Steve Aoki on why he’s a ‘crypto believer’

Vergecast is on spring break this week! In the meantime, check out Nilay's discussion with Steve Aoki from this week's episode of Decoder with Nilay Patel. Steve Aoki is a superstar DJ, producer, record label owner, and prolific entrepreneur. He has been part of the music industry since 1996, so he’s been through a lot of these big tech transitions, and now he’s heavily invested in another, with Web3, the Aokiverse. It involves selling tokens and NFTs and, over time, is meant to be part of the metaverse. Because, of course. Subscribe the Decoder in your favorite podcast app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  Hey everybody, it's Neelai. I'm on spring break this week, so there's no Vergecast, but I didn't want to leave you without something to listen to, so we're going to run this week's Decoder on the feed. It's an interview I did with Steve Aoki, the superstar DJ. Steve recently launched a whole NFT and metaverse situation called the Aoki-verse. I'm always interested in how tech and music influence each other, so it's a pretty fun one. I hope you enjoy it. The Vergecast will be back next week.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:57Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, I'm talking to Steve Aoki, the superstar DJ, producer, and prolific entrepreneur. Steve owns a label called Dimmack, and he tours more than anyone. There have been years where he's played over 300 shows. And now he's launching a big Web 3 project called the Aoki-verse, which of course involves selling tokens and NFTs, and over time is meant to be part of the metaverse, because of course. Now, I have always been utterly fascinated by the constant back and forth between tech and

• 2:37Nilay Patel?

  the music business. New tech makes it easier to create and distribute music, but every time that happens, the business model of the music industry changes. And my pet theory is that whatever happens to music today is a preview of what will happen to everything else in the future. Take streaming, for example. Spotify came to the United States in 2011, before Netflix had even done House of Cards. And now, as I sit here recording this, Apple and Netflix are contending for the Best Picture Award at the Oscars. Steve has been part of the music industry since 1996, so he's been through a lot of these tech transitions. And now with Web 3, he's heavily invested in another. So I wanted to push on how he makes those bets about what's

• 3:22Nilay Patel?

  coming next, what the business of music is like for him today, and how he sees it changing. There's a lot of hype when it comes to artists and NFTs, so I wanted to try to understand it from the perspective of a very successful artist, who also happens to be a pretty active investor. And of course, I wanted to push on the hype around the Aoki-verse itself. Steve calls it "a social club that will combine Web 3, Web 2, and IRL experiences." What does that really mean? And how is he going to manage that community? Like all blockchain entrepreneurs, I also wanted to know how he was thinking about the energy use and climate impact of this project. This one takes a lot of different turns. We talk a lot about how Steve manages his time and all the different roles he plays, and at one point, he even manifests a future

• 4:04Nilay Patel?

  music collaboration. I think you're gonna like it. Okay, Steve Aoki, here we go.

• 4:21Nilay Patel?

  Steve Aoki, you're a DJ, you're a music producer, you're founder of the Aoki verse. Welcome to Decoder.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  What's up, guys? Thanks for having me.

• 4:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm very excited to have you. I am personally fascinated by how art and business work together, especially in music. My personal belief is that whatever happens to the music business happens to everyone else five years later. And there's like a lot going on in music right now between NFTs and blockchain. You've got the Aoki verse, which I want to talk about. But I want to just start with some foundations so people can understand kind of how the business was working.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:53Nilay Patel?

  So before COVID, before NFTs, before everything went upside down, what was your business like? How did, how did work work for you?

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Outside of music and touring, like a primary part of my business was investing. So once I started making money, say like late 2000s is when the DJing actually came through full bore and started seeing some, some income. That's when I started doing some small investments, restaurants mainly. My family's been involved in restaurants since I was born. My dad was a restaurateur. So I was like, oh, I might as well invest in something like that. So I kind of went into that world a little bit. Actually, as difficult of the business restaurants are in general, then nine out of 10 restaurants fail.

• 5:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  You know, it's like a very, very high likelihood that if you open something like nightclub or restaurant, it's very well known. It's, it's like 90% chance it's going to fail. But it's doing very well for me for the past, I guess, like 10 plus years. And then I got into like properly investing and then understanding how to position myself in that space. I started a fund with Eminem called Eminoki.

• 6:11Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it was private fund. I mean, it was just our money. And then we, we basically were just getting into rounds of like more late stage investing, like Uber, Pinterest, Spotify, gone to SpaceX.

• 6:26Nilay Patel?

  You're in SpaceX?

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was, I mean, it was like a friends and family situation where. Like some people that had stock were selling and there's like a sliver of a chance to be able to participate in that. And I was able to get in. So that was pretty awesome. I got into that like five years ago, six years ago now, I guess. Art, like 2010s, I got, that's when I started getting into alternative investments as well. I definitely, you know, if you talk about business manager, you're supposed to work at like a triangular business model where your PE and all the alternative investments are at the top end of the triangle. And like your safe investments are at the bottom, you know, you know what I'm saying? The pyramid. Yeah, yeah, I get it.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  I don't know the right terms, but uh, I, I like, if, if it was up to me, it would be flipped. It's just way more fun to get into like startups and like passion projects. Cause that's how I started, you know, like my record label, myself as a, yeah, consider myself an investment, you know, like what I do with music. That's PE. It's like, you know, I invested myself, but thank God I have, you know, someone else at the other end of the stick that gives me sound advice. Balances you out. Yeah, but like, it's pretty much more like a square. It's not a pyramid at this point. Cause I do so much in crypto now. Uh, I got into crypto like 2018.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  I, I invest in art heavily. I have some incredible pieces in my house. And I don't sell, like I'm, what I've realized in the end, I am a bag holder. So for at the NFT community, they love me because I hardly ever sell. Like I do sell now, like I have a team that helps me operate. So we try to get some cost basis back. But it's even rare I even do that. Like, and I go sweep floors. If I believe in a project, I don't just buy one, you know, and that's just how like I learned my lesson that way. Like you never, like with art, I'll buy one, you know, because I'm just going to have it hanging in my wall.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Or even toys, I like invested into some very high end toys, like cause toys. I have a whole cause room of toys. But you know, I, I guess in the end, like, you know, I'm scattered right here. When it comes to investing and it comes to all that stuff, if I have it my way, it has to have a level of experiential value. It has to have something that I can have a sentimental attachment to. I'm far more likely to invest into that than say like a stock that is going to perform well. I'll let they let my business management handle that kind of stuff. If I'm gonna put my hands on it, it's like, that's one of the differences between, you know,

• 9:18Speaker 02

  when I first got into NFTs, the difference between like investing into a coin versus an NFT. Cause the backend of the technology is similar, but the front end is really important. And it's, that's what, that's how we identify. It's at the end of the day, it's, you know, we'll get to that, I'm sure, but like, NFTs are the way we identify with culture, with other people, the way we communicate. And it's obvious, majority of the people that are very confused about NFTs, they don't see that. Like, they don't see that this is how people identify. They're like, you identify with a JPEG?

