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Good morning and welcome to the lucky lead. Today is Thursday January 18th. It is another cold winter morning here in Chicago. It's a bit gloomy but hey it's 18 degrees folks that is a 30 degree uptick from the past few days here we are warming up the pudgy penguin market is warming
a few major artists are also warming up to the idea of launching big new projects. We're going to talk about that too on today's show. I see some friendly faces out there fungible Joe Brendan hurt me. Thank you for joining us as a reminder for any new listeners out there. We do run this show every weekday Monday to Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern covering all the major news in crypto and entities. I'm your host Tyler D and I'm joined
a full proof lapse. Logan Hiscock enter in chief over at lucky trader. He's ripping the lucky trader account. He's been covering the space in debt for years and ghost content star over at lucky trader quiet whale deep in the streets still hanging out with us ghost Jim. How you doing?
Jim Tyler doing well happy to finally get out of the house yesterday after being snowed in for about a week and the weather is warming up like you said in Chicago. So nice to get out of the single digits and negatives over there.
Indeed we are on an uptrend. Hopefully we do not revisit those lows folks. We've got a big two part show today. First up we've got special guest asked them on with us. He is the founder of collector's corner our resident art expert. He's been dabbling across Solana Bitcoin and aetherium lately. He's been busy asked him Jim. How you doing?
Jim Jim doing well. Don't live too far away from Chicago about five hours and I'm also very happy to be up to 20 degrees instead of zero and sad. That's what we're happy about. But hey, that's that's where we're at right now in January 2024 folks in the second part of the show. We're also going to have Steve at NFT bark from coffee with captain on later to talk about his upcoming book. So we're excited about that.
And guess what today is a very special show. We are proud to announce our new partner was Sabi the leading NFT leverage protocol. If you aren't familiar with Sabi boasts the most liquid NFT derivatives market allowing NFT traders to go long or short projects with just a few button clicks. Interested traders have two options. You can use with Sabi's perps app to go long or short NFTs indefinitely.
Definitely with liquidation based on an index price or use their options app which uses expiration dates for call and put options and no liquidation risk plus with wasabi season two traders will be rewarded with points which may be notable in the future. So you can expect us to be talking about wasabi a lot more on the show. I've been dabbling in the protocol myself. It is slick. I'm excited to talk more about it.
Well folks, that's our intro. What are we talking about on the show today on the docket? We have to start with the pudgies. Why are they pumping? Where do we go from here? We're going to talk the latest happenings in the art market with Astum, Yuga going back to basics. And then we'll get into our conversation with Steve about his upcoming book. Before we dive in though, Ghost, any housekeeping for today?
Yeah, you know it. As always, if you enjoyed the show, Tyler does a great rundown of the NFT market every morning in the morning minute newsletter. Get that pinned to the top of the spaces. Make sure you give that a subscribe if you haven't already.
All right, Ghost, thank you for that. Well, let's dive right in. I was going to start with our art market talk, but we got to spend a few minutes on the pudgies. I covered it in the newsletter. I'll read from that here briefly and then talk to the panel. I've got a couple questions, but the pudgy penguins have taken flight. There was no major news, no token announcement or teaser, but the pudgy penguin ecosystem has been pumping like time is running out to buy in.
So quickly, what happened? It seems like this run started on Monday and it seemingly hasn't stopped for four days. In that time, the pudgy floor has moved from about 10.8 to 19.2 this morning. I think it's a touch below that now.
And just a rapid escalation that included a 37% spike yesterday and marking a plus 78% week. I think we've talked about this before, but when NFTs level up, the moves happen violently. We saw little pudgies jump to 1.9. They're up 120% on the week and reclaiming that 10 to 1 ratio with bigs.
And then the rocks, the pudgy rocks reaching almost a one-eighth floor. They're also up 100% on the week. I think what's also been interesting to me and somewhat telling about this run, cell pressure has evaporated. Yesterday, the listings from 16 to 20, there was only about 70 listings.
And then what happened overnight? The floor pushed to near 20. And then if you looked at it here this morning, there's only about 100 listings to 25. I think there's a touch more now. I checked right before the show, but still only about 120 or 140 listings to 25.
So the air is clear up there. And now the chatter about the flipper will probably heat up and intensify here in the days to come. That's my overview. Logie, I'll throw it to you first. Are you surprised by this price action? Why is it moving so fast this week? Do you have a driver in mind? How would you explain this to someone who's kind of watching from the sidelines?
Good morning, Tyler. It's tough to explain. I'm not sure I can do a great job explaining just why this has happened so violently over the course of what feels like only two or three days, really. And I can't recall the exact date that pudgies hit 10, but was it less than a month ago? Or maybe just more than a month ago? So this has been really, really wild.
To me, it feels like the continued meaming of the flippening or the flappering or whatever people are calling it these days, plus the token stuff, plus just a natural build of these little airdrops that pudgies keep getting included in and the potential for more of those to come.
It's just a confluence of these little variables adding up together and momentum really, really pushing things forward and driving some FOMO. And so that's what it feels like to me. That's how I would best describe it. The velocity, though, is something we haven't seen in a long time, at least in the ETH market, for something to jolt this high at these prices.
Yeah, it was a very quick, quick move. I'm kind of with you. It's hard to say. It's like, it's really token expectations that's driving this. I think that's a factor that's in a lot of folks mind. I think Spencer, you know, who's kind of become famous, one of the more notable pudgy whales at this point, you know, he's explained his thesis on buying into projects with good teams than with token plans. So I think a lot of folks think that is coming. But there's no reason.
But there's no reason to think it's happening soon. It almost seems like the real driving factor right now is this whole meme of the flippering and trying to pass the board a floor price. And I think we talked a bit about that on the show. I think, personally, I'd love to see that happen with the apes moving up and in green versus, you know, falling. And it seems like that might be how this plays out. Logie, additional thoughts?
I just wanted to add, you know, you mentioned you didn't feel like a token coming anytime soon. I have no information that suggests otherwise. But we had Luca on the show, you know, he talked about all of the next level advancements for pudgy penguins would come at a better time, right? A better time for holders, a better time for the market.
