2 - Zeneca_33 | Overpriced JPEGs

Zeneca_33 is an NFT influencer, thought leader, and community member (whatever your preferred term is). After playing poker professionally, Zeneca fell down the NFT rabbit hole in early 2021 and has quickly amassed a huge following. His takes are often sobering and always even-keeled, which is incredibly valuable in this emotional and chaotic market. We knew Zeneca had to be one of the first guests on the show. His wisdom and knowledge are reality checks for any type of market, and we go through his approach to the space, how he picks projects, and his own project - ZenAcademy. ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://jpegs.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overpriced-jpegs/id1591954323 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/5G2HSDneVg8mZUQ3zUIoLX?si=6d57ee1f89184974 ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 👀 ZERION | YOUR NFT PORTFOLIO https://bankless.cc/Zerion 💸 ONJUNO | YOUR CRYPTO PAYCHECK https://bankless.cc/OnJuno 🌊 INDEX COOP | METAVERSE INDEX https://bankless.cc/MVI 🦄 BLOCK::BLOCK | METAVERSE IP https://bankless.cc/blockblock ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 3:00 Zeneca_33 8:08 Distaste for Roadmap 11:12 How Zeneca Picks Projects 16:11 Approaching the Market 25:07 How to Flip NFTs 30:08 Art Blocks 39:30 Veblen Goods 44:44 ZenAcademy 56:59 Network Effects 1:01:11 Advice to the Community 1:07:40 Culture & Ethos 1:13:09 Closing ------ Resources: Zeneca_33 https://twitter.com/Zeneca_33?s=20 ZenAcademy https://zenacademy.io/ Studio by Hatch Coding https://www.hatch.art/for-ages-9-17 Blitmap https://www.blitmap.com/ Top Dog Beach Club https://topdogbeachclub.com/ Curious Addy’s Trading Club https://www.curiousaddys.com/ ----- 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.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Hello, welcome to another episode of Overpriced JPEGs. I'm Carly Riley and today on the show, we have Zeneca33, the NFT influencer, best known, I should say, as Zeneca33 online. Zeneca is fantastic. He was one of the first people that I reached out to for an interview. I've followed him for a while. He's just a wealth of information and wisdom when it comes to NFTs and this space in general. I think he's a really good person for beginners in particular to turn to. But I also think if you've been in this space for a while, he's just a great person for those reminders that we all need to hear sometimes, those like truisms that we can forget when we get too deep down the NFT rabbit hole. So he's delivering a bunch of those in today's episodes. He's going to talk about what he looks for

• 0:47Speaker 00

  in an NFT project. He's also going to tell us what he doesn't care about when it comes to an NFT project. And some of those might surprise you because he doesn't care about things that I think sometimes we're told we're supposed to care about. And we're also going to break down some specific projects like art blocks. If you've been wanting to understand art blocks better, Zenica breaks it down for us. He also recently launched his own NFT project. So at the time that he and I recorded this, the project hadn't launched yet. Subsequently now, it has launched, so you can go check that out. I will put a link to it here. Anyways, enjoy the show, enjoy Zenica. I so enjoyed this conversation. But before we get right into it, here's a word from our sponsors.

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• 2:52David Hoffman?

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• 3:06Speaker 00

  Welcome, Roy, who people probably know much better as Zeneca33. I am so incredibly excited to have you on the show. I'm really excited to have you early on on this show because I think what you do so well on social media, on your Substack, in your podcast, is really just share kind of broad wisdom about the NFT space and how people should think about it. You're really honest about what it can be like being deep in the NFT space. So I think you're a great way to to kick off this show in general and for anybody who's coming at it a little bit new or is a few months old in this space. I just think you're a you're a vessel of wisdom. So thank you so much for joining me.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be a part of this for sure.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  Love it. So I want to start off easy here with your background. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into NFTs?

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Sure, so before NFTs, I'll start there, I was a professional poker player for fifteen odd years. So I I basically went from high school and into poker. Uh, I, so obviously that's an unconventional career and it has its whole stories and ups and downs, but. Uh, it sort of made the transition from my life as a professional poker player into crypto and NFTs a little more seamless than than most. They didn't have like a traditional job I had to quit. I just started becoming more interested in the space and it was like directly more my attention.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  You started gambling with with JPEGs instead of cards.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly, yeah, yeah. Uh, so I sort of got into crypto a bit in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. At like a lot of people and then when that big bear market hit, it just, you know, you lose interest. Non-basing going up anymore and I didn't really have that conviction and and attachment to the tech and like the underlying. You know, revolutionary stuff going on, so I went back to poker and then start of this year, twenty twenty one. Again, prices were going up again and and people started getting more interested in crypto. And so, yeah, so did I and I had a couple of friends who were, they'd they'd sort of been in the space, you know, for the last five, five years. And they were telling me about, you know, hash masks and NFTs and, you know, thousands of dollars for these JPEGs, CryptoPunks and. Obviously, I'm sitting here thinking, you know, they're scam, they're getting scams, they're in some Ponzi scheme, this is all ludicrous, what are they doing?

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Uh, and, you know, I sort of dismissed it as, I think, a lot of people do immediately when you hear about. You know, millions of dollars for a CryptoPunk or, you know, even thousands of dollars for anything. Uh, but.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  Sixty seven million dollar people or whatever.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  That was those sicker shock, I think that hit a lot of people and that broke into the mainstream, it was like, what?

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that was a big one. Uh, yeah, but but eventually, like, they kept talking about it and I was like, hang on, these are really smart people, I know that, they've had very. They've had a lot of success in life, I shouldn't just dismiss it and, you know, at first I was genuinely concerned that they were getting scammed, like, it was like, are they actually? You know, because you have friends or people that get into like, uh. Cults or like Muslim marketing schemes and all sorts of stuff and smart people can get um into that. But yeah, I was like, hang on, these are really smart, you know, critical thinkers and let me just do some research. And that sort of was the turning point where I think I read an article by Paddy McCormack on his sub stack Not Boring called

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Power to the Person. And it was all about like the creator economy and what N F Ts can and love for artists, for um coders, for game designers, for everyone really. And and that really was the the turning point for me. And ever since then, it's sort of been, yeah, just last eight months of all N F Ts. Uh, I went from, you know, being an outside looker and then getting into the trading aspect, buying and selling, flipping. And I started creating content with my newsletter and my podcast and just all of it. And um, yeah, now I have my own N F T coming out in a in a couple of weeks. And I'm sort of transitioning more towards the building side than the the flipping per se. But yeah, I mean, I just, I love N F Ts and I'm really invested in the space, not just financially, but like

• 6:58Speaker 02

  in terms of the conviction I have in in the longevity of it and and the revolution it's gonna, it is creating in the world and it's gonna keep creating for for many, many people. And yeah, I I'm all about N F Ts, I guess.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  With the creator economy piece, that's where the click moment happened for you with N F Ts was once you realized how creators could own their work in new ways. Is that, is that a fair way to say it?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was, uh, that was a huge part of it. And it was also just the the idea of a true digital ownership. And and how, I mean, that sort of, the creator economy is born from the fact that we can now own assets in the digital space in a way that we never could before. Uh, and it sort of made me understand, hey, okay, so maybe these crypto punks that have been around for years were the first real like generative big project. Um, I can understand now why they may be valuable because, you know, in ten, twenty, fifty years from now, if millions of people or billions of people are like investing in digital assets, these very first ones that this all sort of like stemmed from or grew from. Um, they they could really be worth a ton in a way that many may not be able to see right now.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  One thing you've written about that I think is interesting is you've shared, for lack of a better term, a certain distaste for roadmaps, I would say, which is really common in NFT projects. Pretty much every project that drops has a roadmap. Usually says something like at 20%, 5% of the project, we'll do a giveaway. And at 50%, we'll do a charity giveaway, et cetera, et cetera.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  Talk to me about why you're sometimes skeptical about roadmaps? Or how would you phrase that?

