Join us as we sit down with Ben Roy, the visionary behind Accelerate Art and an Angel Investor, as we unravel the complex tapestry of Web3. We'll examine the transformative potential of DAOs in reshaping governance structures, delve into the significance of self-sovereignty, and explore Ben's transition from traditional finance to the cutting-edge world of Crypto and NFTs. Our conversation will illuminate the ever-evolving relationship between technology, culture, and identity in the dynamic ecosystem of Web3.
This episode is a treasure trove for those fascinated by the intersection of crypto and governance. We dissect the pioneering efforts of DAOs like Tribute Labs (Flamingo DAO) in redefining investment and cultural stewardship, and contemplate the cultural impact of gaming on the crypto universe. Our discussion traverses through the nuanced perspectives on community-led decision-making in decentralized systems, providing a window into how these concepts might migrate from niche markets to mainstream consciousness.
Wrapping up, we navigate the delicate interplay between excitement and risk in the world of cryptocurrency, and share personal experiences about the generational embrace of digital art and NFTs. Whether you're curious about finding your niche in crypto, or how intrigue can lead to broader acceptance of novel technologies, this session has it all. Join us in this enlightening exploration of the multifaceted Web 3 landscape, where we peel back the layers of how culture, technology, and identity converge.
Ben Roy links:
Digital Objects by Ben Roy (Newsletter): https://benroy.beehiiv.com/
X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/benroy__
Accelerate Art links:
Website: https://www.accelerateart.org/
X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/accelerateart
SHILLR:
Website: https://www.shillr.xyz
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/shillrxyz
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shillrxyz
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@shillrxyz
Music by 800DB
Twitter: https://twitter.com/800dbmusic
Join us as we sit down with Ben Roy, the visionary behind Accelerate Art and an Angel Investor, as we unravel the complex tapestry of Web3. We'll examine the transformative potential of DAOs in reshaping governance structures, delve into the significance of self-sovereignty, and explore Ben's transition from traditional finance to the cutting-edge world of Crypto and NFTs. Our conversation will illuminate the ever-evolving relationship between technology, culture, and identity in the dynamic ecosystem of Web3.
This episode is a treasure trove for those fascinated by the intersection of crypto and governance. We dissect the pioneering efforts of DAOs like Tribute Labs (Flamingo DAO) in redefining investment and cultural stewardship, and contemplate the cultural impact of gaming on the crypto universe. Our discussion traverses through the nuanced perspectives on community-led decision-making in decentralized systems, providing a window into how these concepts might migrate from niche markets to mainstream consciousness.
Wrapping up, we navigate the delicate interplay between excitement and risk in the world of cryptocurrency, and share personal experiences about the generational embrace of digital art and NFTs. Whether you're curious about finding your niche in crypto, or how intrigue can lead to broader acceptance of novel technologies, this session has it all. Join us in this enlightening exploration of the multifaceted Web 3 landscape, where we peel back the layers of how culture, technology, and identity converge.
Ben Roy links:
Digital Objects by Ben Roy (Newsletter): https://benroy.beehiiv.com/
X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/benroy__
Accelerate Art links:
Website: https://www.accelerateart.org/
X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/accelerateart
SHILLR:
Website: https://www.shillr.xyz
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/shillrxyz
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shillrxyz
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@shillrxyz
Music by 800DB
Twitter: https://twitter.com/800dbmusic
GM. This is Boone and you're listening to the Shiller Curated Podcast. In this week's episode, we sat down with Ben Roy, co-founder of Accelerate Art Angel Investor and one of the deepest thinkers within Web 3. In this episode, we cover a broad array of topics, including the future of decentralized, autonomous organizations, the pros and cons of self-sovereignty, the impact writing has had on Ben's life and even a personal look into his early exposure to art as a teenager. As always, this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied upon for financial advice. Boone and guest may own NFTs discussed. Now it's time to grab some coffee and dive into this conversation with Ben.
Speaker 2:Sir, how are you? Gm dude, I am so good. I'm glad to be able to chat with you today. This is gonna be fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been a long time, long time enjoyer. I wouldn't say I'd be lying if I said first time caller, because we've had a few chats before, First official chat documented. Feels really good, man, great to have you on dude.
Speaker 2:Totally it's fun because I think we're both like media nerds a bit too, so it's just exciting to be able to see you in your element.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I mean metaphorically, you can see my little dog icon floating, true, yeah, but yeah, dude, this is definitely my element. It's my comfy zone. Great to have you in it. Man, I just want to say a huge welcome to you and thanks again for coming on the pod. I feel like this has been a long time coming. For those that don't know, ben is my favorite thought boy. Love everything. Come on all right. Seriously, dude, Our newsletters, our emails get really bombarded.
Speaker 1:It's really hard to, even if there's signal in there to want to pay attention at times, but it's really great because, as someone who's mainly focused on the art side, I do obviously came into crypto with a little degeneracy and love the collectibles, but when you dive into a certain corner of this already niche community, it's really hard to poke your head up and see what else is happening. I feel like I get a great perspective of that with you. You just cover the whole space so well. Yeah, dude, very much thank you for you and your writing. It's really cool to hear the way you think about the space. Yeah, just probably what we're going to talk a lot about today, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, I appreciate that so much. High praise. Yeah, thank you so much. I mean you don't really get to write unless you have an audience, so I have to say thank you for tuning in. I mean it's just fun to click, send and hope that some random people on the internet and some random friends I've now made over the internet actually care and read it and all that stuff. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:Totally, man, yeah, so I got to ask though I always like to hear a little bit of the intro into crypto how you found this, and were you also writing before this? Has writing always been a thing for you? Did you come as a result of playing around here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, those are good questions. Cool. I'll give you the crypto backstory first and then we'll get into the writing stuff. So I jumped into crypto in 2019. I was listening to a finance podcast about XRP, no less, and pretty quickly found my way into Bitcoin and ETH. But it was just like a normal sort of like trad finance background. I was working in kind of international economics, international human rights stuff and kind of got sucked down the proverbial rabbit hole and in mid 2019, I want to say, I started just messing around with Ethereum and owning some Bitcoin and actually got into open seed pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:I bought some Decentraland, because you're just sitting there being like I wonder if this is going to be ready player one one day. I should probably buy some land and I mean, it's so funny. It's like really truly the 50 IQ version of things, as the meme goes. But yeah, it just felt like, as it sounds like, as the experience with many people in crypto. It just felt like an industry quote, unquote. That's like at the intersection of so many different cool things. It's like tech and it's finance and it's culture and it's like an extension of the internet and it's global, like there's just so many cool aspects here that I yeah, I pretty quickly decided I wanted to do more full time work there and so in 2020, I shifted over to my first job in the space and that was doing a startup in kind of the DeFi side of things. I'm a developer tool called Geyser I were two friends who founded that and I became the third qualitative person right, doing kind of the everything else role from community to marketing and BD and all that, all that stuff, and it was just. It was really cool. This is like DeFi summer time, so there was definitely some energy in 2020, but it wasn't as euphoric. So you learn a lot about how to do everything wrong first, basically right and you know when token and how do you like it's just hilarious trying to manage like a public community, right. But yeah, that went really well. It was interesting to just learn about crypto and you get exposure to a lot of stuff when you're, when you're working in the industry.
Speaker 2:That ended up getting acquired by passage protocol for like a small win, and then I shifted pretty quickly into NFTs. I just felt like more at home in the culture side of the space, a little bit from the art side, a little bit from the gaming side, like that whole like ready player one thing. That's one of my favorite movies and I've always felt like resonant with that and yeah, so beginning of 2021, I kind of got into you know, this would have been the NFT bubble, would have started to be bubbling at that point but into kind of crypto punks and art blocks and some of these early NFTs communities. And then around that time I met a good friend, claire Silver, who has since that time become, you know, quite well known obviously, and the NFT crypto universe, I mean just in the art world in general. She's like a wonderful AI artist and a very creative human and she and I ended up starting what's called Accelerate Art. So it's now a nonprofit based in New York and we do some work with emerging artists and do at this point now it's about six shows a year that track like the arts circuit, the tech, the crypto conference circuit. But at the time back in 2021, it was just a you know, this is like kind of middle of COVID times. We want to explore and do something with the NFT world by planting a flag and saying like this stuff is actually art. And so we did some shows where we're in these like random nerdy indie, you know, virtual spaces like crypto, voxels, right, and we were on clubhouse for audio and it was like just chaotic and fun, yeah yeah. So that was like the entry into the more arts and NFT side of things. And you know, I've worn a few different hats since then, but the maybe the most relevant to our I worked at tribute labs for a while, through 2021 and 2022, which is a DAO operations company.
