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VAULT3D: Michael Tant - Unraveling NFTs, Crypto's Financial Frontier, and the Power of Pseudonymity
Join us as we dive deep with Michael Tant from Citizen X Crypto, unraveling the complexities of pseudonymity in crypto and the transformative potential of gaming through token economics. Our conversation traverses the rollercoaster ride of seizing NFT opportunities, the wisdom of patient investments, and the cultural shifts that can occur in a blink.
In a space where even a moment's hesitation can mean missing out on cultural shifts, Michael shares his firsthand experiences of navigating the NFT market, the influence of key figures like Gary Vaynerchuk, and the excitement surrounding projects like Cool Cats and World of Women. The discussion then shifts gears to the foundational elements of DeFi, the role of DAOs in community governance, and the significance of liquidity pools in creating a more accessible financial system. Through personal anecdotes and expert insights, we explore how these innovations democratize economic opportunities and empower individuals.
We round off our journey by examining the importance of trust and social currency in the digital realm, where reputation is king and pseudonymity can open doors to equitable interactions. As we share candid advice for those looking to dip their toes into the crypto universe, the episode is a call to embrace risks, bet on oneself, and understand the value of community engagement. Whether a seasoned crypto enthusiast or a curious newcomer, this episode is packed with invaluable lessons and visions of a digital future reshaped by blockchain and NFTs.
Michael Links:
X (Twitter): https://x.com/MichaelTant3
Citizen x Crypto: https://www.citizenx.co/
SHILLR:
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GM. This is Boone and you're listening to Vaulted, a Web3 podcast series from the Schiller Archives. This episode was originally recorded on October 8, 2021. In features Michael Tant, co-founder and general partner of CitizenX Crypto, which is a crypto-native investment fund. In this episode, we dove deep into the concept of pseudonymity, the glaring opportunity for gaming to adopt Web3 technology, the promising future of DAOs and much more. As always, this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied upon for financial advice. Boone and guests may own NFTs to discuss. Now it's time to grab some coffee and dive into this comfy conversation with Michael. All right.
Speaker 2:Good afternoon Michael. How are you? Kyle, I am doing great. My friends it is. I just got back in town. I was traveling out west coast of California all last week. I got to spend some time over the weekend in Paso, Did a lot of wine country stuff, so drank a lot of good wine, got a lot of good food, got to connect with some friends in the industry and, yeah, I'm doing pretty well, just trying to get back on the swing of things, recovering.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how does it feel to catch up on missing like three to four days out of the line? It was good to do this.
Speaker 2:I brought a wallet that I needed in case I needed to do anything. I spent maybe like 30 minutes with like one particular NFT thing that I was working to buy or sell. I meant to the projects I really wanted to mint. But then, but outside of that, like even scrolling on Twitter, you know, every couple hours I feel like I missed an entire cultural revolution. I missed almost all of the loot blue, a-bold, you know, almost 100% of that Totally missed it. I missed every iteration of it, all the revolutions of it. You know even my friends in multi-coin buying. You know eight figures of loot. Like it was crazy. It was.
Speaker 2:I truly like yeah, I'm grateful that the market seems to have slowed down a little bit in NFTs right now, because it's kind of a catch up on what I missed, but it is. I'm not saying that I regret taking the vacation or traveling, but it is. It does demonstrate to you that in a market like this, there is a high opportunity cost for not participating and that when you have an opportunity like this, which is a golden opportunity in terms of you know how hot everything is, how much volume there is, how many people are buying and selling like you got to take advantage of it, and I've learned that you need to strike while the iron is hot, because when the iron is not hot, it is cold, and it is cold for a much longer time than you think it's going to be, and probably that you'd like it to be right Like this.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think I have in my Twitter bio, like NFTs are here to stay and I do believe they're here to stay, but this market that we are in right now with NFTs is not here to stay. It will mature, it will slow down. There, will you know, there will not be 100 mints that sell out every day, you know, and instantly, 10x overnight in terms of, like, floor growth. That's not going to happen forever. So, while you're here, make hay while the sun is shining, just, you want to be careful that you know when the music stops, that you have a seat and you have a chair and that you're prepared for you know, but personally and from like, an investor perspective, prepared to capitalize on what is going to be a potential bear market.
Speaker 2:And I know that's very generic advice and I don't really like. I don't really like generic advice. I don't think that most people that say oh, you know, this is all a mania. This is a bubble is like super, super helpful. Most of the time, no, unless the advice is like super nuanced, but yeah, but I agree with you that the market feels a little bit frothy and yeah, yeah, so anyway, it's, it's and it's a weird.
Speaker 1:it's a weird spot for me to enter in because, you know, I just I'm at a point where I just started a new career. I started a new, a new job on Monday, you know is where I'm able to finally get myself to a level of financial like stability where I'm actually able to pay off all my debt. So I don't really have a whole lot of cash just to like throw at things right now, which is it's. It's like a sick joke, right, because this is the time to do it, but I I can't, you know. So it's almost like this weird like thing of like you just need to learn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you throw in what you can like invest here, like where you can, and do the things that you love, but it's really forcing me to like ask some really type of what is it that I actually like, what is it that I am willing to spend this money on, what is it that like I feel will be long term? Because, like, I'll tell you, like what I've learned from myself so far is that I am terrible at predicting the hot like 10, 20, 50, x, like two day, you know, projects that sell out. But I genuinely believe and I have yet to prove this, I could be completely wrong, but I genuinely believe that, like some of the projects I've invested in are going to, are going to like, are going to catch fire in about, you know, one to three years, you know that's my bet. I've always been good at that. I've always been good at predicting patience, and so and like listen, yeah, that's a listen.
Speaker 2:In my opinion, that's a better skill set to have. In then, and they're different skill sets. I'm not much of a creator myself, right, like I have a. I have a rudimentary understanding of of charts. I did some trading at some point, I dabbled in it, but I'm much better as a long term investor than I am as a trader, and my advice to you on this would be if you're coming into this space brand new like you said you entered in March you're at a point where you don't have, you know, tons of capital that you that you made from the last crypto bull run to throw right. Like you don't have hundreds of Ethereum that you can just throw it in a project. Like that's right, yeah, which is crazy, that's not uncommon for people to have, right. But if you're in that position, I think you have the exact, I think you have the perfect mindset and mentality about it in that take the opportunity to learn.
Speaker 2:Bull markets like the one that, like the one that we're entering me for NFTs, probably for those a whole like they accelerate every, every move is accelerated 100x, and so you learn so much by participating, being patient, being involved in those markets and you learn.
Speaker 2:You know you learn by, to a non insignificant extent, a much greater amount by participating in those markets than you do in bearish markets.
Speaker 2:And what I mean by that is you learn more about how markets work in bull markets. But bear markets are opportunities for you to actually allocate capital in a way that's going to be most optimized for for, you know, for long term. And that's not to say that if you invest in the bull cycle, like you're going to do poorly, that's not the point. But the point is there's a lot of people that are flipping that, a lot of people that are trading, a lot of people that are throwing capital in NFTs right now to sort of make money right now, and a lot of them will get burned, you know, in the long term. So I don't think it's bad, I think you're, I think you have the right philosophy and think of the right perspective. Make those one to three year bets and then be prepared to make even more one to three year bets when the market is not as hot and in the markets more mature.
Speaker 1:There's actually some things that I like there's. There's so many projects that are like so out of reach right now for me, but like like there's been a few people that have commented on the bear market, you know, and it's just like and I'm like, honestly, I can't wait for that to happen, number one, so I can have this FOMO, just like completely leave me. You know, it's like I can get some rest, I can focus on a lot of other things in life.
Speaker 2:It's, it's, it's truly, it's truly cool. It is fucking honestly.