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Yes, so I definitely don't like most roadmaps. I think most projects, like we have dozens of NFT projects launching a day, maybe hundreds a week now, which is already ludicrous. But the thing is that most of them, they're just sort of jumping on the bandwagon and trying to copy the success of previous projects. And they're effectively copying their roadmaps and not really innovating. And I think that's one issue I have. Like if a project says their roadmap is just sort of what you're saying, 20% of a giveaway, 50%, you know, community wallet will be funded, 75% will donate to charity, that's great, I love that aspect. But it's just like, it's nothing new, it's nothing revolutionary. And yeah, I just, it doesn't excite me if I see a roadmap like that.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  But to take a step back, sort of from a bigger picture perspective, even if the roadmap is exciting and innovative and appealing, it's sort of, my issue is that the NFT space moves at hyperspeed, crypto space moves at hyperspeed. But things are changing and evolving so much that I would rather have the creators of a project, the developers, whoever are behind it, a bit more leeway to shape and adjust to what is happening in the market, what new tech is being created, whatever new thing is being discovered, and shape the roadmap as, make it up as they go along. The fact that a lot of people in the community want a roadmap and want to know what the project's gonna do.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  And then it's sort of written there, like people buying the project saying, hey, this is the roadmap. The creators are then obligated, rightfully so, I think, to deliver on these things. And it may be that some of them take several months to to do, and by the time it's it's ready to be launched, no one really cares about that anymore. It's like, that was the hot thing three months ago, and it's like, I think we saw that with companions, like. Um, the Board Apes have their their Kennel Club companions and and the Punks had Mebit's. And that was like a really cool thing to do, and now every project has copied that. And it's just, it's not really that exciting or amazing or innovative anymore. But because they had in their roadmap, they feel obligated to do it, they spend so much time and energy. Fulfilling these things that they said they're gonna do because everyone seemed to want them.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Um, but they weren't really innovating, they weren't really pushing the the envelope, the the boundaries and. That, yeah, I would rather just have like a description of what what they wanna do, like their vision, like.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  You know, how they're gonna approach.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  High level.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly, high level, and I think, yeah, roadmaps can work, especially if they're, you know, they are innovative and there is a good team behind it. But ninety nine percent of them, I think, uh, I I'm not a fan of.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  So you've written about how you pick projects, and I thought it was a really awesome piece on Substack, we'll link to it. What do you look for when you're evaluating a project or when you're getting into a project?

• 11:24Speaker 02

  So the number one thing I always look for is the people, I I look at the people behind the project. So that that's the team, the developers, the artists, the managers, and and anyone involved in the creation of the project. I wanna know who they are, I wanna know what they've worked on before, I wanna know what they're like, are they good people, are they smart, are they thoughtful? Um, you know, do they have the ability to take the amount of money that they're raising, which is usually quite significant. And use it for good, for the good of the community, for the good of not just their specific community, but the wider NFT community. And just be smart and and do make good decisions. And so that's the most important thing, like first and foremost, it's it's always about the community, I I don't really. Look at the art that much first off. I obviously don't really look or care about the roadmap, um, any of that stuff.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  And then the second thing is, again, the people, but I wanna look at the community rather than the team behind the project. So. You know, uh, so many of these N F T projects, their success is, um, like lives and dies based on. The, the people that are invested and buying into these entities. And so I wanna like join their Discord and see. Who else is interested in this project? Wh- why are they interested in this? What are they talking about? And you can sort of tell, um, projects that are sort of built on a house of sand are, are when the community and even the team sometimes. They're all focused on the price. They just want number to go up. They want people to sweep the floor and de-list and it's just sort of this. It's, it's not really creating any value of substance. It's, it's just, there's nothing there. And those are the sort of like Ponzi. N F T projects that.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  M L M style.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  About the existing users going, getting new, the.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly, exactly.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Buyers and you're like, hmm, yeah, yeah, there's no fundamentals.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Where like, these are the projects that when the real bear market hits, they're just gonna go crashing down. And, you know, i- it's a concern. I'm, I, I worry for people that get into the space that are new and, and maybe just get excited and caught up in all of that. And, you know, invest good money into these projects, not necessarily, um, having the long-term conviction. In it or not having a team behind it that's there for the long term. So, yeah, I mean, that's sort of a red flag. I don't wanna invest in those projects. But if you join the Discord and you chat to people who are in- interested and they're like, hey, I really like what this team is doing. The team's there answering questions. They're building something for the future. They have really cool ideas that they wanna execute on. And, you know, they're listening to community feedback and people are really excited for where the project's gonna be in two months, three months, a year, and they're not really.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  You know, bo- like bothered by the price too much, then that's just a really good sign. So it really just comes down to the people. Um, and then after that, like, yes, the art is important. It, like, I prefer if I, if I like it, if. But, you know, art is so subjective that if I don't like it, other people might. And if I love it, maybe no one else. It's like, that is something that isn't a huge factor. Um.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  I guess specifically in these 10,000 generated projects we're talking about, if I'm buying like one of one art or art blocks, then obviously the art is is a much more determining factor, but um yeah, they're two separate kind of collections.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  Are there any projects you want to shout out that you think like, hey, that's a that's a great example of you go into their Discord, you go into their community, their team is super strong, they don't care about floor price. What are you eyeing these days that you think are doing that?

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Well, the one that just immediately comes to mind because they made an announcement like an hour ago is um Blitmap. And so their their founder is uh his name's Dom, he was co-founder of Divine App, if you remember that, the 15 something videos or whatever, yeah. Um, he has been in the crypto space for a long time. He's like a true builder innovator. He he really does create awesome products. And um yeah, so that's just one project where no one really cares about the price in there, even though it's one gangbusters. Um, it is is difficult to shout it out because I think the the floor price is really high right now to get in, but it wasn't for a long time. Um, I'll shout out Top Dog Beach Club because that's a project that's been around for a few months.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Um, their their price hasn't really done anything crazy. I mean, I think at time of recording it's more like point one five ETH. Um, and they minted at point oh eight. I mean, so obviously, you know, almost doubling in a few months, that's by many metrics a smashing success, but in the NFT space. When people are used to like 10x, 100x, and they they look at that and be like, oh, it's kind of struggling, but um.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  This space has ruined investing for anybody who's a part of it for all time. I was like looking at something outside of sort of outside of crypto that was like a 20% return, like nearly guaranteed, you know? And I was like, that is such a great return by any normal standard, like hedge funds that have like a 20% return or like on top of the world. And I'm like, oh, God, like, you know, like my $2,000 investment is a hundred K right now. Why would I ever waste my time with 20%?

• 16:06Speaker 02

  It's it's warped everything.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  I I would love to get your thoughts on the market broadly. You talked about PFP projects versus art projects and how you approach that differently from an investment perspective. Do you have like mental models in your head? This is something I've been trying to build up of like different categories of projects and therefore you kind of think about them differently or price them differently? Or hey, there's PFP and then there's art and then there's utility. Like, what are those categories to you if you have them?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've never really consciously sat down and thought about them, but there's definitely a a different approach to the profile picture projects. To the art, especially the one of one art, uh gaming projects would be another big category and then sort of like the utility or membership aspect. And I would say by and large, like the gaming, the utility projects are sort of much more designed to provide value of a a longer term. A lot of the gaming projects, they're like, obviously it takes time and and money and and work to create a successful game and a lot of play testing and back and forth, so. If they're they're launching now, but the game may not be released till next year, obviously you need to have a long term vision, but.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  I I do think gaming N F Ts are going to pop off and be huge, and so the the approach for investing into gaming N F Ts is uh again for a much longer term vision, whereas with these profile picture projects. A lot of them are running on hype and and FOMO and short term basis. And it's it's much riskier to invest in them because A, there's just an oversaturation of them in the market, there's just tons of them popping up every single day, and there's just not enough, like despite the space growing at uh warp speeds, there's still just not enough people, enough money coming in to s- to support most of them being successful, so most of them will fail. And yeah, I guess with the profile picture projects, just understanding that it's it's higher risk. Yes, you can, because of that, you can probably find ten X, hundred X gains occasionally, but

• 18:07Speaker 02

  um many projects are just going to crash ninety nine percent. Yeah, so I I would approach them with a higher risk and and the other things with with a bit more lower risk.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  Would you describe yourself as more of a long term investor or more of a flipper or a a combination of the two?