It does seem or stand to reason, Tyler, that we're approaching what feels like anecdotally speaking, a better time, certainly a better time for pudgy penguins holders, right up a ton in recent weeks, and then also to just, you know, a better time and at least in terms of sentiment for the NFT market as well.
So, again, I'm speculating heavily here, of course, but if you were going to lean into it, and if Luca stands true to what he shared on this show regarding dropping kind of next big level things into a better market for holders, could you do too much better than present time?
Absolutely. So I'm on the opposite side of you. I mean, just a week ago, we were talking about how the Ethereum NFT market was kind of crickets, how you know, besides pudgy, basically, everything had been down, it seemed lack of interest, lack of catalysts. To me, a better time would be June post blast airdrop, perhaps seemingly tied right after that.
You know, folks are kind of talking about this blast unlock in February. I've got news for you. I don't think that's going to be I don't think blast is going to see outflows. I think they're going to see inflows at that event because at that time, it will it will make less sense to hold any ETH in your wallet than holding it on blast because you can earn the points by just holding it over there and then you can pull it back whenever.
So I don't think that's going to be a major influx event. The influx event will happen when the airdrop happens, and that's going to be a big one. So I would at least wait for that most likely, but ask them you've been away. I'm curious for your thoughts.
Yeah, I just wanted to comment on that comment about it being a good time or when is it a good time and just to say that there's just so much uncertainty around what is going to happen in the market.
I mean, I would not be surprised if Bitcoin has one of its classic bull market 30 percent retracements within the next month or two, maybe even sooner.
So I do think and to your point about the blast airdrop, when does that come? But perhaps what Luca is talking about is things that they have internally lined up or maybe he can announce a coin, announce a bigger partnership with Walmart, whatever, but line up a few things in a row.
So that momentum really builds that that will be hard to take away.
Yeah, I mean, he definitely has some levers he can pull here. I think product overpass whenever the news comes out for that and how the holders will be able to use their IP.
You know, we'll see if that moves the needle.
I don't know. In some ways, it feels like it's organic buying. I don't have a whole lot of data to support that. I have to kind of dive into who all the new buyers are, but 70 percent moves in just a handful of days are kind of hard to justify, but there are certainly fun to watch.
So, you know, quickly on how to play this. So if you don't have 18 or 19 to fork over for a big pudgy, which certainly I'm in that camp, you know, you've got a couple options.
You can go the little pudgy route, you can go the pudgy rock route, or I mean, start checking out wasabi. So I actually opened up a small levered long on big pudgies yesterday over on wasabi.
You don't have to put up much capital at all. And it's up 56 percent in 24 hours. And of course, this all comes from this comes with a lot of risks.
NFA, whenever you're using leverage on an asset class like NFTs, but it's been fun to see that. So, Logan, I'm curious, any other thoughts from your perspective on ways, you know, folks could perhaps get exposure to this run either long or short, you know, if they're interested.
Yeah, of course, as you mentioned, utilizing wasabi there. And then those just so smaller entry points. In particular, I think rags are a really interesting example of, you know, of participating at a, you know, just in a character class that nobody's paying attention to really in any way.
Like, the only talk I ever see is about little pudgies and regular pudgies. And if there is a token, I mean, it's got to extend to rags, right? Like, it almost has to. So that's just, you know, when I think about trying to participate in these ecosystems, and I don't have the funds, and you're not willing to participate with leverage, it's got to just go all the way down to the overlooked assets.
Yeah, I mean, that's certainly a thesis there, as well. I am very curious how the rags will be included. I could see them being a multiplier. I don't know that they're going to be getting direct token access. But who knows, we will see. Well, I want to move on. We've got asked them with us. So we've got to talk about kind of what's been happening in the art market. I guess before we dive in, I think some of the, one of the biggest pieces of news yesterday that jumped out to me asked them was
out of brain drops and Claire Silver. So I'm gonna quickly read from this tweet here. They're calling it something truly unprecedented for us coming in the world of digital art and fashion. Claire Silver renowned. She's a genesis artist on brain drops, you know, a leader in the AI art space. She's making her brain drops come back for her first ever venture into digital fashion. The project is called Corpo Real. I think I'm saying that properly.
It's a question and a statement. What does it mean to have form in the age of AI? How do we interpret the corporate real corporate real in a digital realm? Join us in this journey where fashion meets philosophy. The drop details is coming January 31. So that's coming up.
The collection size was going to be 500 of these things and that the kicker, they are priced at one each. And I will admit when I saw the price, I was ready to fud this as being expensive for a primary sale. But then I took a look at some of the teaser images and I don't know, they're pretty damn good. This looks like a solid set, but I asked them, I'm curious for your reactions to the news out of Claire Silver and brain drops here.
Yeah, the perfect tea up there. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on with this one. So as far as I know, this is the first time brain drops is releasing something at this price point. And I took a look at some of Claire Silver's other collections. Genesis is way above this. But she has another one called AI art is not art that is also 500 pieces and is sitting at a 1.69 ether floor. Obviously we've seen some sales like that.
We've seen some sales like a little bit lower than that. So, you know, one ether actually based on those comps seems reasonable. But I'm, you know, I'm just not sure that this is going to be one if you're thinking like an investor that you're going to buy and be able to flip it for two ether with 500 pieces and the eth NFT market broadly and certainly the eth art market being a little bit depressed right now. I'm just not sure that that much will get absorbed.
I feel like what's going to happen is the day zero set holders for brain drops. So for folks who don't know, if you hold one of each of their first three collections, one of which is Genesis by Claire Silver, you get to mint first. I think you get looks like a 30 minute head start.
And then it normally goes to public and these have historically been bought it. I have a sense that this is going to get bought it and we might see the floor price drip drop afterwards as people just kind of wait and there's not that much liquidity.
That has nothing to do with the art. In terms of the art itself, you know, it's really interesting that she's going with a full collection that's digital fashion. We've seen some of this stuff before in AI.
There was a collection by Emmy Kusama, I think, Kusano, sorry, from Bright Moments Tokyo that was kind of similarly fashion but, you know, I just don't know how the crowd's going to react to this like it's not really my cup of tea the fashion angle.
