blau.

• 1:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, Bankless Nation, we are here with Justin Blau, more commonly known as the Artist Blau. He just had the largest NFT sale in history, in human history, human recorded history, that is. He sold 33 NFTs in the collection, one for more than 3.6 million, a total of almost $12 million. Blau's got a fantastic history in crypto. He also, I found this interesting, studied finance in school, and now he's bringing some of that experience into his music career. I'd call him more than electronic music producer now. He's become almost a crypto entrepreneur. Justin Blau, welcome to the Bankless Podcast, man. We're really excited to have you.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me. I've heard such great things. I've actually listened to a couple of episodes in the past and it's just an honor to be here.

• 2:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Dude, we are excited. You know what? We got to start here because you've made some some history. This is NFT history and we're just getting set up for for a killer crazy 2021 here. Before we started recording, you were almost like on tech support with a bunch of your friends, almost like Ethereum tech support, guiding them through the process of of setting up NFTs. But you just sold 12 million worth of NFTs. How momentous is this? How does it feel?

• 2:49Speaker 02

  It feels amazing. And as someone who's been invested in the distributed ledger tech space since 2014, 2015, you know, 12 million is such a huge number and everyone's going to be attracted to that number. But I'm way more excited about the statement that we made to the legacy entertainment world. That is really what I'm excited about. You know, if we had done 1 million, 3 million, that's cool. But the fact that we basically trumped, and this is statistically true, we basically trumped any single album deal raise from any major label ever with this sale is pretty incredible. And it didn't even have a grant of rights. So I think the number one record deal ever was Michael Jackson, and I think

• 3:31Speaker 02

  it was a $250 million record deal, but for many, many albums, right? So the fact that we sold one album only as collectible editions of that album for close to $12 million breaks a lot of records in a lot of ways. And to me, that's the statement that I was most excited to make. Not the fact that it was $12 million, but the fact that the music industry is ripe for disruption, an industry that has taken over 88% of its of its revenue and profit from the artists, right? Artists statistically only receive about 12% of all the money generated in the music business. This is an insane statistic, right? And so when I was first introduced to blockchain technology and its potential for distance intermediation, it was so obvious to me that the industry that I knew and love could could so easily be

• 4:16Speaker 02

  destroyed, or at least the legacy model of which could be destroyed by this nascent amazing technology. And so I started exploring that in 2017 more deeply. But was just genuinely enthralled by this idea of frictionless value transfer and permissionless value transfer 24/7 with the original concept of Bitcoin. Like that to me was unbelievable. Having studied finance in college, I studied economics and derivatives, index and equity derivatives, like those were my focuses in college. And so everything that applies in the distributed ledger world, you know, ma- made a lot of sense for me to think about, you know, how this technology would apply to my passion, which is music. And I tried to bridge both of my most, you know, passionate interests over the past six years. And it kind

• 5:01Speaker 02

  of all came together in for this for this particular NFT auction. It was, you know, people say that he did it in 48 hours when the reality, it was maybe more like seven years of studying and four years of execution to get to where we where we were last weekend. So, so yeah, that's kind of the backstory.

• 5:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is, we're going to touch on so many of those themes and it it appears like David and I as we were taking a look at what you've done in this space that you you just tried a series of experiments, right? And you've kind of refined each of those experiments and those evolutions. We're going to go through some of that history. We also want to talk about the statement that is being made to the existing music industry, what that statement is. But let's go back to, I guess, not last weekend, but the weekend before during the auction, because this was kind of an interesting auction. So set the scene for us, right? So auction starts on Thursday. This is for 33 or so NFT goods related to related to the album. The it was

• 6:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  targeted to end on Sunday, right? And but but you had this mechanism in here. This is a fascinating mechanism that the during the last three minutes of the auction process, the bid would reset. So if someone bid during the last three minutes, it would just reset. And as I understand it, wow, this happened like 40 different times toward the end. So you're sitting there and I don't know was it was it was ticking up. You'd already raised like

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Half hours of extra of extra.

• 6:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. So set the scene. Tell us, tell us about that. What was that like? What did you expect going in? What were those final minutes and I guess hours like of this auction process?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  So little, little quick background. I studied macro, microeconomics and game theory, probability analysis in college. My professor Glenn McDonald is the reason why he actually let, told my parents that I should drop out to pursue a career in music because at the time, some of my stuff was going viral on YouTube. So my economics professor had convinced my parents to let me drop out, but, but I was always a huge kind of math nerd, which, which applies to music in the sense that like when I'm programming sounds for electronic music, it does require a lot of like background mathematical knowledge, programming knowledge and stuff like that. I'm not a software developer or engineer whatsoever, but, but there is some

• 7:21Speaker 02

  overlap at least in math and mathematics and music. So one of the things that I was noticing in the NFT space is that it's actually like most of the sales were economically inefficient. And so I wanted to create this little Nash equilibrium experiment, applying the knowledge that I have of game theory to my auction where you basically capture everyone's highest willingness to pay for what they receive at different levels of rarity. And we assigned a certain rarity to different songs on my album. The most popular it was, the more rare it would be, and the higher position in the ranking, the more likely it would be for you to get rare assets versus less rare assets. So position number 33 likely received all more common assets, whereas position

