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CURAT3D: A series of conversations with the people shaping the culture and technology of the new internet.
This series is produced by SHILLR -- the most trusted marketing, media & consulting firm in crypto.
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CURAT3D: Derek Edwards Exploring Digital Objects on the Blockchain
Introducing Derek Edwards, Managing Partner at Collab + Currency and Co-founder of Glitch Marfa Gallery.
We dive deep into Glitch's "Every 30 days" project, aimed at giving artists the space and resources to create meaningful work. Next, Derek discusses Collab + Currency's investment strategy in the blockchain space, and how they've been able to fund some of the most important crypto infrastructure we use today. And lastly, we double tap into the intersection of AI and blockchain and the outsized potential for crypto incentives to enhance synthetic intelligence processes.
Derek Edwards:
X (Twitter): https://x.com/derekedws
Writing: https://medium.com/@derekedws
Collab + Currency:
Website: https://www.collabcurrency.com/
X (Twitter): https://x.com/collab_currency
Glitch Marfa:
Website: https://www.glitchmarfa.com/
X (Twitter): https://x.com/glitchmarfa
SHILLR:
Website: https://www.shillr.xyz
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/shillrxyz
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shillrxyz
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@shillrxyz
Attention is just very, very quick moving. We're constantly searching for new ideas, for new concepts, for new things that we can accrete value to just through our eyeballs. Like paying attention to this and 30 days is really a response to those behaviors. It's really about drawing scope and focus to one thing, one object, for one period of time 30 days and really getting folks to kind of just sit with that artist and that object and that exhibition for a prolonged period of time. That we felt was required to at least push back against some of the behavior pattern that kind of seems to exist in our space around attention.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Curated, a series of conversations with the people shaping culture and technology of the new internet. This is a podcast series produced by Schiller, the most trusted marketing media and consulting firm in crypto. Before we jump in with today's guest, we want to make it clear that this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. I am your host, buna, and today I'm joined by Derek Edwards, managing partner at the venture firm CollabCurrency, co-founder of Glitch Marfa Gallery and one of the most respected thought leaders in Web3. Known for being able to see our own corners, him and his team have funded some of the most successful blockchain infrastructure, including Bitcoin, ethereum and Solana. Glitch has also pierced the veil of the local art scene in Marfa by curating some of the most boundary-pushing artists in Web3, including 0x113D, claire Silver, def Beef, joe Pease, emily Xie and many more. Gm Derek, how are you?
Speaker 1:GM Derek, thank you for putting this show on, for having me on as a guest, and I'm looking forward to catching up and talking about all the things.
Speaker 2:All the things. Yeah, I mean, couldn't be. Yeah, honestly, couldn't be more excited. I've, yeah, definitely had the pleasure of listening to a few podcasts you've been on, and then you, you know, on our building space where Fungie and Ben Roy interviewed you. That was a that was a fun one to listen to. So, not gonna lie, during that time I was a bit jealous and I was like man, man, I really want to talk to this guy. So, yeah, it's a treat to have you on and, yeah, happy to hop into things, man. But I just want to give a brief, you know, like one sentence, just a brief intro, like, yeah, derek Edwards is a managing partner of Collab Currency, co-founder of Glitch Martha, overall thought leader in the space and, just as I mentioned offline, but happy to say that publicly, probably one of my favorite writers, minds and thought leaders in the space. So welcome man.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I hope I can live up to some of the kind words that you're saying here. I'll try. I'll certainly try my best and I'm either way looking forward to this conversation. Incredible man.
Speaker 2:Me as well. I think let's just start with something like just straight up off the like, the easy to dive into man, Like just how are you spending your time today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the these days. Well, so I have a. You mentioned I have a couple of gigs I I think about and work on a day to day. The first is I run a fund called Collab Currency. We're an early stage crypto venture fund. We're actually in the process of activating our fourth fund, but we've been investing for a long time in three prior funds, a number of previous cycles, and I guess the way we think about the world at Collab Currency is, you know, this technology stack, these blockchains, trust-minimized environments these are, for a large part, you know, now at the stage where we can start building real applications on top of them that allow us to touch millions, if not tens of millions, of users over the coming years. And what that means as early stage investors is we want to talk and work and invest in the founders and the people that are seeing the world the way that we're seeing unfold and are building things that we think can become valuable categories of product space over the coming decade. That can mean things that look like companies that are doing some similar job to be done in Web2. So you can think of maybe the top companies by market cap in the world. It's you know, it's typically it's through companies that monetize some form of consumer attention. You know, apple does it through hardware, microsoft does it through business tools and software. We've got Google that does it through search. It has meta through social. You can go through the list and draw analogs from previous categories of value and try and find those same pockets of product space here in crypto and blockchains. I think the other way to look at it is that this is just a completely different technology stack, right? So this is a way to build new types of applications on environments that are permissionless and public and composable, and you know the objects are interoperable and I will also be remiss to say that. You know it takes a bit of flexibility to kind of think about where new categories of value can emerge now that we have such a different format by which information can be written, and so I would say most of my time is spent managing the fund, meeting with founders, working with my investors. We have five killer investors now on the team at CloudCurrency that are all kind of owning a very specific vertical. So my day job and where I spend most of the bulk of my time is on that. At Club Currency you also mentioned, I am a co-founder of a project called Glitch Gallery.
Speaker 1:This is a crypto art gallery. Crypto art is one of my favorite things in the world right now. It's a way for creatives and artists to use this permissionless database structure to create new types of artistic works. And, as you draw kind of a line from previous art movements, it's very clear that technology and blockchains broadly and and kind of uh, you know the form factor by which we're just enjoying media today. I think you know most of us are spending 9, 10, 11 hours in front of a screen uninterrupted.
Speaker 1:It's just so obvious that the next generation of talent in creative fields are really going to use these ingredients to make creative works and implies to fine art. And so glitch is about storytelling and exhibiting and partnering and and working with the artists who have both pioneered and steward of the movement but also are looking at these ingredients today in interesting ways. That we think is pushing the the the field. And so I work very closely with two folks Malta, who is a curator with me at Glitch, and Madison, who's the gallery director. The three of us run all the products and programming and exhibitions at Glitch, and so in my limited spare time I do quite a bit over there as well, and then you know, I've got my own kind of like fun personal interests and things that I'm always constantly researching and tinkering with. But anyway, I'm droning on, so hopefully that's a good answer to your first question there.
Speaker 2:Buna, yeah, man, I mean I think the one challenge of my job here is like picking which thread to. So hopefully that's a good answer to your first question there, buna. Yeah, man, I mean I think the one challenge of my job here is picking which thread to pull on, because there's so much here that we could really go down, and I mean, I think the one thing that really stuck out just going to start probably a few different places, but with Glitch, I think all of you guys recently wrote like the 10 rules for glitch gallery and that's something that really, uh, stuck with me. And I think the first one is just like, if it's fun, it's not worth doing. Uh, it's probably.
