UpOnly & Flip with Brian Krogsgard (Ledger) | ETHDenver 2023 Interview #8

Sometimes, the frontier is at a crypto conference. One of the most prestige being, ETHDenver! We’re back with a handful of exclusive interviews with some of the most fascinating minds in crypto. Wish you could make it to all the crypto conferences, but don't have the time? Don't worry, Bankless brings the frontier to you. In this episode, we’re talking to the Up Only legend, Ledger, aka Brian Krogsgard, and also Co-Founder and CMO of Flip, a growing NFT aggregation platform. Brian and David talk about the past, present, and future of UpOnly and Flip. ------ 📣 RhinoFi | Makes DeFi Frictionless https://bankless.cc/rhino ------ 🚀 JOIN BANKLESS PREMIUM: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/subscribe ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/kraken 🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap 👻 PHANTOM | #1 SOLANA WALLET https://bankless.cc/phantom-waitlist 🦊METAMASK LEARN | HELPFUL WEB3 RESOURCE https://bankless.cc/MetaMask 🚁 EARNIFI | CLAIM YOUR UNCLAIMED AIRDROPS https://bankless.cc/earnifi ------ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 3:35 Brian or Ledger & Camera Formatting? 4:50 UpOnly Status 5:24 Flip 10:44 Who is Flip For? 12:37 Fundraising 13:32 Fees & Liquidity 14:32 Customers & Business Development 15:45 Content & Future of UpOnly 16:23 Closing ----- Resources: Brian https://twitter.com/Krogsgard Flip https://twitter.com/Flip_xyz Ledger https://twitter.com/ledgerstatus UpOnly https://twitter.com/UpOnlyTV ----- 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://www.bankless.com/disclosures

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

• 0:12David Hoffman?

  Bank of the Nation, we got the last interview of the day here at the Axler Interoperability Summit, and this one was a surprise, a very pleasant surprise. It's not really going to be about interoperability. We're talking to Ledger, Ledger Cast, also known as Brian Krogsgard, from Up Only, from Daily Open, a fellow content producer and a long friend I've had in the space. We talk about his company, Flip, which is all about NFTs, both being an NFT trader, but also an NFT community member at the same time. And after we're done talking about Flip, we'll of course talk about Up Only and all of the other content that Ledger puts out. But first, before we get to that conversation with Ledger, a moment to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible.

• 0:50David Hoffman?

  Kraken is our strategic sponsor for 2023. Why? Because Kraken has been around for over 12 years and has proven itself to be deeply aligned with the crypto industry. Trusted centralized crypto platforms are hard to come by these days, which makes the few remaining ones even more valuable. With over 9 million users and not a cent lost, choosing Kraken as our strategic sponsor for 2023 was a no-brainer. We need exchanges like Kraken to provide the on-ramps to get people to go bankless. And Kraken's emphasis on security and transparency makes us feel good about having them as a sponsor. If you're unsure about your centralized exchange or on-ramp, perhaps open an account with Kraken today. And if you're unsure about the rest of Web3, well then maybe you should get your learn on with MetaMask Learn. Learning about crypto is hard.

• 1:32David Hoffman?

  There's no one out there to hold your hand to get into this industry, until now. MetaMask Learn is the best place I've ever seen to send someone to learn everything there is to know about Web3. If you're a company trying to onboard employees, or you're a son or daughter trying to onboard your boomer parents, MetaMask Learn is the place to send them. Interactive and engaging lessons making learning about Web3 fun and easy. Now, once you're through Kraken's gates and you've taken the MetaMask course on what's a DEX, you're safe to make your first stop into the world of DeFi. Where better to start other than Uniswap? Uniswap is of course a decentralized exchange for crypto asset trades and swaps. But it's now also an NFT aggregator as well, making Uniswap some of the best decentralizing trading tech that's out there.

• 2:16David Hoffman?

  Uniswap's big announcement at ETH Denver is their Uniswap Wallet, which is waiting to get released to the public as soon as Apple stops being a big old bully about crypto apps in the App Store. Uniswap is basically on every chain that's relevant in the crypto ecosystem. So if you want to use Uniswap, but with the cheapest possible fees, then use Uniswap on Arbitrum. The Arbitrum Layer 2 is the host of Ethereum's most vibrant DeFi and NFT communities. Arbitrum is already surpassing the ETH Layer 1 in transaction volume, and it's not even close to full capacity. With so many vibrant communities on Arbitrum, Arbitrum is a good place to call home for the era of Layer 2s. Speaking of settling into new homes, the Phantom Wallet is now available on both Ethereum and Polygon. That's right, the number one wallet on Solana is expanding into the Ethereum ecosystem. Phantom is the one wallet for everything:

• 3:00David Hoffman?

  displaying NFTs, making NFT trades, swapping tokens, staking tokens. So if you're a multi-chain surfer or an NFT power user, then the Phantom Wallet is for you. It also comes in mobile. Check it out at phantom.app. Now, let's get into the interview.