• 8:04Speaker 02

  number one received all 11 songs and position number two, unfortunately only got seven of the 11 songs, but received a majority of them at the highest rarity level. And I kind of built a lot of these mechanics on previous really historic NFT sales. I love the rarity mechanic that hash masks and that axes and that, you know, punks with attributes. I was always a fan of like how they created these gamification mechanics and I wanted to apply that through the lens of music with this auction. Of course, None of these tools existed in on an existing NFT platform, so we had to build it ourselves. And the risk that that was that kind of followed that was, you know, I had to bring my audience to my website. There wasn't a built in audience for it for this auction.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  And I was very surprised that we actually had over 2,000 registered bidders for the auction. We only had a total of a little over 300 bids, because I think as the price floor went up, a lot of people were a little bit more nervous. The price floor after the first day, I think, was already at five or six grand. So some of those registered bidders were unfortunately weeded out of the process. But the one thing that we did that was great is that anyone who even just placed a bid received a loyalty NFT. So they still got something for free, which is great, and they didn't get charged. And if you actually deposited crypto to bid in the first place and you and you didn't make it into the top 33, the Origin Protocol team actually gave away, I think it was 300 OGN or maybe 1,000 OGN. I don't know exactly what the number was, just for your participation in the process.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  So of course, we started out this auction with, you know, there's a vinyl NFT. Tier one gets to make a one of one song with me. Tier two gets to make a mix with me that would be tokenized. And the final tier just gets the music and the actual physical vinyl. If they choose to redeem their vinyl NFT, there's a lot of complicated mechanics that are all available on the website. We don't, we don't need to go into the, to the depth of that. What I'm actually most excited about is some of the extras that we're going to announce. I should have announced last week, but I've been so busy that I haven't had a chance. So the top 33 collectors will all be receiving open additions from me in the future for free. Anything that we do as an open addition, a lot of them will be receiving those to the wallet address of their choice that we will mint for them for free.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  And the rest of the world, of course, would have to buy them at market prices. We're also allowing the top six collectors to receive an all access pass to any Blau show of their choice. That of course is going to be tradable as an NFT in the future. So the top six collectors, if you guys want, maybe scroll to the top and hit view rankings. And I can kind of walk you through what each ranking looks like. So Bitter65, whose identity is still unknown, but whom we have email contact with, will be able to make a custom one of one song with me and actually provide creative direction for me to create that song. That's like kind of their mega prize that they get in position one. They also get all 11 song NFTs and the platinum vinyl NFT.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Anyone in tier two will get to make a tokenized mix with me. So they get to kind of tell me songs that they like, that I can include in a mix that I will tokenize for them. They also receive seven of the 11 song NFTs and receive that in rarity accordance with their position. The silver tier receives a silver NFT that's redeemable for a real vinyl. And then they also receive three of the song tokens that are assigned by rarity based on their position. And as you can see, as we go down the list, according to proper Nash equilibrium economics, the bottom bids are, you know, very, very close to each other, whereas the higher bids start to spread out a bit more.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  And what people don't know yet, that we'll be telling them soon, is there any airdropped addition that we send them will be additioned in their ranking accordingly. So 0xb1 would receive addition number four of a future Blau Open Edition that I release, and he will receive that into perpetuity. So there's going to be a lot of really cool, interesting mechanics and gamification that we add as we go here. The all access passes will be applied from positions one through six. So they'll receive an NFT that they can use to get backstage at any Blau show, including festivals. There are some festivals that like only allow us to get two to four all access passes. And for those festivals, you know, based on your ranking, you get first priority or first rate of refusal, right?

• 12:27Speaker 02

  So like for Ultra Music Festival, we only get so many passes, we won't get six. And, you know, Bitter65 or 888 might have a better shot at, you know, they have first rate of refusal on those passes before 0xb1 right-click, save and silence. So those all access passes will be airdropped to the addresses that hold those vinyl tokens later. If they trade the vinyl tokens, they won't get access to these open editions or these all access passes in the future, right? So there is quite an incentive for them to hold on to these vinyl tokens. And finally, I'm going to be throwing a private party in LA where all three of these collectors will be invited. We will also invite all the other bidders in the auction to this private party. But of course, the 33 will be on stage with me during the event.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  And we plan on doing that in LA once the world opens up, just to celebrate such an awesome event and to celebrate what changed the music industry for good. I'm lucky to be in touch with a lot of these collectors, which is really, really nice. I'm in close touch with Whale Shark. He's been a supporter of mine for a long time. I've been chatting with 888. I've been chatting with, as we can go down the list. I don't know right click save or silence or master seed, but Illustrator is a very close friend of mine. And Illustrator actually built this auction mechanic into a smart contract on chain. And we're probably going to name it the Blau auction. So it's basically just a game theories influenced Nash equilibrium style auction where the top X, the top N number of bids receive something in different tiers of rarity.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Ito is, I'm also in touch with Ito on Twitter, who is the man and he's been so supportive of the space and helping new artists. Seed phrase Danny is also an incredible dude, like a lot of think flexible I've been in touch with on Twitter. Jay Han is an amazing art collector who has a robust, you know, a robust collection of real art in Hong Kong. Ben is someone who I befriended recently, just after the, you know, around the time of the auction. And you know, all these people are going to have a direct line to me. Like they'll have my phone number and forever they are, they are forever my family because they helped me change history. And we're just really excited that, you know, this was so successful and we took a big risk doing it off platform.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  But we did it also shout out to Pablo and Gabby and Ari Steinberg, who's my childhood friend. I can't believe that my childhood friend ended up, he was the only credit card bid at the end, which is really funny. He was, he was the only.

• 14:47David Hoffman?

  Justin, this is so cool. And I think. The why this is so fantastically cool is exemplified in where you just ended that where you said like all of these people have a direct line to me. The creator or the bidder number one, they get to collaborate with me and direct my art, my creations. And also you know all these people because of the direct connection that they have between their Ethereum address and the auction, right? And so there's two through lines here that I see here that are really, really fantastic. One is that your biggest and best fans have a way of expressing their biggest and bestness fans, right?

• 15:28David Hoffman?