Speaker 2:One is obviously my favorite um, and I think that probably is a baseline for a lot of the reason why every one of us are here. Like this is, as you mentioned, like this is really hard work uh, and like finding these intersections where you know new, new ways of thinking can emerge and new uh ideas can be implemented, like if this wasn't fun, like none of us would be here if there wasn't some sense of joy, uh, to be able to do this. So, um, that's just like one area that I was like super compelled by Um and really kind of curious. Like you know, multi is one of my like. I'm pretty sure I found Malte through you guys and then started reading his own writing as well.
Speaker 2:But maybe we can just start here. This is just a rabbit hole I wanted to go down and I was curious about is you know, when it comes to glitch, you know what is? You know what is maybe the overall mission here? And I'm just kind of curious, like with the every 30 days project that you guys are doing. How do you guys decide, like, what does the war room look like? How do you guys decide, like, who comes on, uh, and, and how you guys display them?
Speaker 1:yeah, so, uh, first of all, thank you, um, the. The 10 rules for glitch gallery, uh was just as much for us, the three of us, as it was for for people who want to understand kind of how we think about the world unfolding at Glitch and where we think the important areas of attention should really be placed. And you, I mean, it was no mistake that that first one was like critical and so important to us. As, like a North Star, I think I feel very lucky that I live in a time where, in large part, we get to kind of re-architect the way the world works. We now have kind of like these emergent technologies that are quickly growing to become quite important and touching more and more categories of value and more and more verticals, and more and more humans are interacting with them and they're so fundamentally different in how they operate and the types of values that they provide for that we have an opportunity to kind of like change I know it sounds corny, but like kind of change the direction of the world in many ways, and part of my view is, like you know, like there's an infinite amount of things that one can do with that knowledge and it's really important to kind of like and this is going to be different for everyone For Glitch and for us at Glitch and how we think about Glitch it's really important for us to find things that are motivating to us because we find inherent enjoyment and fun in doing those things and we're excited to wake up every day and kind of work on a new problem because it's motivating, because it's fun and we enjoy it and we enjoy working with each other trying to tackle it. So I would say that's very high level, like a rule that we kind of try we enjoy working with each other trying to tackle it. So I would say like that's very high level, um, like a rule that we kind of like try to stay consistent with.
Speaker 1:I think the specific question you're asking is we had we've launched two products so far. Uh, the first product was a year-long um series called every 30 days, and for 12 straight months, every 30 days, we would feature a crypto artist that we felt really was to acknowledge them and their work is one of the individuals that has helped to kind of like bring this movement to bear, and so we featured artists like Snowfro and Larva Labs and Emily Shee and Claire Silver and 113 and Tyler Hobbs and Botto and Vera Molnar and a number of others, and acknowledged some previous work that they had made and we there wasn't anything we didn didn't, we weren't selling any of their new work. We weren't trying to um, you know, we commercialized some, some feature event it, these exhibitions, the series every three days was really just to sit and acknowledge some previous work that we wanted to draw scope and focus to and um, that was really the of of that first year of glitch and the first kind of like series that we brought to market, the. After that first year ended, we launched our second product, uh, which is called 30 days in Marfa, um, applying it to to new work, to future work and uh, giving artists the tools and the resources to be able to sit in space for the same period of time 30 days and make some new, new work. So we launched the first one. It's um, you know, you can kind of think of it as like a kind of crypto art residency, and we paid for the artist, for our first one, the artist, to kind of live in Marfa for 30 days. We gave them resources to the pool and to the gym and to materials and to food and to kind of all the things that they would need to be comfortable, and we worked with them to kind of um, make new work, and the first artist, uh was this amazing, amazing, um crypto artist named die, with the most likes.
Speaker 1:I am a huge believer in their work and and they are and and the the way in which they operate, and they created their first ever long form generative art piece using kind of the art blocks, contracts, and that collection was called Nameless Dread and very much like spiritually embodied, the way they view the world, their you know reaction and promotion of the way technology has just seeped its way into kind of our everyday experience.
Speaker 1:And I feel really proud about about that collection. I think it's to me it represents one of the most important collections of the last few years for a variety of reasons, and I do think that as more folks kind of come to appreciate crypto art and kind of the movement that's happening here, they'll fall back on that collection as a kind of an important one that marks a very important moment in time. The second artist that we're working with, the next residency is actually launching very shortly, here in October, and I don't want to say too much about that? Sure, but it will be the next 30 days in Marfa and there will be a few slight twists this time around. But we're really excited to kind of work with our second artist on this product and let everyone kind of see what they're going to bring into the world here.
Speaker 2:I really yeah, dude, thank you for breaking that down on both fronts. I'm really, you know, I'm really kind of curious, like, why 30 days? Thank you for breaking that down on both fronts. I'm really kind of curious. Why 30 days? I know that that was a theme for the first one, but when you guys were thinking about packaging up the second product and testing this out, what made you land on 30 days? Was it just simply because of a continuation of that? But I'm curious what y'all's thought process was behind that constraint.
Speaker 1:That's a really good question. I don't know if anyone's ever asked us that before. I think there's a few things that come up for me. I think the first is on the internet things, and I've written about this a bit. Attention is just very, very quick, moving. We're constantly searching for new ideas, for new concepts, for new things that we can accrete value to just through our eyeballs. Like paying attention to this and 30 Days was really a response.
Speaker 1:I have so much belief in this movement and the internet and digital and uh kind of the permanency of blockchains and all the things that like kind of have drawn different builders from different areas of life to this tech stack.
Speaker 1:But I also think that there is a inclination to kind of just like rapid fire through ideas and things and concepts constantly, and 30 days is really a response to, uh, that some of just like rapid fire through ideas and things and concepts constantly.
Speaker 1:And 30 Days is really a response to some of those behaviors and it's really about drawing scope and focus to one thing, one object, for one period of time 30 days and really getting folks to kind of just sit with that artist and that object and that exhibition for a prolonged period of time that we felt was required to kind of like at least um, at least push back against some of like the um, kind of like the, the behavior pattern that that kind of seems to exist in our space around attention, um and and.
Speaker 1:In moving into our second product, 30 days in Marfa, um really give artists the confidence that we would be there with them for a prolonged period of time, that this wasn't something that you know they uh could just fire off, that they could sit with and take their time with and let bake and uh iterate ideas with us, on and so on and so forth. And so you know I think there is a and there's, you know there's a. I'm a, you know, a sucker for, for consistency and for concept, and you know we've built our whole lives around this. You know 12 month calendar, and I think there's something very beautiful about that as well, having some of that structure baked into these products. So, yeah, anyway, a couple of reasons that we kind of talked about internally that we hope are meaningful for folks, as, whether they understand or not, as they kind of engage with the stuff we do at Glitch.
Speaker 2:That's incredible, man. Yeah, no, really. Yeah, I appreciate you diving into that. I thought it was. I think it's just super fascinating and I think I didn't really start thinking in terms of constraints and time, uh, until I started, you know, trying to understand, you know, generative art and that's, like you know, obviously a main, uh, you know, um, I wouldn't say a main feature of it, but it's a main area of focus, uh, when it comes to creating these bodies of work and I think taking that, uh, and I really liked the term that you use like taking a stance, uh, cause I just think that, um, this, you know, the, the surface area of this space is like so far wide but it, you know, oftentimes lacks.