• 10:01Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's right in the name. You know, the name is funny because I, I know people think it's a bad name, non-fungible token, but it is the most literal description, right? You can't trade them for one another.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  It's like EDM. It's, it's literally what dance music is, electronic dance music is EDM. An NFT is like literal definition of, of what you're getting. Yeah.

• 10:21Nilay Patel?

  All right. So I, I want to talk about that. That's your investment side. One of the things I really want to explore with you is how NFTs in the music industry are colliding. So outside of the investment side, tell me how the music part of your business works or how it worked before COVID. Cause I, I think people are often really confused about that. Cause it, it's like a business that doesn't really make a lot of sense. How did that side of the business work for you?

• 10:43Speaker 02

  The business of music?

• 10:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  It's, it's like, it feels non-existent.

• 10:49Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Outside of shows. I mean, yes, you got like, if you get a big sync, yeah, but like, that doesn't happen all the time. You know, that's why it's, it's, those things are rare. If you get a big sync on a song, that's how people get their payday.

• 11:03Nilay Patel?

  And that's in a commercial or in a movie, something like that.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like if you get, and even like, like some big movie might be like lowballing you because it's such a big movie, you know? Or, you know, unless you get a commercial for Tide detergent.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  You know, like you're paid like a hundred grand a side. It's like, sweet, you know, especially if you wrote the song, you know, if you're part, you're participating in the publishing and the master, the master, you're going to get paid on the master side. But like on the streams, for like 99.9% of the artists that are making music and putting it out there, you can't survive off of streaming income. You know, you probably know it better than me, like how much we make on a stream. Spotify streams, like, I don't know, a fraction of a penny. So.

• 11:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like point zero zero eight or something.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So majority of people that are making music are not getting a hundred million streams or a hundred million views on YouTube where like, okay, then like you see some money, but like you, even if you're a big artist, even for me, I mean, yes, I get like some really high streaming numbers onto few songs, but it's a few songs. And YouTube is like, is also very low income stream per view, you know? So it's, it's just for sure, I wouldn't be able to have a lifestyle that I have if I wasn't touring, because that's 95% of my income, I would say. I mean, I don't even know the percentage. I'm just taking a wild guess here. But yeah, obviously, as you get bigger as an artist, you find other ways to make money outside of

• 12:34Speaker 02

  the music business. Music business hasn't changed. It's, it's kind of like, once they set a standard, it's like they don't need to go up too far. Right? So the standard is you get this, and that's what everyone else is paying. So whether you get point oh eight of a cent, yeah, let's say you get to point one of a cent. It doesn't change much. It might be like you get your like, you know, a level up there, but it's not enough. Right? So clearly with NFTs and music is providing a different way for musicians to be more engaged with their audience. And this is like, this is where it happens is that like you have.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  The NFT community, the crypto community that are also looking into music as an art form. Because that's the conversation that's being had is that music is art. We all can agree on that. We all can agree that music is an art form, but it's not regarded as an art on the financial side of collecting. You don't collect a song, right? You don't, you just listen to it. It's free. It's always been that way. It's how it is, but.

• 13:48Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, let me ask you about this. So you started, you said, before you started, you said, you've been running your record label Dimak for 27 years. So it's like in the nineties, you started, I think in 1996.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:58Nilay Patel?

  The nineties were crazy for record sales, right? Like CD sales are through the roof. There's no streaming. There's no whatever. And then you like hit Napster and MP3s. That whole business gets turned upside down. Now we're in Spotify's world. There was a moment where, you know, I have a vinyl collection. I'm sure you have a much bigger vinyl collection, but like, you know, people still collect physical music. No one, I think, collects digital music. How did you manage through that?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  As a label?

• 14:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, as the proprietor of a label, as an artist yourself.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, like, like one of the first things we did during that period of time was did the unthinkable. It's like, okay, hey, um, we want to give away a song for free. They're like, what's the manager's like, no, no chance. I'm like, I'm like, listen to me. This is where it's gonna have, it's gonna go. I know it doesn't make any sense and I know like we're, it's like, everything is getting chopped off as far as how much money we're making. But this is how you're gonna make money and I'm not participating on their touring, but you're gonna make more money when more people listen to your songs. Period. By your shows. As far as on the business side of things, I feel like one thing that, that I've, I've always had in my back pocket is, is like, okay, we gotta be a little bit more earlier.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  We gotta do something that other people aren't doing and take that leap forward. That's, that's like a bit scary, a bit speculative. The haters are gonna come out. But fuck them. Let's go. Like, you know, so like, yeah, I mean, I definitely went into the space guns blazing like that and it worked. And I was like, just trust me on this on one song. And like, there's so much more visibility on the single. And but like, here's the thing, to answer your question, on the business side, it didn't really help us, short term, long term, yes. That's how you have to think. I think about whenever you do these speculative moves, it's like, you can't think about short term gain, or else you're doing it for the wrong reason, period. It's just like one of the one of the life lessons I've learned. It's like,

• 15:57Speaker 02

  I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. What I've been doing my label, it's not like, oh, we're gonna make all this money on this artist or bear whatever, and then boom, we're out. No, we're like here to establish a even larger community of people that support us, you know, starting in like these small rooms into like bigger rooms into, you know, arenas to whatever, and keep growing it, and keep servicing them and keep like advancing and, you know, fast forward to now, this is exactly the same kind of concept. Like, I'm not going anywhere. I'm here. I this is the future. Actually, I can't, it's not like I'm not going anywhere. Like,

• 16:38Speaker 02

  this is how commerce will be. So regardless of I'm not going where it'll be here. Like, that's why I'm like, I see like, these people that get into the space and then like, there's these rugs that are happening. Like, don't you see, next year, everyone's gonna be doing it, and you just rugged yourself, you rugged yourself, from what how people, you know, this is how commerce will be. This is how we will communicate. This is gonna be become very normalized. You know, so I just, you have to think about the long game.