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Definitely a combination, so maybe like six, eight months ago. When I was first getting in, it was more of the flipping side, just because I I didn't have much of a bankroll. If I put one, oh, point one is really into a project, and then it went up to point two or point three, um. It just, it made sense to take that out and then try and find other projects to invest it in. And uh it got, like, over time, I became more of a long term holder, just as I was being successful at flipping, I was able to, say, mint two or three in a project and maybe sell two of them and hold one for the longer term, if I believed in it. And then as time has gone on, um.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  I I was like minting more, flipping more, and then trying to find projects that I thought were really good for the long term. And putting and holding on to them more. A- and now I'm at a point where I basically do very little flipping, active flipping, like very rarely am I. Um, buying things with the intention of selling it soon, um, if I, yeah, anytime soon, but, um. Occasionally I'll be buying things and then selling them a few weeks later. If they go up like ten X, I'm like, all right, I should take some profits just cause. You should always take profits, but, um, yeah, now I'm focused more on the really long term and building my own projects and advising other projects. And it it's really sort of, it's almost like a weight off my shoulders. I don't feel like I need to be flipping anymore, like even though there's good money in flipping, I think.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Um, and and it is fun and it was exciting. It's just, it's also stressful. It's also a lot of time involved and you like. You feel like you're missing something if you're not at your computer twenty four seven. And yeah, I'm I'm sort of happy to be, to have moved on from that. I I, yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have to say, I, so I I love you've called out Warren Buffett in a couple, or maybe just the one, but uh newsletters in the past. And I got my start, my first job out of college was at a hedge fund that was very much.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  Built around Warren Buffett's investment philosophy, which is a very long term orientation, kind of a project. So the flipping thing. Is very anathema to me and kind of hard to get into. Um, and I think the the thing that makes me fearful about it for people is moments like this where you're having a bear market. And I have, I have a friend who's sort of started to get into N F Ts, and I think she's been a little bit more in a flipping mentality. And this mar- this bear market is like, hazard kind of freaked. Like I was getting texts this morning, like. You know, eh, like, why is it going down, kind of?

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  You know, so I I wanted to shout out this this quote of Buffett's that you mentioned in one of your your, um. Your pieces, which is be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  Why, why did you shout that out? And, and can you speak about that a little bit? And, and maybe, who knows when this airs? It might be a bull run again, but

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  But what, what people should take away from that here in this bear market?

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, it's just the, the general thesis of that, I think, is that if you're investing with the mindset of invest, like evaluating projects for the long term. And, and if a project has a good team, they're building something and they have like, quote unquote, the fundamentals, whatever the fundamentals are in a T space, we're still figuring that out. But I think a good team is a big part of that.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Then obviously a lot of the space runs on sort of hype, FOMO, um, people seeing numbers go up and just wanting in on, on, on the action. But the sort of the secondary market prices doesn't really significantly impact the ability of the team and the project to execute on its vision and what it wants to do. Yes, they get, the more floor price goes up, the more volume there is, they get a little more in, in secondary market royalties and stuff to keep them going. But by and large, the, they're, they're running off the, the funds they raised from the initial sale and they have a vision and they're trying to execute on it. So if the project is, is going along nicely and then, you know, there's a bull market and a lot of people, and your money can get in the space, they find these projects, they're

• 22:25Speaker 02

  really hyped about them, price goes up because people are really excited. Um, I mean, nothing has really fundamentally changed in the project itself. Like the team is still doing what it's going to do. And it's sort of speculated saying, hey, I want to be in this project because I like what it's doing. And then people are just competing with one another to pay more effectively, say, I'll pay one each to get into this project. No, I'll pay one for five each to get into this project. And then again, the fundamentals haven't changed, but people are just willing to pay more. And I think in those cases, it's just smart to take some profits, take some money because

• 22:56Speaker 02

  inevitably there will be a market turn, there, there will be a sentiment shift. Um, be whatever reason it may be, if, if ETH prices pump like we've seen in the last few weeks, if gas is really high, people get a little spooked for whatever reason, market sentiment will change and then people will be less excited to be in the project. And that's when, you know, floor prices will, will start to drop. People will say, hey, I don't want, I'm not as excited anymore. I will sell this NFT and I want the ETH because I think ETH is going to go to 10K or whatever it may be. And then, and that's when you see sort of the market tanking, people are undercutting the floor, prices crash. And then if they go really far down, that's sort of when people are fearful and I think it's a really good buy opportunity because again, nothing has changed in the project. It's still Essentially the same, um, and so you can get what I think are really good buys when

• 23:41Speaker 02

  the market is fearful, when everyone's panicking, when everyone's selling. Largely because the people that are selling either bought in just for the speculative aspect, um, and or because they didn't have sort of a long-term conviction in the project. So I mean, there there are projects that I bought in and they've gone up, you know, hundreds of percent and then down eighty percent from their peak. And I'm just sort of not bothered because I'm, I can see that the the team and the creators are building things, that they're working on their project. And they have like a multi-year vision. And I think that as the empty space e- explodes, which I think it will over the next few years. Um, the value will just naturally grow up, uh, go up a- and they'll find ways to, you know, build value and people will find the project a- and be willing to pay more to get involved.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  So from that perspective, I'm I'm like not fast when prices go down a lot in these projects that I have conviction in. But if someone is newer to the space, they didn't do their research, they don't have conviction in the project. When prices do go down, then they panic, then they wanna sell, then they worry that it's gone to zero, then they worry that, you know, no one will ever pay more for it. Um, and that's when people are fearful and that's, I guess, when when good buys can be made.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, in short, buy if if the market's plummeting. Now, gas is a little high right now. No, no, that's great. I think, I think that's, that's spot on.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  I'm really good at saying in a thousand words what you said in four.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  No, not at all. It's it's all valuable. I think it's funny to me because again, I I'm sort of,

• 25:07Speaker 00

  I was, I was raised professionally with that sort of long-term orientation. You don't worry about the whims of the market on a particular day, but these texts from my friends this morning, or the this text from my friend this morning, kind of reminded me that not everybody else has that perspective. And I think it's a really awesome thing to just keep reminding people, like, don't let your sense of of self or or well-being or, you know, be dictated by where the N F T market is on any given day. It's down today. It'll be back up tomorrow. If you believe in your projects, don't dump because you're panicking. Um.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  Ho- hold on.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  There there is, um, I mean, th- there is sort of money to be made and like an approach to take, which is much more short-term minded and you sort of like, you can trade with the emotions of the market a- and swing trades so, uh, as it may be, but.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  If you are doing that, I think it's important to understand that you are doing that and and that you're playing in the same risky game like crypto is risky, investing is risky. And NFTs are even more risky. And yeah, so most people don't have the stomach for it. Most people don't have the the knowledge or the um. You know, what whatever the wisdom to to be able to profitably. Know what's happening with the market and and make these quick flips or swing swing trades. So for most people, I I recommend not trying that approach and not hoping to quick quickly flip things and. Yeah, again, go back to the more long term minded, I guess, value investing investing approach.

• 26:30Speaker 00

  Do you have recommendations for people on where to start? If they are even interested in flipping, like, you know, where to source new projects? What are the good spots to? What are the good people to follow on on Twitter other than yourself? Do you have a? Do you ever recommend that to to folks?

• 26:47Speaker 02

  I I get this asked a lot and I still don't have a good answer.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I I was hesitant to ask it because I'm like, I don't think anyone does.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's that's the issue because, well, so much of it is sort of self learning. You just need to. Put in the time, start following people on Twitter, see who you think makes sense and and who you jive with and um. Yeah, jump into discos, network, talk to other people in the space, like. Everyone is by and large very friendly and welcome uh welcoming and willing to share information and help one another out and sort of like. Yeah, lift each other up, but it it takes time to just. Just wrap your head around the whole space and see what's going on. And I think the number one piece of advice I give to anyone is just to be patient because it's so it's so.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Enticing and just people want to just jump in and like wanna buy an NFT and if they buy one, it's fun and exciting, wanna buy another one. And they see people around them making, you know, massive gains, but what they don't see, because a lot of people don't publicize it, is that there'd be losses and there'll there'll. Mistakes um which are around a lot as well. Um, yeah, so I recommend to be patient and just take time. Put it just takes time to just research yourself and.