Speaker 2:It oftentimes lacks depth, you know, and I think that, uh, planning a flag and saying hey, like pay attention to one thing for this period of time, is there's something really comforting in that. I think that something that really confuses me or where I see there's just a lot of ambiguity when it comes to any sort of artist in residency, like adjacent initiative, and almost it's something that I really enjoy around the creative process, around how people get things done, because I think there's this common delusion that, uh, for I not just with in in the creative world, but just with all of us is that like we need all this time to do something like we. We need to have all this uninterrupted time, uh like infinite, to let something forge. And oftentimes I've done some of my best work and seen some other creators do some of their best work under a few sets of constraints.
Speaker 1:Oh man, there's magic in everything you're saying right now. I totally agree. And there was this God, it was in a magazine or is in an article that I read like at the end of high school or early college and I can't remember the exact line, but it was something like tight constraints yield creative results, and that line has stuck with me, uh, since it's. It's so true, these, these, the idea of self-imposed constraints.
Speaker 1:There is magic in in constraints, constraints if you can really kind of leverage them in the right way. And it's, you know, I think there's healthy constraints and there's unhealthy constraints and it's trying to find the balance between that. But I couldn't agree with you more in terms of just the human brain and the human body kind of like acknowledging in like kind of the shadows of the mind, like these constraints that exist as they kind of work through very difficult problems, especially very difficult creative problems, to come up with solutions, and I think different artists or different creatives, different technologists, different founders will come up with like different answers, as these constraints kind of like work their way through their process. But they can be incredibly powerful tools to kind of like seeing the world in very unique ways if you can get the constraints right Totally do.
Speaker 2:I think that's still that last point is probably the most. I think that's everyone's number one challenge. One of my favorite artists and singer is Maynard from Tool, and one thing he shared about his creative process he's like, yeah, sometimes when I'm in between he owns two wineries and is in three bands. This is one of my biggest inspirations. You know, it's like how does this guy do all of this and be so good at it all? And he's like, yeah, like sometimes when I'm in my truck for like 20 minutes waiting on something like I'll write lyrics, I was like that's just so fucking cool.
Speaker 1:Totally, totally. It's like inspiration will just happen from anywhere. I'll also say and I don't know enough about that artist, I do have friends that love Tool and are diehard Tool fans, but I don't know much about them. You said his name was Maynard, yeah, maynard, james, maynard Maynard. And I'll also say, without speaking for Maynard, I'll speak for myself.
Speaker 1:I think the other trick is to find really awesome people to work with, right, and if you're going to take on a lot, uh, so much of it is just like is finding great people to work with and people who think uh creatively, who can work well and like very, um, work well together in ways that are very complimentary, uh, to be able to kind of like achieve superhuman outcomes. Like there's no way that, uh, that one dude can just like do all of it right, like, just like there's no way one dude can run our country or run a corporation, or, uh, it really does take, uh, it's teamwork makes the dream work is something I like to say. And uh, and so much of life is just finding great people to surround yourself with.
Speaker 2:Dude, yeah, I feel like that's like the. The ultimate goal man it's uh, yeah, just doing things with great, like doing great things with fun people and really creative people. So yeah, dude, this was a fun topic to riff on man and like something. That, something that you mentioned a little earlier in this was just this just innate bullishness around this industry and like the opportunity that we have here. So I'm just like kind of curious like what was maybe the first thing that that sparked that for you and like how, like basically, just like what keeps you here, like what got you here, and is that the same thing that keeps you here, or has that evolved?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had a friend, um, who had sold his previous company, um, this was back in 2017. Um, and we were catching up at a, at a party, um, and he had just had, and he had some extra free time. It was actually a couple of my friends there. I was reflecting on this story recently with both of them, just because I ended up just plowing my entire life into this stuff, and they were the ones that kind of brushed the topic and they thought it was just kind of humorous. They're actually both attorneys now. They're both very successful, just like have nothing to do with crypto and blockchain, but, um, they, they both were describing um, I think the I can't even remember what it was. I think it was like ripple. I think they were talking about ripple, um, and like how it worked and, uh, and the tech that it was built on.
Speaker 1:And I had had when I was in business school, I had a friend who had organized these poker nights. This was like 2012, 2013. And like it would be Bitcoin and like that was your, you know you'd buy in with Bitcoin and like so I had some like previous exposure, but like this idea of other products and services leveraging blockchains in this way was foreign to me, and so I remember being at this party and just like talking with them about it and as they were describing how these other products and services work, I had passed the bar. I was, I wasn't practicing, but I was technically an attorney at that point and the lens I viewed things was just like you know, I had a number of ways like tools to use to kind of like evaluate things. I was at, you know, I built startups at that point. I was, I had you know, it was an attorney.
Speaker 1:I was teaching at the University of Oregon at that point and they were telling me about I think it was ripple and I was like this screams like a unregulated security.
Speaker 1:Uh, I was just like I'm going to explain why I think that and I'm like fairly certain that it is. Uh, and so like we got into kind of this argument and so I remember, um, just like going home in the next couple of months, just like just trying to understand what the hell was going on with this technology stack, and I, I just I very quickly realized like this type of database structure was going to eat everything. Like I got it and I started publishing work around or or essays around kind of this idea of putting regulated assets so this was like public securities, private security, startup equity, you know whatever anything like kind of on the regulated side of the asset market on these blockchains. And this was like very early ideas around kind of security tokens. Me and my business partner now we like to joke that we kind of were the security token industry for the first few years because we both did so much work and ran conferences and I ran a think tank for a bit in this area.
Speaker 1:So the way I got into this space was through the lens of just trying to put like trying to think about the hard problems to solve around putting regulated assets on top of blockchains and through that also really came to enjoy this concept of trust minimization, because there was a number of problems that existed when you and a lot of them came down to trust problems when you detached a physical asset or physical rights that existed in the legal air with a digital ledger that was like, interoperable, ran 24, 7, cross, you know, 180 jurisdictions, and there was an elegance to things like bitcoin, which, like, didn't have to serve those same like desires of like trying to match the world in two ways one through this legal layer that was very fragmented across the world, and one that was very permissionless and open and digital. And by understanding inherently bitcoin. I like reworked my brain to understand how things of value could live on top of this tech stack that were that really availed themselves to the benefit of the technology. It was like this huge aha moment for me and once I understood that, it was very clear like this was going to eat it all, like this was going to totally we were going to rework how value exchange kind of was created in the future to fit this form factor because it was so brilliant and so elegant.
Speaker 1:Years down the road, the thing that keeps me here is, I believe all product, all GDP, all store of value assets, all products and services are going to tough in some way touch this technology stack in the future and for me as an investor. So what I do with you know, most of my time is thinking about the sequencing of that reality, like what happens first, what happens second, what happens third, and as these things, you know, get created, what are the second order effects of that thing or the third order effects of that thing? And so much of early stage investing is just trying to see around corners and see the world unfold before it happens. And that's what I've kind of like. Built, you know, collab currency. My business partner built collab currency to kind of try and do so. That's, I don't know, a short end to a longer story there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's incredible man. I didn't know you could be considered a practicing attorney. I remember reading I can't remember which article it was but we were talking about bundling IP rights. I was like, okay, this guy clearly knows, he's clearly had at least some training or hung around lawyers a little bit. I was like, okay, this guy clearly knows, um, you know, he's clearly been, uh, had had at least some training or hung around lawyers a little bit. I was in legal technology before I, before I came here.