So yeah, I'd actually love to hear other folks thoughts on how they feel about that. And the other thing I'll say I just noticed, at least in this teaser images, they're all fashion for women, it seems like and so that's just curious.
I wonder if there'll be men's clothing AI generated in this as well. So just a few thoughts and storylines that we can pick.
Yeah, that's interesting because I mean, let's be frank that the buyer pool is going to be mostly men. I am curious as I'm swimming, I guess at a foundational level, are we are the NFTs, you know, just pieces of art pictures of dresses, or is there going to be like another component to this, where it's actually a digital outfit that you could use in some capacity.
Do you have any insight to that?
You know, I do not have insight into that. But I think that would be really cool and sort of push this to a next level, where let's say in the future you have a digital avatar or even now and you can port whichever NFT you buy and put that outfit on to your avatar.
Maybe they'll even be the thing where you buy one and you can click it into a men's version if your avatar is male. So I don't know. I know there's a there's a company called Drop, who's founded by Danny Loftus who I've spoken to a few times and she's great.
She's been sort of trying to pioneer digital fashion and combination of art in this way. And that is the vision. But I don't know if it's quite ready yet. But it would be very cool.
Yeah, I mean, so when I think about digital fashion, I think about digital wearables over just, you know, art pieces. So I would hope that that's where this is going. And if it's not, I guess I'd be a little unclear about why it would technically be digital fashion.
But Ghost, maybe I'll tag you into the convo here. You know, you've certainly played in the brain drops AI art space quite a bit. Do you have a read on this? Are you gonna be gunning for this?
Yeah, I don't know. This one doesn't interest me as much as some of the other stuff. And I, the last thing I traded was a brain on brain drops was the Delta sauce drop, which I really liked.
But the brain drops are so hit and miss to me. And like, not necessarily for the entire market as a whole, but just personal preference. I feel like they're really out there and a lot of big differences.
So they really have to appeal to you. And this one's just not doing it for me as much. So I think I'll be sticking out. And there's just so much other stuff going on right now with like meme coins and other things pumping.
Like it's hard to, to twist back to that right now. So I think it's a little bit of a tough time to be pivoting back to like the brain drops type AI art, when there's so many other things to keep DJ's attention.
But obviously that art collectors aren't going to be pivoting over sale or things. So always, always a market for good art.
Yeah, I'm with you there. I mean, let's quickly on views, and then we can get asked some thoughts kind of on the broader Ethereum art market right now.
So views is one of the more hyped AI art collections in a while. I think it was genuinely liked and well received. We saw it run from like, what, 0.2, 0.3 all the way to about a 1.3.
ETH Florida is now back at 0.38. And I think that the reality is there's not a whole lot of sustained secondary volume or liquidity in the art market right now. And there's just so much supply and it's, you know, interest is just spread so thin.
It's just hard to see continued ongoing demand. You see these smaller short term windows where these products can have some success. But then it's slow bleed. I mean, hell, we're seeing it with squiggles.
Which is one of the most iconic, you know, art NFTs on Ethereum. But I'm kind of curious for your broader views on Ethereum right now, kind of what's happening and how, you know, perhaps that can inform some of the price action.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think you nailed it. Right now there's just not as much interest in the art side. And we'll talk about a few more upcoming releases or at least one more here. But I think part of that is that we didn't really see too many new releases coming out, which on the one hand is good because we're not seeing more supply.
But on the other hand, there's just less attention and less people, you know, when somebody looks at a new release, it comes out, maybe they don't buy it. And they think, well, there's this other thing that's similar or from the same artist that I like.
So I'm gonna go buy that one. And we're not really seeing that happen. And truly, I don't dive too deeply into PFPs, but it seems like just across Ethereum NFTs in general outside of crypto punks that have seen a little bit of movement.
And Pudgy Penguins, as you mentioned, we're just not seeing a ton. And it seems like it's slowing down a little bit on the Solana and Ordinal side. So my general take is it feels like the market is taking a bit of a break.
And perhaps, I'm not seeing the full picture. And it's more of a rotation into some of these other alt-L1s. I've been hearing people talk about 3.3, like the Ohm wonderland stuff, if you all were around last bull market for that.
And I think that what's really happening is that there's just so many interesting opportunities for folks that they're looking for liquidity wherever they can get it. And those keep coming up.
And eventually, people say, hey, well, I have this art that's worth a lot. I like it long term. But maybe I can just come and buy it back later. I'm gonna go make my money on Pudgy Penguins.
And as an example of this, there was somebody who sold, I think, seven or eight, maybe nine, I have to count it again, Memories of Qilin by Emily Shia, which is probably easily considered a top 10 art blocks collection.
And sold them all into wrapped each bid, some of which were half of the floor, some of them nice pieces. And, you know, four hours later, they swept up a bunch of little pudgies.
So it seems like there's a bit of a rotation going on. But I, you know, I think about this a lot. And I think in the long term, ultimately, there's a Warren Buffett quote that says the stock market or any market is a voting machine in the short term and a weighing machine in the long term.
And whether it's art or a project or a meme coin, whatever it is, I do think over the long run value will continue to accrue to the really highest quality assets.
And so I do think some of this art that's being sold, if it's not high quality, if it's not sort of the top, it probably won't recover.
But I'm less worried on the top end because I look around and I just, you know, based on my opinion, really just think a lot of this is some of the best art that we've seen.
And I haven't seen a lot come out that has overtaken it.
Yeah, I think I think you nail it. And I think it's why I will probably see kind of an extended, I'll call it a bear market for digital art.
And perhaps that's a little bit strong. But until the wealth effect really starts to set in, I think art is going to lag while folks kind of go for more liquid options, go for like the hot hand.
You know, you brought up the members of Quillen sales. I think also a head of Art Basel, someone like dumped a Fadenza and then into beds, maybe more than one and just instantly swept little pudgies.
I mean, the reality is that person made a good trade, right? They could probably afford two or three Fadenzas now.
And I think some folks may hate to hear that, but I think we're going to see more and more stories like that likely here in the days to come.