  All of a sudden, there is something that differentiates a listener on Spotify. Who is your biggest and best fan versus a listener on Spotify who stumbled across one of your songs on like the radio mechanism? So that differentiation is so, so cool. And then the other differentiation that I see is that you actually see these people, you know their names. You actually can get in contact with the quote unquote listeners or your fans, which you can't really do. You like if I was listening to your music yesterday, but you would have no way of engaging with me through Spotify or through any other streaming platform. And so this, this, both of these things together seems to be so incredibly powerful.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. So this is the most important aspect of NFTs for any artist. Is the fact that social platforms and centralized platforms have been rehypothecating the data that I generate for the past decade. What I mean by that is the same way a bank rehypothecates its reserve funds or the funds that it's not required to keep on reserve. These centralized platforms of entertainment rehypothecate the data that we don't even own as creators. And sell that data to advertising agencies and at different rates. It's super wrong, right? So the number one use case for NFTs aside from monetization is actually data.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  I've generated over a billion streams across YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify. I have no idea who those listeners are. Same thing with tickets. I've sold, you know, millions of tickets over the past decade. I don't know who any of those people are. I have zero data on any of those people. The only time I get data is if a fan purchases merchandise, which is, is, is, you know, a select few number of fans. For them to collect a digital asset that has, you know, off-chain functionality is, is interesting in and of itself. And so, you know, the way I see the future of NFTs is as both tickets, as access passes, as unlockable for exclusive content, you know, we're building a Web3 wallet that if you just sign a, a signature on MetaMask or, or Portis,

• 17:31Speaker 02

  which I'm a huge fan of, and we can talk about Portis in a second. If you just sign a message, you'll be able to access content on the, on, on my website, and you'll be able to listen to a bunch of unreleased music just by owning an NFT. And only you will be able to do that. Now, people are like, well, theoretically, couldn't you just rip the music? Yes, but why would someone who spent $60,000 be incentivized to ripping the music and sharing it with other people? I don't think so. You know, and if they choose to, then that's their choice, right? And so, there's, there's really an incredible opportunity that I've been thinking about for four years in, in bridging the gap between fan and artist. And there are very few ways to do that when there's a centralized intermediary in between. And, you know, what we did with, with Origin Protocol, it's a centralized backend, you know, it's centralized wallet backend,

• 18:16Speaker 02

  because we wanted to accept credit cards, we wanted to keep it simple for fans. But my opinion is that fans will gradually start to move to a decentralized ecosystem as they discover its merits and as they discover its benefits. But there's been this huge disconnect in the history of, you know, blockchain tech, which since 2008, since the Bitcoin white paper, obviously cryptography predates that. But, you know, since the Bitcoin white paper, there's always been this disconnect between the mainstream and, and cryptocurrencies because of Austrian economics, because the idea of dollars and cents is the only thing we've ever known when it comes to money. But when you bring NFTs into the picture, it creates something that's a little bit more tangible than owning .0001 Bitcoin for someone. Right? Like, they don't understand that because it's just not something they've been trained in.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  But they do understand what it means to, to collect their favorite images. They do understand what it means to collect their favorite music because people Used to collect vinyl records back in the day. And if the record store sold out of the vinyl, they would trade for crazy numbers in the aftermarket. Right? Um, Alenium, who's a good artist friend of mine, who's going to be doing a drop very soon of his own that I'm that I'm helping coach him on. Um, some of his vinyls from his first album are trade for two to $3,000 on eBay because he only did a limited run of them. So this idea of collecting and this idea of digitally native art is certainly not new. The idea of virtual goods is not new. It's just that now we have a ledger to prove provenance and ownership that is transparent and immutable.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  And this is 1,000% where the entire world is going to go. We have gas costs as a problem. We have we have challenges and barriers that we need to overcome. But with the, you know, with Matic and other L2 technologies, optimism with with, you know, other blockchains that are are now pursuing NFTs in a in a huge way with cross-chain technology and cross-chain transfers that you that I think will be a really essential essential part of the ecosystem in the future. We're starting to see a world where this stuff can exist in a way that consumers understand. We're we're finally getting there. And when we do, consumers and and people who consume entertainment will realize that everything they've known in the past is just not right.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  It's already happening. I have my my fans are figuring it out. They're saying to themselves, huh? I want to support my favorite artists in a decentralized way, in a direct way. Because they'll see more benefit from it. Artists care about or fans care about the artists that they listen to. I have a very deep relationship with the musicians, the music that I listen to. It's it's a relationship that's more than a third of a cent on Spotify. It's value that's been emotionally almost impossible to capture in history. And now you've been you've created this mechanism to capture that value. And that's why we're we're really only seeing the beginning of this market. I mean, my favorite statistic is two two quick things and then I'll and then I'll let you guys ask ask some more questions.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Um, before January of 2021, the NFT sales market was about 160 million in volume. So like from 2008, the the beginning of Bitcoin to January 2021, there was 160 million of sales volume. In February alone, we topped 300 million. It's exponential. The traditional art market market does about 65 million per year. The traditional music record sales market does about 40 million per year. What do you think the size is of this thing?

• 21:38Speaker 02

  It's it's in the hundreds of billions, hundreds of billions. And yet cryptocurrency as a whole, we we as the total market cap is just barely over one trillion. Right? I don't know what it is today. 1.5, 1.3, something like that.

• 21:49David Hoffman?

  1.1 or 2, yeah.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  1 or 2. Okay. So if you think about how big the market is for content. Oh, my God. It's massive. So so here's the next thing. People are like, well, when is this bubble going to burst? These prices are ridiculous. Like, how can every how is there space for everyone? How is there space for everyone on Instagram? How many musicians do you know that can't make money? How many photographers do you know that can't make money? How many performers do you know that don't get paid? It's the same as anything else. Like, there will be those.

• 22:18David Hoffman?

  Yet they still create.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Yet they still create. There will be those who rise to the top and those who maybe make some memes and try to sell them for some money. So just like anything else, there will be value ascribed to the leaders. And there might not be as much value ascribed to to some newcomers. That being said, we've lowered the barrier to entry to an insane, you know, low level where I know this this young girl named Erin, who's 14 years old, who makes AI fashion designs, who sold, you know, $20,000 worth of her art, and she's 14. I also know this kid, Justin, who's 16 years old, who's done $75,000 of his art sales just because his shit is fucking awesome. And I want to put it on the screen back there. I have screens all over my house. These aren't turned on because I'm actually doing a firmware update.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  But but I think all this stuff is really important. And and finally, you know, one other thing I want to mention, and I'd love to, you know, have you guys ask me, ask some more questions? Is for those of you who don't understand NFTs or are looking to explore it, I'd like to give this example.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  The Mona Lisa is a priceless piece of art. But did you know that you can buy an exact replica on Amazon for $53?

• 23:26David Hoffman?

  I've assumed, yes.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Do you want that $53 replica from Amazon?

• 23:31David Hoffman?

  No, I do not.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Would you want the real one?

• 23:36Speaker 02

  I mean, I would want the real.