Speaker 1:It is. It is like you can't even enjoy a full vacation, you know, in California, which is one of the most beautiful places to go on vacation to, without thinking about JPEGs, right, and because I look at that, I'm like this this will be my time. I think by the time that bear market comes, like I'll have you squash a lot of my debt, I'll have a little bit more income to like, toss in. I'm like there's so many projects that I think are going to like, not because they're bad projects, but they're just going to go to basically zero and that's going to be my time to strike, because, like there's a couple of them that I know are really good and there's a couple of them that I see have a lot of potential, but it's just so far out of my price range that like it's not even feasible. You know it's not even yeah.
Speaker 2:I know it makes perfect sense, can you? I'm just curious, like can you give me some examples? What are the ones that you're most excited about but potentially or actually being able to accumulate in a bear market when it's when there's not this much foam Like? Is there a particular one that you like have major FOMO total ion as an investment and also like as, just like a personal collector favorite?
Speaker 1:Yeah, great question. So the ones that I have my eye on, it's actually not board apes, it's the mutin apes. I think that they have some of the hottest potential. I think the artwork is just so fucking killer Like I just like that is my favorite PFP artwork project today and I have I said it with 100% confidence because I just I think I think it's just like so fantastic. I think cool cats as well, like they have like something about cats and the internet always just go together, and NFTs are such a blend of internet, culture, finances and community that I think cats are always going to be a bit. That, to me, is going to be like a safe bet, like that one's not going to. That, to me, is never going to like be a bad bet.
Speaker 2:I fully agree with you on cool cats and I I wasn't even one that was like super early to cool cats. I didn't mint them. I bought a couple when they were like you know, 0.3 ETH or something. I actually bought my wife a cool cat that she really wanted a couple of weeks ago. So I don't have a ton, I don't have a ton, but I really do like it. I think that they are. I like their art. They feel very differentiated from many of the art styles that you get in a lot of the profile picture projects.
Speaker 1:So I like to guess, I like to guess, we like to guess you know I like to guess I couldn't, I couldn't get, I can't, I don't have enough to invest in it right now. I also think, you know, now the one I I know is going to do well and when I is, because I also regret selling it the most in the very beginning. My first big time flip was World of Women, where I actually made and to me, a big flip. You know, I invested, I paid mint for two women, you know, which is 0.16 after like a total, and then I sold it. I flipped both of them for a total 1.3 ETH.
Speaker 2:That's a 10X. It's 10X, it's a 10X. It probably wasn't even that long Like it probably was like a weaker right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was about two to three weeks, which felt like forever, but now I look at the floor it's at 4.5. But I think that one has historical significance because it was like it touches on so many different things that like are a lot of good. Like number one, it's empowering women. It has a 100% female art, like the artist is female, it's going back into so many nonprofits and it like the art is just like it touches on a lot of different cultures and I'm just man like why did I get rid of it?
Speaker 1:Not only in this space? I was like I talked to the D's of this yesterday like only in this space can you flip something for 10X and actually be upset about it.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, no, I mean, I talk about this all the time and you know there's a line that comes from the traditional financial background and we do a lot of.
Speaker 2:We do a lot of investments together and you know he's not as big into NFTs even and NFTs are a little bit different more into more of the token side and like it's crazy because, like we did a deal recently where it was like we bought a token, we did an investment and it was immediately like two weeks after, it was like up 5X and it was like only in crypto can you get a 500% return in two weeks and not even consider the possibility of stuff Like not even like I mean, it's ridiculous and that's that's so crazy. It's even. It's, honestly, you know, crazy in NFTs. Obviously it's not as liquid in NFTs and it's it's a very different game that you're playing.
Speaker 2:But like only there is not, there is nothing, there is no market that punishes sellers more right now than the NFT market of 2021. Nothing selling truly, truly like I can't. There are the number of sales that I have regretted pails in comparison to the number of NFT sales that I have, you know, been like that was a good sale, like and obviously that's that's not always gonna be true Like the market's gonna gonna crash a lot of and a lot at some at some point right, Like and those they'll be looked back on, maybe more fondly, but still like it is.
Speaker 2:It is crazy how punishing it really is for people. But yeah, no, that's a good flip, that's a good flip.
Speaker 1:It was. It was a good one, you know, but now the floor is at 4.5, right, you know, even after. So I'm just man, yeah, now one thing I wanted to ask you because we've why. I think I actually already know the answer, but we one last thing on the topic of like things that are gonna go long term, is anything Gary V does when it comes to NFTs. You know, like I.
Speaker 2:Okay, I like and this is a, and this is like, this is like a, this is a bit of a like.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay this isn't the answer that most would give like meaning. I don't disagree with you and I actually think if you propose this to most people, they would probably agree. But most people, if they asked which ones are going to be around, which projects are going to be around forever, which projects are going to have most long term value, most people would say Crypto punks. They would say our blocks are curated, you know, and Gary V would not be as high on the list. I absolutely agree with you. I actually that. I mean I'm extremely bullish on Gary V and just to make it real, like I'm not a huge Gary V fan like I, I want to want to Okay well, and that's great, and so.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be partially because of the fanboys like you and I don't, I don't know. I get like no, if it's taken yet like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, he has. He has built an incredible following of people like, strong following, passion. It like you if you wanted to be in you know borderline, you've even say like cultic following right, like 100% like and I'm not saying you are, but like truly has built that much passion out of his, you know, out of his follower base and and for justifiable reason, like dude dude gets it. But I, I think nobody, I don't know of a single person that has brought more unique Individuals into into NFTs in the last year and a half. Yeah, gary V like if you look at the way that walla distribution for v friends sets, it's set up in terms of like unique owners of the only NFTs they own initially, like they're first in a few of the friends. It's insane and so I think he deserves I mean, and as I did you, participate in his book thing about I bought 24.
Speaker 1:I'm curious, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I bought 24. Well, I bought 24 books and you know, I have no idea what the? Yeah, I have no idea. It was kind of funny because and there's this visit, there's this reality, this mentality and crypto it was If I go spend like 25 E3 even one either to eat, it's like not Mentally it's okay for me to swallow that, but if I was been 500 bucks on both, I like look that, I like bulk, I'm like what?
Speaker 2:yeah what are you doing, like, why are you buying? Why are you spending this money, this money, dollars, on books and and if you think about it in terms of E, if you think about it as like you're minting a Gary V NFC for point one E It'd be an instant no rainer, and I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even pause. Yeah, well they. So there is a funny, there's a funny thing there. But yeah, I mean, I bought several v-fence at the beginning.
Speaker 2:I have a good, sick yeah and I mean look, there's a clear roadmap, a clear path for success for him with the V con and with future utility it's gonna be given to v-friends. If I'm not, I'm not gonna say that v-friends are like gonna 100x from here. I don't think there's gonna be any NFTs that hold value quite as well as the v-friends do in an extended bear market. And if they do get discounted, I would absolutely look 100% and, I think, something to make a correlation.
Speaker 1:We were talking a bit about this offline, but the one of the key traces I look for, and one of things that's probably the hardest thing to do for people who are creating projects Whether it's our blocks, whether it's promise what, whether it's any new project is coming out is the ability to create demand, like that is. It is probably one of the hardest things to do, and people like Justin Aversa and Gary V are the two people that I know that can do it best, like you know, crush it.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, and it's funny because they both they've done it very right, weights right, Like Gary. Gary has done it on this sort of like maps, marketing scale, justin has done it and this like hands, hands in the dirt, like Personal community curation, talking to collectors personally. They're two different models, they're two different groups, but they're, they're fundamentally very similar actually. Um, and yeah, the ability to generate demand, which you and obviously in this marketing edition, where people aren't punished for anything into things, it's easier to generate demand. Right and it is, or it creates this like self-evil and prophecy. But yeah, no, I mean, gary V should absolutely be committed.