• 3:14David Hoffman?

  Biggest nation, we're talking with somebody different today here at the XLR Interoperability Series. We're talking with Brian Krogsgard. You might know him as Ledger. What's up Ledger?

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Uh, not much. How you doing?

• 3:23David Hoffman?

  Did I just dox you?

• 3:24Speaker 02

  What, did you dox me?

• 3:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 3:26David Hoffman?

  Alright.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  I'm doxed.

• 3:27David Hoffman?

  You're super, super doxed.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Hello, my name is Brian Krogsgard. I live in Alabama.

• 3:32David Hoffman?

  Keep going.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  I was born in the 80s.

• 3:34David Hoffman?

  So I've been putting on my podcaster voice because I'm doing all the whole interviews, but you're also a podcaster, so I know you don't need it. When people approach you at these things, do they know you from Brian from Flipside or Brian from Up Only?

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Uh, they don't know me as Brian at all.

• 3:48David Hoffman?

  That's a good point.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  They just say, uh, "Are you that Ledger guy?" The one in the, in the corner of the screen?

• 3:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the small, the small little video camera?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  The small screen, yeah.

• 3:57David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so you're, you're like me. Well, I actually no longer operate my own OBS. I got Luke behind the camera operating my OBS. And also Dave here.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 4:04David Hoffman?

  You still do your OBS?

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, when we record a show.

• 4:08David Hoffman?

  Why do you put your own camera small and down in the corner?

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Uh, it just kinda was organic from the very first show that we did because I was actually trying to help Kobe stream an interview with BitLord.

• 4:19David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  And, which was random. Um, and then like all these people from, it's like a cast of 2021 characters came on that and we had like seven or eight thousand people join that show live.

• 4:30David Hoffman?

  Uh huh.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  And that was episode zero. And in it, I was like, I'm just kinda here. So I've made myself picture in picture and then it just fit after that. Plus, I kinda like it. I like being, I, we learned one thing in crypto, don't be the main character.

• 4:42David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  So like, I am never the main character. So that works fine for me.

• 4:46David Hoffman?

  You are the, you contribute a lot to the conversation, but no, like, look at Kobe. Kobe can be the main character.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  That guy, that guy can be the main character.

• 4:52David Hoffman?

  So what is it, what is the status with Up Only?

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Uh, Up Only is a podcast that records sometimes and-

• 4:58David Hoffman?

  Whenever the hell you guys want?

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 5:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. We have no obligations because I don't know if you know, but our sponsor collapsed and turned out to be a fraud.

• 5:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah. The, the sponsor world has been different ever since then, let me tell you.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And honestly, we've been, uh, kinda slow playing it. Just, we'll be there when it matters.

• 5:15David Hoffman?

  Sure, sure.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Is that like a news tagline?

• 5:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Welcome to Up Only TV. We'll be there when it matters.

• 5:21David Hoffman?

  When you want us, we'll be there for you.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:24David Hoffman?

  Oh man. Okay. So, uh, but you are here to be Flipside Crypto.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Uh, no.

• 5:29David Hoffman?

  No.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Not flip side, flip.

• 5:31David Hoffman?

  Flip.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Dot XYZ.

• 5:32David Hoffman?

  Flip dot XYZ.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  In the vast world of crypto company names, there is a flip dot XYZ, a flipside crypto, and I think there used to be another one that changed names that had flip in the name.

• 5:42David Hoffman?

  Okay. I think flipside might be my other buddy Will's project. So flip.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Flipside is like a very, uh, query-driven developer-

• 5:51David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  -data thingy.

• 5:52David Hoffman?

  Okay. Well, they're irrelevant. Tell me about flip.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  That's right. No, they'd seem like they're a cool project.

• 5:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  They just should change their name. You should change your name. Uh, so we're flip and it's flip dot XYZ and we're a NFT aggregation platform, but we're kinda like, if you take some of the best things from exchanges and aggregators and research platforms and slap it all together and it's a all encompassing experience in one place and it's on desktop and mobile and it's damn good and not enough of you know about it. So you should go use it.

• 6:20David Hoffman?

  Absolutely. Who is flip for?

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Flip is for the person that definitely has a wallet, maybe has an NFT, but they don't necessarily treat NFTs as altcoins with pictures.

• 6:34David Hoffman?

  Okay. Like they care about their NFTs?

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, they care about the NFTs they own. Like I'm, you know, pudgy penguin 965.

• 6:42David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Um, and I'm invested in this community and I'm going shopping for my NFT. I'm not just trading derivatives of NFTs at the margins of floor prices.

• 6:53David Hoffman?

  Okay, so not, not the NFC power traders that Blur is going after?