• 23:38David Hoffman?

  You wouldn't? Why would you want the real one, David?

• 23:40Speaker 02

  I would want the real.

• 23:40David Hoffman?

  Not at cost.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Well, no, no, no. I mean, like, if someone said to you, right, not at cost, of course. Assuming you had infinite money, would you want the $53 one versus the real one, right? So the reality is, and the same goes for a Charizard, like, do you want a real holographic Charizard? Or do you want to hire a company to print you a fake one? Like, no one wants a 50 cent fake holographic Charizard, but it looks exactly the same. So who's to say that there's not emotional value ascribed to something being authentic? There is. It's existed in so many other areas of the world, in the physical world. It's even existed in the digital world and gaming and with the Instagram verification checkmark. This idea of digital scarcity is not new. It's just the first time we're seeing it applied to art. And the possibilities are limitless. With that, I'll end my rant.

• 24:27David Hoffman?

  Hey, guys. I know it's annoying, but I got to stop the video. There is so much left in this conversation, so don't go anywhere. Justin takes us through all the various intermediaries that restrict his access between him and his fans and his audience. And he goes through and talks about each one and about the merits of each one as an intermediary and evaluates them based on how much value they extract versus how much value they give back to the artist. And then we talk about how this tool of the focal point of a token between a fan, a fanbase and Blau or a content creator, how this token can be the connection point that really disintermediates some of these legacy institutions. It was really interesting and I really enjoyed Blau's perspective.

• 25:08David Hoffman?

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• 26:30David 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, MoneyLegos, 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,

• 27:11David 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 Aave.com. That's A-A-V-E.com.

• 27:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is so cool. Look, Justin, you've just unpacked so much for us to get into some more. You know, we'll get back to this phrase, I think, authenticity. I want to talk about the music industry because when we were in the interview, you said, "Look, $12 million NFT sale. This is a statement to the music industry, right? A statement to the music industry." I don't think I realized until you said what you just said, how disconnected. Artists are, music artists are from their fanbase and how disconnected the fanbase is from the musicians themselves. I don't know that I was fully aware of that. And you were talking about these thirty-three bidders. You were talking about all of the additional things that you were planning to provide them, right?

• 28:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  So it's this new bridge, this new, you know, connectivity layer. But I guess, like, when we go through the history of, of the music industry, there was a time when record labels kind of dominated, right? And then, then came Napster, then came, you know, Spotify, then came YouTube. But that whole layer, right? Now this, but that whole, like, Web 2 layer just became a set of rent-seeking intermediaries and still created this, this, this bridge, this chasm between, between creator and, and fan, right? So Web 2 and everything that the internet has, it, it provided a lot of distribution for musicians' work and for creators' work.

• 29:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  But it, it installed a new set of, uh, technical middlemen, essentially. Whereas with this, this is like direct to consumer, right?

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's direct to consumer and it's going, the, the tools are still very primitive. We need to develop, we need to develop more tools that make it easier for fans to interact with this stuff. But it, but it's, but it's coming, right? Like, we've all known this moment was coming. It was just a matter of time. And that's why I've remained independent my whole career, waiting for this moment. I wanted to own my rights. I didn't want someone else to own them.

• 29:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  So what's the statement that this is making to the music industry? And maybe it's not just the music industry. Maybe it's like the Spotify's and the Pandora's and all the rent-seeking intermediaries it's making a statement to.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  The statement, and, and Spotify actually is not, you know, there are different levels of bad guys who are intermediaries. And I would love to walk through that with you. And then I'd love to walk, you know, what, let's walk through, you know, who, who are the bad guys and why? What statement this makes to the bad guys? And then where I really see this going, which we haven't even talked about yet. Which is what I'm really excited about, as it applies to music. So let's talk about agencies and managers first. They're the least bad guys. Um, I know that sounds crazy. People are like, why do you need an agency? Artists shouldn't negotiate on their own behalf. No one should.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  An artist is meant to have an emotional relationship with fans and with their audiences. And managers and agents actually serve a really important role in guiding a young new artist to success. I would not have been able to accomplish what I accomplished without my management team. They flew in from New York and from, one was in New York and one was in New Mexico. The day after it happened, they flew to Vegas and we were doing team meetings all week. Just like, how do we deal with the next steps? And if I didn't have that support system, there's no way I could have accomplished what we accomplished. And I think managers are the least rent-seeking, even though they do take commission. Their commission is well-earned because they provide a team.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  It's almost like if you think about the first four hires at a startup. Like, your first four employees are your team. They get equity in the company, right? And they are incentivized to be on your side of success. And the same applies for management. Like, management is incentivized. They receive commission. But that is their incentivization to, you know, represent the artist to everyone else in the world who wants to talk to the artist. And it's so important, and I actually think there's gonna be a whole new wave of digital artists that don't have management. And I actually think digital artists need management because they're gonna have to deal with taxes. They have to deal with business management. And like, an artist should just be an artist, right? An artist shouldn't have to worry about all those things.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  So, in the levels of rent-seeking middlemen, managers are the least