• 17:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, this actually kind of leads me into what I think of as the classic decoder question. I asked everybody this question. You run a lot of businesses, you're an artist, you're obviously an investor in a lot of different things. How do you make decisions? What's your, what's your thought process when you go through a decision?

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Decision, uh, you know, it's a balance of passion. Because it's like, you know, I only have so much time in the day. So you gotta be like, is my passion gonna lead me into making sure I carve this amount of time in my day? Because, you know, time is all we have. And my time, you know, just like everyone else's time is valuable. And

• 17:52Speaker 02

  My schedule is stacked, like stacked beyond belief, but it's stacked with things that I that I'm obsessed with, that I that I love. So passion's got to lead the way. And then the economics is important. You know, you have to like, think about that too, because if it's all entirely passion, you know, I've learned the the hard way. And that's where you have teams. That's where you have teams involved that can provide a different, you know, just angle at at what you're doing, give you more insight, more just information on your choice. So like, I I do keep my mind open. I think it's also important to not be stubborn and to know when you're wrong and to know that you're not always right.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  I think it's important you you have the right team because those people are saying stuff to you that actually can change your decision, you know, and you keep trusting time and time again, this decision isn't really true to your core, regardless of the money. It's a, you know, you're picking the wrong team. So you have to find the right team.

• 18:56Nilay Patel?

  I've asked this question of the biggest CEOs, individual creators. It's funny how the answers all kind of line up. At the end of the day, they're all different, but they all line up. And I think, to me, it's one of the most important questions we ask on the show, because honestly, few people take the time to step back and think about it. And it's like, kind of the most important thing you do with your time.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, actually, you know, actually, I'm gonna go into that. I think it's important for everyone to step back from what they do on the daily grind and ask themselves the question, why am I doing this?

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Because like, it's okay to be like, this isn't for me, even though it feels like it is. And you only have one life. I I always think about that, too. Like, I only have, like, what, you gotta think about the time that you have on on the planet. Like, my average life expectancy is like, I'm in good health, maybe ninety, but like, eighty is like, pretty much like, you know, you don't, you generally think-

• 19:54Nilay Patel?

  You might want to slow down at some point, man. You're a worker.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, seventy-five, eight, I say eighty, maybe, like, it's like, so down. So I have thirty-six years left. Like, that's it? Thirty-six years? Only three decades?

• 20:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Third, three decades. And some of these decisions that you make- It's not like, yo, yeah, we'll do this and um we'll get out of it soon. No, like most of the decisions I make are long term, like life long term, you know? There was no end in sight, no exit with Dimok, my record label. There's no exit. You know, I know, like when it comes to like real big businesses, you think of the exit, like five years, we're gonna sell, we're out, we'll do something else. A lot of the stuff I do, there's really no exit. I mean, yes, some cases, yes, I mean, I'm gonna continue to build. It becomes a part of me and maybe partners will come in. So I guess that's the exit.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Cause I'll get some money out of the equation for myself. Yeah. But I have to consider like thirty six more years. Is this gonna be part of my game plan for that? And there's a legacy attached to that too afterwards.

• 21:03Nilay Patel?

  That question, I'm telling you, I ask that question almost every episode. It leads places that you would never expect. So that's why I ask it. You are a worker. This is the thing about you. You tour more than anyone. I saw a stat that one year you toured three hundred sixty one days of the year, which is crazy. You do a lot of things. How do you decide what is Steve the performer time, Steve the investor time? How do you manage all that?

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Okay, Steve the performer time is only two hours.

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  That's what people forget. It's but the traveling is a fucking crazy time sink for sure. Traveling and then the side effect of traveling is a time sink, a brain sink. It it takes away from the brain cycles for sure. Uh, you know, when you're zombiing through jet lag, it's fucking hard to be like optimal, you know? And I'm still trying to figure that bio hack out because I do travel, I mean, pre-COVID. I was a glow, I'm a global artist. So it's not like I'm just doing like one or two or three different time zones. You know, I'm like traveling across the country like every other week. So I did China, I think, you know,

• 22:12Speaker 02

  fourteen tours in China in like two years or something, three years. So every other month I was in China, then I was in Ibiza, then I was in, you know, you're across Europe, then back to America and Central America, South America, Asia. It's like it never ends as far as a jet lag. I was a constant jet liger. Um, so that's tough, but.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  I have a really good team as far as making sure that everything's on schedule, everything's on point. I regard my schedule like the grail, like I, I really stick to my schedule. And as far as being a hundred percent with what I'm doing on the schedule, that's also very important. That's a big part of that. So, I mean, out of all the shows I've done, you know, I never broke under 200 shows a year for 15 years. So out of all those shows, I, I think I've only missed a few. My track record of reliability is like the UPS man, rain, sleet or snow, I'm there.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Like I, I will make it there however way I need to, I will do whatever in my power it is. Uh, but sometimes the act of, uh, uh, act of God comes or I just get fail it sickness or whatever it is. And then, and it's, that's it. Like I just can't go. I mean, this is like, it's not just shows or just an aspect of one thing I do in my life that's really important. So I try to really maintain that alongside everything else. And in order to do all that, in order to be able to make it to all those things, you have to be a mental athlete. There's no other choice.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  If I've decided to take on all this stuff, which I, and, and trust me, the NFT world, Aoki verse is a major time sink in a good way. In a really exciting way, in the future development way, you know, we're building a world, you know? With all that going on, you have to sacrifice certain things that will not allow you to be optimal. It's so important to be optimal so that I go into things with my team and they have to be optimal too. You have to have like, just like I was talking about before, it's like the, the team you pick has to be with you. We're going together, we're moving forward at, at this speed, at this pace, this tempo.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  And the train does not stop and I like that, like, you know, you have to want that, you have to like that. And you have to train like an athlete. I love this kind of bootcamp mentality though, physical, mental, spiritual bootcamp.