• 28:01Speaker 00

  It gets called a rabbit hole for a reason, right? Like, it's a rabbit. You just keep going down and down and down. And down and, you know, hopefully eventually you you hit that point where you you start to get a feel for it, but it takes.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:13Speaker 00

  A while. I mean, I'm many months into this and I don't. I don't feel like I'm there.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, the learning curve is steep and that's uh something that we need to improve upon and I think we are getting better at it. And um yeah, over time we'll have better resources and like a go to place for people to go to the to find and learn and educate themselves. Um yeah, I I know about some projects in the pipeline that are working on these things, which is exciting, so.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  Ooh, anything you can share?

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  Any secret alpha? Yeah.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, they're launching next the next week, so I don't know when's it gonna come out, but a a project I'm advising on is called a curious Addys Trading Club. And it's they're they're effectively, their goal is to build sort of like the Duolingo for crypto and NFTs. So an app that, you know, beginners can learn, understand what gas is, what Ethereum is, how to transact, what an NFT is. Everything basically in an easy to, you know, just a gamified way, because that's fun and stuff. Um, and it's back like the the two co-founders or husband and wife team who have had tremendous success working on other startups. Um, the the husband Ben is a a Thiel Thiel fellow from um, so he dropped out of Harvard, he got that.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, did the Peter Thiel, yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  Brand thing.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  And um, yes, so they've had a lot of success, they know what they're doing, they've built apps and they're they want to basically create this. Basically go to place for new people to crypto and NFTs. And, you know, it'll take them a while to to develop the app and and be out on the market, but it's. Yeah, that that's exciting for me because I would love to say, like, we all have friends saying, hey, you're into NFTs, how do you get in? And you're like, where do I start? Oh, okay, maybe um, go to YouTube, watch the watch these some of these videos. Here's an article that I found and and ask me questions. And it's like, it's not scalable, but it just say, hey, go to this website, look at this app, download this app, great, so that that's really exciting to me.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's the like the macro and then the micro. It's like, well, let me first explain to you or try and convince you that this is a legitimate thing.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  Then step two is trying to start directing you places and it's it's really a challenge.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:20Speaker 00

  So speaking of learning, uh, something you've written a lot about that I'm I'm eager to learn more about and and I imagine a lot of other people are as well is art blocks. I'm familiar with art blocks, I I know it's basic breakdown, but I think there are a lot of people who are newer to the space who maybe aren't. Um, and you've written about it, I think, really eloquently. So first, can you give the the brief overview, if somebody doesn't know, of like what art blocks?

• 30:42Speaker 02

  And sort of how it's broken down between playground and curated and and factory and et cetera. Sure, so Art Blocks is a a platform where generative artists can release their work. And so generative art is basically art that is created by code. So the artist will, they won't just, you know, use it, they won't use Photoshop, they won't use pen and paper. They'll they'll write some code and the code itself will generate the art. So they can, you know, code in a color, they can code in circles and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And uh they they're able to make extremely sophisticated things and pieces of work that look visually appealing and aesthetic and just nice pieces of art. But rather than them generating, creating themselves, they're generated by the code.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  This is, generative art has been a thing for fifty years, you know, even before computers, people were finding ways to generate art without, you know, physically creating each piece. But um obviously, as technology has improved and gotten better and code coding has gotten better, people have created more sophisticated versions of generative art. But there had never really been a good way to sell it, to capture it and create value out of it. Because essentially, the the artist could just run, wh- what they would do before Art Blocks and for NFTs, where they they run their algorithm a thousand times or ten thousand times, look through all the outputs and pick out like ten that they like the best. And then they would just sell them as as prints or like digital images. But there there was no, again, no true digital ownership over it.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  With NFTs and blockchain technology, what can happen is that, and what does happen with Art Blocks, is that the artist will upload their code to the the blockchain, so it'll be permanently and forever stored on chain. And the user will go to the Art Blocks website. And when they want to buy a piece, they they click the mint button and it uses the sort of the the hash code, so like each, the the the seed phrase, oh, not seed phrase, but like the seed from the transaction. So each person who, you know, they they have a unique Ethereum wallet, at a certain time, it it inputs it. And the the code runs and the output is, you know, a generative piece of art based on this. Code, but the output is unique, so no one else will have the same output.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  And the artists themselves don't know what the outputs are going to be until people click that mint button, until it is generated in real time. And in real time, it is saved to the blockchain. It is this piece of art, this N F T that's created. Um, it is all stored effectively all on chain. So it's not like a lot of other projects, um, you buy an N F T and it's sort of, the actual image file isn't stored on Ethereum blockchain just because it's prohibitively expensive to store that much data. But with art blocks, the code is on chain and effectively everything to recreate it is on chain. So art blocks can disappear, the website can go down, they could pack up and leave tomorrow. Um, and as long as the Ethereum blockchain is around, um, more or less, people will be able to recreate their art.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  I mean, okay, there's usually a couple of other dependencies, like, um, a JavaScript package called P five J S, I think. Which is a generative art package, but for all intents and purposes, that package itself is as decentralized as the Ethereum network, like it's, it's, the code is like locked in a cold storage locker under a mountain in, in Norway or something like that. And, and it's like in, you know, thousands of people's computers and it's like, yeah, it, it, you will be able to recreate your art. Whenever you want. So it's like true ownership in the truest sense. And yeah, so art blocks is this platform where artists launch their, their projects on their users and collectors can go and buy them.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  And create and find out what they get. Like again, no one really knows exactly what they're gonna get by clicking the mint button. So it's, it's a bit of a fun experience. And yeah, they, they've launched a couple of hundred projects now and they, they sort of split their, their platform up into three different areas. So that's a curated collection, the playground and the factory. Curated is basically what it sounds like. So art, the art blocks. Team themselves will um go through all their applications and curate and select the ones they think are the the best or the most interesting or unique or what whatever it may be. And release them under this flagship collection and that you know they're restricted to one one a week at most you like lately it's been a few weeks since we had the last one to sort of like

• 35:04Speaker 02

  restrict the the supply and keep quality high and and you know they go through a curation board and so it's very prestigious to release under that. And then any artist that has released a curated piece can sort of release a project in the playground. Which as it sounds like is is just a place for them to try new things, experiment, play and and create new art and you know they can launch one project a month there effectively. And then the factory is just sort of everything else. So if if you're a generative artist, you can apply. And maybe you don't want to go through the curation process, which can take I don't know months, maybe even years now to actually have your work on art blocks i- i- in the curator's uh section. Or maybe you're just newer to the space or you don't have the, you know, your work isn't as uh

• 35:47Speaker 02

  unique or advanced or whatever to to necessarily pass curation, but it's still generative art, it's still cool, interesting and it passes like a lower bar of curation. And that's where the factory comes in and they release multiple projects a week there and it's a lot more affordable as well, like for curated, the price is now, you know, several each each usually. Um maybe less now because it's in the bear market, but one to two each at least. Whereas in the factory you can get it for like point one each, for example.

• 36:12Speaker 00

  So now's the time to buy art blocks.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  So you're you're very bullish on it and you've written about art blocks specifically a couple of times. Why are you so bullish on art blocks? Generative art can be created anywhere. Wha- what it is about an art blocks stamped piece that that you find so exciting?