Speaker 1:There's a doubt, I'm a, but I would argue on that. One point, though, is that you know, like what, what Built, that a lot of that cultist following is in grant, that he shares it all over social media, and he, you know that's part of the marketing, but there's not one person, whoever like, if he gets called in the street, there's not one person. He'll stop everything he does to go talk to him. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like well, yes, yeah, no, I did a different sense, like it's not in art, like Justin with the art form.
Speaker 1:Gary does it like with, just like the practical advice for him, you know, but it's, it's insane to see him. The sales marketing, the live sales. Yeah, and even if he didn't have an exact roadmap, even if he said there was no V con, I would still be as bullish on Gary. Yeah, yeah, right right, I said.
Speaker 2:I said you agree with you. I mean I don't think he's gonna be only utility, he's going, he's only IP and licensing.
Speaker 1:He's like gonna be creating comic books and TV shows and children. I can see it Like I can actually see that happening yeah.
Speaker 2:Absolutely no, I'm, yeah, yeah, I'm totally with you. I mean, yeah, yeah, I really do like your V. I bought the books. I like isn't fvs. I have a couple of V friends Um and I I feel extremely comfort. I haven't even like considered like maybe I should sell one.
Speaker 1:I feel that's that's that's a, that's a testament. You know that's a testament to like what he's doing. But you know I want to want to want to switch gears a little bit. You know like want to talk a little bit more at you, mike, like what, what Interested you in the NFC space or what? How did you even stumble into the space, like I? I know it's a probably a broad question. It has a very long answer. I'm here for it.
Speaker 2:You know, no, I mean we can do. Yeah, no, great, great question, great question. So, uh, yeah, man, this is one. So I mean, I first heard about Crypto in general back in 2013, 2012 or 13. I heard about Bitcoin.
Speaker 2:I actually went to like this discussion group. You know, that's like in my community. There was this like men's discussion group. They would like talk about economics or or politics, or philosophy and like great whiskey, smoke, cigars, that sort of thing, and, and there was one, there was a. There was a guy that was a little bit older than me, but he was a younger guy and he did his.
Speaker 2:He did a presentation all about Bitcoin and it was very interesting because one of the guys that started the discussion group was a big gold bug and, you know, had a ton of gold, made a lot of money in the healthcare, healthcare world and allocated a ton of capital to, you know, to physical gold and, you know, did very, very well in a physical gold trade because when he was buying it it was very inexpensive. But you sort of approach the, the buying gold, from a sort of laissez-faire Austrian economics, pseudo anarcho-capitalist perspective in terms of like, okay, you know, states, state money, state money is not sound. State money is not dependent. We can look at how money is being inflated and money is being used. It's highly problematic. It's not a great store of value. Good gold is at that and probably was at that time one of the best hedges Against, you know, the state's increasing appetite for power. Okay, the idea right.
Speaker 2:And so I heard about Bitcoin. It was very interesting because, you know, I wasn't as old as the gold bugs and so I sort of understood like the internet is big, obviously, and there's this like now there's like this internet money and you know. And then I learned about the idea of blockchain. Blockchain seemed very interesting. You know, I didn't buy Bitcoin. After that. I wasn't even at a point in my life where I, you know, where I had any capital to invest in anything. I wish I had bought some Bitcoin, says that body that that's learned about it.
Speaker 1:Oh, that didn't you.
Speaker 2:Yeah no but but, like clear, like you know, I listened to like an hour-long presentation about it and then an hour-long discussion afterwards and I still didn't buy it. I was very interested in it. It appealed to me Fast-forward. Late, early 2016, you know, mid 2016, I started hearing about Ethereum and at this point I was, I was, much more integrated into sort of the tech, tech scene, tech space. I was thinking about technology.
Speaker 2:I I still, I still was passionate about economics and finance and money and what money was. But I was more interested in, I Was more interested in how like Find about in financial applications that that could be used to sort of like replace and supplant certain existing systems. And so smart contracts yeah, totally spoke to me like I got smart contracts very, very quickly and when I understood the power of you can set this set of conditions that so so much that when your asset, so when somebody wants to purchase your asset, it self acts, it's you know, they put, they post their collateral, the purchase and it executes the transaction in a way that's trustless, in a way this non custodial, in a way that doesn't require a middleman to take a huge cut of the fees and you know all you're paying is like the, the fees to pay the network that it's you know, to make sure the actual actions go.
Speaker 2:That was fascinating to me. I Intuitively, you know, after thinking about it, I understood how big this is going to be. You know I got into Ethereum.
Speaker 2:I should have played the ICO game a little bit in late 2016, 2017, you know I still, I understood Ethereum, I understood smart contracts, but you know the market at that time, there were so many people that were in these ICO pre-sales where, like it would, there were, the money was so easy and so free to make to be made, that many people sort of glossed over like is the technology that we're investing in actually good? There was a sort of like Cane bring explosion of tokens that didn't actually have any value. They were just like named the thing that this person that had like some idea to his blockchain with and, of course, on speculation alone, tons of them exploded. I made a lot of money. I lost a lot of money. Yeah, like you know, I didn't end up. I didn't come out a ton ahead. I, that's not true. I came out a lot ahead, but I didn't start with very much capital, and so you know. So then in 2017, I started like sort of hone my thesis, after I realized like a lot of the stuff is Dogshit, garbage, vapor, yeah, and like I need, I realized like I needed to, I needed to figure out like what I wanted to hold for a while, and so I mean I got lucky, to be totally honest, like I mean, I picked some really, really nice coins to invest in and hold for the bear market.
Speaker 2:I went extremely heavily into chain link and, to you know, it was probably the largest investment that I made. And the reason I thought chain link was the reason she was the largest investment is that I understood the implications for smart contracts, if they could be. I understood the Oracle problem very well in that smart contracts were limited to tokens, but if we could make smart contracts apply to anything and everything in a way that maintained the sort of non-custodial decentralization, trillions, of trillions of dollars. So I mean big investment in chain link. I invested in synthetics SNX, which you know was a synthetic asset DeFi protocol. I invested in Linde, which is now Ave it was a lending borrowing protocol and I invested in VZX, which was a margin trading, a decent margin trading protocol. So I basically went all in on DeFi and I basically went on all in on what like, from an economics perspective, I understood were important pillars for DeFi, for finance, for for some sort of system of finance to have right, like if you're gonna have an agent ecosystem.
Speaker 2:You need lending and borrowing, you need leverage. You know you need synthetic assets. You can get exposure to things that aren't tokenite.
Speaker 2:And you need and you need data fees and you need price fees and you need chain link. So that was sort of like my thesis. Um, you know I was, I was in school, I was doing other things outside of crypto, I was working in the space as much at that point, um, but I, like, placed my bets and, thankfully, most of them just crushed it, even throughout the bear market, and they all did really well. So I got a lot more capital. I started to get involved at some of the dowels that they were building in real quick, what?
Speaker 1:and let's dive into dowels, like just for, because some of the audience, like I, built my get. You know, a lot of my audience was built on gaming, e-sports, you know, and I think dowels, in a weird way, is actually a great that way to that like. So, like when you, when you started getting into dowels, like what is like number, what is it now, like you know what's, what's your like, what's the primary purpose of a dow? Yep.
Speaker 2:Great question, yeah, so a DAO stands for Decentralized, autonomous Organization. It's basically a way to organize power in a way that's decentralized and organize powerful action in a way that doesn't give a ton of power or capital to a single individual. So it's like community power, community decision making, community capital that can be deployed in all parties or most parties in a group. That's like a very, very basic understanding of what a DAO is. And DAO will do a couple things. Dao's, first and foremost, will help deal with regulatory scrutiny. They help companies that are building complex D5 protocols avoid a lot of the regulatory risks by decentralizing the power and decentralizing the building of those protocols, and so that's the one thing that they do. But there's also a huge social element of DAO's as well. That's really, really interesting.