• 24:44Nilay Patel?

  So one of the things that I find in my life is I, I wear a bunch of hats. One of them is a management hat, one of them is a creative hat, one of those podcasters hat. Switching context for me from it's my creative time to I'm talking to other people about other stuff is I need to schedule that time to be creative.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:02Nilay Patel?

  Switch modes. Do you have to do that? Are you mental athlete? Can you just go from one to the other? Like, can you walk out of a business meeting and write on stage?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Yes, 100%.

• 25:11Nilay Patel?

  That's crazy to me. I would not be able to do that.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Okay, what's even more difficult is because I've mastered the nap. I think this is far more difficult. So it's like, you know, I did, I did five different countries in 40 hours, five shows in 40 hours. So the only, the ounces of sleep I was getting was on the, the transportation. I remember like one show, like we're like, literally, I was driven right to the back of the stage. They're like, I could hear them chanting my name. This, I'm on. And I'm still like asleep. Like I hear them. And they're like, my manager's like shaking my arm, like, you gotta hit the stage right now. We just arrived and they're chanting your name and they're like, you have to, and like, you know, 30 seconds is all I really needed. And I just got to the stage and boom, like, you know, you just

• 25:57Speaker 02

  feel it, you know, like, I'm just excited. Like, at the end of the day, it's just follow the excitement and the passion. And, and yes, when I go from like, let's say, the, the polar opposite mental hats that you're talking about.

• 26:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  You just have to accept that your brain isn't going to be able to adjust so quickly. And you're just going to have to just like fail a little bit in, in like the first part. But when, once, once I'm going, I, I catch up and I'm like riding on my horse and I'm good. I'm, I am flying. But like, I always accept that, like, you know, it's just part of who I am. Like, you know, I, like, luckily, I'm, I have some leniency from people that, that are listening to me to, to kind of give me some benefit of the doubt.

• 26:46Nilay Patel?

  We have to take a quick break, but stick around because when we come back, we're going to talk about Steve's new metaverse platform, the Aoki verse.

• 26:57Speaker 03

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• 27:30Nilay Patel?

  We're back with Steve Aoki.

• 27:34Nilay Patel?

  We spent the first part of this interview talking about who you are, how you make decisions, how musicians make money, all that stuff. So now we got to talk about the Aoki verse. So COVID hits, touring goes away. That's what you're spending all your time on. You got deep into NFTs. You jumped in really hard. What drove you in that direction?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  I'm already like a crypto believer.

• 27:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  So I think that's actually the foundation is important. Like I'm already pretty savvy in the space before I was in the NFTs. During COVID, that was the opportune time. It really was for everyone like me that has some money to invest, believes in alternative investments, believes in art, believes in collectibles, believes in crypto. There's a lot of different like reasons why I jumped in. And that's also why I jumped in. There's so many different angles of why it makes sense to me. On the collecting side, on the investing side, you know, on the curating side, on the creative side, there's just so much more I could participate in.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  And at the same time, I was getting into cards, sports cards, Pokemon cards. And, you know, later on down the line, I formed my own TCG company with the founder of a, that was already developing this particular brand. And we're doing absolutely incredible with this. So I'm heavy into the card world, to that whole space, the collectible space, right?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  So it's like on the collecting side for NFTs, I'm already there. Like, you know, certain things that you love, certain things you believe in, and you understand the communities. And that's the other thing, too, is the community side of NFTs is just as important as the art, as the technology behind it, the utilities behind it, the communities is really, really important. By far, the community that are part of each of these projects, far more important than any other industry I've ever been a part of. Whether you're like investor in Tesla and you're like part of the, you, you, you own the stock and you, you have a voice. You know, essentially it's very similar, but this is way more of a two-way street, way more transparent, way more real time.

• 29:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  And that's also important when I created the Aoki verse, membership community, is that we have to be real time. We have to deliver fast. And, you know, as some other, the, the projects that I was part of, I wasn't seeing the delivery as, as fast as I would like. And this is where I was like, this is something, when I created the Aoki verse, I was like, wow, there are like multi-layers to what we can deliver to this community. Real time, real world stuff, you know? I'm excited to do these like shows, like I'm doing the first Aoki verse only event exclusively for passport holders during NFT LA. So that's about to happen. We haven't even announced it yet, so you guys definitely.

• 30:33Nilay Patel?

  There's a scoop.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's, there's some alpha there. That's what's exciting is that like, I want to do this just for the, the, the citizens of the Aoki verse. Cause a part of being in the Aoki verse, you get a passport and you could grow your passport and level up your passport. Yeah.

• 30:49Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about that a little. So the Aoki verse is your community. I've seen it described as a token gated social club. You just described it as a membership community. On the website, it says it's a web three meets web 2.0 meets IRL, which is great. Tell me what all that means. How's it work?

• 31:08Speaker 02

  It's everything that we just said. It's a social club. It's a membership community. It is web two, web three, IRL, all combined into one because there is the real world utilities and offerings, the live shows. There's actually one person that made it to the highest level, level six. And on level six, one of, one of the offerings is. I'm gonna make a record with this person.

• 31:34Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  They're gonna come to the studio, we're gonna make a record and we're gonna release it together and it's gonna be Steve Aoki and XYZ, you know, dropping a record. And, you know, here's the thing. I don't just work with musicians and artists. Like, I made a song with Bill Nye. I made a song with J.J. Abrams.

• 31:54Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Ray Kurzweil, like, scientists, thinkers. The probably one of the most exciting collabs I've never done that I'm putting out to this space, the Ether, hopefully it comes back, is doing a record with Elon Musk.