Speaker 1:Um so I it, it will.
Speaker 2:You know it's. It was quite boring, but it was really fascinating. You know, um it totally is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the the the academic and research side of law is. So I I not only did I go to law school and pass the bar and technically still qualified, I'm still doing my CLEs but I come from a family of attorneys a working attorney. So my brother is an attorney and my dad ran his own law firm for 40 years. So I've grown up around the practice of law and I can tell you your gut is correct. Grown up around the practice of law and I can tell you your gut is correct the academic and research side of law is just way, infinitely more interesting than the actual day-to-day practice of law.
Speaker 2:Totally, totally, and I think like, since we're on this thread, like one thing I one question I've had, or one I guess. I guess curiosity I've had over the past couple years is like what does it mean to put rights on chain? You know, like, what does it mean to put rights on chain? You know, like, what does it mean to put like what is like how does this impact? You know, like, how does copyright law change when the entire world is is touching these rails? Um, we've seen, you know, a few things with cc0, like we've seen some of the transient lab story inscriptions. I think tjo was one of the first to put like an actual contract, uh, or put rights into the token. Um, so, like, I'm really like this is one of the things that one of those like probably boring topics I'm just really really curious about, cause I think it has an outsized impact.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, I mean, uh, so this is uh, this is a. So I did this podcast. Um, I did this podcast with Carly Riley this was a few years back after Moonbirds had gone CCO and I think I was like the lone proponent on the panel. There was like a Disney IP attorney on the panel. There was a couple others. I can't remember exactly what the makeup of the it was, a saying like hey, this is actually a.
Speaker 1:There's merit to the, this approach where value can accrue to this network of objects without there actually being commercial legal rights you can defend in legal space. Uh, which I think I think it's becoming slowly more obvious to people. I mean, x copy is an amazing example of this. The most networked artist in crypto on planet Earth generates millions of dollars in both primary and secondary sales. All of his objects are CCO and I think people are starting to realize that there's. I'll take a step back and just talk a little bit about how I think about property rights in general and then how that may be help those. That way of framing may be helpful or not helpful in crypto, but if you take a look at X copy as an example, he made it all of his work, cco. You can remix and commercialize any of his works in any fashion that you see fit. There are no jurisdictional binds or any sort of clamps that exist towards remixing or using his work in any meaningful way. And yet the prices of his objects are just going exponential. And you know so.
Speaker 1:I wrote this piece Storing Value in Digital Objects a few years ago, where I made the argument that, inherently, value starts with attention. And if you believe that in an internet age where we're spending 10 hours a day in front of these screens, you know there is immense power to compounding attention, that happens like through things like remixing and through things like alleviating some of the constraints around how work is shown in this like very natively digital environment, and if you believe that's true, then the benefits that you can accrue that can translate to an object may far outweigh and far outpace those that may accrue to traditional legacy models of protecting IP, of like defending it, of preventing people from sharing it and preventing attention unwanted attention coming to that object. Now, of course, there's trade-offs. Right Like this isn't perfect for everyone. There's going to be different business models that people want to employ or enjoy. But on the face, there are real reasons why stimulating attention around an object and removing some of kind of the legal layer implications of an object can be so instrumental to value accrual at the intersection of internet, digital objects and a kind of attention being in like this natively digital environment for more and more people every day. And so I would just say CCO is like a first manifestation of that idea that's starting to kind of like pick up, and for the audience that's unfamiliar, cco is just another way of saying just kind of like you're removing kind of the commercial restrictions around the intellectual property that may exist and people are free to kind of commercialize or remix or do whatever they want without limitations or scope to kind of a previously defendable IP.
Speaker 1:Now I think, just as another mental model that I have is the way the world works today I've mentioned this before but just for just hand-wavy back-of-the-napkin stuff there's like 180 countries on planet Earth and each of these countries has their own rule of law. They have their own governmental structures, law, they have the you know their own governmental structures. They have their own politics. They have their own legal layers that has been developed through case law or through statute for hundreds of years and you know those things aren't actually interoperable with one another. The laws of other countries don't apply to the laws of of how we rule and make law here in the United States. These things are very jurisdiction specific. So that's part one. Part two is humans have created a technology that leverages a 24-7 global permissionless database where value can be exchanged across the world through, like these digital networks that aren't even visible to the eye in nanoseconds, and we now have like square peg round hole where we've got this fucking brilliant technology stack that allows value to be created and written and and and traverse, uh, multiictions in the blink of an eye and this very legacy, old, you know, like fragmented way of making laws. That is very jurisdiction specific. So that's part two.
Speaker 1:Part three is you know property rights are, you know, are, a subset of like the legal air, like how we view who owns what, who can defend what. And as we move into things that are more digital, it's easy to say like who you know truly owns a house on a plot of land that you know, I think in there's a number of you know third world countries where, like, defending land use is actually a huge problem, but for many countries, you know, it's very easy to say, like that plot of land exists there that's owned by this person, you know that parcel that exists here can be defended by that person. We've got this, you know registry that in the county recorder's office or that the jurisdiction maintains that says who owns that physical property. As we move into kind of digital property, especially digital property that could be largely reproduced for the last 20 years, that can like move quickly and move across jurisdictions very quickly, it starts being very, even more difficult to kind of like establish legal layer jurisdiction over certain objects or certain things. And so, knowing that these two things are just constantly coming out ahead to one another, I think the brilliance of just having all value accrue to the invisible network around an object to me is an elegant way to bypass all of this tech debt, all of this legal layer debt, and to really just stimulate the networks that are now existing in this purely digital environment, this internet environment. And this is why I always kind of like try and reestablish this point over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:I know I sound like a broken record, but I think it's so important.
Speaker 1:It's network digital objects or network digital objects few external dependencies, and external dependencies can mean legal layer.
Speaker 1:It can mean things that you know allow blockchains to speak to, you know, storage networks like IPF, ipfs.
Speaker 1:I think there's merit to these things, just like there's merit to the legal layer, but I think the thing that I always try to impress upon people is that there's a new type of way that value can accrue to these things that has nothing to do with these external dependencies that have existed for thousands of years while humans have been trying to figure this shit out around property rights.
Speaker 1:And leaning into this new tech stack and totally availing yourself to it uh, can produce very interesting outcomes if done correctly to it, can produce very interesting outcomes if done correctly, and so I know I'm rambling in like all sorts of crazy directions. It's probably not where you wanted to go with this podcast, but this concept is something that I think is very important and I think will manifest itself especially in a world where we're now starting to kind of like bring synthetic intelligence into the mix and things can be reproduced so quickly and humans are not even having a hand in the styles and the types of value that can be created on top of these ledgers or elsewhere across the world, dude.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, I teed you right up for that. If I was mad at that, that's my own damn fault, but I really. No, I thoroughly enjoyed that, because it's something that you know with my background. I was like, wow, like this feels like there's an opportunity here. But hearing things parsed out like that into three and four parts of what this is how it works, currently works and what it could be, yeah, like I couldn't think of anyone better to riff on that with, because I look at it as this big, you know, like this big kind of gray area that you know, like we all know, that memes are a product of remixing culture. You know, and it may not make sense for everyone, but we start to get a little hairy when it comes to how we navigate, define, are okay with, etc. Or how we feel about things. And, yeah, I think you honestly just gave me a lot to think about, to be honest.