Speaker 2:I actually just did an event on DAO's with insidecom last month. It was late last month and we had three speakers that were just incredible Jonas Lamis, his daughter, rebecca Lamis, and Jess Loss, who are all members of various DAO's, building certain DAO's Yep, yep, I'm pretty sure if we did a video, you should go watch the video. If you haven't. It's the best presentation, the best deep dive into DAO's that you will get in 40, 45, 50 minutes.
Speaker 1:I'll link that in the show. I'll link that in the show that way, if anyone listening wants to go watch it, because it's 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a pretty great one, and I'm not one to typically plug like, oh yeah, you should watch this. That one, though. Truly, if anyone asks me what a DAO is now, that's my go-to recommendation. There's a lot more. We can get a lot more philosophical with DAO's. We'll give you some of the links that you can post in the show notes as well.
Speaker 2:That's a very, very intro to DAO's, and I want to touch on how gaming affects DAO's. Let me jump back right into this. Later I'll wrap up this narrative. So I got into DeFi. I started building a bunch of DAO's. I started doing a lot of angel investing, started to run a lot of different angel checks in the crypto space. I'm in the process of launching a fund right now, and so fast forward that's right now mostly investing in building pretty much just full time investing in building.
Speaker 2:At this point, when it comes to gaming in trip-in-native gaming, it's imperative that we touch on what NFTs are, and it's imperative we touch on token economics and token economic incentives. So a lot of people know what AXI is. Axi Infinity it's a play-to-earn model. It was, as far as we can tell, the first play-to-earn model video game that ever worked. It's this idea that by playing the game, you can actually earn real capital, real assets.
Speaker 2:And this is different from a lot of other games, for example in other RPGs, where you play the game, you grind the game for hours and you do earn things, but the things that you earn are limited to the scope of that particular game and they're connected to an account that is not owned by you. It's only licensed by you and it's controlled by the game developer, so they can ban your account, they can take your assets, they can take your 100,000 hours of work that you put grinding into a video game and it's just. You did it just to flex socially at that point. And clearly there's value in don't get me wrong, played a lot of Destiny, played a lot of all the video games where you have to go grind, played RuneScape where you're not able to get it.
Speaker 2:But and my point is this, if there is enough demand for individuals to play games and spend thousands of hours playing games where they earn fake assets that aren't worth anything outside the confines of the game, how much more willing are people going to be to play a game that earn them assets that are relevant to the game but also have value outside of what the game developers say, and that, like summarizes my bull thesis on gaming and how it's going to work with NFTs. When you bring your wallet your Ethereum wallet, your Solana wallet, whatever it is into a video game, you are bringing your own decentralized identity and you're bringing your actual assets into the game with you and you bring them back out when assuming you didn't lose them, or whatever, because you spent them on something right.
Speaker 2:And when you buy an NFT that is an asset in a game, you own that asset regardless of what happens to the game, right? And so there is a. There's a famous quote, and it's Jeff Bezos that makes this quote here, and Bezos said that your take rate is my opportunity.
Speaker 1:And the ID here is that, and what do you I saw your tweet when you said that. What did you say?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I was thinking about this a while ago. Your take rate is my opportunity and there's a great thread by some other VC. I think it's an A16G guy. I'd have to go check. I should live about this.
Speaker 2:The summarizes with Axie and the ID here is that, like there were companies that Bezos was competing with that had incredible margins, meaning their profit margins were thick and they made. If it costs 30 bucks, they made 100 bucks, and Bezos saw that their margin was his opportunity to come in and undercut their competition. And so with something like Axie, what was something like a traditional video game game, developers keep and owners of the game keep all revenue spent on the assets in the game. In a model like Axie, where it's play to earn, where you actually pay assets to other players, where there's NFTs that get exchanged, nfts that get sold, the model of the margins get shrunk drastically. They get shrunk by 95%, but it doesn't matter, because they beat the competition. They absolutely correct the competition and they award all of the players and all of the capital, and so that, to me, is the future.
Speaker 2:I'm very bullish on the metaverse. I'm very bullish on my assets, or my assets, I'll be able to take my crypto punk with me or whatever it is like. In all these different worlds and all these different games and people and no game developers can be able to ban my wallet and take my assets and take my whenever my legendary cloak was. Then I heard so that's sort of like my very basic thesis on gaming and NFTs and why I view gaming as a perfect opportunity for crypto.
Speaker 2:But how about answering any?
Speaker 1:other questions or elaborate on that. When you, there was something that I completely went away from me. We'll have to go back to it. I'll start by telling you a story like yesterday.
Speaker 1:I had one of my neighbors when I was telling him what I was getting involved in. I was talking to him about NFTs. I was like this is something I've been talking about for the past six months. He's in the game, he's in the Fortnite, he's in all these things, and when I was describing this to him, I said when you buy a skin in Fortnite? He chuckled his great example, because it's really important when I'm explaining these things, to make it relevant to the person you're explaining, to Give them a real life example and a use case of what this actually means, how this technology can apply to them, Because a lot of people can't see that. And so I said, well, I asked him a question do you actually own that Fortnite skin? And he was like well, he's out there for about 10 or 20 seconds. And he's like well, no, I said well, what exactly are you paying for then? And it clicked right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know and listen, I play Fortnite with my brother, I play Fortnite with my cousin and if you see the OG skins in Fortnite it's a big deal. But the idea that you don't own that is crazy. And there's so much economic activity that could be added and could be spurred and could be created by transferring ownership of those assets to just licensing ownership, and that's something that fundamentally, nfts are going to change for gaming. I also really interested in how token economics work in conjunction with NFTs in terms of how native currencies and those types of things plug into video games themselves in their interaction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so too, and I think you know my, of course, I grew up playing like Pokemon. I grew up playing like all those games of the Game Boy, and you know that's like to me, that's like what Axiom is. It's a new age version of Pokemon. Like, you have your characters, battle and you can. I've never played Axiom. You know it's a little bit more than that, but you know it's essentially a beefed up version of that. Now my curiosity I've always been an FPS gamer, you know. I've always been a big Halo guy. You know, big Call of Duty guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it literally changed my childhood.
Speaker 1:I bought it at well parents at TimeBoughtonXbox, just to play Halo. I couldn't even hold the controller in my hand. You know so much nostalgia there, right? You know my fascination is how, and now I'm currently playing Valorant, which it's?
Speaker 1:I'm touching this because Valorant in my opinion you cannot find a game that has better skins than them. They are so expensive. But there is nothing that can be the Valorant skin, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, please look like. Look up. Like the Elder Flame skin on Valorant. It is literally okay, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, I've seen this game.
Speaker 1:They're also with how FPS and NFTs and like these like and gaming works with, with a lot of these tokenomics and this in this, like how does that all work? Like that's. To me, that's like the million dollar question. And, taking it a step further, is esports being built, like you know, being built on the blockchain, like that's? I know, yeah, yeah, that's totally that's my thing and I just don't. I haven't even come up with a thesis on how that would work. You know, I haven't even come up with like an idea of how that would work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's a great. The specifics, the details are. The devils are always in the details, for sure, but the details and specifics of how it's going to play out are not nearly as important to me as, like the, as having the infrastructure in place to facilitate it. And so, like, I'm confident that if we get the infrastructure built out, if we onboard the users, if we bring more people into you know, into and we get more people comfortable with with Web 3, like that's going to get built and I can't wait, I can't wait for an eSports game that, like, perfectly plugs a little bit of back end on Web 3, where, if I want to go, if I want to go play Valorant, I plug in my Metamask account and my super rare NFT Valorant skin is, you know, only shows up in Gator because I plugged in my Web 3 account and that's the asset, that and like.