But at the same time, the folks who did the best on the Pudgy Penguin trader, the ones who accumulated when there wasn't that much interest and had the conviction like your Warren Buffett quote.
And for those with the bankrolls and the patience, there's going to be a nice window to continue picking up art here.
But on that note, you mentioned it's not a great market. Is that why we're seeing artists turn to some of these other blockchains like Solana and Bitcoin and kind of what are you seeing or tracking on either of those?
What might be jumping out to you?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I raised my hand here because I just want to point out that if you look at almost any given asset project, whatever, there is usually a long period of stagnation followed by, you know, and then it pumps, right?
It's the same with pudgies. It's the same for most of these meme coins.
Like go take a look at the bank chart, you name it.
And so right now it might feel like everything's moving or a lot of things are moving and you're not in all the right stuff.
But if you look at any one of those given projects, most of the time they've done nothing for a long time and then something happens.
So I think this is like pretty typical. And sometimes I just try to look at that to help with the FOMO.
Now moving on to artists looking at other places. Yeah, you know, I think artists naturally, they want to try different things out.
They want to try to innovate and experiment. So we are seeing some artists release certainly on ordinals and are planning to release on ordinals.
One thing I wanted to point out on the ordinal side is even though we're talking about ETH art being in a down market, ordinals art is still not really in a down market.
A lot of those floor prices that pumped over the last few weeks have sustained or only decreased a little bit.
And Sotheby's is having an auction that's live right now until the 22nd with 19 pieces for sale.
One interesting thing about that, Tyler, just as of checking this morning, the thing that has the highest bid is Genesis Cat by far, who is the founder of Taproot Wizards, which is an ordinals PFP.
It's got a current bid of $120,000, 56 bids on it. Before that, the highest one was a Dave Lucrece piece, a benediction from Between Worlds.
And that still is a bit of $65,000, but those two are far and above most of the rest of them there.
And it's interesting because FAR is considered more of a native ordinals artist.
And so, you know, I think it's kind of interesting to see how he's outpacing Dave Lucrece, which was really more of an Ethereum artist.
So that's one thing on the ordinal side.
On the Solana side, Rope Ranisto, who had the project Life in West America and is considered the pioneer of post photo AI, a fusion of AI art and photography art, is releasing a project on the 30th of January called Smile.
This is more kind of going the other direction. This is on Solana. It's a one of one of five thousand pieces.
They're all various smiles that are post photo AI. So they're kind of warped by AI.
Some of them really creepy, but it's a 0.2 Solana mint. So only about 20 bucks, right?
Given current prices, really cheap, really interesting to see him try to go and expand that collector base.
I'm excited to see what happens with that one. I have no idea, but it's really low price mint.
A lot of his collectors are bridging over from Ethereum to go and buy that.
But I don't think we've really seen honestly much like this in general and certainly not on the Solana side.
So really curious to see how that emerges. But, you know, I think artists are they're just doing what they do.
They're creating, they're innovating, and it's hard for them to stop doing that.
So I commend them for trying it in an interesting and different way.
Yeah, it's going to be interesting to watch quickly on the Taproot Wizards Genesis Cat here. Yeah.
One hundred and twenty thousand dollars. So this thing's at three Bitcoin.
It's probably going to go higher because there's several days left in the auction,
which also is going to somewhat set the floor of the quantum cats when they come out.
You know, I was thinking these would be somewhere between a quarter Bitcoin and half a Bitcoin.
Now, I think I might have to raise my targets to closer to a half a Bitcoin based on how this Genesis cat is traded.
And it's also kind of showing me I think there was some there was some general thought that the PFP cycle had run its course in 2021, 2022.
And we are not seeing any signs that PFPs are slowing down the highest trending projects on these on these new NFT ecosystems like Bitcoin are PFPs.
So it doesn't it doesn't seem like that stopping with regards to Rupe.
It's a lot of supply. It's five thousand.
So I guess you kind of have to view this as somewhat of a twist on an open edition with this level of supply and at this price point.
So I guess if you view it like a poster, a twenty dollar poster, you can't really be too disappointed.
I am curious what all this extra supply will mean for life in West America or his other collections.
So that will be a big one to watch.
Well, I want to thank you for coming on.
I want to get into our conversation with Steve here in just a minute.
But before we do that, let's read the news.
Today's top headlines powered by Lucky Trader trading volume jumped on Ethereum to thirty two million dollars on Wednesday led by the Pudgy Penguin ecosystem explosion.
Most of the leaderboard was very green.
Again, those pengus led top movers up thirty six percent to nineteen.
No monkeys led action on Bitcoin with fifteen Bitcoin in trading volume with the floor holding a point one nine two.
The Bitcoin puppets jumped ten percent to point oh two six.
They hit point oh three at peak.
Solana NFTs were led by crypto undeads and open soul map.
The undeads did fall to about eleven point five.
I think they went lower at bottom.
The founder dollar did tell holders to set your alarms for three p.m. eastern today.
The information on the reveal is expected.
The leaders shared a board a be a club update saying that we're going back to basics.
Introducing a revamped club site.
A community survey in reminding holders about the recent other side and Dookie Dash news.
We talked about Claire Silver announced her new product on brain drops.
He shared that he's actually talking to protocols to line up air drops for seal holders and to quote position accordingly the set the market like the news.
Sapi Seals up seventy four percent on the day.
Nakamigos released their crypto trading cards as a free meant for eight hundred thirty seven NFTs.
They open at zero point three three.
I saw that zero point four this morning.
I missed some fun on the A.I.
Art used in that collection.
And then the shadow hats auction was won by Adam Hollander for two and a half Bitcoin as the shadows rebounded to a point one Bitcoin floor.
Web three and crypto news.
Crypto makers are down this morning.
Bitcoin down half a percent forty two thousand three sixty eight down a percent twenty five ten.
Sold down two point five percent at ninety eight with dog with hat.
Did more volume than four of the top five meme coins and coin market caps meme category yesterday.
Tailing only doge as it jumped 17 percent to four hundred and thirty million.