Speaker 1:I'm still also thinking about all these things.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I have any of the right answers, but I do have a lot of ideas and I think some of them are directionally like on target.
Speaker 1:I think something you said I really want to make sure I double click on establish some sort of like very narrowly tailored outcome, and I think that's amazing. I invest in those companies, like I think there is really there is merit to doing that and defending property and IP, and in that way, there's other creators or creatives or game developers or developers or protocol engineers that don't want to do that and they think there's a different type of compounding value that they can create. And I want to invest in that, as long as there's like a scope and these things are narrowly positioned correctly to the right audiences. And so I think the last thing I want to say on all of these ideas is like there is no one size fits all, and that's the thing I will always believe. There will always be different types of outcomes to be optimized for, and it's really important you have the right toolbox to approach those problems.
Speaker 2:Totally dude. Yeah, I think that's really well put and I think that probably segues into, like another topic. I'm just fascinated by watching you know you on the timeline, whether it's marketing yourself or like you know whether it's you, yeah, just talking about just ideas in general is just how you build attention. You know, it's really interesting to watch and see and you've invested I mean, your fund is invested in some of the you know just some companies that are like just incredibly useful and still here today and it's really wild to look at your portfolio. So I'm really curious, like when it comes to Glitch and when it comes to people that you in teams, that you guys invest in, like how do you build attention for new companies and accounts?
Speaker 1:Wow, great question, man. I wish I had like a playbook to find to say, like this is how you do it. There's a you probably saw this but, like Mr Beast put out like this 30 or 40 page PDF I shared it with a bunch of our portfolio company founders which was quantifying, like how to do it, like how to build a successful production company and, um, monetize and quantify that build in, uh, in a way that, like somebody could learn about it. So, um, there's, there's definitely playbooks. I think those playbooks change as, like the landscape changes, right, like the landscape for creating attention today is very different than even it was five years ago or 10 years ago or even pre-internet. Understanding the, the arena that you're playing in, is just as critical, and how it's evolving and how it's changing in real time is just as critical as understanding yourself and your value, prop and um. And you know I'll take a step back and I'll I'll talk about it from the lens of startup investing and then I'll apply it to this attention thing. So, uh, when you know I'm training my investors to, as they're kind of like engaging with founders and looking at product space and trying to figure out, you know how to see around corners and how to and how to see things at the early stages. I think the very simplified mental model that I've said before in the past, and I'll I'll say it again here, is um right team, right product, right time and products you can interchange for problem Right Like, so like the, the problem that's being solved, and so there's all different kind of like branches that stem out from each of those three things. So, like you know the right team, maybe this founder has experience building in this category before, or maybe they've been doing research in it, or maybe they're an academic, or maybe they've built a previous venture and so they have a track record of success. Or maybe they, you know, were a bus boy at a restaurant but continued to kind of like, see this thing over and over and over again and understand it inside and out. They have some relevant domain experience that makes them the right founder for this job.
Speaker 1:The second is like the right product or the right problem. You know there are an infinite. It gets back to the kind of the thing we were talking about a glitch. It's like there's so much stuff to do, like work on the things that are fun for you. I also think about that in terms of venture and venture capital. Right, there are so many problems to fund. Like I mean there are.
Speaker 1:I tripped over you know something on the floor earlier today as I was kind of like walking out of my house and like that's a problem, like I could figure out how to build some contraption that made it so I could walk around this thing, or like that picked up all my clothes at night or that made me never trip again. But like, is that a venture scale problem? Is that a problem that needs to get solved at scale? Is that something that I want to invest or have others invest millions of dollars into solving? And so not every problem is equal.
Speaker 1:Right, and especially as you think about venture, which is like a very specific type of company, building Like Glitch is not a venture backed business. It's not something that I think warrants venture investment into. It's something that I think can grow sustainably and have massive impact. Just, you know, methodically, like being thoughtful about how it grows and how it generates revenue and how we keep expenses lean and how we grow this thing time as time goes on. It is not something that I think deserves or should be on a venture track. I also think it would lose some of its ability to mobilize in interesting directions if it did that, if it had to appeal to a board or you know, deliver some sort of like bottom line outcome that they could then that we could then fundraise against.
Speaker 1:It puts you on a track, a very specific track, that I don't think it should be on, and I think it may end up causing an adverse reaction to and so stepping back to the three pillars, like this right problem thing is so important you want to make sure that you're investing in like the right type of problem for the tools that you have. And then the last thing is timing, and I promise I'm going to get back to kind of our Mr Beast attention thing after I go through this Understanding kind of the environment and the landscape that you're investing in is so critical. It's just because you you know you've got this amazing founder that's working on this venture style problem doesn't mean that they're building three years too early or five years too late. Right Like this could be a very saturated market at that point or the market might not be ripe enough to support an outcome that's interesting economically for them or for a venture investor. And so timing is another way of just like looking at the environment and making sure that it's all in alignment and integrity with the founder and the problem and all of these things. And so, as a heuristic, that's something that I really try and drive home with our investors. It's really just like. Obviously there's millions of things that subtree out of that, but as a general heuristic, I think it's been very helpful for them to kind of come back to that. I think it's been very helpful for them to kind of come back to that.
Speaker 1:Now, sorry, my computer keeps going on. It keeps shutting off the screen, so I'm just trying to make sure we don't get cut off here. Oh, you're good, dude. Drawing it back to your question, which was like the one about attention, like quantifying attention. How do you build attention? I think those three pillars can really be applied to the same concept, right? So let's see, like, right team, like, who are you as a founder, who are you as an individual, who are you who, like, if you really do some soul searching, like, what are you qualified or interested in or gives you juice or gets you excited, to like talk about or bring attention to your spotlight, right? So much of uh, of like building attention is just like making sure you're in authenticity with the types of things you're trying to draw attention to, uh, and so it gets back to like there being philosophical alignment, narrative alignment between you and you know the, the attention that you're trying to generate for yourself.
Speaker 1:I think the second is second is the right problem, or the right product, packaging the thing that you're trying to do in the right format, in the right way. I happen to think that there's immense leverage on Twitter and a single tweet I've had single tweets, you know, get viewed half a million times or a million times or whatever Like there's an immense network that can get built out of a very few amount of characters, like think about the power, the leverage in that I can send a couple of sentence out into the internet and it can be read a million times or more. That that type of leverage is insane to me. That, to me, is like the right product for trying to build attention. For Mr Beast it's YouTube, for others it's you know's ad space on television during the Super Bowl. The form factor can change. You want all of the three things to be in alignment.