Speaker 2:Effectively, you're helping small communities that are focused on investing do that. Investing it's kind of like a venture capital role, but in a decentralized way, and so you just learn a lot. There's a lot of smart people around that space and very cool to just be a fly on the wall for those conversations. And then a good friend of mine, stefan, who's an artist and a designer. He wanted to explore doing an NFT project, but specifically a creative commons one. He's really interested in kind of open source culture and tech, and so I just wanted to help him make that happen and so we did Good Minds was the name of that.
Speaker 2:And then finally, wrapping up here, over the last let's say, 18 months, the main thing that I've done while keeping Accelerate Art alive has been more on the angel investor advisor side of the space. So just having the opportunity to work with about a dozen startups, yeah, it's that intersection of kind of crypto and culture and art and gaming and yeah, that's how I got to kind of where I am today. I'll pause there. That's a lot of a story to unwind. We can talk about writing after too. But yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:Totally dude. Yeah, you served me quite a few verticals to, or I guess I should say quite a few rabbit holes to hop in, and this is always the analysis, paralysis of a host that I get to solve in real time. When people give you such a dense story, is which one do? I want to go down with the constraint of time that we do have. I mean, just a comment before we do that like it's really impressive to kind of see how you fell into it, how you've navigated it since kind of really where the entry point was and really where really went. Like it was like the start was finance and then culture came afterwards. So kind of it's just cool to see, like when people like for me at least, when I onboard people, it's like you have to give them a reason to care. You know, and you know it typically makes sense to onboard people with what they spend the most time with, and so just wanted to just to comment on like how it's cool, how you kind of just fell into the culture side because right around when you fell into accelerated, started meeting Claire and doing some of those crypto boxes meetups is really right around my entry point into crypto as well, like as a whole, you know, like I didn't really do a whole lot of good. So, you know, for me it was, you know, a little bit different than yours. It was like, oh, now there's pictures on these tokens and that makes it more interesting. I understand pictures more than I understand the tokens, you know, and so, like it was like the Trojan horse for me to really understand this world.
Speaker 1:I think, really where I want to jump into the like jump down a rabbit holes around Dows, just specifically because it's the area I really have the least amount of knowledge, you know, and I have a few caveat or a few like layers of context here is that you know, I look at like voting in general, like the just the concept of governance, let's just like boil it, boil it to that topic as a whole. It's really hard to like get people to vote. You know it's really hard to like incentivize people like want to like do shit, because it's not like even in our country, or in probably in your country, voting is not the most like appealing thing. You have to like take off work. You have to. It's like a huge pain in the ass. It's like no, like you don't see results immediately. Yeah With Dows. Do you see Dows making a big dent in any of our like just I would just want to call it like IRL or human governance systems that we currently have in place.
Speaker 2:It's a great question, man. I think it's interesting when you get around kind of emerging technology people, there's a lot of optimism around like, hey, this is gonna change everything. You know, we saw this around, like even the early 2010s with social media, right. You're like, oh, everything's different. Like this time it's gonna be different, you know, but in a different framing of that phrase. Yeah, and it's just, it's like humbling to look back and think, well, we have 5,000 years of, you know, western history here, since Athens, thinking about governance of humans. Right, it's not necessarily like these are new conversations, but yeah, I think about dows as an interesting next chapter in human governance. I think there's definitely like some reruns of a lot of the old problems that we've had for many, many, you know, centuries at this point, but there's also some like new interesting cool things because you can coordinate over the internet in an economic way that didn't really exist before. You know blockchains, right, and so, yeah, I think I would say like I am cautiously optimistic on Dows as a vertical. I think a lot of what has happened in the last, say, five years or whatever that they've been around, has been lackluster. It's a bit tricky, like you've said, to get people to care or to coordinate, and often like there aren't really incentives for people To do anything and effectively it's just a gigantic group project on the internet where no one cares and does anything. Right, like that's probably the summary statement for most dows, honestly. But I do think that there are particular Examples, or like verticals, where it becomes like cool and new and interesting and compelling.
Speaker 2:I think where I'm coming from, where, well, at least when I was working at tribute labs, like that example of an investment, dow is one you know compelling example to me, where you gather a small group of people. You know, in that case it's all like regulated and legally above board and companies based in the states. It's just that the structure is different, right, like the way that people come together and vote on capital allocation Is different. Is it perfect? No, but I think it's like a meaningful alternative to normal venture capital and while most people in the world don't really care about venture capital or don't interface with that as like a Is a concept, it's just interesting to see dow is kind of disrupt one little thing, because that's how it starts, right, like you need to prove your concept to say, hey, like there's something new and interesting here Could even just be a bunch of collectors gathering money together and saying like, hey, we want to be stewards of this type of culture, right, whether it's generative art or art in Asia or whatever, it's right.
Speaker 2:And so I think those are two of the two of the areas that I'm particularly interested in are kind of the capital allocation side and the collecting side. I'm biased, but I would say tribute labs is, you know, among the best players in the game when it comes to this stuff, and Particularly my, my old boss is there, aaron right and pre Just, both, both brilliant folks, and so, yeah, if anyone who's listening to this is interested in dows, I would encourage them to check those, those people out, because, yeah, there's a lot there.
Speaker 1:Got it. No, that's super interesting. And what this really makes me think about is, like, because the only dow that you know, you know, before you mentioned, you know, before you mentioned tribute labs was, is flamenco dow, you know, and it's like that's the only one where I've seen, where I'm like that makes sense, you know, like that totally, that like from an outside looking in, like they are stewards of us, of a particular type of culture, and it's like it kind of just makes sense to riff on your point, that like culture seems to be, that seems to be the Seems to be, what moves the needle and anything. It's usually the first mover before anything else comes to play.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And just to clarify too, tribute labs actually operates flamenco dow, so those are the same group of people and so I had the chance to kind of help out a little bit. Just as like, effectively, you're the intern, right where you're, you're able to just listen to a lot of really smart, interesting, thoughtful collectors and investors Make their decisions and help do a little bit of the administration behind the scenes. But yeah, it's great, it's great that you're able to flag that, because I do think flamenco is pretty prominent as an example of you know, people who effectively are patrons of the digital arts, right like they've really done a great job at Helping to taste, make NFTs as a category In my mind and you know there's a lot of people I admire in that group. But yeah, tribute is effectively a steward or like a helpful Governance component to house flamenco operates and obviously I'm not gonna get too too far in the weeds here specifically, but yeah, just just just a flag that they're one in the same operation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that, that goes to show you how much I Knew. I just noticed flamingo. I know the front-facing, you know. So that, totally, yeah, that makes a lot of sense and it's really cool to hear about that. Like it's, it's cool to kind of see the different layers and how and how that functions, because, to me at least, really and I guess this also makes me think about, like you know, typically we don't know what's gonna be new until the new thing comes. So, like you know, when it comes to different voting, when it comes to different like reasons to vote on something or the idea of governance in this new age, that to me is really the only thing that I can conceptualize, given my knowledge. That really makes the most sense. Or I'm like, okay, cool, like I could see some things built around it. But as far as, like, what else that could positively impact, I don't really know, you know, when it come, yeah, just in, just in Dallas, in general, yeah, there's.
Speaker 2:There's kind of a wider way of thinking about this, like if we zoom out from kind of collecting and investing the idea of governance over like a public good At scale is interesting at some level, like Ethereum or Bitcoin even have like a rough consensus form of governance which is like, oh, we want to do this kind of thing in our development roadmap and you get a bunch of people around the world kind of debating it and thinking about it and then they decide, okay, yeah, we're gonna do that right.
Speaker 2:But even more specifically, in some of the like layer to quote-unquote Solutions that exist on Ethereum, those are things that come to mind. Something like arbitrum, which, for people who may not be super deep in the weeds, is effectively like a scaling solution for helping Ethereum function better. That is an example of like a public good in a way. Right, we're token holders, are able to vote on certain outcomes and, as you think about, like, say, the next decade, there's gonna be a lot of Software that matters, right, that affects a lot of different people, and so this idea of being able to have a governance component to open source chunks of the internet like that's cool to me too. It's a little bit of a different conversation than, like, sure, a bunch of people throwing money into a multi signature wallet to hopefully, like, buy the Constitution or whatever. But there's, there's like there are different plays here, right, and so I think, yeah, it's a bit nerdy, but I do think that that vertical is also something that we'll see played out over the next few years.
Speaker 1:That is, yeah, that's thanks for number one reminded me of that moment. That was a. That was a moment of euphoria on the internet and I and I I remember that very well and I think I remember it being outbid by someone who is like like a rabid anti-crypto, you know like he's very much against it, but he's the one who bought it.