Speaker 2:And then when I go win around, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you know, maybe I can, I can seamlessly bet right on this eSports. So, like, I can seamlessly say I'll throw, I'll put $5 on an escrow or whatever it is for for this particular match If I win the match. You know, I mean the, the. The possibilities, once the tech is optimized, are truly endless. I really could not be more excited on on gaming as it relates to crypto. I think it's one of the more overlooked aspects of sort of the marriage of NFTs. I think it's honestly the most low hanging fruit, or NFT for NFT like for for NFT mass appeal if you want to make NFTs explode, if you want to onboard people in crypto, make video games that use Metamask and use NFTs.
Speaker 1:So this is actually something that's been popping into my head a lot, though. So the more in this has to exactly do with gaming, the more I read about Solana, the more I watch about watch Solana, the more I believe, like, I think that Ethereum and Solana have like their. I don't think one is going to overtake the other. I think they have both two independent. They're both going to excel, in my opinion, and parallel. Um I. The way I look at this is that, like when we, when we're talking about tech being optimized and games being built on web three, like if I think about that on the current state of Ethereum, like my I I actually get sick to my stomach of how cringe that would be. You know, like how slow it is, how clunky it is, like yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 1:So I think, that you know NFTs like when you talk about like fine art collectibles, you know PFP projects. That's to me forever going to live on NFTs Like I could never if I bought that in Solana. It just wouldn't have the same vibe. You know, like I, I don't get the same feeling.
Speaker 2:But yeah, well, part of that, part of that is and part of that. Just just to interject for a second like one of the biggest parts of art collecting and and the sort of value of art collecting is tradition and history. Like one of the most important attributes and elements, like core elements, is is is history and tradition. And Ethereum did it first. And all the NFTs that are on Ethereum the old ones, the OG ones, have been around for a while. Like art blocks are clearly like the first a big generative art play right, like like Crypto punks are clearly the first like so they have history. Solana right now is brand new. The NFTs that are on Solana, they're awesome. I have a lot of them, but they they currently don't have the same sort of, they don't have the same sort of weight distribution and culture.
Speaker 2:yet yeah, no, and and this is why I actually agree with you I'm mostly bullish on Solana NFTs for gaming.
Speaker 1:I was just about to say that it might be transactions in gaming, like I'm.
Speaker 2:I'm. I'm excited about Star Atletes, like for for. For this exact reason and I may not think their model I had, or guys don't want to think their model. Like I I am very excited about what games people are going to build on Solana that use NFTs on Solana. I'm also bullish on Ethereum games. I just think it's going to take a while. We're going to have to figure out some scaling solutions. We're going to have to figure out how that's going to work and how it's going to integrate. But I think you have it right in that currently, the culture, the tradition, the art, a lot of that it has a premium when it's on Ethereum. Yep, it's special when it's on Ethereum and it's OG. Right now, I don't feel spectral for being on Solana. I do think that changes over time. Like I do think the first Solana NFTs become more valuable. Um, I just you know they just got mentioned. They're brand new.
Speaker 1:Right, it's almost like the words, like literally verbatim, like right out of my mouth, like where I was going with Solana and gaming and start out, this was, like my, my biggest like use case, for that was like. You know, I haven't done a whole lot of research on the actual Solana platform or how it all works, but just just the, the look, the Christmas, like the, the graphics are are pristine, I mean cause. That's what got me thinking. I'm like if you try to put that level of graphics on Ethereum, that just won't work.
Speaker 1:You know, like cause, that was built with Unreal Engine 5, you know, and and that it it looks so so so incredible, you know, and in my questions around, like you know, is is there a? Is there a a time where, down the road, where Ethereum NFTs can go on to the like, it's like the interoperability of NFTs on each chain. Like if you could put a fine art, like, say, you're in a ship in Star Isle and you could like deck out your ship with a spray, you know, with a piece of art that you bought from a crazy collector, like, say, like a, or if you're in the ship, you could put like a picture of your Fidenza in the ship, right, like. You know what I mean. Like, is there a? Is there a point where they can connect and you can actually like use those and all the chains connect and everything is meshed together to where it's seamless? Do you ever see that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, there is a point I mean, there's a look, there's a point where the tech becomes, where the technology, where the technology is is able to do that. The bigger question is like yeah, the bigger question is how, what will the demand be like for that specific type of thing? Where will it be? Where will it be? How will it be situated?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we're still several years out from that actually happening. Like we need to see the actual games built first and we need to see, like yeah, we need to figure that out. I do see a world that happens where you can have multiple wallets connecting, and maybe even from multiple chains. I think we're a long way out though.
Speaker 1:Like, yeah, I'm one of those people that has always liked to like live on the absolute edge of things and like think about, like, even even when we're like so early, like point zero, zero one percent of people know about this, like I'm trying to add five more zeros to that about like what this could look like. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, I mean listen and listen, that's like that's super important. It's really important that we have people that think that way and that that are constantly living on the edge and pushing the boundaries right, like that's. We wouldn't have gotten to where we are in the space now if it weren't for people like that. So, and I mean, I do like to spend a good chunk of time and I had space as well, but yeah, no, I don't know. I don't know when that's going to happen. I just think I think it's an issue of, like priority in terms of execution, and so I think there's other stuff that we have to optimize first. There's other stuff that we have to prioritize before we can get there, and but I don't know. You know, maybe, yeah, maybe somebody should be, I mean, and there are teams that are working on like cross chain compatibility, like we have Rune and Thord chain. It's clearly working on like this general decentralized atomic swap thing, but then, yeah, but the but the world you're describing, I think it happens.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no, no. I'm not sure I wanted to get your take on that because, like I like I can see the immediate future and I can see this playing out, but like, okay, let's take that a step further. One of the one of the switch gears, a little bit man like, because it's the it's the topic around cryptocurrency that I know I say the least about is around DeFi, and it's something I like, I'm excited about it, but I don't, I don't, like all I know, what I know, has come from fractional, so I have like a huge thanks to, like, andy Dee's, the team for building that because, like that to me, is one of the greatest ways that I could learn anything about DeFi, because I'm buying pieces of art of people that I like it creates a feeling that we were talking about, you know. Yeah, I think it's interesting.
Speaker 2:It actually works both ways. I think I think fractional, fractional listen, I love fractional. Love Andy, love Dee's love with their building. Fractional is incredible and I've talked about how incredible fractional is for quite some time. It this? What you're describing is an underrated aspect of what fractional has done and is doing, but it's it's not. But it's not any less important than some of the other problems. That solving what fractional is doing for people that are into NFTs is exposing them to DeFi. What it's bringing for people that are into DeFi that use Uniswap, that you understand how liquidity provision works, it's allowing them to come learn NFTs in a way that is totally in their own native language and that is fascinating to me. Like that is, it's brilliant. And fractional, like I still think fractional, fractional has a great working product, totally works. I own I participated in Justin's twin token I have some of. Anonymous is X copy. Five eyes I have. I think I have three or four other fractional tokens.
Speaker 2:So I have a list of fractional tokens. They're awesome, it's really cool, it's a brilliant idea, but what you're exactly describing is totally correct. You, as an NFT person, now get to sort of understand how DeFi works and the importance of DeFi by owning a percentage of whatever this piece is that's been tokenized and that's incredible. What fractional is going to do is it's going to bring a and we can talk about, like what DeFi is and my thesis on DeFi in a second. What fractional is going to do, in my view, is it's going to bring this sort of extended liquidity and extended program ability to NFTs that is so important If you want to expand the market for NFTs right now.
Speaker 2:You know there are funds, that there are some funds like three hours capital, for example. I documented this and I've chat with them all the time like three hours capital bought a bunch of NFTs them and Vincent Van Doe. They ate into tons of crypto punks or blocks, curated, you know. They even boxed between flames deaf beef all these like very, very classic works of art they ate into. But they're you know they're a bit different. I mean, they're very much built, different in terms of how they, how they allocate capital, how they invest all that stuff, and so they were like sort of some of the first, that's what they ate into actual NFT ownership.