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm I would say I'm very bullish on generative art as a whole, so there there's gonna be very successful generative art that has been not on art blocks as well, created elsewhere, um other platforms, other individual artists releasing it. But I just think that generative art as a as a medium is this is just gonna explode over the next several years, decades even, because it's just the perfect uh.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Vessel or like this, you know, this point where art and coding and technology and culture all meet. And it's a thing that wasn't really possible again before blockchain technology. And it was sort of still in the early days, I think, of real, what what they call long form generative art. Where you know, you can create five hundred or a thousand uh iterations of something a- and sell them. And so, yeah, very bullish on generative art in the long term. And uh I I was actually sidetracking. I was talking to someone a couple of days ago, who is, who has created a platform for kids to learn generative art. And so, um, you know, it's sort of like a learning course. You can, you know, I think it's ages five to seventeen or something. They go on, they click what their interests are, and then it really takes them through the basic steps.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  It's like copy and paste, like tells you the basic code, it's like write this in. And it'll create like a a square that's colored, and then you can add a ball to it and you can move it. And it's like, you know, really teaching the next generation of generative artists. And and like, I I think that's gonna be bigger and bigger as we go on.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  That's awesome. Is that like an online thing or is that that's in Germany somewhere? It feels like that's the kind of thing that Europe is gonna catch on to before the United States, like.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  No, no, no, this is an American thing. Um, yeah.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  Oh, wow, good guess.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, um.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  This should definitely probably be, start being like the school curriculums themselves. We need, you know, much heavier focus on generative art and on computer science and NFTs and crypto in general and.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's part of the whole.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  We'll get there in a hundred years, once it's.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  Perhaps to the time when we needed it.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, yeah, we're getting there. And I g- I guess to get back to it, generative art, very bullish, Art Blocks, it's just already a massive, well-established brand in the generative art space. They have tons of artists that are, you know, many of them very well-respected. Probably all of them, I mean, I I don't know them all specifically, but, um. And and, yeah, there there's tons of people that have really fallen in love with the art and found personal connections with the art and the artists and the platform. And I know the the the team, the creator, Snow Fro, Eric, is, he has a really long-term vision, like he wants to build art art blocks. And and just essentially. Encourage this whole generative art movement for, from not just a collector's or a financial

• 39:15Speaker 02

  investment point of view. He's more focused on the art and, you know, making that explode. And I think that's really important. And, you know, again, they're building for decades, not just the next month or year. So I'm bullish on the whole ecosystem.

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• 40:23Speaker 00

  I want to give a special thanks to overpriced JPG partner Block Block. Not only because they are a sponsor of this show, but also because they are my employer. Block Block is an innovative blockchain lab who work across NFTs and the metaverse. And our goal is really to push the industry forward with every new project we take on. We founded and currently run the MiBits DAO, which just partnered with Larva Labs to create more metaverse-friendly renderings of MiBits, which is awesome. We are also partnered with a Sundance award-winning filmmaker to build the first DAO that will own a feature-length documentary film. We have a ton of cool projects down the pipeline and are really

• 41:02Speaker 00

  looking for cool people to partner with on this. So go to blockblock.io to subscribe to our newsletter and be kept up to date about what we have going on and also to check out open roles we have available. We'd love to have you apply, come work with me, coming out, blockblock.io. You taught me the term in your writing, via your writing. I'm not going to pronounce it probably correctly, but Veblen or Veblen goods?

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Veblen, I think.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  Veblen, okay. And and this gets to I I the piece you're talking about with branding, which is the Art Blocks name has really started to establish itself as a well-known brand in this space, which of course comes with power. And this it it therefore it's able to create this dynamic of a of a Veblen good. Why don't you explain to folks what that means and what that is?

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Sure. So traditionally with uh markets, like we all know that supply and demand, if if something is in low supply and in high demand, it it's very valuable. And then if supply goes up, um the the existing supply and total supply generally goes down in value, just because, you know, there's more of it to go around. And the demand might not be matching it. With a Veblen good, it, again, I'm not an expert. I I found out about it not too far before I wrote that piece, but um effectively, it's uh it goes against that and it it suggests that as in some cases, as supply goes up, price can also go up because it's sort of the brand power. And and like a good example of that is

• 42:32Speaker 02

  say, a Rolex watch, like there are or or whatever, you know, a Louis Vuitton bag or whatever luxury good that there might be, there it's not like they're restricted in supply. Anyone can, whenever they want, go out, go to a shop and buy one. You know, they they're pumping out thousands, tens of thousands. I don't know how many exactly, hundreds of thousands, maybe a year. Um but because they are considered a luxury brand already, um it's sort of as a new person buys in and and and gets one, they they feel like they have this luxury good. They have whatever social status that they may be looking for by getting it. Um and then now, all of a sudden, this person is an advocate for the brand. They're part of the network. They they themselves will probably be talking it up and saying, hey, you know, Rolex is, I have one, they're really cool. Hey, and you know, other people will see that.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  And it's sort of, yeah, it goes against the traditional supply and demand, but I I think that in a way Art Blocks may or at least Art Blocks curated, maybe all of Art Blocks will be that way, where in the in the future, um the case, I mean, it even is still now, but like if someone owns a piece of Art Blocks curated, it's sort of like considered a luxury item. Obviously, it it's thousands and thousands of dollars and multiple ETH to own one. Uh and they they keep releasing more, but it's not really hurting the value, I don't think, of Art Blocks curated. It's just, you know, more of the same luxury good being released.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  And I think you made this point sort of as a uh. A response to people who were like, oh, because there continue to be new art block exhibitions and new artists, is there going to be an oversupply problem with art blocks? That's going to hurt them in the long run. And I think we in the NFT community maybe are so wired for like, there's only 10,000, right? There's this 10,000 drop. The idea that something is going to continue to be produced over many years like freaks us out. And I think that's the, I think that's the wrong perspective. First of all, 10,000 is so tiny. Like, there are going to be so many more people that flood into this space. So like, supply, I don't think is, is, is at all an issue right now we need to be worried about. But I think that point of like, if you're, if you establish a strong enough brand and

• 44:33Speaker 00

  establish yourself as a luxury good, you are less subject to the, to those kinds of wins, the supply and demand wins.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I definitely agree with that, yeah.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  So I want to make sure we talk about your project. I think it's really exciting. You have announced you are launching your first NFT project. You, you mentioned this earlier, said you're, you're excited to kind of get out of the flipping game and start building something. Talk to me about the project.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Sure. So it is, effectively the NFT or the token is going to be a, a membership token. So you'll get access to largely my, my Discord server. And so I ha, I created this Discord server two or three months ago now, and it was free and anyone could join. And I sort of always intended it for, for it to be free. Like, I even have in the back of my mind, yes, I may launch an NFT in the future, maybe you'll get access to a couple of private channels within the Discord, but the whole Discord will be free. And over the last maybe two or three weeks ago, I sort of changed my mind and decided to make the entire Discord sort of gated, a, and you need the NFT to get in. Although anyone who was in at the time, which was like 11,000 people, I said, you know, you're

• 45:44Speaker 02

  here, you supported me earlier, you have lifetime access, basically. So I didn't want to, you know, make anyone who had founded have to pay. But the, the biggest reason for wanting to make the whole Discord gated as it is, is that, um, that the NFT space is so Wild West, Ian, to create term, um, it is full of scammers and bad actors and like, especially on Discord, people are joining servers and like DMing people with malicious links and posting links in the Discord. And we had, we had a case a few weeks ago where- Three accounts joined, three or four, and then one, one of them posted a link to a project saying, hey, this is minting now, it's really cool. And the other ones were jumping in saying, hey, I've minted some, hey, that looks really cool.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  And so, you know, one of our members thought this was just genuine conversation, they went to the site, minted and lost a little bit of ETH on this scam project. And, you know, obviously I hate to see that and by gating it and having this sort of higher barrier to entry, which is not that, I mean, it. The, the base token is gonna cost zero point zero three three ETH, so it's like, it's reasonable, I think, for lifetime access to a Discord. Um, yeah, so I think that will eliminate a ton of scammers a- and that kind of thing. And the other thing is it will just sort of, um, make the whole Discord more cohesive, rather than having two different sections gated and stuff like that. For the majority, everyone will get in. And so, yeah, this is a membership token, um, ninety nine percent of people.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  So I have two different price tiers, but this is the one that I think ninety nine percent of people will be interested in, point oh three three ETH. And the, the drop mechanic will be the, um, it'll be an open addition, so there's no restriction on the amount that I'm gonna sell. But it'll be open for two weeks, so, you know, anyone can wait for gas to be low, if they want in, they can wait, take their time, mint. Um, if they wanna mint multiple, maybe they can give it to friends in the future, or if they think it'll go up in value in the future, they can do that. But, um, yes, this avoids any sort of gas war, any sort of whitelisting necessary. Um, and it's not like I'm selling a, a rare commodity, it's not like, uh, uh, every NFT is gonna be exactly the same. So it's just gonna be a, a digital letter written by me with some text.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  It's a fungible, non-fungible token.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah. Uh, ERC eleven fifty five, the, the technical ones out there.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, there you go.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Is basically what it's gonna be. And so, yeah, everyone will be affected in the same, but it's just like a membership card to, to, to the Discord.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  And I, I wanna get into the second tier as well, but before. So what's going on in your Discord? Like sell your, like, you know, what, what's, what's the haps happening in the, in the Zeneca Discord? Uh, is there?