• 32:09Speaker 02

  culprits, you know, of the existing system. I think they will always need to exist, and I think they're the most important variable. And I think that digital artists will need managers to represent them in negotiation and to represent their, you know, finances. And for an artist to maintain that creative clarity, like, I need my management team. In fact, one of my managers had to fly back to New Mexico to get a vaccine shot, and she's actually coming back today. Like, just to be here all week with me. Guiding me through all these opportunities and helping filter what's important and what isn't. So managers are super important. If you're a digital artist that's listening to this, find a great manager. You will need them because otherwise you will be flailing in the wind as you try to journey through this insane world.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  And I'm actually, um, you know, I, I, I'm working on more specifically joining a management team that is focused on low commission structure, very reasonable commission structure to provide many services for new digital artists because I think they need those services desperately. I mean, Phiosis is, um, 18 and has made millions of dollars and like has to understand how to pay taxes. And I'm very glad that they found a great manager and my manager's name is Andrew, but Phiosis found, uh, is now working with Sean Mendez's manager, um, another Andrew, who is going to guide them on, you know, all the complicated stuff that an artist shouldn't have to think about.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  So management, agents, agents typically negotiate deals outside of the scope of like the internal day to day of an artist. So my management team only negotiates deals on my behalf that are like music related and brand related. But my agency represents me to the world of live music. And my agent found me when I was 19 years old in Nashville and I've been with the same agent to this day, Hunter Williams. He was, he had his own private agency and then, you know, CAA actually purchased that private agency. And so he became a member of CAA and he and I've worked together for 10 years and he's one of my best friends. And he commissions me at a very reasonable rate, but adds so much value to my career.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  So agents, I, I also think as long as they are acting in the best interest of their clients, there's a lot of value to having, maybe not for a digital artist to have an agent, like someone who's just making visuals, I think they probably only need a manager. But for a musician, my agent represents me to the entire world from a live performance standpoint and is able to negotiate those deals, help me with production of the show, the staging, the performance. It's hard for a creative to conquer all those things. So agencies are typically heavily criticized, but when the commission is reasonable, they shouldn't be. They, they add a lot of value. Let's keep going down the list of who doesn't add value.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Record labels. Record labels are, well, actually, before we get to record labels, we'll go to Spotify. Spotify, Facebook, Instagram are actually at the middle of the list. Because while they rehypocrite data and, you know, basically monetize content without the artists, you know, really seeing much benefit, they have improved an artist's payouts to an extent. So YouTube has increased my revenue substantially because when people use a song on YouTube, I do get a royalty for that. And without YouTube, I wouldn't even be able to monetize my music in that way. So they do pay out royalties, Spotify the same. Because I own over eighty percent of my master recording rights. Prior to the world of Spotify, no one was buying music, they were stealing it. Now they pay nine ninety-nine a month to get access to all of it.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  It's actually better. So my revenue growth in twenty fifteen, my revenue in twenty fifteen for music was like ten grand in last year was maybe five hundred thousand. So that's only because, though, I own my own masters, right? When you own your own music, the payouts from these streaming platforms are actually significant. But their mistake is that they don't share the data, right? So while they've improved the actual monetization of content, they kind of steal the data, which is something that I'm not a fan of. And maybe there's a platform like Audius, who I'm an advisor to, that, you know, provides that data to artists. And I think that those services are going to grow in popularity and artists are going to gravitate towards those platforms because artists should control their own markets and their own data.

• 36:20David Hoffman?

  And that's what allows you to communicate with your fans. That data is that missing link.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Exactly. Like, I can't communicate with my Spotify listeners, but I can communicate with my Audius listeners, at least in the future I will be able to. Just messaging, right? Like, even being able to send everyone a message that's not filtered by an algorithm is really powerful, let alone like being able to talk to them on a Discord server, right? So I would say managers, agents, platforms. Worst actors, record labels. Absolute worst. Not indie record labels. There are some indie record labels that cut very fair deals, that provide immense value to artists that otherwise like don't have the capital to even get started. But traditionally, record labels really only provide two resources. Liquidity, for someone to pursue their dream, right? Capital.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  And distribution, because they have a marketing arm, they have a team, they can get the music out there. In twenty twenty-one. You don't really need any of those things. Your distribution is the internet. Your capital can be raised from your fans and we'll get there in a second. That's what I'm quite excited about. So there are some record labels like Monster Cat, Mike Darlington is a really good friend of mine. Like they do shit right. They cut fair deals. They help artists that have little to no following, who have good music. They help them get started. They're an incubator. They're like Y C. Like imagine a record label as a Y C. Like that's cool, right? That makes sense. But the major labels that take, that give these advances that are recoupable against royalties.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  So record, regular record label will say, here's a million dollars. We're taking 80% of your music. And by the way, after we, we don't pay you until our million dollar loan is recouped. And then we get 80% of everything after that. Who the fuck would cut that deal? I wouldn't. It's fucking crazy, but artists have been trained to do it because otherwise they don't get the distribution.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  Come on, that has, that has to end and it's going to end. I'm telling you, and, and when that's what I wanted to prove. So Spotify still has a place in the world. Instagram, Facebook, they will always have a place in the world. Centralized platforms are necessary, but the record labels, the ones that are predatory, they're fucked. We're coming for them. And my next thing that I'm excited about is enabling fans to actually fund music, to invest in music, to invest in master recording rights. So imagine a record deal, but with your own fans where they can participate in the upside of the music. Now that's a security. It's a security. But who's to say that if it's done compliantly, that can't happen in the next six months?

• 39:03Speaker 02

  And that's the project that I'm most excited about to let fans invest in my album and get a, what would, what we would call an SNFT, a, a non-fungible security token, but labeled as an SNFT, where it, it represents their contribution, their financial contribution to the album and accrues royalties. It just has to be compliant. It's not that hard to make it compliant. Reg CF, Reg D, Reg S, non-transferable for a year.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Having, you know, and after it is transferable, having a compliant platform that collects KYC AML, you know, like this stuff is not hard. It's just expensive to execute. The legal fees are insane to execute all the paperwork to be compliant. So my goal, after showing how these collectibles work, creating value in art, is actually to give participants, you know, an equity stake in the IP of my art. And that is where this is going. This is just step one. And this has been my dream like for 10 years. But then when, when I learned about distributed ledger tech, it gave me the idea of like, okay, my dream for 10 years has been, how do I go direct a fan and give them a stake in what I do?

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Blockchain technology is like, oh shit, this is the way to do it. Five years later, we fucking do it. And the next 10 years of my life are going to be dedicated to figuring out how to create products for artists that don't require high legal costs, that are totally regulatory compliant, that enable them to raise capital from fans instead of a record label and reward fans for investing in their creativity early on. And that is my vision for the future. And now I can shut up.

• 40:43David Hoffman?

  Okay, so there's, there's so much to talk about and I, I want to talk about, and everything at the end of the day goes back to the power behind tokens. And what tokens offer and tokens for, can offer anything to anyone so long as you can code such a thing. And for what we are seeing with fan, with, you know, creatives like you, digital artists, musicians, you know, using the power of tokens, specifically the ERC 721 standard to produce an NFT that all of a sudden those fans really want. But what you're talking about, after we went down the list of middlemen who do or do not add value or are on some spectrum of costing, costing and then returning value to the,

• 41:26David Hoffman?

  what is ultimately the value of the creator. And what you're saying is that the record labels are the, the worst ratio of value returned versus value extorted or value captured.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  And not all record labels.