Speaker 1:I thought that was hysterical. Totally very funny. Yeah, the irony of that was really great. It's either crypto bros won or we got someone who wasn't intending to buy something do it out of principle Just because he didn't want to win.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's a little bit tricky to when and this is this goes to show, maybe it's just the last comment on the doubt stuff. Yeah, yeah, if your treasury, which is like the sum total of the money that you raised, is public and you're trying to go into an auction against someone, you can't really compete because the other person knows that you're limited at a certain cap, right. And so I think it was Ken Griffin at Citadel, yeah, one of the biggest, you know marking market makers in the world who Outbid the it's that, that group for the Constitution. But it's kind of like, okay, well, just do your your balance plus one dollar, right, and then it's kind of over.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I think, like headline here is there's definitely some interesting experiments that are live today. So it's a cool thing to follow, especially if you're like a politics or you know anthropology or social kind of nerd. But the question becomes like, yeah, what, what does this actually mean for like real people in practice? And I think we're gonna have to see. You know, wait and see for that experiment to get played out.
Speaker 1:Totally. Yeah, I mean often and you can't I think Sean is the one who pilled me on this but recently, listening to Lex Friedman's podcast with Balot apology on the network state, yeah, and that's really where, like, when I hear about that, that's really where this like makes sense. You know, I really said my opinion where it's like okay, cool if we're all on a network state or if there are multiple network states, this makes a lot more sense. But until that point happens, it's kind of hard to to really conceptualize that. Or like getting our own people you know, people that don't, that are not complete nerds To like want to use. Yeah, you know For sure. So, well, cool, man, that that was a great like. Yeah, that was a great little bit there. I mean because, yeah, dows or something, yeah, it says these things. I want to keep my keep my eyes on, but Appreciate you going there. It's cool to kind of hear a little bit more about how they function and kind of how you think about it.
Speaker 1:A lot of interesting use cases here. So something else that you know you mentioned in your, your end. You're like great intro, I'm like cool, like I could just like take things from a little basket. Yeah, yeah, is, you know, is gaming man? You know, like, obviously there's a lot of people that Are gamers. I'm an FPS guy, not more than you know, but you know there's a lot of people that are gaming of a lot of different we're a lot of different types of gaming hats. So I'd love to kind of know, like how, like how gaming has impacted your views on, like on the web 3 space or on the crypto space as a whole.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question, man. I think what I think about gaming, I think about it as like we. I mean I'm 30 years old, I kind of grew up with the internet right Like my life has kind of tracked the rise of the internet and the first Virtual spaces really that I hung out in are like games on the internet. It's like neopets and RuneScape, like role-playing games, things like that, and then shifting into you know Xbox and console stuff and my own kind of FPS like Journey with Halo and Call of Duty and all that, and so really what that Kind of cued me to realize is that there's value in digital things for one, and we can talk about that, but also that, like being able to connect with people in a distributed way across geographies is very meaningful and I think you know most people would agree with that today, especially like in a post COVID world where everything went remote and everyone's on zoom and stuff. But I think people who are gamers Kind of intuitively know that and knew that before it became like a very consensus view.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, when I think about you know gaming and how to intersects with crypto, I think sure that there's just this basic sense of being able to own items on the internet and that being interesting and there being kind of Game economies and things like this, or being able to flex status based on what you've accomplished and you know, things.
Speaker 2:That would To some degree, anyway, in my view, make intuitive sense to most people who would play games. I think it's also just a cool, like crypto offers a different way to gather people right. They have economic alignment together, they have extra reasons and incentives to participate in these different universes and to build community, really, right. So to me it's also like hey, this is cool because it gives gamers a different way to come into relationship with each other, and so you see some of that around. You know World of Warcraft or anything that's had an economy, regardless of whether the rails or crypto or Fiat her. But yeah, those are. Those are sort of two of the points that I think get me excited Just being able to own things, that the status piece of that, the economy piece of that, and then also just the ways that community can form Around these objects, and that being particularly interesting too.
Speaker 1:I think there really is man and I'm gonna linger on a few, on a point here Around the idea of digital objects, because, you know, to me gaming was like my first Like aha moment. I'm like, wow, this just like makes complete sense. You know, it's like there's, there's, there's no way that this you know this was the most obvious use case from from the very beginning is what I could really, you know, latch myself on to, you know. But what's interesting is it like the more conversations I've had and like I still kind of keep a small pulse, or us, you know, I kind of keep my toe in the traditional gaming world or just in that community as well, because that's really where I came from before here, like I, you know, podcasted in the East Boat's realm and I was content creator and Twitch, and so you know, of course, I still follow a few people and it's just, you know, I can't help but just notice, the sentiment just has to me, the sentiment really hasn't changed since 2021 and it's like, well, I agree with you. You know, is this just gonna be some Super kind of niche corner of the internet, kind of like I guess this could be where, like the indie game, like I feel like indie games are gonna be Threat, like gonna thrive in the near future, like it's not that they haven't, but kind of like how culture has always moved the needle for Just the rest of the world.
Speaker 1:Like you could argue that indie games, you know, have moved the needle for the rest of the gaming industry because that's where free to play I don't present and play to earn center. Yeah, just mainly free to play. Was you know? Now, fortnight's on it. It was you know, but it was. I can't remember the other games before, but, um, yeah, I guess, just like. Yeah, man, does this populate the whole ecosystem or is this just gonna be what indie games become? And it's like, yeah, just yeah. Definitely curious your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:Totally. Oh man, there's so much here. I think the way I think about this is it's kind of like a barbell. I do think a lot of what you're saying around indie games Will kind of map over crypto and, to an extent that that's already happening, this idea of like stuff that's new, it's experimental, like you have a diehard fan base, but it's pretty narrow, and then that you know this this throwaway line of like good niche subculture becomes mainstream culture over time, and I think that's like a good trajectory for like indie games Influencing mainstream games.
Speaker 2:I think, like one angle to the crypto gaming conversation is to say you know, there's gonna be an indie scene here and that eventually will like transport itself into the mainstream. I do think, at the same time, though, you're probably gonna see some mainstream stuff that abstracts a lot of the you know quote unquote scene, or like this in the Side of things away, such that normal people can just play these games but there's extra functionality that they're able to explore if they would like to. And so, yeah, like when I think about games that are being built right now, or like, you know, investors who are smarter than me, who like think about gaming and wrestle with what this could look like. I think we're gonna start to see. You know, both things have their lane where you have more of like a crypto native version of gaming and then a mainstream set of gaming, because so much of the Context, for, you know, the wider gaming industry still sees crypto as like negative, right? Yeah, it in 2021.
Speaker 2:A lot of the narratives were, you know, like NFTs are destroying the environment and, because of sort of proof of work, the emissions and obviously these things have changed. I don't know. I mean, maybe it takes a rebrand, maybe people don't call them NFTs, they call them digital objects or or whatever it is. But yeah, I think, going forward, if we were to teleport, you know, three to five years into the future, my sense is you're gonna you're gonna see indie games that will still exist, that have a little bit more of like a crypto Nerd ethos, and then you're gonna have a lot of mainstream games that just use crypto rails. People will assume that you're able to own these items and a lot of what gets us excited will just be part of the fabric of gaming.
Speaker 1:Wow, dude, there's a lot to respond to on that. Yeah, I feel like this is a great. Yeah, I love this. I love this man. I'm gonna draw back to a previous episode of the podcast of of a podcast I did with bona fide Han and we. We rift on a topic. Dude, one of my favorite, one of the most brilliant people I think I've, yeah, I think I've met here.
Speaker 1:I just, yeah, love the way that guy operates and what we, what we lingered on was the idea of, you know, like the, the jump from fiat to digital currency and then the jump from digital currency to digital objects. You know, and we we talked about, really, where the challenge is is like, once, once people accept Digital currency is something that is valuable to them or that they want to, they want to, you know, have some, have something up. Then the jump from digital currency to digital objects is really simple. Like I don't even think it's a jump. You just walk across a short bridge, you know what I mean and you're like, oh well, that that makes a lot of sense, you know. So sometimes I just kind of wonder on this, like where, where the fight really lies, you know, like, is it? Is it in the main currency of things? Is it, you know, or is it trying to just pill people in a teaser? Is it just making fun games? You know there's there's so many different ways to think about, like how to cater to the masses. And while we're on this topic, though, like something that I've realized, it's a.
Speaker 1:I think it's the double-edged sword, at least for me personally, of what I enjoyed the most about the space is that this space feels very counterculture and very non Like we don't want.
Speaker 1:It's like there's a, there's a, there's an underlying, you know, air of like week, we, we do what mass adoption, but we don't. You know it's because it's kind of fun to like have all the, have all the asymmetry and have all the opportunity here, you know. So it can be challenging and I and I guess really where I'm going with that is, you know, like once this becomes, once there is an area of mainstream, and say there is two lanes where you know you have kind of just the really hardcore community, you know, crypto, native community, building kind of in tinkering with new things in the indie world, and then you have more of the abstracted, you know the abstracted community, which is more of kind of mass adoption. It kind of just makes me wonder, you know, like, what this type of community will go for next once there is more of a mainstream adoption, because I feel like people here are just gonna go for whatever's next, like once, once it like once everyone comes. It's like get the fuck away, type of thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a good observation, man. I think there's a lot of there. There's there's at least a strain of anti establishment energy Among most crypto people, and it's not even necessarily to say politically one way or the other. Look, there's a lot of people across the whole spectrum that I've met anyway in crypto, but there's just like one of the unifying things is sort of a rejection of hierarchy or existing ways of doing things.