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think they're going after a different market and I think they've done a great job at that. Um, and getting liquidity in it. We're, we're going after people that, kind of like if you think of it in a ERC20 landscape, like a swing trader, not somebody on five minute candles.

• 7:13David Hoffman?

  Sure, sure. A momentum trade?

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's like, I, I always say this in, in, in my own investing. It's like, okay, well, I'm going to invest based on fundamentals and trade based on technicals. And with my JPGs, you know, like I'm gonna pay attention to the price. You know, like if I buy something, I could think it's the coolest thing ever. But if I buy it for point one eighth and it goes to 10 eighth, I'm gonna be tempted to sell it. So like the price does matter and a lot of platforms ignore price and metrics and community-driven stuff. And we have all of those interesting metrics, but the creator, the community, the art is still first and foremost.

• 7:49David Hoffman?

  Okay, so what can Flip really do that other NFC platforms don't really offer?

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Uh, the big thing that literally nobody offers and we've had since day one is a native mobile app. And what it's best at is being a notification hub. So I can follow your ENS and if you flip, uh, you flip an NFT anywhere. So you trade something and sweep something, I can get a notification. And it's like, hey, David is aping checks right now.

• 8:16David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  And checks are point two eighth. And I'm like, well, David told me about Matic when it was 11 cents. So like I better fricking get over there and sweep like 50 checks or something.

• 8:26David Hoffman?

  Okay, so.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  You get notifications of anything like that.

• 8:29David Hoffman?

  For all of my friends that I've told, hey, you should totally buy MFers. They could set notifications that if I ever sell my MFer, they could be like, yo, David, what the fuck?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  And they will.

• 8:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. I gave away, so Charles Reed is a big crypto dickbutt guy, and now I've said crypto dickbutt.

• 8:46David Hoffman?

  I'm also a big crypto dickbutt guy.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Now I've said that. So he gave me one, and I told him, Charles, I won't sell it. And I did ask him, though, I was like, hey, can I give it away to somebody as part of a, like, a thing? And he was like, yeah, that's fine. So I transferred it to someone, and Meltem, literally like the same day, was like, what have you done? Because he thought I sold it. I was like, Meltem, I did not sell it. Do not kill me. I'm so sorry.

• 9:12David Hoffman?

  She would, too.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 9:13David Hoffman?

  I've hung out with Meltem a couple of times in New York. Within five minutes, every time I'm meeting here, we're talking about crypto dickbutts.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, and now we are, too, and that's just how it is. But if you're obsessed, like, you get those notifications, it's directly in your feed, so like, all the wallets I follow, all the collections I follow, it's gonna tell you, like,

• 9:32Speaker 02

  out of standard deviation price movements, it's gonna get, tell you, hey, this person listed that. If I'm following, like, I have this Azuki, that's like my favorite Azuki, it's got these background Firefly things. And the guy finally listed it, because I, and I knew, because I was following it on Flip, and it's like, hey, it popped up on OpenSea, sent me a notification, and I'm like, okay, I like it, but I don't like it for 6090.

• 9:56David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  But you get all that information. And by the way, if you ever just want to share it, it's the best single NFT landing page in the world. Go try it.

• 10:05David Hoffman?

  For the NFT newbies out there that need a good UI/UX?

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Anybody, like, you know, if you think of your sources of truth, there's EtherScan from a data perspective.

• 10:14David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  OpenSea, except for OpenSea is like, no, no other exchanges exist.

• 10:18David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Ours is gonna show the accuracy of EtherScan and the trustworthiness of OpenSea, but it's also gonna have, like, just a beautiful interface.

• 10:28David Hoffman?

  Okay, so when Meltem did come and say, yo, why did you give away your dickbutt? What she usually, did she get notified by a flip?

• 10:34Speaker 02

  I hope she did, but I don't know.

• 10:36David Hoffman?

  I'm sure she did.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  She may just have like a direct brain connection with the...

• 10:41David Hoffman?

  She's like, somebody gave away a dickbutt. So it seems to be like really at the intersection of people who care about collections.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:48David Hoffman?

  But still play the trading game. And so I really care about Cool Cats. I'm willing to sell my Cool Cat, but I'm also willing to buy another Cool Cat because I really like the Cool Cat system. So it's like somebody who's like willing to play the financial game, but still enjoys a collection at the same time.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I thought, I find what most people do is like, they actually, they may have one thing that they really care about. Um, I was talking to Luca from Pudgy Penguins recently, and I think it might be the only collection that I've never sold something from. And I, I didn't realize it, but I like, I think I'm a pudgy maxi.

• 11:22David Hoffman?

  Well, I am, however, am a pudgy bottoms, bottom seller.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  There you go. I'm sorry.

• 11:28David Hoffman?

  They're like point four or something.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  They may be a pudgy maxi, but they're a Cool Cats enjoyer.