• 41:37David Hoffman?

  Not, not all record labels, just.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Right, like there are record labels that do add immense value. There's no doubt, right? But there are also the big guys that, you know, it took two, and I don't even get, like at this point in my life. I have a lot of friends that work at Universal Music that are good people, but fuck Universal Music.

• 41:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  You've been two years.

• 41:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  As a whole.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Three years. As a whole, right? Like, there are people that are good people that work for these legacy companies. And I don't want to tarnish their names because they're great and they're doing great things and they, a lot of them believe in this. They'll probably jump ship at some point. But the fact that it takes three years to pay someone. I mean, come on.

• 42:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Like, it's just wrong.

• 42:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, we feel the same way about banks.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Me too. I mean. Quick story, I had to send a wire for a real estate investment with Bank of America five years ago. Right around the time that I was introduced to Bitcoin. A little bit after. And because someone didn't have high enough authorization at the branch, it took a week to send it this big financial wire. But it's my fucking money. Why should it take a week? It makes no sense, right? So, bankless.

• 42:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, you're muted.

• 42:57David Hoffman?

  Thank you. And so I want to go back to what we were talking earlier about NFTs as a way for, you know, direct creator to fan engagement. And how, and the powers that go with it. But that is that investable layer where you're talking about with a security NFT, a security token, which this, the, the conversation of securities has totally plagued the crypto industry. But that's also largely because the products that these security tokens represented were also just terrible products. And that's completely different when we start talking about music and art, because it's the, the product is much more legitimate. But I think the cool thing about a security token NFT is, is we are establishing the meaning, the emotional relationship between artist and consumer.

• 43:40David Hoffman?

  But with a security token NFT, we are turning that into a loop. Where the artist creates the value, the fans consume that value, but the fans can also create more value by ascribing a secondary market value to that security token NFT. And so all of a sudden, your fans go from a consumer to a producer. Because your fans are like, well, I just bought into this security token NFT, which represents future cash flows of a Blau album. And I think Blau is the hottest shit on the world and his music is going to dominate. And I think he's underappreciated. So I'm going to purchase his security token NFT because I want that cash flow because I do believe there's upside.

• 44:21David Hoffman?

  And then I'm going to go and shout from the rooftops, yo, everyone, go listen to this music. And that this feedback loop of incentive mechanisms because of the power of tokens, I think, has a lot of dormant power under it. Can you talk about that?

• 44:35Speaker 02

  I mean, everything you just said, you just described in my vision completely. And by the way, this can be done with fungible tokens too, like fungible tokens can represent shares in something. Or it can be done like the the actual technical backend can be done in a couple of ways. You have a fungible token that's limited, that there's no inflation on, that represents a share of IP. That's like a simple way to do it. But what I like about the security NFT is it helps you tier loyalty of fans. So let's say I want to raise a million dollars for my next album. You get a certain type of NFT if you make a hundred thousand plus contribution. And that NFT has other functionality outside of just the cash flows that exist.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  And it can also be traded. So let's say you spend a hundred thousand dollars, you get like the platinum NFT for my next album, right? Maybe that also gets you backstage access and all these other things and also entitles you to cash flows pro rata based on your investment. So that's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is you just own a number of fungible tokens that represent like that are like more like a DAO token. Right? That that's wrapped in, you know, one NFT that represents the whole album. Like there's lots of ways to structure it from a financial engineering standpoint. We particularly like this idea of of an of an SNFT because it makes more sense to consumers

• 46:03Speaker 02

  than fungible tokens, like this idea of having point zero zero zero zero one of something is really complex to people. And so just having one thing that that is tangible to me is just an easier way. Like you can do it both ways, do with a fungible token or a non fungible token.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  But having something that says you contributed $100,000, that NFT has that metadata and thus accrues royalties because of that, the metadata in that NFT that represents your pro rata share. Like, that to me is just easier for a fan to understand than a fungible token, right? And so then they can get access to a Discord server because they got the platinum one because they contributed over 100,000. Now, someone might have contributed 130,000, they still have the same style security NFT, but the metadata shows that they get a larger pro rata share of the royalties, right? So each SNFT would theoretically have like other metadata associated with it that represents the share of the total investment that fans have made. So this is just like, it can be done in a lot of ways.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Like, the idea of an NFT representing 100% of the rights of the song and then wrapping that in a DAO token is interesting. Like, a DAO record label is interesting. There's so many interesting things. The issue is regulatory law, regulatory compliance. If I were to do that on my own, compliantly, there's infinite possibilities of how it can happen on the backend. The issue is less like the technical backend and more like, how do we make sense of this to fans? That's like, that's my number one goal. Because in the history of crypto, which is still, you know, what, only, what is it, 14 years now? The history of crypto, we have not seen this kind of mass market movement to the decentralized world, to the decentralized ecosystem.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  And so we have a responsibility now, as people who believe in this stuff for a while, to build the tools that make it easier for people to use. And guess what? Some of those tools are going to be centralized, the way Coinbase is necessary. And that's okay. We need an on-ramp to transition people from the fiat world to this new world. It can't just like, can't just expect everyone to believe in this shit. Like, all of us have to buy Bitcoin at some point, or accept Bitcoin as payment at some point, we had to do that conversion. And so we can't ignore that that conversion needs to exist, right? I don't think there's an alternative. So we need to kind of balance our heavy focus on decentralization with the centralized world to find that bridge. And I think NFTs are that bridge.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  I'm excited to be an active participant in that ecosystem.

• 48:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, so okay, so it's super cool, right? So one thing that you said earlier is basically the record labels are the ones who traditionally provided capital. But now, in this new crypto world, you can get capital directly for your fans. So like the record labor, they're they're done, right? This is totally disintermediates them. But I want to get back to some of the subtlety of what you're saying, right? So basically, if I'm a super fan and I love Blau, right? And I want access to his materials, I want access to his collectibles, but I also want upside into the things that you're doing in the future, Justin, right? I can buy a collectible and ERC 721, a nifty, and kind of get that upside, right?