Speaker 2:So I don't know, I mean, I think, like the current indie game scene, independent of crypto, is probably a good, you know, case study there where, yeah, what is cool and what is popular changes and people kind of go with that, whether it's like art style or game mechanics or whatever it is. You just, yeah, you naturally have a bit of a an edge community on like the fringe of the internet, and that probably leads to, yeah, like new and innovative things over time. For sure. We'll see it, we'll have to see what happens, though I think I'm definitely torn. I'm sort of caught in between, right, where you want to see mainstream adoption and have, you know, normal people Using the things that you get excited about every day, but I definitely understand that. You know, there's like something fun and interesting about having a subculture that you're part of, and so yeah, man, we'll see.
Speaker 1:Totally dude and I and I think I'm gonna use a pretty Pretty, you know, a pretty raw example is that, like you know, when I was in and I lived in Colorado this is before I got sober you know when when pot was illegal, there was something fun about buying pot, you know.
Speaker 1:But once pot became legal, it just became like smoking a cigarette, you know what I mean and it was just there was, it was like there was some air of excitement that was gone, you know. So I think that's part of you know at least me personally, maybe not everyone that specifically or that specific example but like it feels like there's just, yeah, this bit of like we're getting away with something because there is opportunity, you know, and then once, once that's gone, it's like I fuck that man, like I mean it's, it's, but it is a bit different, like it's that's sometimes that could. That could probably be an unfair comparison because it's, you know, if you really are here and you believe in what we're building, like you'd want to see people use it every day, like that'd be pretty fucking cool, to be honest totally.
Speaker 2:There's a couple of different things there, man.
Speaker 2:I think, like, at one level, crypto Isn't just a subculture, because if you're able to execute against like these narratives of self sovereignty and you know Whatever being able to own items yourself, that there is something that's kind of like deeply Anti-establishment about that, but it's also deeply empowering, right, which is why you see people who are like totally libertarian and I'm like totally left-wing All attracted to crypto in some way because it undermines, like, the current system in an interesting way.
Speaker 2:So if you if you, you know see that played out to its end degree, and I do think you probably see Some meaningful change depending on, like, whatever your perspectives are. But also I think you know, as you're talking, I was just thinking we're living in a very interesting moment of many emerging technologies Growing rapidly and integrating with each other and having some sort of exponential growth here. So I do think, no matter what happens, like there's gonna be some you know emerging scene of of Text stuff going on somewhere. So I don't think you'll you'll have to worry too much about you know, finding that tribe, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Thanks for playing to my fear there.
Speaker 2:I got you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, man. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a really great, that's a really great point, and it kind of leads me to another question that you probably have seen a little bit being on being on the angel side is, you know, when we talk about the idea self sovereignty, like to me now, today, that sounds like it's like I love it, like now that I've like been doing it for a little while and like I understand the concepts and it. You know, like when I could I always say I was converted from like a right-click saver to a left-click owner, like that's a different feeling, you know, and that's a good one liner, isn't it, man? I think I don't. I don't know if I stole that or if I made it up or if I like created it, but it's been so long I don't remember. We're just gonna go with that's mine, but the but, the but the road to getting there, like I've had to cut my teeth in a pretty brutal way, you know, especially in the very beginning. Like you know, you, I think everyone to some degree has an experience with, you know, clicking on a bad link, or like entering their seed phrase to a fishing website.
Speaker 1:You know, that was me, like I'll just that was me in the very beginning. You know, yeah, and it's like that was a really tough L. You know, like I just flipped two world of women. You know I made like 1.5. You know I made like basically an ETH profit, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then you know, I transferred some to my cold wallet but then you know, I like had I got, I got fish in a telegram and I entered in my seed phrase twice because I thought it was legit and it got drained and like I knew in my head that you're not supposed to enter in your seed phrase, like, but until you do it, until you have that kind of like, you know Just a moment where you do it and you don't think about it, you know you don't really learn. So I guess, how, like, in the way you think about it, like, how do we make that Not as daunting? Because, like it was, it would have been really easy for me and I thought about it to just pack it up and leave. You know, I was like that this is fucking stupid, like I don't want to do. This is dumb and I think a lot of people do you know.
Speaker 1:So how do we make that? Or what tools do you see? Or that that are missing or that you see Are being built to like make that easier?
Speaker 2:For sure. Well, first off, I'm sorry that that happened. It happens to many of the best of us, so, yeah, you're definitely not alone. I think. Yeah, it's a hard problem. Ultimately, right, and I'm not sure I'm gonna have too much insight here, there's a lot of other people who have like a, might have a sharper take, but my sense is we'll probably need more friendly, you know, ways to access crypto products and services that don't let you, you know, go through those experiences of getting fish, right, whether that's just like a mobile wallet exercise, where you have like social recovery ways that are just like abstracting away all of this or some of the complexity, at least right, so technically, you don't have to manage like a seed phrase yourself, right, maybe that just exists on your phone in some way and you have a way of recovering that with your friends or something, or people who are trusted, confidence, and you know, so that there's ways at the UX level to make access and crypto products and services easier.
Speaker 2:I do think part of the challenge with some of these things is it's at the social level, right, not the technical one where I get texts all the time when it's like, hey, your bank needs you to do this like click this great link, right, and if I didn't already know in advance, like okay, this is probably a phishing scam, I would click that. Now it's hard because that's like a mainstream phone. You know, I have an iPhone, like I have in Canada, but I'm with one of our main telecom providers here. There's nothing that those Businesses can really change about the fact that social engineering is a thing and unfortunately, I think this is actually going to get worse with with kind of AI, voice training and things like this, right. But yeah, I would say, like high-level points one, I think we can do a good job at making UX better.
Speaker 2:I think part of that is starting to happen, at least since 2021. So there's some different wallet options. You know, people can kind of experiment with different things here. The social engineering side is harder to solve because it's a human problem and humans are hard, right, and it's just, it's just difficult, and so I think, yeah, a lot of that's gonna come down to education, right. But I know that that's kind of a cop out answer because it's, you know, most people Ignore what they're told anyway, like how many times you read the instructions when you're buying furniture or whatever. It is right. I mean, it's just again human problems are human problems, and it's just a challenge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, totally in it. Yeah, that's it. That's a fair answer, though I mean because it's I don't really know the answer either. It's kind of on the same plane where it's just, you know, I'm I'm personally of the of the type, and I think you are as well. It's like you know, like I will, just I'm not gonna. I don't even think we're that unique. Like humans learn by messing up, you know, it's just like when it comes to the idea of sovereignty, like the, the stakes are a little higher. When it comes to like, say you, you know, say this becomes like the norm. You know, and we're all trading. We all like spend money with magical internet coins over fiat. It's self sovereignty. You know, like what happens when that's your life savings. You know what I mean. Like that, to me, that's that is like the thing that scares the shit out of me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So totally, I think it's more the way that I would think about it is. It's more that having that as an option For people who would like to do that is interesting and important to me, where there's a good reason why people like to have banks that are Regulated by, you know, a government and sort of backstopped in the event that something were to happen, because they don't want to think about it right. Or there's a reason why people might transact with visa because I mean, at least in Canada, it's like relatively generous. If someone has actually fraudulently used your card, you know, you can get that money back right. Yeah, there's ways of being cared for by these, these entities that don't exist in crypto, and so it kind of cuts deeply in both ways.
Speaker 2:There's an interesting case for self sovereignty, like you don't have to wait for ten days for your bank to transfer money from place a to place B and then you know Canada has the highest banking fees in the world. Fun fact it's like an average of, I think, over 250 bucks a year the average person spends on banking fees. So there's just like this bloat of the intermediary you know this famous way that people talk about crypto of, you know, disintermediation. There's a case for that, but I'm totally sympathetic. Like do I have all of my money and personal assets in crypto? Definitely not right, like you want to hedge and be smart and things like this, but having the option is meaningful, I think, and you know there's a lot of things we can talk about about that. But I also know that you know you might want to go somewhere else here.
Speaker 1:Well, no, this is it's. I mean, we can maybe spend a little bit more time on this, because it is interesting that I think, over the years, one thing that I've grown to, I think, be one of my favorite aspects of crypto, one thing I've just realized, is that it represents the, the option. It represents the power to choose. You know, there's not one way to do things financially anymore, you know, and I think that you touch on that really well and that, to me, is the most interesting aspect. But it also kind of helps, like you know, clear up the narrative of like, you know the maximalist Maximism of like having having too many eggs in one basket, or having, you know, too many things not hedged, or you know it's not, that's just never, that's just like never a good thing.