Alt layer announced an air drop for Eigen layer and Tia Stakers along with NFT holders of the oh Adi NFT collection.
And then Tia Staking wallets have jumped two hundred percent over the past two weeks from one hundred and seventeen thousand to three hundred and thirty four thousand as that becomes a more crowded farm.
That was a rundown of the news, folks.
Well, I want to welcome our second guest to the show here and Steve at NFT Bark.
He doesn't need much of an introduction.
If you're listening to the show, I'm sure you are familiar.
But just in case his resume is very deep.
He's the co-author of The Everything Token.
He co-authored the first Harvard Biz article about NFTs.
Again, the co-host of Coffee with Captain Community Lead at Starbucks.
He's on the show today to talk about his upcoming book, The Everything Token,
how NFTs and Web 3 will transform the way we buy, sell and create.
I'm excited for this conversation.
Steve, GM, welcome to the show.
Sorry, got sticky on the mute button.
GM, thanks for having me on.
Always appreciate what you all do.
Listen back actually frequently because the way you cover the market I think is really well done.
It gives a broad view, but then somehow can drill in on individual topics.
So really grateful to be on with you all.
And, you know, as leaders in this space, it's awesome to be here.
Oh, I appreciate you saying that.
So thanks for the kind words.
So why did you decide to write this book?
So you mentioned that Harvard Business Review article back in November 2021.
And when we released that, we expected that the NFT community would be pumped
because here are us explaining that NFTs aren't just pictures on the internet
in a respected publication.
When I worked at large companies, Harvard Business Review was what we printed out
what we brought to trainings to read and then ultimately use
and create sort of like activities off of them.
So being there, I mean, that was like a life accomplishment for me to write that
no matter what with Scott, my co-author who's a Harvard Business School professor.
And as we did it, like, yes, the NFT community was stoked,
but what was really interesting is the non-NFT community was stoked.
So people who were outside of our scope of influence and understanding said,
okay, this is the first time I've read something and this sort of all makes sense to me.
Concurrently, Scott and I would be going and doing sort of this, you know,
consulting where we would go and talk to large brands
and others just to educate them on Web3 at a high level.
And we, one, got good feedback, but two, would hear, I want to hear more.
And three, we'd get a lot of the same questions like, hey,
but crypto is a scam and it's tied to crypto.
So that's kind of curious and hey, you can't really have infallible proof of ownership.
So the truth is there's no way to scale the information that we had in that article
and blow it out in a way to give more to everybody who wants to learn about it.
So we thought a book was the most scalable way to do it.
So, you know, within the three months, four months after writing it,
I started DMing Scott and I was like, hey, man, I feel like there's a book here.
And he's like, you know what?
I also feel like there's a book here because we could write significantly more on this.
So we sort of outset to like come up with a way that we could have a book
that somebody could hand to their company, their boss, their friends, their family
and say, this is how these things work.
And so our goal really is to educate people and have the ideas out there
because they keep telling people like, look, I'm showing the book.
And if it's cool, like, and you can tell me, it's always, I always say like,
the space is your barbecue.
So if possible, like if I can pin to the top, the tweet that kind of has that cool.
I'm going to assume that's a yes.
You know, when people are like, oh, you're selling books, you're selling books.
It's like the way a book deal works.
We're not make, first of all, our time it not paid the same way you would be paid
doing actual work, the amount of time and energy it takes to write a book.
Number two, it's paid in an advance in the sense that like, unless we sell millions
upon millions of copies of this, we're not going to see the return on the book.
The reason we wrote this book and what we want out there is we want the ideas out there.
We want someone to pick up this book to understand.
I don't think I think NFTs are a giant scam and pick it up and say, oh, okay,
this is a better software solution for a variety of businesses and consumer
Business and consumer activities.
And so that's the impetus.
We heard the feedback on the article.
We thought there was an opportunity to scale this out to people and we badly
want the ideas to get in the hands of companies and help do our work to sort
Well, I appreciate the insight there, certainly.
And I'm right there with you.
The conversations I've had with friends, I think we can use the
It's just, it's understandable.
Folks have this like anti-NFT, anti-cryptostigma, but when you talk to
them about the use cases and the why, I think for most reasonable people,
And I think there's just broadly a lack of easy to understand educational
And if more folks understood, I think they'd be more easily open to the
idea and understand why this market exists.
My second question for you was what's going to be the goal of the
What do you want your readers to take away from?
And perhaps you could elaborate on that a bit.
And by the way, I also want to be clear and say that up front, we
should admit that like a lot of the skepticism people have is healthy
based on what they read typically in sort of the news or other
And so the skepticism is understandably healthy, which is why
the book actually starts.
You know, on page nine, there is a bold headline that says, wait,
aren't NFTs tied to cryptocurrency and isn't cryptocurrency a giant
We just want to address it up front.
We literally have a board ape on the first page and start with how
ridiculous the premise is that a company that seemingly primary
product is digital pictures of primates got a unicorn raised with
Like we hit this up front because our editor who was non
crypto native made the point of like, look, we need to make
sure readers if this goes to a non-native crypto person, we
can start off by telling them they're an idiot and tell them
like have fun staying poor.
What we need to do is go to them and say, look, like this is
actually a technology, but your your skepticism is well-founded
and we get it and here's why and here's why it's infallible
proof of ownership and here's how it works.
So we did that as far as like sort of like the goal and what
we're trying to do there to your point is, you know, we
want like this again to move the adoption curve a little
My dream of dreams is like to tell a story that Harvard
Business Review article, a friend of mine, Jaybrush, who's
in DJ Network and on chain monkey and a big member of the
The way he discovered and I didn't even know this until
like relatively recently.
He read my article, then he followed me on Twitter because
That was how he started to get into NFTs.
Then he ended up following me into on chain monkey and
now he's like a staple of that community.
And when I hear stories like that, it fills me with joy
because I'm like he discovered something that is so
meaningful in his life through something that we created
and my goal of this, what I would love in that smaller
than 1% group, like at a macro level, the goal is like
I would love people to take this book, teach it in
classes to help their people teaching blockchain because
they're teaching it at Harvard.