Speaker 2:But the problem for many funds is that NFTs are not liquid. Nfts are difficult to value and when something is not liquid and it's when it's difficult to value like it's just there's a certain risk profile. The risk profile is totally different and it's not enough for somebody that wants to get $8, $10, $50, $100 million into an NFT sector, an NFT space, it's very difficult to do that.
Speaker 2:Fractual is going to make that possible. Fractual is going to allow big funds to spend money allocating towards NFTs, fractionalizing it, gamifying it, getting a liquid much faster, you know, in terms of their investment, because now the token can be traded freely and, no, no, they don't have to worry about finding a buyer for a $10 million NFT, and they can, and that can be something that makes their investors happy as well. So I'm extremely bullish on what fractional is going to do for bringing institutions in the NFT space.
Speaker 2:That's what it enables, but I also am very excited because it is going to allow NFTs to come into the DeFi space. So the first part of like is it creates this liquidity, but it also creates more programmability, which means when you have these tokens that can now interact with any DeFi protocol, you can now buy a twin token and you can go lend it out and get paid interest to lend out the token, or you could borrow the twin token to do something with it. Or maybe you could stake. Maybe Justin launches some token or some platform where if you stake your twin token as collateral, it helps, secures the network and you earn some sort of yield. There's all these different complex financial things that can be done with tokens that can't be done with NFTs. That fractional is going to enable and so I mean, yeah, it expands the economic opportunity for NFTs. Gotcha A hundredfold Gotcha.
Speaker 1:In my view, one of the questions that I have around this is that, and first and foremost, I didn't even think about the institutional level. The way I viewed it was simply from the person who needs a lower barrier to entry at the time to learn. So it's like for someone like me. What I did was like I was probably at five to six different fractional vaults. I just invested.01 ETH, literally like 20 bucks, 20, 25. Yeah, dude, and I just spread that across to them like okay, I'm an experiential learner. I can't just read about this and understand the concept, especially when I don't understand D-Fi in general. I'm very new to it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Hey. Hey hey, hey, hey, I also this. I applaud you for her learning by doing that's difficult to do, it's risky and scary to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know, like I was just a couple times where I got really excited and I was off on the map like, instead of just like I forgot to move the zero two times over and I thought I was going to make like $5,000 on a $20 investment but then someone was like, no, you forgot two zeros. I'm like but, but you know it's just just to show the emotion. But still, even though I look, instead of 5,000, it was 50, you know I put in 15. That is still a 3X gain on my investment and I'm like, okay, that's kind of dope Right. So similarly for the beibe with non בbabibi and, of course, the apple tree tree.
Speaker 2:And you remember when one of the dos기- I mean it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's like a dope in me and rush right like I think that either it's it's incredibly, incredibly addictive, dangerously, yeah, yeah, but yeah, I think the question.
Speaker 1:I have. Is it like so when someone you know Fractalizes or they, they create a vault and they and they give up dinner team, put it in the fraction, lock it up at the fractional vault? You know like you have the option to either provide a little quiddy pool or to not like what is. I know what it look like. I guess I don't even fully know what a liquidity pool is like. I know that liquid means money and I know that you know you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I Can explain yeah, I can explain like a yeah and there's probably a video and send you that you can show notes people that are interested.
Speaker 2:So a liquidity pool basically is a pool of Tokens or Cabell from which people can that that can buy and sell into, right? So for example is you know, let's say there's, let's say there's, a hundred tokens for a project. If I own 80 tokens, it's gonna be difficult for me to sell all 80 tokens into a liquidity pool Because there's likely not enough liquidity for me to sell into. And so liquidity providers long, for example, uniswap. They get paid in fees every time somebody swaps. Now you know they may lose Money in terms of like, they may not when they, when they provide liquidity, it's typically 50 50s, but 50% they're token and 50% of them in Ethereum or USDC or whatever, whatever the pair it.
Speaker 2:And when people swap, it's swapping out those tokens and that of course caught, you know, raises the price, lowers the price, that sort of thing. So they may end up losing If the took. If one token goes up way, way, way more than the other one, they may end up losing a little bit, but they end up making out okay because they earn fees on it. But liquidity pools are incredibly important if you want to be able to buy and sell an asset, um, without going directly to find, without finding a single, appeared a peer party where you can just I sell to Kyle, kyle sells to me. Liquidity pools are ways to pool capital that people can buy into and sell into. You know, regularly, all the time, yeah, that's sort of I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Now I'll still have to do some more research because, like the, I didn't even what's what's wild about the, about defi's, that I probably understand more about finance from the very little I know about defi that I have in traditional finance all the way up to this point, which I think is the fascinating thing about this, because, like I Don't even I like when I when I saw my parents like you know, like my parents were telling me about, like you know, investing in 401k and stocks and all these other things, and, like you know, then Robin Robinhood came out with fractional shares and I'm just like that all seems so boring, like that is like that is just the most boring thing.
Speaker 1:I don't want to learn about this like this, is this like I could be, so I could be doing something so much better with my time, and I think that's what, honestly, the way I'm looking at this, is that traditional finance wants it to seem so, where it's all gate kept and it's all like Insider knowledge to where you want to go play outside, versus making your money work for you. You know what I mean of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean yeah, no, you're exactly right and I mean in boring and safe is how. What boring and safe is is yeah, boring and safe is how a A lot of people about how a lot of people are the traditional financial system in the United States Right, they're okay with boring and safe. The problem is, like the way that inflation has gone, the way that monetary policy has changed, the way that spending has changed, the way that inflation, the way that asset inflation has happened, boring and the yields are bad now, and so boring and safe doesn't cut it anymore. Boring and safe would cut it. You know 30, 40, 50 years ago, boring and safe is not boring and safe. It doesn't. It doesn't, it's not working for people that are our age at all.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, I mean, yeah, crypto is a revolution, crypto is a crypto is a revolt against the traditional financial system in many respects. I mean, you know, I was just having a chat with like another good friend of mine who Actually, born and raised in Venezuela, you know, was a, you know, was a political activist for a long time in Venezuela. I an advocate for free speech and for property rights and economic freedom, you know, and Because you know, at the time when he was in Venezuela, the their monetary policy was horrible, property rights were horrible. The government can just take your shit any time. You know, the taxation is horrible and if you criticize the government for any of these actions, you can get, you can go to prison.
Speaker 1:You can get out and get all this stuff.
Speaker 2:We're literally bad and like you know he yeah, that's experience where he didn't, he didn't, he didn't have a lot of well, what little. You know what little money he and his family had. It was often taken from them. He got it gets. He valued. When he spoke out against it. You know he tried, he was. He was almost killed several times. They try. They kidnapped his pugs. I'm thinking it was him, wow.
Speaker 2:One point and yeah, yeah it's really scary stuff, right, it's like it's no. So. Stories like his are the types of stories that, like, really make me excited about the crypto revolution, what we're building, and that, like when he talked about crypto and he talked about building permissionless networks, and he talks about owning money and owning control of your capital and owning control of your assets, like it's deeply personal to him, you know, because, because, because the experience that he's had and I don't I don't think he's alone in In I mean you know his experiences.
Speaker 2:Of course, you know very bizarre and insane and crazy to happen him, but his perspective on the world and his perspective on finances he's not. He's not alone in that perspective, and so I'm extremely both on the crypto revolution. But I also believe it's incredibly important, like I really do think that democratizing economic opportunity, giving individuals and communities ownership of their own assets, ownership of their own work, is incredibly important, and cutting out middlemen, both corporate and state, it, you know it couldn't be, it couldn't be more important right now for, for, for the society and culture that we're living in. So, like the crypto world, like it's really cool. When I get into nerdy stuff, the very stuff is awesome I get so we're setting up about that I also just excited about, like the ethos of the, of the, of what we're building.