• 32:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  You know, I just, like, to me, I just see the spirit of someone in the studio with me when I'm creating. You know, it can turn into something beautiful. But in any case, a lot of stuff happening at my shows, tha- that kind of access to shows I'm already doing, to shows that we're gonna be creating. And drops, obviously, physical drops, digital wearable drops, the fidgetal drops, right? Combining both. What, I think one, one thing is really exciting to announce here, too, is the first collab that we're doing with My Little Pony.

• 32:38Nilay Patel?

  Which is...

• 32:39Speaker 02

  I think, dude, I swear to God, every, every time I've, like, announced, like, I talked about this in Twitter Spaces, everyone's so excited. That's the thing, like, we do collabs, my brand, Dimok Fashion, like, our merch line. We do tons of licensing deals with really big anime and cult IPs that I love. I grew up with, like, Matrix and Gremlins to now My Little Pony to, like, Naruto, Dragon Ball, Bleach, Attack on Titan, things like that, a lot, a lot of anime stuff. But the first, uh, drop we're doing is gonna be exclusive. We're gonna do an exclusive, uh, collection for My Little Pony.

• 33:16Nilay Patel?

  That's great.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  For all the AV members. We've also got the next chapter of Dominion X. My first NFT drop, I did Character X, and then we, we'd launched with Stupid Buddies, Seth Green's, uh, stop-motion animation company, created Dominion X. Seth and I are, we're doing the Dominion X NFT collection. The PFP is coming soon, uh, with exclusive early access to just passport holders.

• 33:39Nilay Patel?

  Can I get on the weeds on just, like, how the passport works and stuff? So, this is stuff about these communities that I think are utterly fascinating, right? They're all built on the blockchain. These are all tokens. You should theoretically be able to sell them and resell them. So...

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:51Nilay Patel?

  On the website, it says, "Aoki credits are ERC 1155 NFTs. They're on Ethereum." You buy a bunch of those and you can trade them in for an Aoki versus passport, which is itself an NFT. So when you trade them in and there's 30,000 NFTs, the credits to start. When people trade them into you, you get them back. Do you get to resell them?

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. So when you, when you trade them in, you essentially burn them.

• 34:16Nilay Patel?

  You burn them. Okay.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  There's like whatever credits left over and people, you know, obviously the more they burn, the less are in population and presumably, you know, that drives the, uh, the price of the credits up. But you, you use up the credits to level up your passport. And as you level up your passport, it goes from level one is one credit, uh, level, level two is four credits. Level three is 16, level four is 64, uh, level five is, I forgot what it was, like 256 and level six is a thousand something, you know, it's all in multiples of, uh, of four.

• 34:56Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Sure.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Each level has different applicable rewards and utilities and, and offerings.

• 35:03Nilay Patel?

  So what if some, this is such a dumb question, like the idea is to get a lot of people in the community, right? What if someone buys a lot of the credits? Like what, what happens then? Cause this is a part of buying and selling your way into a community that I think we're, it's early. So we're still learning, but to me the, the idea that there'd be an Aoki versus whale that just like chokes out the community seems like a problem that may or may not happen.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  I think it's difficult to do that because there are whales here for sure. I mean, one, there's already one whale that got to Black Prism level six. And there's a few level fives. There's I think five members that are level fives. If you look at the floor of the credits, they still are around the same price. I think it's like, uh, right when we launched the passports, like point one. And I think that maybe that maybe it's a point one five. I'm not sure. I have to check the floor again, but it's yeah, later on, as these credits burn, the floor will decidedly go up. That's for the market to decide that, you know?

• 36:04Nilay Patel?

  Right. And the passport itself is an NFT. So can people resell the passport?

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you could level up because here's another thing too, is that we're building out a mechanism. And by the way, the the dev behind this is manifold. And to me, they're the best dev on web three. You know, they just like all the stuff they've done previous to Aoki verse with Pox pages to post, which I thought was phenomenal. With Mad Dog Jones, a generated project with, you know, everything they've worked on has always been out of the gate, something unique. So we kind of like launched this with a culmination of a lot of the ideas that that already existed and put together.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Whether it's like, you know, I love the hundreds, Adam Bomb Squad, fidgetal concept because they had their their merch company, their fashion company, right? And I I offer the same thing. That's why we're doing these drops of My Little Pony. We're going to do Attack on Titan next. And then we're going to be working with other NFT projects and dropping exclusive collabs inside of Aoki verse with great projects that to me are blue chip. And you have that aspect. You have what Gary V and V Friends has done on building out what V con is going to look like, which I'm going to be speaking as well.

• 37:25Nilay Patel?

  But I guess what my question with the passports is like, this stuff is all really new. So I'm just thinking of the corner cases, right?

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Of course.

• 37:33Nilay Patel?

  What if someone buys all 30,000 credits and then they turn them into level six passports? And then you hold a show and there's 30 people there like that's

• 37:43Speaker 02

  That's that's fine with me.

• 37:44Nilay Patel?

  That's fine with you. Okay. Cause that's a weird outcome, right? It could happen.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Okay. So that could happen, but I think there's like 2,000, between 2 to 3,000 members.

• 37:53Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Of the Aoki verse. So that could have happened is not happened, you know? You're right. There's someone that could have done that. But like, for example, I played a I played for Gala Games.

• 38:06Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  So Gala Games, I played their Vegas show, the first Vegas show they did. And I just played in LA. And it was like, I think they booked out Doja Cat, Aziz Ansari. Uh, but they couldn't make it for some reason, but uh, uh, Kings of Leon. And myself and you know, some other DJ friends, Blau was also like, you know, clearly like, you know, who Blau is. And other DJs, right? And, and I show up, it's the forum, the forum was 20,000 people, okay? But Gala Games is doing exclusive community, uh, show.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  And they brought in the heavyweights and they turned this 20,000 cap venue, legendary iconic venue in LA. And made it special for 200 people.

• 38:58Nilay Patel?

  That's amazing.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  200 people, maybe 300, I don't know. Her was playing too, her. She is phenomenal. That's something that's like aspirational. I mean, they have an incredible business and incredible community. And they're taking care of them, you know? I, I love that. I think that's, it's like, you could do anything like, for me, it's going to be a different feeling when I play. This Aoki verse show.