They're teaching it at Stanford, but I want the other
engineers, data scientists, people in college look at
this and say, there is an opportunity here like we
haven't seen maybe since the dawn of the internet.
And to give an example of what I would hope that people
do, like obviously, you know, those educational
opportunities where people read the book, share it
with friends, do those sessions inside Fortune 500
companies where everyone reads a book and gets
together and discusses it.
The coolest thing in the less than 1% that I want to
see happen that would be the most dope thing in the
world is right now, building on the blockchain is
There's security issues, there's tech barriers.
It's sort of like when I was making websites in
1995, like I had to code HTML and if we got a
phone call, I got kicked off the internet because
my sister got a phone call, right?
Like that was what it was in 95, 96.
Now, if we want to spin up a website, like Tyler,
we could do a dual Squarespace account and have a
website up tomorrow, right?
And because of those out-of-the-box solutions, my
hope is that the picks and shovels people read this
book and say there's an opportunity and they start
building that stuff for Web3.
Certainly a lofty goal, but I feel like you can
accomplish, I can feel the energy in your voice.
And it's making me excited about the book.
I've got a lot of other questions.
Emma, you've been waiting.
I know you've got a question for Steve.
Steve, I just wanted to know what you had today for
first meal since we know you can't call it
I actually have not had breakfast yet.
This is, first of all, great question.
Emily is hearkening to the fact that I have
what are considered the worst breakfast takes in
all of Web3, if not the world, where I eat chicken
and vegetables and things like that for breakfast
because I'm not a big, I like a waffle, but it's
I like bacon really fatty.
All these things that in the morning make me not
My tummy can't handle it.
This morning actually no breakfast.
I do actually generally intermittent fast in the
However, nothing for breakfast this morning,
although I would love to have like, I don't know,
a good chicken piccata, maybe some chicken parm
if I have some leftovers there.
If Chipotle delivered at 8 in the morning,
So would do that, Emily, but nothing yet this
morning in the tummy outside of coffee.
Well, that's certainly an interesting way to
I'm with you on the intermittent fasting.
So no food intake yet this morning.
Well, Steve, we talked a little high level
I'm curious for your writing process.
You run Coffee with the Captain every morning.
I imagine a lot of time and energy goes into
So like, how are you carving out time to dedicate
What has the past, you know, 6, 12 months,
however long you've been working on this,
Yeah, it's about a year and a half process.
We've been working on this and that's actually
kind of speed running it for a new tech book like
But we want to make sure we got it out there
really like as soon as possible because this
tech is emerging and penguin publishing wants
to be I didn't even there's a connection.
Penguin publishing, Pudgy penguins all going
But like we we didn't really like we wanted
to make sure we got this thing out because
there is no resource that exists like this
followed by a framework for success.
We call it the NFT staircase.
Those elements for success followed by
executional considerations.
So the process for this, the way I was able
to make time is I simply don't exercise or
eat healthy anymore, which is going to change.
But the past year and a half has been a
It's been like, you know, like you said,
coffee with Captain two hours in the morning.
Starbucks got to make sure I'm on point there
because they are crushing it in the web
three space and I'm grateful to have even a
small part of that being the community lead.
And then on top of that, this book,
which the writing process is actually super
I love talking about it with people because
like I've never written a book before.
I have no idea how this whole thing works.
And so the way it sort of works is like Scott
and I basically, you know, have iterations
of the book that we would be sending back
and forth with our editor.
She's providing feedback the whole time.
We didn't ever set up a metamask or learn
the space intentionally because we want
her to provide the feedback from that angle.
And over the course of about, again,
18 months, it was like writing this
And then the coolest part is like I've
always been a writer, but the way her
editor thinks because she's published
all these amazing, like best selling,
great books, all these things, right?
A book needs to be done a certain way.
So it's like crazy because she would
take like we'd have like a whole blown
out examples of like even like a pudgy
penguins, for example, of what they were
doing and then we would realize like
wait a minute like this actually talks
more to community or to evolution.
We can pare down this example because
the average reader doesn't need to know
every single thing about like the
intricacies and a case study on pudgy
penguins or board API club or whatever
we put in there, right? Doodles.
They need to know about this section of it.
So the cool part about writing was we wrote
the long research paper and then like our editor
would like pare down the concepts
into more digestible things that we knew
fit sort of different sections of the book
and it was almost the way to describe it is like
those slide puzzles with a picture on them.
It's almost like we had this unclear
slide puzzle but it did all fit together.
She just needed to help us slide it around
and get everything in place to actually tell
That is very interesting.
I feel like it would be fun as a writer
to have that kind of relationship
with an editor or you can just kind of
put everything out on the page
and then have them kind of cut it up
and mix and match. I am curious.
I want to go to Emma here in a second.
But was it one of those situations where
she said cut it back to 50,000?
Did you have to do a ton of cutting?
It never had to do with length because
oddly enough Scott and I looked up one day
and we were like holy shit we just wrote like two
like our commitment was like
you know basically they wanted it to be like
they didn't want it to be like a brief so they were like
we don't want you guys to write like you know 90 pages.
We could at least like 120 pages.
We looked up and we blinked and we were like
holy crap there's 200 pages here
and now it ended up being like 250.