Speaker 1:I, regardless of whether it's in financial markets or anything else, like that just doesn't seem cozy, it seems really risky. So I can really, I guess I can really appreciate that and I guess that the Part that this segues into that I wanted to talk about is I Like there are so many people you know that I have met in this industry and like most of the time when I speak with Canadians before, whether I know they're Canadian or not. I'm just like Dan. This is like fucking Chad people like they are. Is the, is the inflated, is the bloated fees? Is that one of the reasons why Canadians are just so fucking bullish on crypto?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure that that's necessarily the reason. I think you know I appreciate the the high praise. There's definitely some cool Canadians and I don't know in crypto. You know a lot of the early crypto scene. You know Canada just figured prominently in that. I mean the italic is Canadian, like a lot of the original, if people kind of come around, come out of the water loo. You know computer science scene and stuff like that. So there's definitely a lot of Canadians and I always appreciate you know out, being out on the conference circuit and bumping into people that way.
Speaker 2:I think the case for people being bullish here is probably the same as the states, frankly, more or less, where it's just Saying like, okay, I want. I mean, maybe it's just that you're interested in new technology, right, there's the sort of fintech case here of hey, this is maybe a more efficient way of doing finance, or I mean it doesn't. It's not just limited to finance, right, we've already talked a little bit about the the culture side to Whether it's like art or gaming or whatever. I think some of it from from my perspective. I mean this is just anecdotal way.
Speaker 2:The people that I happen to know Is it's what you've said, right, it's an option to Not have all of your values stored in one particular system. That may have some issues, right, like we, we've got Question marks in how, in terms of, like, how much money will be printed over the next decade to keep up with all sorts of social obligations, and you know, politics is is politics is a complicated conversation, obviously, right, yeah, I think, in trying to keep it as neutral as possible, I think there's a, there's an interesting case and people find it interesting to be able to keep a piece of whether it's a Little bit of Bitcoin or a little bit of you, through a little bit of whatever else Outside of the bigger system, so that you, you know, don't necessarily need to submit everything to money printing or to inflationary Policy that you may not agree with. Yeah, I don't know, but people are going to be interested for tech reasons, for finance reasons, for social reasons. Like it's hard to Square, square one whole country away into into just like one answer.
Speaker 1:For sure, man, I mean, but yeah, it's just I. And even though there is a lot of you know there, there is a little you know high praise happening there, like, but it's there, there's a lot of truth in it. Like there's been a lot of a lot of artists that have interviewed as well, you know, like victim of scare and Erin McGee and you know and like you know, fuck, like I have an interviewed fuck render, but he's, you know, he's Canadian as well. It's just like totally and like there's a lot of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, for real, like it's. It's like it was a bit of a Social and emotional pamp, but it's also there's a lot of truth in it. So now, talking about people that'd be interested and people that have options and people submitting to a certain system, we've, we've ripped about it very like, or we've we've bantered a little bit, very lightly, on Twitter. But you know, mama Roy, she is a, she is a crypto trader. What does she think about all this?
Speaker 2:Yes, so for for some context here, I got my mom into NFTs in 2021. You know, I initially, like Kevin Rose, had a good podcast. I think it was a modern finance, yep yeah, and I think that actually acted as an onboarding point for a lot of folks.
Speaker 1:That was me, I'm for sure.
Speaker 2:So my yeah, no, I'm, yeah, it was just.
Speaker 2:That was a good one.
Speaker 2:And my mom has always been a tech person and you know I was running around it business for my whole life and so has been just like more open to new things maybe than the average parent on the tech side.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, past that podcast along and and proof was just starting up and she basically said, hey, like I think I want to do this would, would you be able to help me figure this out? So I bought her a proof pass for Christmas, no way, and that, whatever that year was I guess two, two years ago now and yeah, I mean she, she just like got into the scene and started collecting art and did a little bit of trading and stuff, and it's just very funny. It's now kind of a shtick that I have on Twitter where Periodically my mom will email me or text me or whatever and it's like, is this real, that my mom is actually worried about, you know, having to stake this NFT in this contract or whatever, right, it's just like I know it's like a very endearing Experience and I think you know more power to her right, I mean, she's in her fifties trying to figure out new technology and yeah, all love.
Speaker 1:That's so cool, dude, and that's really where there's a through line in our impart of her story, because While my mom's not actively trading, my mom does own both of our. She did, she did full set, collect our very first season one Media pass to get all the art Ah, let's go. And she and she fronted the and she bought herself a collector pass for season two. So she's getting all the art from season two and it's like, like, it's just really cool to have those conversations and I think it's proud. I'm sure you can relate to this, but like, I feel like having, like a family member obviously you know our mother's like Getting to ask some of these like really, really like high-level questions, you know, or just kind of like understanding the concepts in which they're used to and where crypto differentiates that, or like how they need to think about it. I also find that, like I, it's a great barometer of like how much I know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:When my mom asked me a question because she always asked some like really simple question, like fuck, like I gotta like go Six layers up. You know it's always a challenge, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, there's that like Richard Feynman thing which is, you know, if you can't explain something to a five-year-old, you probably don't understand it yourself. Yeah, and I've always found that humbling, right. When you have these conversations we're like, well, what do plug, it's really even do that's new, or you know why is this even? You know, I mean, you're sitting down like I should probably know the answer to this and you know, I have my, my, my attempts at this point. But it's also just fun, right, like it's cool to be able to share. You know, an industry that you spend a lot of time working in, obviously for many years with, with a family member, right, and so it's just entertaining that you, my mom has a Twitter account and periodically likes my tweets. It's just like hilarious. That's hilarious to me. I find that enjoyable, so it's endearing for sure.
Speaker 1:I love that man. That's really cool. I always love seeing your tweets when, when, when she shares something with you or y'all interact. It's so fucking awesome man. Um, yeah, dude. So on the line of wholesome, you know like you have arguably one of my favorite squiggles as your pfp, so you know squiggles and punks. You tweeted this out a little bit ago. Why? Why are they just the most in that in inevitable thing in NFTs?
Speaker 2:Great question, man, I think. Well, first off, thank you for for the the high praise of my squiggle. I like to think it is one of the most special ones, but it's just, yeah, happens to be one that I kind of got early in that process and so you become attached to these things, right, that's maybe the most bullish case on NFTs is like you own these Random items on the internet and most people who may not be familiar with, like or have never owned an NFT before, they kind of laugh at you right where it's like huh, I can like right click and save this picture and then, once you own something for a little while, it's like hey, that that's mine. They're like I don't want to sell that, I don't want to get rid of that. So it's just like a human nature thing, I think. For for punks and squiggles specifically, it's really just thinking about how art markets work and over time I mean historically speaking, you know there's gonna be different eras of art and then in each era a lot of the value tends to accrue to just a few artists or a few sort of symbols of a movement, right, and so I think you know, when you think about this idea of digital objects and like, basically, that we figured out how to own items on the internet.
Speaker 2:Now, some of the first flag bearers of that movement are Crypto punks and Chromy squiggles. Right, crypto punks being kind of, you know, probably in the defining singular quote-unquote first NFT yes, it's not technically the first one. You know all of our history nerd friends will point out that there are other ones, and you know there's even some stuff like rare Pepe's on Bitcoin and whatnot. But the interesting thing with crypto punks in my, from my perspective, is they're the first project that really got the whole Experience together, in the sense that it's like hey, we have these objects, these little crypto punk profile pictures. We also have a marketplace baked in where you can buy and sell those. We also have a community of people who, you know, are excited about this. It's all of those things in one that kind of made a lot of people come in and say, aha, this makes sense to me, right? Nfts are going to be a thing, whereas other experiences, you know, remained more niche.
Speaker 2:I think Chromy squiggles are equally interesting, like they're more. They have a historic role. They're kind of the first, one of the first examples of generative art that is on a blockchain, and so this, this marriage of generative art, which is a discipline that's, you know, been around since computers have been around and blockchains, is a way to now own that generative art. It's just a, you know, a match made in heaven, and also it's kind of become an emblem or like a logo right of art blocks, which is one of the best stewards of, like, crypto culture, of the NFT space, like one of the most prominent businesses around, and it's also attached to, you know, snow, for who is the artist that created Chromy squiggles and founded our blocks and, you know, art also tends to Be very connected to the artists themselves and he's a great guy and he's a great steward of all these different things.
Speaker 2:And I think, in some way, when you're able to, you know, own a squiggle, you are connected to him and that business and the culture all at the same time. So, anyway, this is this is long story short. There's kind of different cases for both punks and squiggles, but I think, really, when you zoom out and think like 50 years from now, when people look back on like the early, you know, art on the internet type of scene, of course, there's been digital art that's been made for a long time and galleries have collected that and it's just like a file Right. They still have some value. But I do think there's a net new thing that happened here. We can own items on the internet using blockchains as databases and those are kind of the early standard bearers.