Speaker 1:I think the last thing is about timing and this is more of again like an environment thing. Sorry, it's about timing. It's more of like looking around and seeing. Is the things that you're interested in? Is the way the product, the vehicle that you're bringing the things you're interested in to market in alignment with what the market wants to hear, what the market wants to see? Are they interested in other things? Are they focused squarely on some of the thing that isn't an integrity and with, like your interests or kind of like the form factor? And so I think my rough heuristic for anyone like looking to kind of generate attention is to kind of be in integrity with those three things.
Speaker 1:And I think if you can nail that and it's obviously trial and error and I don't even think I've got this right you know a lot of this is fumbling in the dark and I think so much of Mr Beast's PDF was showing like, hey, it's about measuring all of these things so that you can manage them effectively.
Speaker 1:It's measuring click-through rates, it's measuring conversions, it's measuring, you know, the thumbnail. It's measuring all of this stuff and then calibrating and recalibrating up or down depending on the outcome you're trying to achieve to get it right. You know I don't put as much of a process or an emphasis on this. But I do know that if I really wanted to be successful, that's probably what I'd do. I would make sure those three things are in integrity as one another, and then I would quantify it, and then I would calibrate up or down depending on the outcome I was trying to achieve. So anyway, so anyway, that's my I, I, I'm, I'm shoehorning in kind of my own ideologies here into the to answering your question, but I think there's probably something in there that's valuable.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the framing is like the one thing that I that that's just stuck out to me in in literally everything you say, whether it's on a podcast or in writing, or you know a tweet or whatever the case may be is that is the framing. So like I think the framing is probably like the one of the most helpful things because it allows people to see clearly. I think mental models are something that you know, a lot of my favorite thinkers here like it's, like it's. It's not the idea, it's the. It's not like the actual thing, it's not all the technicalities, it's like if, cause, if there's no mental model ahead of that, it doesn't make sense. Um, or like the, the, the, the details aren't going to, aren't going to matter as much unless the context has been, has been laid. Uh, so I, I know, I, I really, yeah, I appreciate the like, just like the in-depth uh parts, and that's literally my favorite parts of these interviews, man.
Speaker 1:Uh, so I appreciate the question. I appreciate the questions as well. Like I, it's fun to tread back and try and uh kind of, like you know, operationalize a process here in a way that I don't think I've ever really thought about. So thank you, for I actually am really grateful for the questions. They're getting me to think about things in a way that I don't think I have Incredible man Dude, thank you.
Speaker 2:No, this is, yeah, this is a blast and, like, I think the one thing that, like in that context that you just laid out around, yeah, building intention and what you think about and the questions that you have to answer, again, the one thing that came back to me through that entire speech there was constraint. It's like reducing the world down to a few questions and once you get down to the essence of what it is you're trying to do, it becomes a lot more authentic and natural and it doesn't have to be so hard is the main thing that I drew from that. Um, I appreciate that. So I, yeah, yeah, dude, for sure, uh, so I, I know, you know, I'm not sure what if you do have a hard stop, but I want to. There's a there's one or two more topics, uh, or questions that maybe we can uh go on.
Speaker 2:Here is, you know, the I can't remember which article it was, but I'm pretty sure it was the the punks, squiggles and autoglyphs article Um, you had mentioned the future of generative media. Uh, there were, there were three components of it, uh, that we're going to propel it forward, which was the joint creation, um, joint creation aspect, having the assets be on chain, uh, and the playground, um, and those three things were going to be the propeller or the fuel to really skyrocket this to just the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years. I'm curious when you hear those read back to you and where we're at today. Is there anything you'd add to it? And yeah, is there anything you add to that list? Or is there anything you'd add to it? Um, and yeah, is there anything you add to that to that list, or is there anything that's changed?
Speaker 1:Gosh. Um, so I wrote that article and I think really early 2021. Um, and I think this was back when, uh, I mean, this was like before board apes and before Fidenza and before, you know, I think, like Incredible, the kind of like the inflection point this was. I think Squiggles were like at maybe I don't know-.
Speaker 2:They were half an ETH or something like that.
Speaker 1:Half an ETH.
Speaker 1:Okay, so they were cheap they were, I don't know very, very interesting to kind of like start playing around with this tech. So it's pretty cool to kind of honestly just like think back to that time and where my kind of mental state was. I think the you know, I think to answer that question, it's just it's. It's tricky because I do think that the world has changed and evolved a little bit. I will say, like my confidence in things being community owned and networks being community created and more and more dependencies that existed off chain being on chain and more and more of like existed off-chain being on-chain, and more and more of community formation through this playground happening organically in real time at speeds that we can't quite imagine. I think all of those are just up and to the right. I don't even think we've really those ideas have really penetrated mainstream in any meaningful way. I mean we have meme tokens. I think we've really like those ideas have really penetrated mainstream in any meaningful way. I mean we we have meme tokens. I think we have, you know, commodity money, we have bitcoin, we have nfts, uh, but, but the but, those principles like those, these are still not like evenly distributed across the world like we're. We're still very much like you in our corner of the internet, like trying to explain these value props, and so I think the, if you know, I think talking about the lens of, you know, synthetic intelligence and you know, procedural generation of all types of outputs that humans can enjoy, that humans can interact with, uh, I mean, we're god, it's.
Speaker 1:Somebody wrote this on twitter yesterday and, um, and I can't remember exactly, I'm gonna blow the citation, I don't remember exactly what it was, but somebody wrote that, like there was, um, that there was a prediction that by the end of next year so the end of 2025, that 99% of the content, the media that people viewed on the internet would have been, in part or in whole, generated by AI. And I think there's probably, you know, obviously we're not there yet, but like, are we trending to a direction where that's true? Like you kind of have to believe we are, and so, if you believe that to be true, then there is something that's going to merge into this grand trend line that I'm describing of joint creation and on chain and, like this, you know, community formation that's happening, that's going to be in part or in whole, assisted by synthetic intelligence and AI. And, um, you know, I I think if, uh, to answer your question directly.
Speaker 1:If there's one thing to append to kind of some of these early ideas I had in in early 2021, it would probably be the merging of um of kind of machine intelligence, synthetic intelligence, into kind of the mix here I think that's no and that segues like into an just, yeah, another area I wanted to talk about which was, uh, yeah, which is, yeah, the convergence of AI and crypto.
Speaker 2:And I think, as time goes on, like it just feels, like, you know, because there's moments like I came in here with a really strong belief in this tech, mainly from like a creative lens of like wow, like, oh, I can like tokenize the weapon skins I pay so much money for on Valorant, you know like that was like my ticket into this space, but being here full time, there's moments where it's like, you know, definitely during your first cycle of like a bear market, it's like definitely question, like okay, like what are we doing here? You know, is this still? Is the dream still alive? Is this still valuable? Is this, you know, is it the price that's affecting my mood? Or, you know, like all the things, all the thoughts, all the emotions, but like I think one thing that was super interesting, maybe in 2023, that I, yeah, just like kind of had a spark of like, oh, wow, like here's yet another use case. Not that the other ones weren't valid. They're still very strong and have just only crystallized the more as time goes on, but I feel like we always just need new narratives to feed on and need new things or new use cases to research or sink our teeth into.