• 49:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  So it's similar to a Beeple piece of artwork. In the early stages of Beeple, before he makes it totally mainstream, his art might be worth less than in later stages, after he becomes like the, you know, the new Mona Lisa, essentially. So you can buy the

• 49:37Speaker 02

  I'm never selling my Beeple, I'll tell you that.

• 49:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Never sell your Beeple, right? Hold for hold for life.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  $969, could have gotten 170, nope.

• 49:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  So here's what's weird to me is is existing regulatory and security law, right? So it's fine to for anybody in the US to buy a collectible and then to resell that. Anybody can do it. I could do it, you could do it, my kids could do it, totally legal, right? But where somehow things get weird in the US with securities law is if it has a cash flow attached to it. Then it becomes this thing called a security. And then we have all of these specific laws where you have to be an accredited investor. So you have to have a million dollars net worth, or you have to have a certain amount in in salary per year in in order to even invest in this thing, right?

• 50:27Speaker 02

  And people complain about wealth inequality yet.

• 50:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  That's like the most, I mean, they've changed, you know, Reg CF from 1 million to 5 million, and most people probably shouldn't be raising more than 5 million for their creativity, I probably don't think. So I do think that that change in Reg CF should be helpful. But accreditation laws are literally the reason why the wealth gap is so large, more than taxation, more than any other reason. The opportunities are not provided to lesser, you know, lower class individuals who they're stuck. Because they don't even see the investment opportunities. So for me, the two most important things to change to create a better wealth balance in the world. Number one accreditation

• 51:11Speaker 02

  laws are fucking dumb and need to go away completely. Although, although there, there needs to be a line, right? Like we, we need to then educate the masses on financial literacy. And the fact that primary education in the United States doesn't have a focus on financial literacy is insane. Why should we learn about the Boston Tea Party when kids don't even know what compound interest is? Let's just be fucking real. Like insane. It's insane that we don't teach younger generations about how to pay their taxes, but we teach them about a historic event, you know, decades slash centuries ago. Like what the fuck?

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Right? A more financially literate population will invest with financial literacy and with, with an educated mindset, not always in a speculative mindset, and thus create more value because they give new entrepreneurs the opportunity to create tools, to create more value, and it creates this positive feedback loop. So why not give the public more? I, I envision a world where I've got two choices. Got Starbucks, and in Las Vegas, I have Madhouse Coffee Shop, privately owned, open 24 hours. I go to Madhouse. It's an extra five minutes away. I love the coffee. It's better. I want to check out with my

• 52:30Speaker 02

  coffee and invest a dollar every day. Add a dollar to invest in that company, in that local business. Why can't I do that? I should be able to do that, right? Like, it's so obvious. So that's where, well, that's where crypto comes in, right? The legacy payments world of Visa and like, sending wires and all this shit is so inefficient. If I have a little digital wallet, I check out. Do you want to invest in? How much do you want to invest? Was your experience great? Click a frickin button. You can look up the agreement later on what you're actually signing, how much shares you're getting, what the valuation is, right? You should be able to see those things. But we need to teach the next generation

• 53:13Speaker 02

  to look at those things. People, people need that kind of financial literacy to continue to create value in our universe. And we saw it happen in tech, right? The, the tech boom.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  I mean, changed our lives in an insane way. Just the fact that Clubhouse exists, the fact that we can zoom and have a conversation across the world, you know, the same thing will apply to investing in all other types of companies, but we don't want that investment to be, you know, exclusive to the already rich. We want that to be available to the mainstream. And Roman Hood is taking, you know, has, there's some problems with Roman Hood, but it is taking steps in the right direction, enabling access.

• 53:56David Hoffman?

  I do believe that there is a connection between the disintermediation of things and then the people becoming more educated, because that means the disintermediation means that then the power is back into the hands of the users and therefore the responsibility is back in the hands of the users. And that just kind of promotes learning and engagement. All right, guys, one last break in the action. We've saved the best parts of the interview for last. We bring up the conversation of art synthesis, when so many different artists are so good at their specific type of cultural creation type of art. Blau, for instance, is a musician, but there are other types of artists that are doing different things, 3D rendering, 3D art.

• 54:39David Hoffman?

  We bring up the conversation of what's it like to collaborate, not just with other musicians, but with other artists of different skills and where the future of art is going when we integrate all of these different things into some sort of digital expression medium that we are seeing in NFTs. I think it's the probably the best part of the conversation. Don't go anywhere. We got to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible.

• 55:04David Hoffman?

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• 55:48David Hoffman?

  because your Monolith wallet is native to Ethereum. Monolith helps you transcend both the legacy and the crypto worlds because the money that you hold in your Monolith wallet has the power of DeFi behind it. Swapping assets on Uniswap or earning yield in DeFi is at your fingertips. But with Monolith, so are the groceries at your grocery store or the coffee at your coffee shop. Go to monolith.xyz to sign up and get your Monolith Visa card today. Synthetix is Ethereum's decentralized derivatives liquidity protocol. What does that mean? Synthetix is a platform for creating and trading synthetic assets, which are assets that are priced via an oracle rather than bids or asks. Traders can use the Quenta exchange,

• 56:31David Hoffman?

  which hosts and trades all of the synthetic assets created by Synthetix. Traders on Quenta can trade synthetic tokens like SBTc, S Oil, or S DeFi. Because Quenta is powered by Synthetix, traders experience zero slippage on their trades. No, I didn't mean low slippage. I meant no slippage because that is the power of the Synthetix platform. No slippage on your trades. You can also easily short assets with iSynths, which are synthetic assets that move inversely to their target asset. Synthetix isn't just for traders. Developers can build on Synthetix to access the infinite liquidity offered by synthetic assets. Or investors can stake collateral to the protocol and earn fees that the protocol collects. If you're a trader and you're looking for a trading platform

• 57:15David Hoffman?

  and not found in the legacy world, check out quenta.io. If you're a developer or you just want to earn yield on your collateral, go to wwwsynthetix.io, where you can stake your SNX or ETH and earn fees from Synthetix.