Speaker 2:I get excited, you know, to talk to people like him, where, where I see the passion and I see the, I'm reminded of the importance of what it is that we're building On, a, on a bigger perspective about like it can be really easy to get caught up in this, like, oh, I flipped this NFC and made this money and like, and it's really great that happens.
Speaker 2:It's like huge, healthy market activity. In many respects it's like it's good there's demand, it's good that people were flooding in, but there's a there's a bigger perspective here that we also have to remember and, yeah, it makes me very bullish on people, it makes me bullish on humanity, it makes me bullish on crypto and it makes me more, if you've been excited to work in the industry, right Like it. The industry is fast, it moves fast. There's a lot of burnout that happens each crazy. The markets just move, unlike any other markets. But you know, when I feel like it burned up, when I feeling burned out, I you know the package tends to get renewed when I hear it's like that and so, yeah, that's sort of that's sort of a little bit about why I mean, and I'll tell you, like I've Very similar.
Speaker 1:I and I think Jimmy. Jimmy said the best, which is what sparked a lot of like me Just reaching out to a bunch of people to start talking about NFTs. Even more is that I was watching a podcast where Jimmy was on with Gary V and he was like the best way he could describe just specifically NFTs, you know, was that he's like you know, think of like NFTs is like the, the lost treasure, and we are the goonies who just found the lost treasure that's gonna save the town. Except instead of treasure, the threat, what the treasure represents is the imagination that we had as little kids of what this world could be, and it gave me it.
Speaker 1:Sit chill. I'm like, wow, this is like my, you know, because I've always envisioned this like incredibly technological future. I've been really bullish on like how technology can make an impact in people's lives, like just a, just a small story, like I kind of like people remember and I were literally kind of right on by the times airs would be a little bit passive, but you know, like how people remember where they were on 9-11, like exactly what they were doing, what happened, and like when they first heard that news. I felt the same way about when Steve Jobs pulled the iPhone out of his pocket. You know like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, I feel the exact same. Feel the exact same Happened, I've already happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I remember I'm gonna pay $550 for a 4 gigabyte, no 3g, no app store, edge cellular iPhone, you know, because in on top of the revolutionary technology, no one's a better presenter than Steve Jobs and I'll die on that hill like.
Speaker 2:I Absolutely, I mean yeah, and I think touching on it.
Speaker 1:We took a slice of there, but I want to touch on something that it relates to like when the passion dies out, like hearing stories like this, it how it democratizes access across the entire world. Something that we actually I think this whole podcast was built on this connection was Around pseudonymous cultures. You know, around pseudonymous investments. You know around this like idea of a pseudonymity and, yeah, you know, like the way I see this is that and I actually I can't remember what podcast I listened to that you were on that really got me thinking. You're like we all have. We all have as humans, we all have natural biases that like Based on how we're raised, how we're, like where we grew up. You know we all have natural biases as human beings and what the pseudonymous culture does, or like when you're investing in NFTs, you're investing in crypto, you're also investing in the pseudonymous slash anon culture.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, no, oh yeah, I mean, and so, right, right, I'm not the best person to talk about this honestly and I would say I'm at, I'm I'm quality to talk about it. The best person you need to go listen to on the rise of pseudo anonymity and the pseudo anonymous culture is the logic Bellagy, shreeney Vasan, one of the founders of coin, early guys at Coinbase, so the buy of that company, very much a futurist technologists big on Twitter. He talks about pseudo anonymity all the time. But yeah, no, I mean, I'm extremely bullish on what pseudo anonymity is going to do from an economic activity perspective. And you know, like there's so many, there's so many aspects of pseudo anonymity or just straight up anonymity that are that, that were, that give power back to individuals where, where the power was taken from the individuals in the first place, in my view, and so when you, when you will have a student, that, when you have a, you know an anime character as your profile picture online, you know there may be a separate type of discrimination that happens on a pseudonymous level, but there's, there's, there's far less that there's. There's different, it's a, it's a. It's a very different animal and I think pseudo anonymity helps solve many of the, specifically when it comes to economic discrimination that happens to people on the basis of race, gender, you know, sexual orientation, orientation, age, appearance a lot of that stuff gets solved from an economic opportunity perspective in a pseudo anonymity, in a pseudo anonymous culture, and that's where I think was headed at least a big part of it is and I Think I think it's incredibly important to protect that.
Speaker 2:I think it's incredibly important to protect people that want to remain anonymous and like I've written checks that's two and a half teams. I wrote a checks mononymous team bits week. I funded it, a fund of anonymous team this week and so like it's gonna take a long time for people to get comfortable with that. It's gonna take up because it's gonna take. It's gonna take a long time but people are starting to warm up to it. It started to become normal. Some of my best friends are, you know, anonymous or pseudo anonymous on the internet and and it's Part of it's just a cultural thing like there are certain generations that are living right now that will just never be okay with that for the most Far, and it may take several generations for it to be totally comfortable. Yeah, but it's absolutely that the question.
Speaker 1:One of the ask is like, you know, because you probably invested in in people to where you know their identity. You know like and so so when, when looking, I guess the question I have for you is like, what's the like when you ask yourself questions on like, do I invest? How much do I invest? What are some of the questions that you ask yourself? Like on a pseudo anonymous versus like you know, a completely transparent you know, and non anonymous you know team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. I mean it helps when there is some sort of social referral right. It helps when there's somebody that I know, that you know. It helps when there's somebody that I know that vouches. That type of thing is really, really huge. It helps when I can have a chat with the team. It helps when I can sort of build even though they're anonymous if you're anonymous it helps when I can construct a Rithk profile and understanding about them in the context of their pseudo anonymity and that you know that really does help. There's a lot of questions. Some of the questions are like, for example, if they're wanting a DAO, making sure that, like, the funds that I'm sending are in a multi-sig right and like it's not like controlled by one person, and if there is other people that I do know and trust you know, that have an incentive to keep the funds secure, like that's an example of something that increases my comfortability level and this type of pseudo anonymous investment, you know, outside of that.
Speaker 2:I mean it just depends on what they're building honestly Like.
Speaker 1:there's probably a lot of other questions I would ask, but it's going to depend a lot of what they're building Gotcha and what I'm here to say also, and it ties into it's wild how this all webs together, but it ties to a lot like what I hear is a lot of social currency, you know, it's like it's like who these people are and like some of it and the social reputation of people. Yeah, you know, even tying back to fractional and DeFi like I was one of the first investors in Deez's hoodie punk, right, and you know, and I actually put that as my PFP and I've seen, you know, and along with what's wild about that is like, even though I fully own the entire punk, there was still a weird set and I say weird just because it was different a different feeling I never felt before. It was almost like a sense of responsibility and putting that profile picture on my Twitter because, like, there's a culture around punks, there's a social currency around punks and like, when you see a punk, you immediately, you immediately think trust.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah. No, I've trusted the same owners to do not knowing they are but knowing just because they're punk owners is insane, Like it's crazy. It really is crazy. There's like I mean, you know, in fact, I used Deez actually before and this was like months ago, this was like four months ago at least, maybe five, and I use Deez is like an escrow and, like you know, I sent him $100,000 NFT.
Speaker 2:Like he could have just run off with. It is what I'm saying Like and he totally didn't. Because there is this like even in anonymous suit, in pseudo anonymous culture, if there's like this, there is a separate identity that you're building up and there's still social reputation attached, it's just a very different type and a very different kind and it is really, really compelling. It makes me, it makes me buy into the fact that pseudo anonymity is going to like, that we're going to overcome the problems associated with people trusting pseudo anonymity, because I can see it already happening on a small scale and they're like okay, it's worked, we've seen it happen, it's done, it's going to continue to work, it's just a matter of time. But yeah, I mean, yeah, it's crazy, you're totally right. Like when you have a punk profile picture, when you own a crypto punk, when you have that, you know, whatever it is like, it's not just fun, because it's other communities as well.