Speaker 2:And that was like the rise of AI and it's like when ChatGPT came out with like GPT-3, it was like holy shit, there is just so many doors just completely unlock and so many questions began to emerge and it started to get me wondering like, wow, imagine with the amount of deep fakes and fake content and synthetic content like you were mentioning. I wonder if there's a way to verify that.
Speaker 2:And I was like oh wow, maybe there's something. Maybe there's yet another use case for a trust-minimized ledger that could be applied to a new technology. Um, so I'm like really curious. Like I bent bit tensor is like yeah, that's one of the articles I read and I was like that is a. That is a very dense article. So just want to say off the top of my head, like or before we get into this, like holy shit, that probably took a long time to write and co-author. So, uh, it's just very, very dense and rich with information. Um, so I guess like yeah, maybe we can segue into that for how much you can talk about it? Um, but I'm just curious like what excites you about that? Like you know, maybe super high level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, um, gosh, I wish we had more more time to unpack this, but I'll I'm going to stay high level and hopefully, uh, uh, hopefully at least provide some insight as to kind of the thinking area. The first thing I'll say is, uh, that that piece did take, uh for sure, some time, um, but I had an amazing, amazing collaborator and contributor uh on that piece, which is one of my investors, ronan. He's the youngest investor on our team and he's quite sharp and it was great to kind of like work with him on that over many, many months. To answer your question directly, I think the elegance of blockchains as a counterweight to the rapid generation of new types of information through AI is just like one of the. It's like a layup right, like we have an environment that's secured by nodes all over the world that's permissionless. That is an amazing timestamp for all types of information, both financial and otherwise. It's a recording format for data and we have the ability now to kind of like create processes as a natural counterweight to the generation of media, both by human or by computer, and it's to me the role of blockchains as a use case for that is just. It's like a match made in heaven, peanut butter and jelly it makes total sense.
Speaker 1:I think the thing about BitTensor and I'll say, or just the thing about AI generally, is that let's take ChatGPT and I've given this call before in the past but, like I, I don't just think blockchains are a great terminal form factor for where information that's AI generated lives. I think that's 100% an amazing use case. But I'll also say I think the really interesting stuff, the stuff that BitTensor is touching on, the stuff, that other really interesting stuff, the stuff that BitTensor is touching on, the stuff that other decentralized intelligence networks are touching on, is that the actual creation, the actual, you know, the melding of information that goes into the inputs that make up synthetic intelligence, those may actually be best coordinated and best run through crypto economic incentives that live on top of blockchains. And I'll give you an example I think it's it's easier to work through this from something that's easier to get, which is something like a clod or a chat gpt or perplexity, uh. So let's just take chat gpt, which is like a hundred million people use it far more have tried it, I think, like I can't remember a single digit. Millions pay monthly to subscribe to it. It's a product that's, I think, the fastest product to a hundred million users ever. There's obviously, like it's, a successful consumer application right, I think we would all agree.
Speaker 1:And if you actually look at that product, it's actually a series of a bunch of different products that make up that product. It's things like data scraping, so the ability to kind of uh reach out and grab and scrape as much information, helpful information, uh to train a model on uh as possible. So data collection, data scraping, it's data storage, it's the actual pre-training process, it's the training process, it's the fine-tuning process, it's the inference, it's the actual embedded application that is in integrity, with all of these things as a final landing place. And you know all the other jobs to be done that make up that. You know that end state product of chat GPT and 100 million people using this thing To achieve that outcome. You know the modern AI movement. It requires massive amounts of data. That data requires massive amounts of computation and that computation requires massive amounts of capital. And to date, the easiest way to work backwards from there, which is getting capital to pay for computation and to pay for data and to run all of these processes to create a chat GPT, those have been done through centralized institutions. They're raising a shitload of money. I think it's something like $120 billion, probably more. At this point these quotes are so dated. Yeah, going just for the purpose of building these foundational models, these arts language models and these training runs are costing tens of millions of dollars just to kind of get these versions out the door.
Speaker 1:I would say the thing that gets me really excited about this intersection of crypto and AI is that all of that stuff the capital, the computation, the data can actually be better served and create more interesting outputs, more rich outputs, better process, if we just take the two core ingredients of what we're building here in Web3, and that's blockchains as a trust-minimized database and it's crypto-economic incentives to incentivize jobs to be done.
Speaker 1:And so if we go through that stack, that list of things that I just described the data collection, data scraping, pre-training, training, fine-tuning, inference, data storage, data labeling, all of these things my argument, and I think the argument of a lot of the people that are building at this intersection, is that each one of those jobs could be better served with a protocol that's emitting incentives to get people to use latent compute or to use latent storage or to use latent labor to do, jobs to be done that get checkpointed and written, in some part or whole, to blockchain-based databases.
Speaker 1:And I would argue that when you do that, when you socialize these processes out to the edges, to the crowd, instead of keeping them siloed, you're going to reach more interesting outcomes. And I think the best evidence of that is the largest supercomputer on earth is bitcoin. It's far out paces the computational uh heaviness of something like a centralized data center that, like elon musk, is building in texas and um I. My view is that the biggest outcomes in the world as it relates to synthetic intelligence will not get created until they are supercharged by the two ingredients that I just described crypto, economic incentives and blockchain based databases. And the rest is just formulating those ingredients for each job to be done in a way that makes sense and that the market is willing to believe in. So that's the thing that really gets me excited about all sorts of projects, not just Bintenser, but all sorts of projects that have a very similar worldview to how this technology stack is going to shake out.
Speaker 2:That's incredible, dude, I think, with how many different things you just listed there, I feel like we could have an entire podcast on just that topic. So, in the interest of time and constraint, just want to thank you for that, like that's. Yeah, it was. It definitely melted my brain a little bit, I had to say. Out of everything I read, it was probably, you know, the one I understood the least, but there were moments of it that stuck out and there were little threads to like think about. So, yeah, thank you for. Yeah, thank you for going there, because it's-.
Speaker 1:I really do appreciate you saying that. I will say like it's. We're just like we were in, you know, in the early days of NFTs. Just like we were in the early days of, you know, running a smart contracting environment on top of blockchains, or even the birth of digital commodity money on top of a blockchain. Like, all of this stuff is still very uncertain and unclear and opaque. Like I spend a lot of my time thinking about how this stuff is going to happen and how it's going to come together. Uh, so by no means like is what I'm describing just like a gospel or like how it's going to shake out. But I will say, like you know, directionally, this feels to be, uh to to me, one of the most exciting categories of value on planet earth that anybody could be paying attention to, and so it's where I have been spending a lot of my focus over the last it's called a year and a half, two years incredible man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I, yeah, definitely it, it. I think it didn't click to me. So you literally just said that it kind of that category kind of felt like nfts did to me. When you literally just said that it kind of that category kind of felt like NFTs did to me when I first started learning about this in like March, april 21,. You know where I was, like oh, my God. Just like you know that I don't know why I didn't click to just now. So thank you, of course, but also I think you're bringing up.