• 57:33David Hoffman?

  Justin, I want to turn the conversation back to NFTs and specifically the art side of NFTs. And this is a theory that I have on NFTs, specifically the revolution in art that they offer. And in just the music world, people will get hyped on a collaboration between like their two favorite artists. Oh, like, you know, RAC and Blau doing a collab together. But RAC and Blau are both musicians, right? And so you guys are taking turns, or like if it's a rapper, you guys are taking turns rapping, or taking turns making music, whatever. But in this new NFT world, what I'm seeing is possible collaboration between different artists in their expertise.

• 58:14David Hoffman?

  And so we have Blau, the musician, paired with Beeple, the digital artist.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  Crime Sunday is my partner in crime.

• 58:22David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that, yeah. So talk about how like this new revolution in digital art can be not just two people of the same medium, but different artists of different mediums coming together to create something new. Talk about that.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  100%. And this is a great place to end the conversation as well. Art is always about experience. And as an artist, I create an audio experience for people. But experience is broken down by the senses. It's visual, it's scent, it's smell, it's touch. It's all these things.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  It's 3D, right?

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Art has been kind of homogenized in different lanes. You have visual art, you have music, right? You have live performance. There's no reason why more experiential worlds can exist when you combine all art forms. It's like so obvious, right? But it just hasn't been done that much. So when you combine visual art and audio, you get...

• 59:24Speaker 02

  A deeper experience than just seeing one or listening to the other. And that is so powerful in itself. That's why Slime Sunday and I, we have our next drop on Nifty Gateway. Coming up this Friday and it's all unreleased music from me. And unreleased visual content from Mike. He actually has been working on a music video for this drop since last November. So there's a full length music video. When you start combining that with the physical world and you create real world experiences. That makes that makes visuals and audio. I mean, now you're adding another dimension of both touch and aura. And the future of that is just so insane. I mean, that's why I love experiences like EDC. You know, you just get this like hyperdrive of sense.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  And you get this appeal to all of your senses. And one of the best conversations I've had.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  In the past week. There have been a lot of celebrities that have reached out that want to do this. But I'll tell you, the best convo I've had was with Pascal Rotella, the creator of Insomniac Events.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  And he was like, I don't want to rush this. I'm not looking for the cash grab. And he didn't say, I'm not looking for the cash grab. He's like, I don't care about the money. I want to reward the fans that have been buying tickets to my shit for the past 10 years. How do I get them a free NFT? And what can that NFT do? Like, these are the questions that Pascal is asking me. And I'm like, dude, you are thinking about this the right way. At your festival, you can create a scavenger hunt. Let's say you go to see an art exhibit, you can get a proof of memory from that art exhibit. Right? You can get proof of memory of a set that you watched by scanning a QR code. It goes right to your wallet. Like, there's an infinite number of possibilities that exist when you. Bridge the live experiential world with the digital world.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  And that call with Pascal was my favorite of all because. EDC has a special place in my heart. It was like, what, what? I've obviously played four times. We'll be playing a fifth when it happens this year, if it happens this year or next.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  Bridging those worlds and creating experiences that are like the most memorable for people, the experiences they remember when they die and having, having more than just a photo of that experience, having something that explores more dimensions than just a photo or a video is, is so powerful. And I, I think that's like from the art standpoint where we will see this thing going. Just hyper experiential digital art that, that, that explores all mediums, not just one. Um, and I'm just excited for it, guys. Thank you so much for having me. I hope I answered most of the questions and uh, you know, let's definitely do this again.

• 1:01:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's been a blast, Blau. Thank you so much. Uh, we, we appreciate it. Super excited to see what you're dropping next. Any, uh, any hints on what's next for you here?

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we've got Nifty Gateway on this coming Friday, March 12th. Um, Slime Sunday and I did a complete music video and we also have three open edition pieces that are visualizers that he designed with full length unreleased music that I've been working on for four months. We've literally been working on this for four months and we actually thought that the album drop was going to be like the, the warm up for, for this one. So I don't, it's going to be tough to talk about the album drop, but uh, this one has taken us a lot of time. We're really excited about it. I'm happy to share, give you guys a little sneak peek in the chat of uh, what's coming out. Uh, and uh, it's gonna be, gonna be dropping this, this Friday uh, with our alias. Our alias is called uh, SSX Blau.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  It's just Slime Sunday times Blau and uh, I think you guys will enjoy the assets and uh, I think everyone else will, will be taken into a different world with some of this content. We spent a lot of time on it. So.

• 1:03:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, this, this link that you're sending, can we share this with, with the audience?

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  No, not yet.

• 1:03:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Private. Okay. Bankless Station, we'll, we'll have to keep it private for now, but that, this is coming. Uh, and the artists are coming to this space. It sounds like Blau. Is, is there going to be a stampede of new creators and artists coming to the NFT space as a result of what's going on here?

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  You heard it first, but Rob Gronkowski, who's a good friend of mine, is launching his first NFTs tomorrow on OpenSea. Really excited to be helping him with that. Um, Halzy's going to be doing some really cool stuff. Elenium's going to be doing some really cool stuff. I know Calvin Harris is going to be doing cool, like everyone. Everyone, and I haven't signed any NDAs, so no one can punish me, but uh, everyone, everyone is coming, and it's up to the community to decide what feels authentic and what doesn't. And there's gonna be a lot of inauthentic shit. Let's just be real. But there are also a lot of people like Disclosure, who made a song on Twitch, and tokenized it to Zora, right after he made it for his fans. I mean, there's infinite possibilities here, and I'm just excited for the artists to explore new creative mediums.

• 1:04:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow, thanks so much. This has been awesome. Bankless Nation, of course, risks and disclaimers, everything we talked about, can be risky. Eth is risky, crypto is risky, so is DeFi. NFTs can be speculative assets as well. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless Podcast. Thanks so much.

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  Thank you, guys.

• 1:04:27David Hoffman?

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• 1:05:08David Hoffman?

  Ask Me Anythings, and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless Nation.