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  Awesome people, good insight. What are we getting there?

• 48:16Speaker 02

  It's all of that. It's just a really good community. It's tons of people that are, I mean, friendly and, and willing to help and share information and learn about the space. Um, I, we have, we have like an alpha channel, which a lot of spots have now, where people post about mints going on in real time and, and try and share information. But I'm trying to make the focus not so much on like, what's happening right now. I'm sure it's an alpha, but just sort of create this greater environment of, of education and sharing knowledge and researching longer term projects. And so I post like occasionally, uh, I'll do research, deep research into a project and post the breakdown. Hey, I think this is good. This is coming up or this project that had launched a while back is, is maybe a little on the radar. It's worth looking into. Obviously I, I don't recommend anyone buy anything. I don't give financial advice. I just do some research and share some of it.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  And I mean, that's part of it, but a lot of it is just like, it's just another community to hang out and be around like-minded people who are there to learn and like, I've really here for the long run, not, not like, there's so many communities out there. Which, um, I mean, hey, I mean, people like them as well, but they're all focused on the short-term flipping. They're talking about like, this is minting right now. Let's get in, let's get on the way, let's flip it and then, you know, move on to the next project. Whereas mine is hopefully more of like a chill, calm environment and, and that is the community that I provide and I'm fostering. Um, and yeah, so I, with the size of the community and with money raised, I, I hope to bring value in other avenues, whether it's, you know, discounts to analytics tools or whatever it may be.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  Um, but again, like I hate roadmaps. I'm not plan, promising anything. I'm just saying, hey, if you buy in, you get access to the Discord and we'll try and do cool things together. Um, yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  And that, that segues me to the, the second tier. I'll, I'll tee off the second tier by saying, I loved something you wrote about it, which is, you realize this is expensive and I'm not offering that much, correct? Or some variation on that, which is a, um, a wonderful, uh, a wonderful way to sell your own project. I actually think it is really effective, but it's hilarious. I want to talk about why you wanted to emphasize that. And, but let's start with, with what is the second tier that you're, you're launching?

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, first tier unlimited point O three three available to most. The second tier is is basically much more exclusive. It is three point three three ETH and restricted to three hundred and thirty three. You can tell I have a thing with the threes. It's everyone asks when I created my Twitter account, I was thirty three years old, so I had thirty three in my name and then I just ran with it. And uh I think I'm still thirty three. Um I forget my age, anyway.

• 50:47Speaker 00

  You created your first Twitter account this year or within this this age?

• 50:51Speaker 02

  I created this Twitter account. I had one from back when I was an online poker player for a while. It had like two thousand followers and it didn't really. Yeah, I I didn't really use Twitter that much um for the last like.

• 51:01Speaker 00

  Now you have like a hundred thousand followers, right? No big deal.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  It's stupid, but yeah.

• 51:05Speaker 00

  It's growing fast.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  It is growing fast, which I think is a testament to the whole space growing so so much.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  It it's a testament to you too, though. I I think you you give uh you do long threads. So for anybody who doesn't follow Zeneca thirty three, that's his handle. Uh I really like you. You give thoughtful threads, which I enjoy on Twitter more than like snarky one liners. So I I think you're providing real value for people that way.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  Okay, so three point three three ETH. Oh, sorry.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  Three point three three ETH and restricted to three hundred and thirty three. And basically what I'm saying is that's the access to a more private Discord. So within the private Discord, there'll be one channel. It's just the three hundred and thirty three of us or maybe a few channels. Um and it'll basically be more access to me. I'll spend more time in there and I will, yeah, it's it's just my time. And so I I was sort of going back and forth on whether I wanted to include this or not. And and what really sort of, I guess, pushed me on the edge was that a couple of weeks ago, I decided I wanted to start uh advising and consulting for projects. And I created this Google form for people to fill out if they wanted to, you know, bring me on to their team. And I had

• 52:08Speaker 02

  eighty responses in thirty six hours a and uh on the form, I'm saying my my fee is six percent of initial sale revenue, which for most projects is going to be like between thirty and sixty ETH, which is obviously a ludicrous amount of money. And and this many people were still willing to pay it. And then after thirty six hours had ended, I got another like fifty messages from people saying, I missed it, you know, can we still work something out, et cetera. Um so effectively, people are willing to pay for my time and and find some value in it. And I mean, I want to help people. I want to work with projects. I want like when when people message me, you know, if we go back a month ago or six weeks ago, I would answer everyone and try and, you know, help them out with feedback. But it's gotten to the point now where I just literally don't have the time to do that. I can't.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Look at every project that people message me about. So this N F T is sort of one way that, you know, if you're launching a project. If you want a little bit more of my time, you want some opinion, then you can, you know, buy this, get access to Discord. Chat with me and I will be much more able to, let alone willing to, um, you know. Look at your, your, whatever you're launching, but, um, I mean, that's one reason to get in or that people might want in. The other is just. If they want this to be, it's like, if the community will be small and will be hopefully with like minded people. I'm sort of curating the, the. Community myself, cause I I put out a Google form for anyone that wants to jump on the whitelist to, to buy it. And like. I, I wasn't sure if it would sell out, if there'd be that much interest. And then I got like a thousand responses in twenty four hours.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  So, yeah, just before this call, I was going through and, you know, I, I had a field on the form saying, why do you wanna be in? Uh, in the community or why, why, why do you wanna pay this much money, basically? And, um, yeah, I'm trying to pick.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  What's wrong with you? Yeah, it is so much money. It really blows my mind, like, to think of how much money it's gonna raise and I need to. Figure out what, um, what I'm gonna do with it all, cause I mean, there, there's no denying it. If it sells out, which it's seeming like it will, it'll be like a thousand ETH just from this tier. You know, four million dollars and that's a ton of money and I. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it, but I need to be thoughtful about it and, and think about it. And like, what, what I can say is I'm not, like. I'm not gonna just create a token and pump it back into the, like, it's not a project where I'm saying, hey, I'm gonna build this thing. I'm not gonna. I don't have, I'm not an artist, I'm not a game developer, I'm not trying to create a DAO or anything like that. It's like the.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  In essence, people are paying me for the access and the time and it's that kind of thing, but it does give me the ability to. Do cool and interesting things that, again, I'm not putting it in any roadmap, but. Uh, I don't know, I commission artists to create cool art and airdrop to people, create, buy like metaverse land and have clubhouses and, I mean, it just. Collaborate with whatever. There, there are a lot of possibilities and I just, I don't know what I'm gonna do with it, but I, I, um. It's something that I need to think about, of course, but, yeah, so I get to go through this, this list of people that have applied to be whitelisted. And I curate the list a bit and hopefully put together a group of people that are. They're for the right reasons and then part of the value will be this network effect where you know you have these

• 55:14Speaker 02

  uh this group of people that are either they're new and learning and wanna learn and have you know maybe they have expertise from outside the NFT space that they can impart. Or you have someone that's launching a project and wants some insight and you know can help other people in the future who are gonna anyway. There there's so many possibilities, but yeah, it's a bit of an experiment and that that's that's what it is and I'm excited for it because you know it it does it will give me the financial freedom to not feel like I need to flip, not feel like I need to be buying and selling NFTs and I can focus on again helping others and and spreading um I guess information and education and that kind of stuff.