So it was never about the length
but the cutting that she did
was more to make it more concise
where again it would be like we might tell an entire
case study on doodles and that's all well and good
of Scott's teaching it at Harvard and going through a class
and bringing them through the case study and how would you play
and all these things but our
editor would be like look an example
of evolution listening to the community like just to give
a very brief example it's like you know
doodles were a vibey brand that had
this great art they rallied around in this community
effort right and then doodles realized
wait a minute like we did this event
at South by Southwest and
it absolutely was a banger and people really
liked our immersive world. Let's lean and
evolve to this and they ended up going
with camp they obviously had the best opening in the history
of camp who does deals with incanto
you know and Nike but the point is
like we would maybe have five
pages on doodles and she would be like this
really illustrates that evolution and
listening to your community concept put
it there cut this other part and if people
want to learn more about doodles they can but like
it wasn't about cutting the words per se because
we said too much or it didn't fit it was like
example of this concept so let's
put it here and that part was like
I literally I can tell you factually I have
become a better writer because of our editor
because of how she makes you realize
you don't have to include everything
in there and tell the whole story you can actually make it more concise
to make a really really salient point
every day so trying to focus on writing
for the internet and brevity
and I'm just kind of curious
I'm sure we could spend a whole conversation on that
but Emily I think you've got another question
it looks like we may have lost Emily
so I'll keep going we might have to
the next question I have for you Steve
is do you have any inspiration
for the book either from your
that really struck a chord
yeah absolutely I mean there's
a combination of books that go into it
so I think for Scott and I like
first of all like writing style
Scott and I are whimsical
and fun and we want to make it approachable
we got were pre-readers who said things like
it's academic yet approachable
it's understandable even though it takes
a research perspective and for us
like we wanted to almost have
the Malcolm Gladwell style or
you know the Seth Godin style and like
we've gotten feedback from people and we did have pre-readers
who said they like the fact that there's
all these individual sections broken down
so it feels like you get into a chapter
then there's like four or five sub-heads that allow you
to kind of feel like you're digesting
the concept you can take a break at that point and it's
a clear stopping point it's not just long chapters
so I would say our style and this is a great question
by the way nobody's asking me anything remotely like
this and that's one of the reasons you're the best
is our style really I think was
influenced to some degree by the
Malcolm Gladwell type style the Seth
Godin type style and Penguin did
send us by the way on the front end which is funny
because Scott and I are readers but on the front end
sent us like a stack of books with
everything from you know Annie Dukes to
you know those sorts of things and the last one
I'll say which is a very specific one
but it's hilarious because I
missed a call because I was sick with my editor
came on later and I said you know what style
of cover and book I really really love
and I'm like this may be super niche
contagious by Jonah Berger a youth pen professor
it holds up it stands the test of time
even though the examples might be
dated you know Gary Vaynerchuk
very similar but I brought up contagious
a little more nice to a lot of people
and they're like we literally talked about contagious
on the last call you missed as sort of an analog
for what we're trying to go and it was like one of those alignment
moments where Scott and I've had zero
arguments in a year and a half of
writing this book and it just shows because we're so aligned
on that but those are sort of the
Jonah Berger contagious sort of
Malcolm Gladwell Seth Godin like
those styles of having those sub heads letting
people read and also being colloquial
because the last thing I want to do is
use a bunch of big jargon words in web 3
and turn people off we want to make it understandable
Yeah it's very easy to turn people off and in fact
most people are already turned off so
I feel like you have to kind of go
above and beyond to try to get
them to warm up the idea certainly
I enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's
writing style so that is good
to hear. You know I see the book
like 288 pages so I think
you would have to use some styles
like that to kind of keep folks
attention to keep the pages
few more questions but Emily I think we've got you back
and what have you got for Steve here?
I am back as long as you can hear me.
evolved when you were writing the
Yeah this is a good question that we've gotten a few times.
Honestly like I don't know that it
evolved but what it did was it
we're like it's almost like when you have those
jokes where people are like Bitcoin
solves this and it has nothing to do with Bitcoin
there were moments where we're like okay
we were talking about health records and health care
and we would actually go maybe a step
problems so there were times like that that our editor
The challenge of separating
my own personal experience with the macro
experience is certainly something that we had
to come to reckon with that
Scott and I have had one experience but that doesn't
necessarily mean the experience of everybody else has been
the same and finding the non
personal examples to include in it
became really important where
whether it was an individual or
actual macro level case study example
when we were challenged by our editor to find
those we needed to do it so I
wouldn't say it's necessarily that we changed
but I think we had to look at a different lens
and I also think in certain ways
it reinforced us where I feel increasingly
confident in this technology having
done this because the more
examples we started to suss out and the
more conversations we started to have and then
even at times in real time we
would say something about like something like Nike
should do and then Nike would literally do it
and then we'd have to update the book to say actually this happened
those moments in time were
really cool so I think it reinforced but
it also forced maybe a different lens
board a participant in ecosystem
at it differently as maybe somebody
Goats PFP or whatever in a different
way as well as how a consumer picking it
up would read so it just forced a different lens
That does make sense and certainly
writing process I mean a lot has changed
with what some of the major brands
have done and clearly you were plugged
have clearly seen at least
some level of opportunity
I guess my next question for
you Steve I think one of the
the everything token is to
help in the onboarding process
to help push the idea forward
NFTs to go more mainstream
than they did in this past cycle
what are the catalysts that come
to mind for you when you think about how
I think it starts like a lot of
and tech bubbles of the past
or tech booms of the past
and then you had the bubble pop
and then it came back out to say
but there were things that were vaporware
so I think number one the bubble has
popped which is very helpful for us
in a lot of ways where the speculative
nature of these things still exist
in a small crowd but what's
happening is people are starting to
what's going to happen to continue to evolve this space
and by the way I want to be clear my
definition of mass adoption is not someone coming
in to buy my eat bags as eggs
and liquidity my definition of mass adoption
is this technology bringing value
and align incentive structures to consumers
and brands alike for maybe
the first time in human history or one
of the first time certainly right because in web one
you were the customer and bought it
in web two you were the product
they bought and sold your information and in web three
you are part of the brand and it's a whole different
sort of model and so for me
to move this forward it's going to have to
be brands like Starbucks Odyssey is the
example I keep using not just because I worked
year based on the stamp distribution
of sort of the year long sort of
reward stamp that they put for like people who participated