• 39:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  I don't care if there's five people there. I really don't care because I look at each person as people that believed in the Aoki verse membership. They got themselves a passport. It's going to be so much more meaningful to me because I know where every single person came in from.

• 39:42Nilay Patel?

  How does that generate revenue over time? So once all 30,000 credits are burned and there's however many passports and you're playing shows for those people. Where do, where do you get more money from?

• 39:52Speaker 02

  The secondary.

• 39:53Nilay Patel?

  So when people resell the passports, that's where, that's how you get paid?

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's a secondary, the Aoki IP, whatever, company participates in the secondary. I mean, like when we, when we launched this, we wanted to be a very healthy cross-section of NFT culture and community that's participating, not just Aoki fans. So we reached out to all the different communities that supported us in the last year, which is when we started designing this about like, about like six, eight months ago. So we reached out to all these different communities. So like, really wanted a very diverse, broad base, you know, reaching out to like FuckRenders team, to Jinxie Squad, to the Doodles camp, to, you know, Atabomb Squad, to Blouse Camp,

• 40:40Speaker 02

  to, I mean, it just looks like 24 different communities that were all part of the launch of Aoki-verse. So I think in, in, now what that does, you know, as far as like building the community is it just brings in a lot more different kinds of ideas, different like reasons why they're a part of it. It makes the Discord way more vibrant, you know, like conversation's gonna be not about just one thing, there's gonna be different, you know, things that they want, things that they're looking for, things that they're excited about, things that they value. And that's one thing that as a social club, and this is where the social club fits perfectly,

• 41:21Speaker 02

  is that we're gonna communicate and actually connect with a lot of these different partners, the dead fellows, whatnot, and do really cool offerings from our community and their community, and do something exclusive for what we're doing, you know, whatever those offerings might be.

• 41:39Nilay Patel?

  When you have a community like that, we, this is one of those like, I end up asking everybody this question, you run a Discord, do you have moderators? Are people keeping it clean? Are people keeping the racists out? How does that work?

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, that's a good question. And yeah, we have moderators and, you know, we have our weekly calls and meetings about how it's going in the Discord and, you know, definitely rely on them to do all that stuff. So it's, I think it's really important, yes. It, it is, cause like, you know, that's what you hear all the time, it's like, oh my god, this so-and-so community's Discord got hacked, like by this and that, you know, and like, you're not impenetrable, you know? It's like, it happens to everybody. I think at this point in time... As people have ventured into this space, that's one of the big notifications and conversations

• 42:34Speaker 02

  and initial dialogues is be careful with like whoever's saying what to hit this link to do this, you know, it's double check and make sure it's just.

• 42:44Nilay Patel?

  But are your moderators double checking for you?

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's their job, right? So yeah, they might miss through the cracks. It might, some things get dropped, but you know, it goes right back to making sure you have a quality team.

• 42:59Nilay Patel?

  So if your level six passport owner goes and I don't mean to impugn this person, but you have a level six passport owner, they go on the discord, they say some silly shit or they try to do a scam, do you boot him and take the passport away?

• 43:11Speaker 02

  God, I haven't even thought about that. There's like a different conversation. We have level six. So level six, the level six passport, it's like I have like a one-on-one discord with them.

• 43:23Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  So I mean, would a level six do something like that? You're right. It's possible, you know, it's possible for anything in the world to happen, you know, but I think it's highly unlikely.

• 43:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  If someone's going to invest all that money and time and energy and be a part of it at such a high level, would like, would they try to rug everyone and try to like scam other people? It's very, very difficult for me to see that happening. Is it like, is it possible? Yeah, it's possible, but is it likely? No, it's highly unlikely.

• 43:57Nilay Patel?

  I'm just curious, like again, it's early, right? So I'm just thinking like, let me pull the string all the way.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course. You have to definitely like, I think that's the only way you can safeguard or protect, you know, is by asking every question you can so that, that, you know, there's levels of protection there because you're right, it is, it's early, it's decentralized.

• 44:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Does like, that's the only way you were going to move forward with innovation technically and philosophically is, is, uh, is with these kinds of questions, you know?

• 44:29Nilay Patel?

  We're going to take another break, but when we come back, we'll dig even more into the consequences of putting the Aoki verse on the blockchain.

• 44:41Speaker 03

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• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  We're back with Steve Aoki, talking about some of the consequences of Web 3. Let me wind us down with what I think are some of the most important questions of all. You're on Ethereum.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:40Nilay Patel?

  The criticism of all of this stuff, whenever anyone talks about NFTs on our site, or we talk about the podcast, the feedback I get from our audience is, "All this stuff is so energy inefficient, so horrible for the climate, it's all a scam." But the worst thing is the climate aspect, right? You're burning a lot of energy to do this stuff that, you know, it's a, it's a club. You could just not do it on the blockchain. Do you think about the climate aspect of all this?

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Yes, I do. It definitely is a very important topic, and it's something that needs to be addressed in a way that uproots all of it. You know, if there's a way that we could figure out how to build a more ecologically friendly foundation underneath the actual blockchain, yes, it's like, it needs to happen, you know, but like, I guess, if this is a question like, is it worth doing or not doing? Well, I'm building in the space. I really am hoping for people that are way more versed in understanding how to make that happen, happen, you know, like it's like, it's definitely a

• 46:48Speaker 02

  hope and dream that we can actually find a way to to make it more eclectically sound. Yeah, absolutely.

• 46:56Nilay Patel?

  But you don't think the climate aspect outweighs the opportunity aspect because I think that's the complaint, right? If I had to sum it up is, yeah, there might be a lot of opportunity. Yes, this might be better for musicians. Yes, there's a direct relationship. The climate stuff is so bad, the thing is so inefficient that we should wait, or you should use a different blockchain that is more efficient or somewhere down the line. But you picked Ethereum. So I'm just wondering how you made that decision?

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Well, when I first got into NFTs through Nifty Gateway, that's on the Ethereum blockchain, that's like where we were able to source it all. It's like, I still, I can't really answer that question for you in detail. That's something that just, we have this conversation with my team about, do we switch to Solana?