• 55:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the reality is not to show for your project for you, but but you know thirteen thousand dollars, right? What whatever this sort of lands at, who knows if if it is ten K by the time this launches and a little bit more, but is is um i- is not unreasonable at all for like lifelong consulting services, you know, like consultants charge a lot of money and there's no, as long as you hold this token, you have that access, right? So I think I mean, heck, twelve thousand dollars is not a lot for a a month of consulting services. Um so you know, if if you're somebody who's looking for a really strong consultant, I mean, I could see this being a huge win for like

• 56:29Speaker 00

  not that you necessarily wanna pick these folks, but like for institutions, right? Like who are trying to get into this space and and that's um that's practically cheap if you're them, right? I'm sure you're targeting sort of individuals that you wanna you wanna bring in, but um I think that that three point three three can be initially like, oh, my gosh, whoa, because we're so used to drops where it is more like point oh five or point oh three three or or whatever, but when you when you frame it for what you are offering, as much as you joke that it's not much, it it really is something. And then the other piece that I'm interested in is this network effects uh part. So I get a lot of questions and I'm sure you get even more questions than I do about hey, I'm an artist.

• 57:12Speaker 00

  I wanna get started in this space. I see the opportunity, but I don't really know how to to take a breakthrough. And it strikes me that one of the biggest advantages an artist can have is other network connections within the NFT artist space.

• 57:29Speaker 00

  Um, I'm curious if you would agree with that and and you know, you feel like maybe it's worth spending a bunch of time getting to know other artists in the space who can kind of be your network effects when you launch. Um, and B, how much you're thinking about that with this community that you're building?

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I a hundred percent agree that it's incredibly important, the network effects. I think just for anyone in this space, like whatever your goal is, if you want to succeed in the NFT space, networking is probably the number one thing to do. And you know, networking sort of has this businessy-ish vibe where it's like you go to these rents and suits and conferences and you chat to people and network. But in the NFT space, it's it's a lot more fun. It's like you just chat with people on Twitter, you join Discord and you vibe and you know, you have fun. And you talk about cool JPEGs and and whatever crazy madness is going on in the space, like someone refusing nine million dollars for their pump or you know, whatever Coinbase is launching their their marketplace and there's just you can talk about tons of stuff and you just make friends and like everyone is so friendly, you network.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  And then, you know, if you are launching your project, if you are an artist and you have friends and communities, then that's, these are the people that will be there to support you. And yeah, I really don't think and I can understand how important the network effect is and just how important this true network. Um, obviously you can be successful and you can find success by just being like a passive person in space, just lurking if you don't want to talk to people. You you can use, you know, research and be on on the outskirts and still find success by investing in stuff, but it's definitely harder and especially if you're an artist trying to sell your work, trying to spread the word, then again, networking is is key. Um, and I forgot part two.

• 59:10Speaker 00

  You know, I I think you you addressed it. It sounds like that part two was is do you have that in mind as you're curating this list of

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 59:18Speaker 00

  of the three hundred thirty-three who you'll let in?

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:20Speaker 00

  Because it strikes me too, as I'm once again explaining why this is not an overpriced JPEG that you're selling here. Roy slash Zeneca. I think, you know, twelve thousand dollars is also not a wildly aggressive marketing budget if you're launching a brand. And

• 59:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  I do think artists should think of, I think a lot of artists do think of their NFTs as a brand or should oftentimes, depending on the kind of art you're project you're dropping. And it it.

• 59:49Speaker 00

  Chilling for your project in like a random discord where there's 12,000 people is is not always necessarily going to be the most effective way to go about it. I think there's a way people could think about this as a marketing expense for their project of hey, I'm going to be in this intimate group of 333 people who this person I've trusted had sort of handpicked so that I think are going to be good people to have meaningful relationships with. Who are maybe meaningful people to talk about my project out publicly if my project is good, right? I know you've been clear, I'm not just going to market your your thing because you buy this.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  But you know, $12,000 is not a crazy marketing expense for a brand.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  And a way to build build a meaningful network.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I I do. Yeah, I mean, it's it's hard to say that I think it will be worth it or the value is there, but and I really don't think anyone should be buying it if it's a significant amount of their the net worth of it. Like if if they only have 10 ETH, if they not only, it's a lot of money, but if that's what they have, then spending 3 ETH or 3.3 ETH on this may not make sense. Like it may be a longer term thing and the value that they may get from the group will you know, be smaller, non tangible, I mean, certainly non tangible. But yeah, if you're a project launching, if you have, you know, you're an individual with hundreds, thousands of ETH at your disposal, then it makes, I think, some sense.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. So what is the biggest piece of advice

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  you would give to a new artist wanting to launch a project? I'm sure this is the question you get all the time. Do you have like one piece of advice either to an artist or to to an investor? One of the two or both?

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the advice is probably the same. And one part is what we just said, network and just, you know, make these connections, but the biggest piece of advice I think I give everyone is just be patient and realize that it takes time to find success in this space. Usually, yes, people do get overnight success and there are these edge cases, but they are edge cases and outliers and the exceptions. And for everyone that has overnight success, there's dozens, hundreds that do not, thousands maybe. And realize that.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  It's very exciting in the N F T space. There there is a lot of money to be made. There's a lot of other success to be found. But uh it's not going anywhere. The tech and the the space is gonna be here for forever. For for a very, very long time and we're very, very, very early. Just because it's exciting and fun and it looks great, you don't need to jump in. And buy an N F T today or tomorrow. You don't have to launch your N F T if you're an artist today or tomorrow. Take some time, build up a community. Um, you know, have a network, talk to friends, or just, you know, soak in information and and research. And so that when you do go to, say, invest or buy into a project, you know why you're doing it. So. You have the conviction in the long term so that you can hold a- and, you know, survive these bear markets, which I think is important.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  And and not necessarily panic and freak out and text your friends in the morning about it. Um, that that's one thing. Uh, or if you want to play the aggressive flipping high-risk game, understand that you are doing that. And again, that you may be losing a ton of money, you you could you could go to zero. Um, a- and only, you know, risk money that you're afford to lose, but the the issue comes in when people are impatient a- and then they just jump. Headfirst in, not really sure what they're doing. You know, they just want to get involved right away, which I can understand. That is cool and exciting and fun and. You know, it it's it's all happening, but yeah, people feel like they're gonna miss out, that they're they're late already and they wanna jump in. Yeah, there's so much FOMO, but. Um, you're not late, you're early. Even if you listen to this in two years, you're probably still early. Like, we have, we have a long journey ahead of us, like.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  Decades. Um, think internet in ninety ninety five. It's not like you were late if you got into the internet game in two thousand and two. No, you're not. So I think we have plenty of time ahead of us. Just think about learning and investing yourself, like educate yourself and yeah.

• 1:03:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, you threw, you embedded within that, uh, the one I was gonna say, which was, don't. Don't play with more than you can afford to lose, which which you were getting at with if you have ten each, don't spend three of it on on this project. It's I don't know if it was you or somebody else I saw on Twitter who was like, if you have a stomach ache after you bought something, like you spent too much. Was that you?

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  No, it wasn't. It sounds like something I would like.

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  It sounds like something you would say. Yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  It does, yeah.

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  It was like, hey, if you have a stomach ache, if you can't sleep at night because you're stressed about the move you just made.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  I've said this the sleep thing before, but yeah.

• 1:04:18Speaker 00

  Okay, so maybe I'm conflating two different ones.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, that makes no sense.

• 1:04:22Speaker 00

  Did you have any moments of that when you were early in this space where you overextended? And it was like that learning moment of like, oh, yep, okay, that's I I went across the line for myself.