Speaker 1:I'll say one thing on that which is, to me, things like NFTs verifiably scarce digital crypto, art, verifiably scarce. Digital gaming objects verifiably scarce identity markers, avatars, all of these things so well in a world where you know synthetic intelligence and ai continues to kind of like you know, get created in tandem with blockchains, with crypto, economic incentives and you know, outputs living on like these, these, uh, these distributed budgets, and so I know this sounds like such a weird barbell to most folks, but like this barbell of synthetic intelligence and things like nfts, to me is is, maybe, is so interesting. It's like these things actually complement one another in such a fascinating way and, um, yeah, anyway, I just uh, I just wanted to make that one note, which is just like. These two categories to me, are just um, they're very complimentary and will grow together as time goes on.
Speaker 2:Hell, yeah, yeah, dude, thank you. Yeah, thank you for kind of putting a pin in that or putting a bow on that topic, man. Last question before we wrap man, it's a question that I've taken from, you know, one of my favorite podcasts, which is Invest Like the Best, but I like to repackage it. So, in the essence of stealing while giving credit, what is the kindest thing someone has ever done to you in Web3? Or done for you?
Speaker 1:Gosh. Oh man, you know that's such a good question. There are I mean, there are so many people who have done amazing things for me, with me in this space that I'm like, eternally grateful for, um, the fact that you know, uh, my business partner, steve, and I are, um, we've been friends for a long time, we've worked together for such a long time. Uh, he pops into my head as someone just like uh, so reliable, and someone that I'm grateful to to spend my professional career building with. Uh, there isn't like one thing I can point to, but like he, you know, is at the very top of that list for me Malta and Madison for being collaborators and contributors with Beyond Glitch. It really is like that product really is a labor of love for us and they could be both doing anything that they want right now and the fact that we're the three of us are contributing on that is very meaningful to me. Uh, knowing that like there's opportunity costs, of course, to to putting attention and scope to to that product, um, there's a bunch of people that I'm just like I count my lucky star as a you know, um, a bunch of our collectors at the for the every 30 days product that we built. There's like 150 of them that have collected these full sets and that are contributors every step of the way. You know, wayne and a bunch of other folks really stick out to me there as people who are just like good, just great people that I'm just lucky to like kind of be in orbit with, that I'm just lucky to like kind of be in orbit with. I think the last thing I'll say just in terms of somebody who I think is so important to me, that is a symbol to a lot of the like some of the things that I think are best about this industry is Snowfro.
Speaker 1:He already gets, you know, a ton of love and credit for this, but like I don't think it's enough. Um, he, he is somebody who is really embodies, uh just like the type of people that I want to, you know, run and build with and uh contribute to this industry's growth. Like he has a family that he's totally devoted to. He has a company that he spends all of his time thinking about building and working with to kind of like create value for and with for an emergent building and a new industry. He contributes to other people and other collectors and other galleries and products and services constantly without any sort of acknowledgement or credit, like he is out there just like helping constantly and I and a lot of this stuff actually doesn't go seen.
Speaker 1:He is a steward and an ambassador for our entire industry. Everything from, you know, meeting with one-on-one with some of the world's most influential women and men, to giving panels you know, closed doors or open doors that are kind of like viewed by hundreds of thousands or just a small group of influential folks Just you know, being a steward for this technology stack and why it's important those things add up, like those things, all of those things together, are just, like you know, incredible. But those things really do add up and like they change how people think about the space and the world and like this technology. And very few are willing to kind of sacrifice their time to be able to do all the things that he does, and he does them all with a smile on his face. And uh, he's not just uh.
Speaker 1:You know my favorite artist, my favorite crypto artist, or and the squiggle is not just my favorite crypto collect, crypto art collection and it's. I have a long list of favorites, but this is at the very top. It's he's. He is also just like an incredible human being, and so I, um, I am. It doesn't you don't see it much on Twitter right now, but like the things that that dude does day to day is just it's very inspirational and very important, and he moves the needle for so many of us. So, um, anyway, I just want to shine a light on that guy, uh, cause I think he's very important to this space.
Speaker 2:I couldn't agree more, man. Yeah, it's. When you said he does it with a smile on his face, it literally made me smile, because the interactions that I've had with them are just are some of the best you know, even however short or long they may be. It's like, yeah, he, he has so much inbound. It's probably ridiculous, and I could not think of anyone more who just encapsulates, you know what this like, I guess, the dream that a lot of us fell in love, uh, fell in love with here around what this, about what this could be. Um, so thanks for taking that question and putting a unique spin on it and then just highlighting, you know, a bunch of key players that that just really, really have an impact on, on your life.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, thanks for the thoughtful question.
Speaker 2:Hell, yeah, Hell, yeah, man. Well, I want to. I want to wrap it up here. Uh, Derek, is there any? Um? Yeah, Is there any place that you want people to to, yeah, to look at? Is there anything you guys are working on? Uh, any place you want to direct people's attention to before we close it out today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, first I'll just say like appreciate, uh, all of the questions. Um, it's just say like appreciate all of the questions. It's I mean like you obviously like are very thoughtful and eloquent, which makes like chatting very easy. But you also came like super prepared and researched and that's like for me it's super fun and I'm honored that you even took the time to kind of go through my previous work and materials like that. So thank you for making this conversation so enjoyable, I would say in terms of just like a stuff that's incoming. Yeah, if you're working on stuff that touches crypto, like that's what Collab Currency does, that's what we back founders who are working on big problems across this stack, then please reach out info at collab currencycom. We'll we'll get sorted out to infiltrate to kind of a my team for for glitch, we've got this amazing artist in residence that we're going to be announcing very, very soon, and so please keep an eye on on glitch gallery and the work that we do uh over the next two months.
Speaker 1:Uh, leading up to our blocks weekend in November. Um, our box weekend is something that it's uh, uh an event that we uh co-create a number of the tracks with the art blocks team on Madison is uh has just built an amazing uh program. Year after year and this one's no exception, we're running a bunch of night exhibitions that I think people will really enjoy. We've got a bunch of amazing panels and panelists that are going to touch on a wide variety of topics. That are things that people are thinking about and interested in hearing about, with some amazing panel leaders that are going to walk through those things.
Speaker 1:There will be announcements, there will be brunches, there will be food and coffee, and so for folks going out to Marfa for Artbox Weekend, please stop by, glitch and enjoy yourself for those three days. And then, yeah, other than that, you know, days Um, and then, yeah, other than that, uh, you know, I appreciate, uh, appreciate the invite to come on here and take a couple hours out uh of my Thursday and just riff on things that are interesting. I do appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Hell, yeah, man, uh, dude, yeah, no, really, yeah, thank you for the kind words, man. It was like I said, it was just a. It was, yeah, super fun to like think or talk. Talk with a thinker who thinks about things really deep yeah, it's literally one of my favorite things. So I'm happy that we went down the rabbit holes. We went down and, yeah, just incredible, man. So, yeah, and I also suck at taking compliments, so that's worth it. I'm getting better at that. But, yeah, I will definitely see you at Gl. Uh, cause I will be in Marfa this year for sure. Both me and Fungie from the Schiller team will be there as well. So, um, awesome, yeah, man.
Speaker 1:Well, hell, yeah, do it. Uh, appreciate you. Keep doing the amazing work over at Schiller and, uh, I'll see you in a couple months.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, man Take care so.
Speaker 1:Thanks for watching.