Speaker 1:Totally dude. I yeah and it yeah. Just to go back on the squiggle I mean it's blues, blues, my favorite color, and your, your squiggles like, like also mine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it always has been, you know, like it always has been and, uh, it just, yeah, it's just a fantastic looking squiggle and, admittedly, like I really like your the way you kind of sum that up, because, yeah, it's a punks weren't technically the first you know NFT project ever exists on the blockchain, but it was the first one where community got like really gathered around it in a meaningful way.
Speaker 2:Um, you know hearing well, like yeah, another thing, sorry to jump in, I just forgot to say like they're the first people to kind of define that 10k Size and the idea of different traits and randomization. So it's not, it's like it's totally what you're just saying, like it's the community, um, that forms around it. But I think a lot of those design choices are the reason why a community is form grounded in the first place, right where it's like hey, I want to collect different types of these things or whatever. Right, so yeah, but sorry to start interrupting.
Speaker 1:No, you're good dude. No, it's a great interruption and it's like because you look at any, not not just the size of of of NFT or collectible projects or community projects, but down to the traits. You know, like 3d glasses are inherently, you know, crypto punks like zombies. Yeah, like every single trait about crypto punks is emulated in every other project, whether people realize it or not, and I think it's just something really special. Um, so, yeah, I do. I think it's a great idea. Uh, yeah, one day for sure, do you own any punks?
Speaker 2:I own one punk from back in the day. I had the good fortune of being able to show up in that scene back before they were really expensive, and so it was exciting to be able to collect one and own one, and I hope I'll be in the position where I can keep that and not have to sell financially just to have been around. I wrote a actually I mean it might be a good segue back to the writing conversation. Yeah, back near the beginning of that that boom, I wrote an essay called the Fat Cryptopunks Thesis, which just kind of laid out a bit of a roadmap for why I think punks are interesting, and it's influenced by a lot of other people. It's by no means just like my individual thinking, but yeah, right around that time I just got really interested in crypto punks and thought they would be cool and got to buy one. So, yeah, I still have mine. I'm along with my squiggle. Those are probably my two most prized assets.
Speaker 1:I would imagine, dude for sure, they're definitely on the top of my bucket list to own. So, yeah, but I think this is a great segue into the writing you know, because that you know on your, on your beehive, like that is like your first article. You know that you wrote yeah, at least that I see here. So we love to kind of, yeah, maybe, maybe, like finally get to that topic. We went through a lot of different other rabbit holes of you know, I guess, really the impact that writing has had on you, or you know, or why you feel compelled to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. So I think I guess I'll do the pre crypto part first and then we can get into some of this more crypto writing. I so I've always been a reader. I just grew up, and very early I mean. So my parents were divorced when I was quite young. I grew up, you know, in between houses. Like one of the most consistent through lines for me was both like a lot of books and a lot of video games, and so in many ways, I kind of see who I am as an adult today as like deeply informed by both of those things. I still read, you know, like 40 books a year probably. It's just like a big piece of who I am, and that can be fiction. It doesn't have to be like fancy, nerdy books necessarily, though there are many of those too. It's more just like. This has always been a thing, and I kind of track that to.
Speaker 2:You know, I actually have a memory of being like seven years old, you know, in elementary school, and you know I grew up single mom for the most part. You know she's working two jobs. I'm, whatever in public school doing my thing, like we were fine but not well off, and she basically said look anytime you want to buy a book, I will pay for that, no matter what like no cap, as we would say to them. Right, and it's like, yeah, hilarious and hindsight to think about that, but also incredibly meaningful, because at the time it's not like you're reading anything fancy. It's not like I was, I wasn't like a super smart kid or anything. It's more like, hey, I want to read fiction stuff, like I want to read all these whatever detective books, whatever. But my mom always made a point of saying I will, if it's a book, I will buy that for you. I will figure out how to make that happen. And I feel like, for that reason, I've always been sort of shaped by you know writing and have wanted to be a writer as well. I think that sort of comes it's like a good one to punch right, like people who like to read also tend to like to write, and so, yeah, it's not really like I I wouldn't say I had to. I was like that special of a writer or anything. But I always just thought, hey, like I like this stuff, I always thought I might be a journalist one day, through kind of elementary school and high school, and started to take it more seriously in high school so I started to write more. You know, you get the whole like student newspaper situation. Yeah, yeah, take some extra writing courses like new media stuff, whatever, and then yeah, anyway, so that's that's a little bit of the backstory personally. And then in crypto specifically, like I've written quite a bit over the last I guess three years now and have a newsletter now for kind of the latter part of that, where I try and write a short piece every month and specifically at this intersection of crypto and culture. So a lot of stuff about NFTs and gaming and art and a lot of what we've talked about today honestly. And yeah, I mean we can geek out a little bit about about that if you'd like to. But the main kind of TLDR there is.
Speaker 2:I've tried to learn how to write for the internet specifically from first principles, and what I mean by that is like most writing writing is difficult for everybody. Yeah, even though you know everyone writes, most of it is not super high quality. Like I get bored reading my own writing all the time You're like, oh my God, who wants this over? Like these sentences are so bad, like the paragraph doesn't even make any sense. You know you zone out like most people just don't read anymore, and I don't like.
Speaker 2:Some of that is an attention span thing, but some of it is also just like the quality of writing is it's hard to make that compete with, like the quality of a video game or the quality of like this podcast, right, it's more likely that people end up doing audio or visual stuff, and so to write like compelling stuff for the internet, you need to just really keep it tight. It needs to be short, like every word matters. You're curating an entertainment experience for people who are just like attention junkies, basically, right, and so if you want to compete, you need to, you know, make a very like high effort. Yeah, you just have to make stuff high effort. So, anyway, that's a little bit of the backstory there and how I think about what I'm trying to do anyway, on the newsletter side.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm glad you touched on a point that I was going to ask you a little bit more about, which is like, specifically on the internet, like I mean, even with your last article I tweeted it the other day like the episodic nature of human attention makes it really hard to sustain communities over time, and you could apply that to write it. You know that, for whatever reason I still don't know why they just stuck out, but I think it was the word episodic. It's just a great descriptive to how kind of like, just fucked we are. I'm glad our attention spans are, you know. So, yeah, no, I can really appreciate that and, as someone, and what you said there makes a lot of sense because I think, in first and foremost, just to go back to your backstory, like I, you know, I love that Like shout out to your mom like, for that is that is so fucking cool.
Speaker 1:That really was when you said, when you said that, like you just love hearing stories like that, and you know, similarly, my mom, you know, would take me out of school to go see Lord of the Rings in elementary school, just because, just go, you know. And she was like, and I would always ask her why. And she's like you know like what is perfect attendance to teach you in the real world. And I was like you got a point.
Speaker 2:That's a good point yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's like you know, like go to go to school Good, good grades, Pay attention, but like perfect attendance doesn't teach you shit in the real world. So we could. She also read the books. You know, speaking of a reader, she read all the books in college and so it was a very much of a like we, as it was a cultural part of my childhood that we just very much were aligned on and still are. You know it's. It was really cool to have that moment. So, yeah, shout out to shout out to the moms doing the Lord's work here.
Speaker 2:Big shout out to the moms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but but something that you, that you mentioned there is, is one of the reasons why I gravitated away from reading is because, you know, I used to read a lot as a kid and but once video games came out, that was just priority over everything. It's like there's no way I'm going to fucking read a book after this, you know. So it just it caught me. But also there, you know, and you can probably appreciate this is that gaming was really the first community that I felt like I was a part of. You know, like with the, with the broadband internet rollout. That was like you know, I was on the swim team growing up, but gaming was like, oh man, this is the shit I want to talk about at the lunch table at school, but always feel like I'm going to get laughed out of the room. You know what I mean? Um, totally.
Speaker 1:So I think there was a, there was an extra role there. It was like I was just kind of seeking that, that tribe, if you will, you know. So, um, but as an, as someone who doesn't read a whole lot and who is actively making efforts through audio books, through Kindle readers, through, you know, whatever opportunity or resource is available. Like it's. It's really cool to be able to, to read something that's so succinct and, like you said, every word matters, um, and I think that's something really important that I'd like to leave people with um on that topic. So, uh, yeah, dude, shout out, shout out to you man. So we've talked a lot about digital things, um, and I, and I will say most of this has been, like you know, based off of my observations from you, but I did do a little cheating on this podcast and I and I hit up Fungi.
Speaker 1:Um, just if there was a topic that you would love to talk about that most people may not know, and he mentioned pottery, so I'd love to double click on that a little bit and learn about what your past yeah Is hilarious, all right.