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I definitely had a few moments like that where, yeah, I guess I did overextend because I I couldn't really sleep or I I was just too, like, I I invested in a couple of projects and then I I sold them for profit, but then they went up in like five or 10x and I was like agonizing over it, which I mean, that's, it's gonna happen in this space. You just can't time the top or the bottom or whatever. Um, yeah, I I learned from those and over time have, I guess, started to, uh, yeah, invest less or like less as a percentage of my overall, uh, bankroll or portfolio and more towards projects.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  Again, so I have conviction in that all of those moments where I was had like a sinking feeling in my stomach or I couldn't sleep or whatever, it was always because I didn't have conviction in in the projects I was investing in and, you know.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  I will say I I've had a moment and I I feel confident in saying I've learned from it. I'm somebody who, again, comes from a bit of a finance background. I know you should never play with money you can't afford to lose. But that means different things to different people. What you can afford to lose means different things to different people. And I I went a little too far, like totally swept up in FOMO. I was in a Discord. The whole Discord was like going like, you know, it was sort of the the the price was rising. Everybody was like getting each other so hyped up. And so I I went in a little harder than I should have been, like right at the peak, right? Right as the thing starts coming back down. It's it's since gone back. I I actually did have long term conviction in the project, so I was able to handle it. But like, I had the stomach ache. Like, I I went to bed. I woke up the next morning just feeling so embarrassed that I had like

• 1:06:10Speaker 00

  fallen prey to the hype cycle on a Discord channel. So this is to say, like, it happens, you know, again.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  Can we know what the project was?

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm, yeah, okay, I'll say it. I love, I actually, I love this project. It's creatures.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  Oh, I agree. I love this.

• 1:06:25Speaker 00

  I love creatures. I'm such a long-term, but I bought in, the first time it went up, I bought in at like 1.5 and then like 1.85, which is, it's, it's over that now and I think it'll go higher. Like, I really believe it. But like, I bought a few, like, at the time, it was just like, like, $10,000 or whatever it was. And I was like, that's more than I feel comfortable. And then it was like, right before it went back down to like 0.7. I was like, oh, come on.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  It was also learning for me. It was like Kevin Rose had just made his profile picture. I think Gary Vaynerchuk had just said something about it. So it was, it was a moment for me to learn, like, right after a bunch of celebs start talking about a project, is when you're probably gonna have a little, like, short-term peak. So like, just like, take a breath.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We saw the same when, I think it was Shaq made a creatures profile picture.

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  Luckily, I was already holding it.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's when I bought it. I bought it as soon as that happened, because I was like, okay, this is, I already thought the project was cool. I was planning to buy it a day or two before, but then I saw this and I was like, all right, I'm, I should get in now.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Speaker 00

  And again, I, I think, I only buy into projects that I, I have a long-term conviction in, because I haven't learned how to flip it. Well, I may never, but that was a case where it was like, you took it a little too far. Probably shouldn't have spent that much. Awesome. All right, we're, we're running low on time here. The last thing I wanted to address, because I think it's really interesting, is

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  you, you, so Richard, who's an influencer in this space, kind of famously recently did not sell his CryptoPunk for like $9 million or $8 million or something, right?

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  9.5, I think.

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  9.5, okay.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:01Speaker 00

  And you retweeted his, his tweet about it, saying, I'll get, exactly, like, when we say NFTs are different because institutions can't just come and buy them, this is what we mean. Some things are just not for sale. Can you? Explain that a little bit more, or maybe explain to people who are new to this space, like what what that says about the culture and the sort of ethos in NFTs and and why it's interesting.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so NFTs are, at least up until now, everything that's been sold, it's sort of like the ownership is distributed amongst the community, amongst real people. People, especially in the case of CryptoPunks that were here, like OGs in the space early. And um compare it to sort of most other, basically every other crypto investment, like coins or even financial stocks and and stuff like that. Um if a big institution wants to get involved and and into the space, they can just come along and they can just buy a ton of Bitcoin or Ethereum or Solana or whatever. Um and then they just have a significant portion of the market. And even at the beginning stages, they're often funded by, you know,

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  VC investors, angel investors and seed rounds and private sales and publics. And then eventually, you know, the rest of us, the the the, what's the word? Uh, you know, um.

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  Laypeople?

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  Laypeople, yeah, yeah, yeah. Regular casual investors or, uh, there's a work ethic, but anyway.

• 1:09:24Speaker 00

  Retail, retail investors.

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  Retail, there we go, yeah, yeah. We are usually stuck having to buy later on and then the price may tank because the institutions, you know, decide, hey, we're just gonna sell off a ton today. And then, you know, it's it's just like, that isn't really a case with NFTs, at least at the moment. If if an institution comes in and they want to buy a ton, like they want to invest a billion dollars into CryptoPunks or Apes or whatever, it's like they just, they can't. They have to pay what we, who hold the NFTs, are willing to sell for. And in the case of Richard, he's just said, my punk is not for sale. So that means that it's not a case of, hey, we're gonna offer you a billion dollars, but it's just not for sale. And if enough of us say it is not for sale, then.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  We get to keep the integrity of our community. We get to have it decentralized in our hands. Um, and for the ones that who that do decide to sell, they get to dictate the price. They'd say, okay, it's not for sale unless you give me, you know, a hundred million dollars or whatever it might be. Um, and then it's, yeah, so if the institutions want to get in, A, make them pay, and B, if you don't wanna sell, don't sell it. My profile picture ape is just not for sale. I've I've created an identity with it. It's it's a brand now. I have a podcast called Two Board Apes of, you know, it's just, it's for better or worse, it's now my avatar for for the metaverse, for the NFT space.

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  And it probably will be forever. Maybe I'll find something I love more in the future, but if someone comes along and offers me double floor price for it, I'm not gonna sell because if someone comes and offers me nine point five million dollars, I will think long and hard, but, um.

• 1:11:02Speaker 00

  Okay, you hear that? Who who was it? Was it like Visa or Mastercard or whoever was trying to buy it?

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  No, it was, um, poap dot X Y Z.

• 1:11:08Speaker 00

  Oh, oh, yeah, okay, of course, of course, yeah.

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, um, yeah.

• 1:11:11Speaker 00

  All right, well, poap X Y Z if you're if you're listening.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, but yeah, by and large, it's like NFTs are ours. You can say it's not for sale. You can say it's not for sale unless you pay me this much. And they just can't come in and invest how much they want to into buying it up in a way that they can in many other industries and get get control of them, you know?

• 1:11:32Speaker 00

  I think that that is a, one of the big reasons I was drawn to this space is this underdog contrarian in me. And I think this this dynamic is sort of a microcosm of what's happening sort of broadly right now, which is there's this increasing tension between like individuals and institutions and institutions are crumbling in some ways. And I think you saw that play out with like the Melvin Capital, like Wall Street Bets dynamic, where there was a whole bunch of us kind of being like, go Reddit, go Reddit.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:03Speaker 00

  And and I think this is, um, this is. Yeah, and this is the, this is an economic sort of extension of that, which is very cool. The the the last anecdote I'll share to this point is, um, I don't wanna get myself in trouble, but recently my uh my company was sort of, not, I'm not a founder, but was approached by.

• 1:12:23Speaker 00

  This kind of institution who's trying to get into the space and who wanted whales to help them, like they know whales are important. They wanted them to like help, you know, push and market this NFT they were dropping. And it was like, that's not how this works. You can't just come and like swing around a bunch of money and think that the whales have money, right? Like that's why they're whales. Like they, what they value more than your money is their kind of independence and in many ways, I think reputational integrity around that they've built up around the space. And so I think that's a really kind of beautiful thing. It was kind of fun to like tell this boardroom of like corporate white guys, like your money's no good here. It's, it's not, you can't, you can't buy the marketing in the same way in this space. You have to network your

• 1:13:07Speaker 00

  way to it. So awesome. Roy, Zeneca, I keep calling you both. This was so fun. I really, really appreciate you, you taking this time and really excited for your project to launch. I think it is not an overpriced JPEG.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Awesome. Thank you for having me. It's been a lot of fun.

• 1:13:24Speaker 00

  Awesome. Cool. Well, we will talk soon.

• 1:13:33David Hoffman?

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• 1:14:16David Hoffman?

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