• 47:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Do we switch to another blockchain? And, and actually, you know, I love Solana. I love what they're doing. I think it still needs some work and it still needs a way to build into a premium NFT blockchain provider. But I, I do love it. And I do plan on working with Solana. So, yeah, I mean, that's, that could be the pivot, you know? I mean, there's, we definitely have, like, there's a lot of different people on the team that actually make these decisions as well. So it's just kind of like go with what we're all going for for the time being.

• 48:23Nilay Patel?

  I hear this all the time, right? You're describing a bunch of people in a club, they can buy and sell the tokens. That is mostly happening inside, right? Like, you're not interfacing with the world a whole bunch. Why does this have to be on blockchain at all? Why don't you just set up a server and a little social network and do it like Super Web 2?

• 48:41Speaker 02

  I think the, yeah, the, the big difference is exactly what you just said. I mean, the whole idea is that we're moving towards Web 3. That's the main difference is Web 2 is you don't own anything. You like, yeah, you know, I always put it like this, like, yeah, I always fly American Airlines because I want to get my points up. But I'm the highest level of American Airlines. I can never sell it.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  You know, like, it's the same thing with like, certain things that I that I always use it I that is part of my, you know, the way, the way I decide, like, I, of course, I could fly United all the time, but I decided American, I'm like an American flyer, you know, I'm concierge key, like, I, I'm proud of that. I can't sell it. I wish I could. If I, I wish I had the opportunity to, that's not like I don't want to sell, it's like, I want to have the opportunity to sell it. So, I think that's the main difference is Web three allows you to like, if this is like, the world that the social club that you subscribe to, whether it's like Soho House, your Soho House membership, you don't, you can't sell it.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  I like going to Soho House, I like going there feeling like I can have my meetings here, I can, you know, do my thing here. You know, I, I like, I enjoy being in that environment. So I'll pay that, you know, whatever I pay to be a part of that, I can't sell it. So I think that's the main difference is this ability to sell it, to be able to grow it and sell it. You know, you could micro level into your, in your levels. Eventually, we're going to be able to do that where you can gamify it, where you go to all these different shows and you can start micro leveling in your level.

• 50:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  And you could grind it all the way up, you grind it up to a different level. And then you spend all this time grinding it to this level and have all your PO apps and all, all the different badges and stamps in your passport that, that allow you to grind. And when you get to a different level, you're like, you know what, I, I want to sell it. Yeah, you have every, the ability to do that.

• 50:37Nilay Patel?

  That's cool. So this is, this leads right into my last kind of big think question, and I have been excited to ask you this question the whole time. This might be the only question I have. You're in it when it comes to art and commerce and finance, right? And I'm like a hippie and I'm like, the point of art is to be democratic and to improve people's cultural lives and to knock people out of their comfort zones. And we have spent an hour talking about financialization, right? Buying and selling things, creating tokens, creating markets, grinding so you can resell a product that is based on your experiences. Where do you see that tension? Do you ever worry that art, music is just getting too

• 51:20Nilay Patel?

  financialized, that NFTs are kind of creating all these monetary incentives around culture?

• 51:26Speaker 02

  I think we haven't really even made a dent in culture. We just haven't even like, we made a dent within our small world for sure. But as far as like cultural ramifications, we have, we're like so small. We're like, you know, such a small percentage of the whole space. I just think it's gonna start changing. Yeah, you're right. The dialogue will change with, let's say, for example, with music. The dialogue's gonna change when, you know, your favorite artist is doing an NFT and it's art. It's like, yeah, you can actually listen, the whole world could listen to Radiohead's album. But Thom Yorke is making something special with

• 52:10Speaker 02

  that album, limited to only a certain number for people that love that album and love Radiohead. And then it provides an income stream and a conversation in a way that never happened before. It adds a different layer. It allows it to be viewed as art the same way that you would buy a piece. I mean, it's just, it's exciting, to be honest. And I think at the end of the day, it's up to the artist, right?

• 52:39Nilay Patel?

  So I don't know. I think that's the thing. You know, this is again, this is me just pulling the string. It's early. But I don't know. I think a lot of what we've talked about is based on the fact that unfortunately, in the current system, the music itself isn't worth very much money. Right? And we're moving the value to everything else. And the music is kind of becoming, for a lack of a better term, like marketing for the stuff that is worth money.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  That's right. Music is meant to be, at this point, the way we view music is meant to be free and heard. But you're adding a different layer to it of scarcity, where it has an art impact of scarcity.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  So I mean, like I said, like it's up to the artist. It's up to the artist if they decide they want to even venture down that path.

• 53:25Nilay Patel?

  But can any artist realistically make that choice? That's what I'm, that's, that's like my pull the string all the way like, will you be able to make money as an artist? If you're like, I'm just going to do music and then the music isn't worth anything.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Well, it's up to the, it's also up to the market. It's entirely up to the market.

• 53:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  That's the other thing that's exciting about the whole world is like the market decides. The market will decide if they're going to spend money on XYZ, the band that just came out was like, hey, I want to make money off this album that no one's heard of. And the market will decide if they like, they want to pay for it. They're going to decide what the floor is. They're going to, they're going to decide with their wallets.

• 54:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  At the end of the day, you know, it's like, let the market decide, let the artists decide if they want to do it. But like, why not allow this conversation, this way of viewing music as art? Why not allow that to happen?

• 54:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't, I, I don't think I'm, I'm at, I wouldn't allow it like I.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I know what you're saying. Like, you know, like, no, I'm just like pulling the string the other way because the artist doesn't have to do it, right? You don't have to do it. You can just release music. It's fine. That's just how it is.

• 54:33Nilay Patel?

  But then you won't make any money.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, you'll, you'll only make money in the confines of how it works. Yeah, you're right.

• 54:38Nilay Patel?

  So I, I think that's the tension that I'm like really interested in, right? Like, it's at some point, the music itself should be valuable, not connected to.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's a different conversation here. This is nothing to do with NFTs.