• 11:35David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  And so like they, they actually see the monetary side of some stuff that they're not totally in love with. But then they've got like their version of a grail community. And for that one, it's not about the money, but they, you know, they still want to keep track of everything. They want to know the news. They want to see what their portfolios were. So we have like a portfolio evaluation tracker with multi-wallet. We have taxes. Of course we do.

• 11:57David Hoffman?

  Ryan's gonna love that one. All of a sudden Ryan's gonna love NFTs.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Me and Ryan are just gonna nerd out on the taxes. So it actually will transition your cost basis between your multiple wallets. So every wallet that you've connected to Flip, we can generate a report and send you your tax basis. If you're harvesting, if you're loss harvesting or, or looking at like long-term gains, it'll qualify that. Tell you what you've made. Um, it's, it's, it's pretty doggone cool, man.

• 12:21David Hoffman?

  I'm sure a lot of 2021 NFT traders or 2022 NFT traders are now like, oh, I wish I had had that when I was doing it.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Well, now they're still doing it, but they're like, I cannot believe I lost $50,000 on a JPEG.

• 12:37David Hoffman?

  Did you raise for FLYP? Like, how is this whole thing?

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, we raised in late 2021 was our seed rounds. And that was led by Distributed Global and Chapter 1. And we'll probably be raising again this year. And we're in it for the long haul to build wealth. And one other thing, you mentioned earlier, kind of some of the hot topics. We're doing some stuff around like a royalties API right now. Because we think part of being catered to communities is to really empower them. It's to be opinionated, but not necessarily political. Like, we're not telling them, hey, here's what you should do with this royalties API. But you do deserve the information of like, my community, I want to token gate up my Discord based on whether they paid royalties or not. You can do it.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  And so that's one of the things where it's more of like creating tooling specific to those communities. So we're trying to think pretty deeply about that side and get a bit opinionated. Yeah, so that's, yeah, I'm excited.

• 13:32David Hoffman?

  Very, very needed, especially as other platforms are really just marginalizing everyone to have the opt-in platform.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's something that I think a lot of us saw coming for a long time. It's like the race to zero for fees. And, you know, liquidity in NFTs is good in a way. But I think like if you take something non-fungible and then just make it completely fungible, you're not really, you're kind of upending the original purpose. And to me, like the ERC 721 spec is a deed or a title or a receipt for a thing. It's like this thing. And I think that's still important, and that's the future use case of NFTs. But derivatives platforms are still huge and they can, like from a volume perspective, they can trade at multiples of the spot platform.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  So it's not impossible for Board8 to do a billion dollars worth of derivatives trading. But like, a hundred million dollars worth of spot trading of the underlying.

• 14:31David Hoffman?

  So who are you looking for in, for FLYP? What's your ideal customer? And on the hiring side of your hiring or BD, relationship side, who are you looking for to join the movement?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:42David Hoffman?

  The Flip movement. What do you guys call yourselves?

• 14:44Speaker 02

  We say Flip and then say go to flip.xyz.

• 14:47David Hoffman?

  Cool.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  But yeah, we call ourselves Flip. We, from a customer perspective, we want people that are excited about NFTs, excited about the long-term future of NFTs. Like, there's more than even just the speculation side of NFTs. I'm really into experiential NFTs. So like, hey, I'm at this event and I'm, I'm, let's say, I didn't spend any money to be here, sorry. But let's say I spent a thousand dollars to be here, the art or the NFT is actually my receipt with a visual component, but like, I'm happy to have spent that thousand dollars. I don't need long-term value from it, but that NFT can still be my token, my access pass, my like, my, you know, the, the various gated components that NFTs can serve an interesting purpose for. We want people that are

• 15:33Speaker 02

  excited about what that means, what the community side of NFTs unlocks. And then from a business development perspective, if you are one of these communities, if you're building NFTs, if you're looking for better tools, better places to send your community, talk to me.

• 15:49David Hoffman?

  Beautiful. What is the future of content production? Tell me about the future of Ledgercast, Up Only, and Ledger doing content.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I still do content every week, but more on the technical side of things, Weekly Open and Ledgercast, but Up Only is still here, I promise. We, you know, we, we talk a lot and we'll, we'll, we'll get back to a more regular format pretty soon.

• 16:14David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  But we, if something really big happens, we'll pop on.

• 16:17David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Hopefully, I could take a little bit more break before that happens.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:23David Hoffman?

  Ledger, if there's anything else, feel free to got an open mic, but otherwise, thank you for joining me.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  I'm just happy to be here and, and y'all are doing great work. It inspires me, so I appreciate it.

• 16:32David Hoffman?

  Well, hey, before I had Luke behind the camera and Dave behind on the audio, I had Ledger teaching me everything I know about OBS, and so the cross poll nation goes back pretty far.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Awesome. Good to see you.

• 16:43David Hoffman?

  Cheers.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Later.