Speaker 2:So the backstory here is I did four years of pottery in high school and actually got into art school for pottery and sculpture, um, before like shifting more into the sort of politics and economics career path that I was mentioning earlier. And yeah, I mean it's a big part of who I am in the sense that, like, if you zoom out and think, well, why am I doing accelerated art? And it's like art nonprofit, uh, some of it is, yeah for sure, curiosity in this NFT scene and seeing some energy there and it's meaningful in a small way. Like I mean, we're a small player at the end of the day, but to be able to help some emerging artists is like it's just cool. I like that stuff, but part of it is like forever. Since you know, I was young, I've just liked art, like I've liked artists, I've enjoyed being around that kind of thing and I feel like, as someone who spends a lot of time interviewing artists, I would imagine you would resonate with that too. Yeah, um, there's just something interesting about arts and culture and, yeah, like this whole, this whole area.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I did, I did a lot of pottery. I also just had a bunch of health issues in high school where I wasn't able to do a lot of sport and stuff, which, um, growing up, was a big part of my life and so in lieu of that, I ended up doing a lot of art. So it was effectively like a bunch of school, a bunch of art, a bunch of gaming and a bunch of reading. That's like essentially my life for for many years. Um, and, yeah, I had a good kind of crew of people that did pottery stuff. I mean, like I'm I know this isn't visually recorded, but I'm like looking at a couple pots that I made in high school right now like big pauses and stuff. Um, so it's yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:I think it's more just interesting when you're young to try and facilitate some creative endeavor right, it just helps you think about the world differently than you know, like you're going to economics class or math class or whatever it is, and that's great. Um, you learn some mental models and some things there. That's helpful. But if I'm thinking about pottery, it's like okay, how do I create something from nothing? Like, how do you, what do you do when half of your stuff breaks along the process, from the wheel to the kiln to the glazing, all that stuff. What's project management? Right? When you're like 15, you don't know what, anything about project management, um.
Speaker 2:But also, if you want to sit there and be like, well, I want to make a hundred mugs, so how the hell are we going to do that? You just sit down and be like, well, I guess this is the game plan, right. And so I look back at that and just think, you know, there's a lot of adjacent lessons that I still as much as I'm not, you know, super active making pots anymore um, a bunch of adjacent lessons that I'm really thankful for. So, yeah, it informs a little bit of who I am on the arts and culture side. But also, just like it's cool, I like art stuff and you learn relevant lessons there.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I'll spam you some, uh, some pottery images offline after this, please, please man, no, dude, I really love that and I'm and I'm so glad I asked, uh, I'm so glad I asked about that because, um, you know it's, it's something really like as a kid I used to, uh I used to just be infatuated with, like museums, like I used to love going to museums, you know, and I would just spend a lot. My mom would always take me, I would just spend a lot of time looking at shit. I had no idea what I liked about it, I just knew I liked being around art, you know, as a, as a, as a wee lad, you know, um, so yeah, dude, it's and, and what, for some reason, and it's just to like riff on your story here, man, it's.
Speaker 1:I feel like you know you're obviously in the same generation as I am, but there just always seems to there was this disconnect of like okay, art's really cool, but we, it was still under that narrative of like yeah, but like it's not really, it's not really sustainable for a career, you know, or like you should probably not focus on that too much. So I would say for me personally, I, I took a left turn from that, you know, uh, just, and it wasn't until I found the space where I realized, like how much I missed that and how much that was buried down, and I was like, fuck, this is like, this, was it all along, you know, but you had to follow a different. Yeah, totally, um, totally, but, dude, yeah, I would love to see the pottery. And last last kind of questions. We, you know, wrap it up here.
Speaker 1:This is a. Maybe we can just do a, you know, some short thoughts on this, because this is something that I'm really interested in personally, um, having bought a few of like the avant-art prints that like have some NFT counterparts and like lining up with the pottery thing as well. This is what made me think about that. Um, digital objects linking to physical, physical objects. When it comes to art, um, how do you think about that, or what are some of the ways you think about that? So you question man.
Speaker 2:I think, um, there are some smart people who are working on this problem. There are a couple of companies that kind of have explored this and you get the whole like QR codes, linkage and things like this. I think we'll probably see some version of the art world adopt like ownership standards around NFTs, because it's just easier to transfer like digital, uh a digital counterparts to a physical one Um for like administrative purposes. Uh, I think my sense, generally speaking, is I am more bullish on digitally native digital art Um versus like a digital physical connection, because it's just like you have a much more intuitive way of owning an internet object on the internet than trying to worry about a painting Um, that's like tracked in an accounting ledger sort of fashion on a blockchain Um. So to me, I think, like I guess the two answers are well, definitely see that. I think people will do that. I think there already are some artists who you know work physically Um, I mean, thank you. X is probably someone that comes to mind. I don't know if Jen Stark has done anything at that intersection.
Speaker 2:Um, there are obviously a lot of people who do physical art. I love physical art. I think there's a lot of value in physical art. I just think it's hard to marry physical and digital um beyond, sort of in a tracking fashion where digitally native Objects just make sense to me, right, where it's like it just seems to be, I don't know, maybe the saute, I don't know. I'm just more bullish on digital first things because it's it's like of its environment, if that makes sense, um, and so, yeah, I think we'll see that. I think, like you know, it's a good additional way for people who create digital art to extend their communities. Um, you know, I have physical stuff from Snowfro, from Grant Yon, from Jack Butcher, like I like this, this, the sort of Prince side of the space, um, but it's, yeah, it's harder for me to think like, okay, there's something especially valuable here because this physical thing is connected to a digital thing, where the digital first piece, um, maybe just like a internet native dude um makes, makes more sense to me.
Speaker 1:I like that. I like your takes on that. I, it's very like it's valid, uh, and I think about it in a similar way. Um, I think really where, where I'd add to what you said is you know there's something like the one area that physicals, you know there is something just different is that there is something that's very like tactile about it. You know you can like see the different printing techniques, you can see a lot of the ways like that. Just it shows differently in a frame. You can get a floating frame, you get a map. You can do a lot of cool things with it.
Speaker 1:My, my, the challenge right now and maybe this is gonna be one of those things where we just don't have it for years and then all of a sudden, the technology just like goes fucking turbo crazy and we get some of the best screens from the most accessible prices. Because that's my thing is that, like, when can we get Similar type of attributes, or what are the attributes that would make owning something or having a digital frame Be really unique? Because, like, there hasn't really been something insanely compelling where it's like that's what I'd want to buy and I just miss. I just don't like, I can appreciate like and I for to a very like strong degree, like, like, having it like the digital object is like it may just makes too much sense and it just belongs digitally. You know, I can really respect that tape because I agree with the two, but it's just like I also want to see it on a bigger. I just want to see another bigger frame. I feel like the phone is just like dog.
Speaker 2:Listen, like I think we're gonna get there. I don't think we're there yet. Yeah, I think there's a couple thoughts. One is you start to I mean, you hope that we'll start to see better screens or more interesting you know experiences in the physical world where you can have a portal to the digital one and see that work. Yeah, I do think like that. That future will be coming soon.
Speaker 2:I think Rafiq and all stuff in the MoMA is an interesting example. Like people were really captivated by that right. Yeah, I'm being extended as an exhibition. There's something that's like at a high professional level, you can start to get screens that are meaningful and, you know, are able to show cool art. I don't think personally, we've really reached that, that level, or not in an affordable way anyway, but yeah, I think we're gonna see some progress there. I think, as digital environments themselves become more like interesting and immersive and populated, something like you know, apple's headset coming out next year yeah, I wonder if you know that starts to contribute to People just sort of having aha moments around. Okay, like these digital things make sense.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I'm also like, like I've said, like really bullish on physical art. I like and that's not even meant to be an economic statement. It's just like what you said. It's sometimes it's just interesting. There's texture, there's so much going on.
Speaker 2:I just my one point of skepticism is more like the linkage piece In terms of like. Okay, I just say I have this great painting. I mean, many of my close friends from growing up went to art school, like art designers, artists and things, and I have some of their physical work. Like I'm looking at a painting from this girl from 2014 and it's like that's, that's great, I like, I like it. It's fun to be able to own it. What's the point of having an NFT as a part of that? Beyond the sort of administrative side of okay, well, once I've sold this thing, I can give you that, that ownership record, right, I don't know, maybe there's a case here, maybe I'm totally missing something and that's very, very possible, but to me it's more like that's interesting from a technical side, but from a culture making side, I'm much more interested in my digital first things and and that, yeah, that's just maybe my bias at the moment, but totally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's, yeah, it's, it's. It is an interesting spot to be in and I'll just share a little bit On the two prints that I bought. You know, cuz like you're, you're absolutely right that you know I bought the ringer print. You know the the lack of iterations print. Oh yeah, there was my dude also.
Speaker 1:I I was talking to Fungi and I remember getting the email and I was like I'm probably not gonna get it. You know, it's just like it's cool, like it's lackma, like we like we, you know, as a company We've supported lackma and hosted a few spaces and got some great art from like Lady Cactoid in that crew. And so I was like you know, like it'd be cool. You know it'd be cool but it's not really compelling. And I kept reading in the emails like, oh, they got an NFT component and I'm like, ah, I mean that's cool, like you got me a little bit there, but like it's still not interesting enough. And then once I saw it in person, it was just like I looked at it, I was like dog, I just fucking caved. You know, like I just caved and.