Speaker 1:There is a there's an impact associated with it.
Speaker 2:And there's a, there's this sort of social credence that you get. That's at this base level of respect and it's impressive. It's really really, it's really really fascinating to watch. It makes me more excited about the future and make me more excited about the pseudo anonymous future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think, tying a bow on this all before we start wrapping things up, is that, like you know, that's, I think, one of the most on top of all of like the cool smart contracts and R and R. I guess, beneath all of that, is that like one thing that I have really noticed or I've loved about the crypto world is that to the outside world, people who aren't involved, cryptocurrency just sounds shady. It just has. It doesn't have like crypto. Crypto like it sounds very like like we're hiding something. Right, that's what that's the feeling that I got, at least when I first heard about it. But like when I, when I dove head first into the community, is that like this actually incentivizes people to do the right thing? Like that's like the thing that I yeah, great.
Speaker 2:And there's great economic incentives, right Like there's yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're totally right.
Speaker 2:More, more Prices in the whole culture is just incentivize you to do the right thing.
Speaker 1:Because why? Because everything's public, you can track everything that happens. Could you go create another wallet? All the wallowing.
Speaker 2:It's all the same ledger. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:You know, and to say that I've never had just ingenuous thought or like a selfish thought, like that's completely, that'd be a complete lie, you know.
Speaker 1:But what this does is this and there are always going to be some shady characters, but people are so less incentivized to indulge that shadiness in this culture than any web to web one and pre web culture that I've ever been a part of. Agreed, yeah, and that means what is like, that's like the heartbeat of this, because I've never met, I met the most genuine people. I've never even seen their face, like I've never seen, like yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely man. But yeah, I want to start wrapping things up, man, you know, and just to just to give the audience like a nugget to chew on, you know, for people that are just getting involved, you know, whether it's NFTs, whether it's DeFi, whether it's crypto, you know if there, if there's anything that you learn kind of like right, whether it's either right from the beginning or a current experience that you're, that you're having, like what would be a piece of advice that you would share with them, some alpha, if you will.
Speaker 2:Piece of advice and is this related to anything? Is this like crypto generally? Is it NFTs? Yeah, like whether it's a mantra and experience.
Speaker 1:You know a piece of advice, like something that you've like, one of the most valuable things that you've learned. I like to leave the door wide open. I don't want to pigeonhole you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, of course, I mean there's a couple of things. The first one is like, don't be afraid to bet on yourself is one of the biggest things that I would, that I would, that I would say it's crazy how fast the crypto industry moves and it's really, really interesting to see the number of people that I, that I'm friends with in the industry, that have that have experienced immense success financially but also just personally, you know, in the last, in the last two to three years, because they bet on themselves. And I'm not saying you should quit your job and you should go full time trading NFTs or crypto or anything, but what I would say is like, don't be afraid, don't be afraid to put, like to put your neck out, to stick your neck out to take, to take, to take some risks personally, to spend some time learning. The space is so intimidating, and so a lot of people just don't think, a lot of people just don't have the confidence in themselves to sort of take whatever extra leap they're scared to take in terms of getting more involved. Maybe it's doing something like a podcast, you know? Do you know working with some project, doing some sort of community moderation work whenever it is don't, don't be afraid to bet on yourself, that the, the the number of people that I know that have bet on themselves and truly only lost is is basically, is like, basically zero, right, like even the even the people that bet on themselves and lost still learned enough about themselves that they turned it into a win down the line. So, don't be afraid to bet on yourself.
Speaker 2:And then the, the accompanying sort of like general life advice with that is don't be afraid of, don't be afraid of failure, because the, the, the, the biggest, most fundamental driving factor in people not betting on themselves is that they're worried that they're going to fail and that they're going to worry. They're going to worry that it's going to be the end of sin, of fail. So, conquering that sort of fear of failure and and being willing to say I'm going to do this to test myself, to push myself, to see if I can do this on my own, and I don't care if I fail, because if I fail, it's a learning opportunity that's going to, that's going to be the type of thing that takes you to the farthest in this space, like that's like, and not just in the space, but also in life in general.
Speaker 2:But it applies you. It applies most to you need in this space because it's a terrifying one. It's so scary. The type you have to learn, the horror stories you hear about breaking into the community is weird. It's such an in group right now and so I would say don't be afraid to fail. Obviously, I'm not saying, I'm not saying Google every time we'll leverage on you know bit more with all your, all your capital.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying it shouldn't be a degenerate gambler and and and risk blowing up your account. What I am saying is don't be afraid to take to bet on yourself or to take risks, and and don't let the reason that you don't bet on yourself because you're scaled or scared of failure Like that's the biggest thing, if there's another, if there's no reason, if, if, if, if there's some of the reasons, that's fine don't let that reason.
Speaker 1:I like that, yeah, cause I like I'm in a very fortunate position where you know like I love my dog to death and I would I would go to any ends to like make sure he's taken care of. But you know, the reality is that she costs maybe 500 to $1,000 a year. You know it's not that big Like there's not any other responsibility that I have besides paying my own bills.
Speaker 2:So you know, like, if, especially if, you're in a position like that, like, let's say, if you're in a business like that, where you're where your biggest responsibility is your dog and and you kind of like rent, like there's never going to be, you're never going to be, less risk averse, right, like there's never going to be a time, there's never going to be a time where you can afford to take on more risks than right now if you're in a similar position.
Speaker 2:And so what like? Why not Just just do it like? Pull a leaky and do it right Like it's? Your risk profile is only going to get more conservative from here is rock on man.
Speaker 1:Go ahead, Michael. Last thing where, if people want to follow you, people want to get to know you a little better, where can they find you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Yep, Twitter is. Twitter is the best. I mean I'm sure you'll post links. My Twitter handle it's at Michael Tant three, but with capital in capital C, so it's just my name. And then I am the third. So I'm Michael Edward Tant, the third. So the three is just my. I'm the third. So, yeah, that's my handle. Follow me on Twitter. My DMs are always open If you are, if you're building something and you need capital, if you just want to connect, my DMs are wide open. I look at a lot of the old four projects.
Speaker 1:I run a lot of checks, so I'm happy to take a look at any project that and if anyone sees Michael's profile pictures, probably arguably one of the biggest flexes I've ever seen, it is a bit of a flex.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, I have the I'm rocking on Twitter. I'm rocking the CryptoPunk Fid Fidenza background, which is definitely it's about the most flex you can put like in a profile picture all at once. I've seen. I've seen some people that have like that, have made it even more complex and they have done like multiple and then like Fidenza and archetype background and like an auto background and they have like full-cac TV and in the TV is something there's some people that like, have like six or seven or eight NFTs all in there, I probably would have been more complex.
Speaker 1:That's a pretty smooth bet though. That's a pretty good one to have, like pretty good combo to have though. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I'm ready for the Fidenza piece to get to my house. It's signed by Tyler Hobbs. It's done. It's done.
Speaker 1:So I can't Absolutely. We got it. We're definitely going to be doing one of these again. I just got, I got a feeling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good, oh, look anytime in and kind of the pleasure is online. Truly, I love talking about this stuff. I love talking to people who are excited about the space. I mean, yeah, I'm a talker, I'm an extrovert, I like talking to people and I like talking about something passionate about in crypto. Yeah, it's one of the things I'm most passionate about in the world. So, thank you so much for the pleasure of being able to come on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, man. Hey, you have a great rest of your day. Hang on All right. Thank you, you as well. Thank you for listening to the Schiller Vaulted 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 audio platform and leave a five star review to ensure you never miss an episode and to help others discover the Vaulted podcast as well. To stay updated on 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 Boone signing off.