• 54:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but if NFTs are the, the big opportunity.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  You're, are you saying the NFTs take away from the potential for music to have its own value?

• 54:59Nilay Patel?

  I'm saying the incentives are more about the, if the money is on the NFTs, everyone's incentive is to focus on that instead of the music, which is again, in my like nineties, don't sell out worldview. The music is like the most important thing.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Oh, I know, but I think it's like two people talking over, over each other's heads because the music is going to exist regardless.

• 55:21Nilay Patel?

  Interesting.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  It's going to be out there for people to listen to. It's, it's like we said, it's basically free. You know, what we're talking about with Spotify, they're like, you know, they might increase a little bit extra money for people to make money, but they're, it's not going to be a game changing effect. It's always gonna be at that level free.

• 55:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  So it's going to exist, but if you want, if there's someone that's like, hey, I absolutely love this album and its attachment to this particular rarity scarcity of this NFT of art that's connected to this emotion I feel when I listen to the song. And I want to be the person that owns one of those few hundred pieces of that. Why not?

• 56:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Why not allow that conversation dialogue to exist? It's up to the person buying it in the market that dictates what the value is and up to the artist to actually allow it to happen.

• 56:14Nilay Patel?

  I think that's an amazing place to end it. I will say this. I think you should come back in like a year and we should talk about how it's going. Cause it is early.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:22Nilay Patel?

  We're talking about some hazy ideas are gonna get a lot clearer and like even just a year.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  For sure. Oh, yeah. It's six months. I feel like you're a veteran in NFT space. You've been in here for like six months.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  It's like, I'm, you know, like, I got a PhD in NFTs, only been here for the six months. It's like that early, you know, like I, I get it. Getting into NFTs in like summer of 2020, I feel like, wow, that was so long ago. You know, dropping my first collection in February 2021, it feels like, you know, it's a year ago. I mean, literally a year ago, I dropped my first collection and, and it feels, you know, I mean, there's so much that that's out there, but I feel like incredibly knowledgeable about what I understand now. But, you know, what's exciting is it just, you just every day, there's something, a new level, a new way to advance it forward, do something

• 57:18Speaker 02

  that's interesting, keep building on this idea of community, because that's really what it's all about, you know?

• 57:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Beyond the art, beyond everything, it's about this two-way convo with community and, and delivering like incredible experiences. At the end of the day, it's like, I, I go back to the real world stuff, you know, real world shit. At the end of the day, our life is a bunch of, is based on a bunch of experiences, right?

• 57:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  And you want those experiences to be meaningful, whether it's spending time with your family or going to a live event where you feel something, listening to a song that makes you cry. You know, looking at art that makes you melt, being part of communities that, that make you feel connected. We need to continue building off that, you know, like the same way I'm going to my shows and I play a show. I literally, the reason why I play so many shows is because I'm obsessed with just like that, that level of connection I'm having with different crowds through this music. I'm not even barely saying anything on the microphone, yet I'm connecting with strangers.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  Those are moments that are so important. So it's like, how do you encapsulate that and bring it into what the future looks like? You know?

• 58:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  So.

• 58:34Nilay Patel?

  I'll tell you, when I was, I'm old now, but when I was in my twenties, before my friends and I would do something crazy, we would always say, "Life is a collection of experiences." And I think about that all the time.

• 58:44Speaker 02

  It really is though.

• 58:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:45Speaker 02

  It's, it's all it is.

• 58:47Nilay Patel?

  Sometimes I was experiencing, we maybe shouldn't have had some of them, but we did.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've all had that. We've all had that.

• 58:53Nilay Patel?

  Steve, this was great. I really do want you back in a year to talk about where this has all gone and what you've learned, because it is the beginning and I feel like a lot of these threads are going to get pulled. But this was a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming on.

• 59:04Speaker 02

  And I, and I do want to say that what we're doing with Aoki verse and the passports and this, this community membership and this social, the social club, because essentially people are, are like, if, if you see what I've been doing in the past year with NFTs and you're like, I really love this kind of this whole world, because it's really a multiverse where, you know, it's like the multiverse of communities that I'm a part of. Essentially, that's what it is. When you, when you enter in the space, you're like, I want to be part of that. You know, I want to, I want to be part of all of that's happening in the Aoki verse. That's why you enter in the space and then you start, you know, we, we start understanding,

• 59:46Speaker 02

  "Oh, you really like that? Okay, we're going to try to deliver that if that's possible." Like those kinds of fun activities. I really believe, like you said, in a year's time. That there will be other people in the space that are in the center of certain things that that you will love, whatever it is. So you love cars and there's like one guy that's just or girl that is just in the middle of like car culture. And they're like, this is our membership community to all things in the car culture. And I really love this person that's in the middle of all that. They should have a membership community that bridges all that to the people that want it, right?

• 1:00:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  This is basically that. I think is what's going to happen is that in a year's time, it's going to be, you know, and that what I've seen is like, whenever you see a really brilliant projects that drop, you're like, oh, this is great. I'm going to use this idea, this seed, but I'm going to put my own DNA to it, or put our DNA to it and build it up for the community that that we're trying to speak to. That's going to happen a lot more. That's, that's my prediction. You know, one year, one year, uh, what do you call, when you, when you, uh, time capsule.

• 1:00:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, we'll play the a year for now. We're going to just have a soundboard of all your predictions. We'll play the clip.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:59Nilay Patel?

  Uh, this is great, man. Thanks for going deep with me. I really appreciate it.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Of course, man.

• 1:01:07Nilay Patel?

  Thanks again to Steve Aoki for taking the time to be on Decoder today and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. As always, I'd love to hear what you think of Decoder. You can email us at [email protected] or hit me up directly. I'm at reckless on Twitter. If you like the show, please share it with your friends. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you really like us, give us a five star review. If you tweet the show at me, I will almost certainly retweet it. Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's episode was produced by Creighton D. Simone and Jackie McDermott. Additional research was done by Liz Leon. It was edited by Kelly Wright. Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our senior audio director is Andrew Moreno. Our executive producer is Eleanor Donovan. We'll see you next time.

• 1:01:52Speaker 04

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• 1:02:22Speaker 05

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