Speaker 1:But. But with the ringer print, like visually, it looks really cool and I bought it purely as a conversation starter. You know, I feel like that's a really interesting thing to have in the home to have a conversation about gender-to-part. Yeah, totally, you know, and it's like the but the interesting, the part that to your point, is the NFTs in 1155. So it's like you, one could argue that it's utterly useless.
Speaker 1:You know, when it comes to it's like cuz, like it's like where's the value? Like the value isn't in the digital object. At that point the value is the physical. And it's almost like they kind of just said like hey, here's the NFT, just because we can do it, and it's kind of cool, and we don't really know what we're doing. Which respect, respect, I mean, no one knows what the fuck they're doing.
Speaker 2:Like they're like I like that they're trying it out you know, I think like that's a really good way to articulate the what I was trying to say earlier, which is just like Physical art is great, like you can do a lot of cool things, like the culture making process there is meaningful obviously we've done thousands of years of physical art it's more just the tenuous nature of like. Why does this thing have to be connected to an NFT? And that's more what I mean when I say like I'm more bullish on digital culture. I mean that through the lens of like why NFTs actually matter? Right, because it's just digital property rights. But yeah, it sounds like we're both saying the same thing, so I'm yeah totally did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just kind of. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. But that also brings me to the punk print. You know they're, while punks are like Ridiculously digital, like they're, they're like very it's, it's a you know there's very is a strong cultural. You know they're, they're, yeah, they're the leaders of cultures. What I'm trying to say my brain got a little mushy there, but but it is interesting to have something that is digital, digitally native. It's something that's been so impactful to have pushed the digital space forward.
Speaker 1:Having all of those be represented in a physical object Is interesting, in my opinion, and it's like having punks kind of live outside of their realm to like say like hey, this is like what started a cultural movement. You know, on the blockchain pictures on the internet, having a picture of those physically say like, yeah, that was the, this is, this is what started, this is what started it all. You know it's kind of interesting. It's it's fun and interesting to be able to take them out. But with that one, there is a scratch-off code to where it links it to a 721, where it's like, okay, that is kind of cool. You know it's like that's yeah, that it. That is neat. You know, now I don't know what I'll do with it. I still, as a collector, don't really know where I'll. I'll stand like where the value really lies after that, but Nonetheless we we fuck around and find out.
Speaker 2:Is the? Is that absolutely? Yeah, that is the way, that is the way.
Speaker 1:Well cool man. In the spirit of doing that dude, I feel like we've gone just about across every vertical man. This has been an exciting chat dude, so one of want to start wrapping things up and just kind of Put the focus back on a little bit something that you're working on long-term. Is there any long-term projects that you're currently working on right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question, I think, why I should say first, thanks so much for having me on. It's been super fun to be able to go through all these different like crypto related topics. I Think. A couple things first.
Speaker 2:Definitely, you know, accelerate art is, when I think about the things that I'm doing, something that I feel pretty convicted will exist five years from now, which, in a space that moves pretty quickly, feels like a decade. You know what I mean. I think it's cool to be able to do, even if it's very light touch and just a few things a year, like just to have a gathering point for people who like to work in digital art and we're interested in exploring NFTs and To create some community around that. I think that's meaningful and, yeah, so I'm. In terms of long-term projects, I think that's definitely one of them. My writing stuff, I think, is something I'm committed to long term and trying to figure out how to consistently just yeah, I offer, hopefully, something of interest and value around this particular niche, like some of the crypto and culture intersection.
Speaker 2:I Think there's a few companies I've, you know, had the chance to work with over the last couple of years that I Think have a long-term future and that kind of cross cuts a lot Through, like the conversation that we've had. Right, there's some Dow stuff, there's some gaming stuff, there's some arts and culture stuff and, you know, hoping that those, those companies persist and, like both, maybe accomplish some of that in the conversation that we were having earlier and getting crypto people excited but also somehow have some of that, you know, more mainstream adoption moment and would be exciting and, yeah, we'll see where things go off ultimately. Yeah, off the top of my head, those would be the three. I like it, man.
Speaker 1:It's cool to it's cool to have a Kind of have a hand and a few different baskets there. So it's cool, man. Dude, thank you for yeah, thanks for thanks for showing me your Thank you for yeah, thanks for thanks for sharing that and, again, it's exciting to be able to be a part of your journey and be able to, like, watch you do this. It's uh, it's, yeah, it's great Love and also just selfishly loving the spaces that you're hosting with fungy every Tuesday.
Speaker 2:Those are Um, those are so much fun. Yeah, thanks so much man. Yeah, a lot of fun. It's been fun hanging with the whole Schiller crew. Um, excited to see, like for the next year, how this goes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, for sure, um, one, uh. Oh, this is something that I'm experimenting with and I came off off the top just now when you were speaking about kind of what you're thinking about long term. Um, a little bit. You know, I know we love to laugh and joke and shitposts and and and stuff like that, but there's also, uh, with a lot of people that have a sense of humor here Do their best to not take themselves so seriously Um, there's usually something really just definite, there's just something really strong that that kind of moves. That kind of moves everyone here, uh, to build such cool things and just to have the have the fix, get to participate in such a volatile, uh, industry. So we'd love to kind of circle it back to you, like if you could look at your legacy or like what you like, if someone was like, looking back on your life, um, what would you want your legacy to be? Or like, how would you define that just in a few words?
Speaker 2:It's a big question, man. I think, um, it's a good, it's a good thing. I was just thinking there's a book by David Brooks, the New York Times columnist. Um, it kind of talks about eulogy virtues versus resume virtues, right, like this idea, what would you want to be known for At the grave? Versus, like, what are you trying to hustle for in kind of the day-to-day status games that we play? Um, I think, yeah, when I think about it, I mean aspirationally, who knows, like, do I even have a legacy? Tbd, right.
Speaker 2:But in the spirit of answering the question, I think I would like to be known for someone who built community, like someone who facilitated belonging for different people, who Helped, you know, other people gather around things that they were interested in.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of what I do with the art stuff and accelerated art and working with founders individually, and just like the different kind of responsible Responsibilities I have or hats I wear in the space, a lot of it just comes down to that. It's like community design, right? So can you build relationships with people, um, can you help them feel seen and known and, you know, help them thrive in some way? Like, what can I do to help other people win Um, because I think, yeah, so much of where I find Uh, both like personal meaning, but also just like where I find I thrive is when I am more in that like coach or Advisor position right, we were able to just like be on the sidelines and help other people win Um. And so I think, yeah, some that's a bit of a hand wavy answer, but some level of like community builder Uh would would be an interesting legacy to leave behind.
Speaker 1:If I could, I'll never not laugh when you say hand wavy, uh, in front of anything.
Speaker 2:I forgot about that.
Speaker 1:I just absolutely love that. I never heard it before you, uh, and I'll just never not laugh at it. Um, it's just something so inherently fucking Ben Roy. So, um, we'll cool, man, uh, if, if you want someone to, uh, if someone's looking to find a little bit more information about you, where would you want people to go first?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great. Um, so I think twitter, I'm at ben roi, double underscore Um, I'm far too active there, so if you want to follow me there, um, I'm definitely around. Uh, I am it. My my newsletter is ben roibeehivecom, and so if you want to, you know, follow along on the writing side. Uh, there's definitely that stuff too, and those would be kind of the two main um spots.
Speaker 1:Thank, I love it, dude. Yeah, you definitely we. We all spend a little too much time on on on the twitter x app, the terminally terminally online problems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, thanks. Thanks so much for having me on. It's been a lot of fun just to be able to chat about all these different things. I uh, I hope some of that's useful and, yeah, I appreciate you appreciate all this work that you're putting into, kind of helping curate a lot of conversations with fun people across crypto. So more power to you.
Speaker 1:Means a lot, dude. Yeah, let. Likewise, it was fun to be able to riff on a lot of different things. Uh, it's it was. You know, it's fun to just to kind of understand, again, poke my head up to what else is happening around here. So, um, yeah, dude, thanks for thanks for your time, thanks for making this happen, thanks for your uh, thanks for the the banter back and forth. This has been a, this has been a treat, dude. So, um, just hang out with me for a little bit once I, once we stop recording. So this finishes upload, uploading. But, um, yeah, man, thanks again for coming on. Hope you have a great rest of your day.
Speaker 2:Awesome man, you too Take care.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Schiller curated podcast. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. As we close out today's episode, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform and leave a five star review to help ensure you never miss an episode and to help others discover the curated podcast as well. To stay updated on our upcoming episodes, as well as our weekly twitter space schedule, be sure to follow us on x, formerly known as twitter, at schiller xyz. Once again, thank you for tuning in and remember, if you're looking for it, art is everywhere and it's up to us to appreciate and explore the emotions it brings to our lives. Until next time, this is Boona signing off.