in year one the inaugural year
of a beta program without really turning the
lights on with a group that has
33 million members in their
Starbucks Odyssey had 58,000
active members last year 58
thousand and they haven't even turned the lights
on right so to me the sort of mass adoption
and moving forward is people looking at that
modeling after it I've actually had calls with web three
brands asking about like what Starbucks is doing
and how they can apply it which I think is really smart
because they're not dogmatic about we can't learn from web
that's what happens it's 58,000 people in
Starbucks Odyssey it's the average consumer
being able to use Nike dot
swoosh for gated drops and other things and then
before they know it people who hate
NFTs are going to have NFTs in their wallet
without knowing it without knowing they have a wallet
because Starbucks Odyssey is architected in a
way that my 68 year old mother can
use it and not have to think about
the blockchain or NFTs because the fact of the
matter is the majority of the people don't
care what makes something work they care
and so to me mass adoption starts to
things like Ticketmaster and others implement
it and realize it's a better software solution
and build out the rails and then
picks and shovels get built where a small business
can implement it all the same
yeah I think maybe going one step
further and I'm with you there
well first I'm still not in the Starbucks
of money every week at Starbucks
and I'm still on the dang waiting list
so I can't wait to get into this but I think
it shows how strict they've been
and kind of keeping the doors
closed for this beta program
on our show a few days ago we were
kind of talking about brainstorming
you know what is the first brand
that has the best shot to get
into millions perhaps tens of millions
into NFTs do you think Starbucks has
are they the leading candidate
I mean they certainly would be at the top of my list
what other brands do you see have a shot
yeah I mean it's Starbucks and Nike right now
and nobody else because they're willing to take
because they have the larger
they're innovative companies they're forward thinking
and they're willing to take the regulatory risk
and be super careful and it's funny because
you know the crypto what's funny about
Starbucks is you realize the mentality
of an average consumer when you're
in Starbucks and see that discord because
it's a combination of sort of
normies and crypto people and crypto people
I remember one of my favorite conversations was
you know for not knocking this
person but there was this there was a Starbucks
Odyssey stamp because they called their NFT stamps
they don't say you got an NFT it's a stamp
that you get for completing these brand positive actions
and there was a stamp where you did a few
a few you like took a quiz you took
a virtual tour of a roastery and then you like
bought a bag of coffee scan the bag of coffee
and saw the coffee's origin it was showing like
that you can trace your coffee's origin
the stamp like was going for like
$75 at this time this conversation
happened and somebody goes what are you
back to the bean to cup stamp right
now because right now it seems like the floor
is kind of stagnant yada yada yada and somebody
who was like non crypto native is like
I'm trying to understand this mentality
I bought a $15 bag of coffee
$75 and it carries points
which correlate to a wars program
like what more do you want them to do
they just five extra money and
they're giving you the opportunity to participate
in this loyalty program you could sell it right now and make money
and so the mentality of the normal people
because we think in these large terms of
like oh man my crypto and debt
is only getting me a thousand dollar profit
the average human being is like
profit is a massive thing and
there's a way to participate in the gamification
and so to me Starbucks and
Nike has those consumer bases and that
already built in brand loyalty
versus sort of the traditional web 3 brands
which build the identity and community
on the front end they have a level
of identity and community and they're super
charging that to move it to the masses so
Starbucks would be my bet but Nike's right
there because they have those rabid users
yeah it seems like those two are
they're probably one two in some
order it'll be interesting to see if any other
brands can come out as wild cards
well Steve I want to be respectful of your
time we have a couple minutes left
I've got basically two questions left in my list
one what does your book tour look like I know
you've been kind of doing the spaces circuit
I'm curious if there are any other aspects of it
and then kind of part two you know
what are interested listeners
need to know you know details
about the book launch any and all that
yeah awesome I'll kind of
answer both those and appreciate you having me on
I mean I think to me number
like a combination of this so I'm
Scott and I are great because we have like
complimentary skills I'm running to all the
spaces like we have this joke around that like
Scott will be doing certain things and he'll be like this is my type
of nonsense when he's like making sure the end notes
of our book are pristine and I was like you know
what you know Twitter spaces that's
my type of nonsense I'm all the way in on that stuff
and right now we're talking in a lot of
spaces because we know that this is a
home crowd where people are hoping to drive
mass adoption and we hope that they're
able to get value out of this book
give it to a friend and family member etc
the other side of that tour is
we're writing articles for like Harvard Business Review
we're writing articles for you know the Harvard
based email we're doing an event at Harvard so we're doing
all that stuff in the traditional world we're talking
to Bloomberg I think on launch day or the day
after launch day we're doing a Google talk
those things go on YouTube and have tons and tons
of views so like there's sort of
this combination we sent out a newsletter
to eleven thousand people that I have and
got a you know twenty percent open rate right
off the rip on that so it's all of those
things but then to give you more than you
bargain for and I know I'm kind of going long here but like
to give you more than you bargain for I will tell you
the things you don't think about going into a book
are like you have to like solicit
bulk buys from people so you know ask
favors from friends who are doing bulk buys of twenty-five
plus which you know gets you a
steep discount on it you have to ask for quotes
from the back of the book so on the back of our book
you know we have endorsement quotes on the book jacket
if you turn it over from Gary Vaynerchuk
Chris Dixon the co-founder of A16Z
you know Adam Brotman the person I mentioned
who brought Starbucks in the Metaverse
Jeff Turney former CMO of Progressive so
you need to call in those favors and get on the phone
and so those parts of it are always like interesting
as you're going through the process and everything
and then to answer your last question
and I'll kind of like leave it with this look
the thing that people can do that would mean
the absolute world to me and please tweet me
if you buy this book is that up top
in that pinned tweet you can see more of the rationale
and thinking behind it but if you click on that
tweet there's a place to buy it at Amazon
but it's really sold anywhere books are sold
you can get it on audible you can get it in the
overseas there's an Arab version there's a
UK version there's all these different
rights everywhere so no matter who you are and where you are
you can get it and I keep you know my big
thing is that you know I've done spaces
for you know five hundred
straight days plus me and Chris have been there
Monday through Friday I you know do my best
to sort of deliver value and meet with people
and have conversations and amplify what's good in the space
if I have brought you point
which is the cost of this book in ETH terms
like that I just want the ideas to be out there
and every book you buy helps drive towards
mass adoption because it pushes it
up lists it helps get people in the
mindset of sort of the you know
of seeing it on a list that's going
up and then that you know business executive might say
that's good it helps educators see it so
you know for me it's grab that $30
book I rarely if ever tell people to buy
something or ask for anything but like to me
this is like the most important thing
I've ever done professionally because it has the opportunity
to move this space a little bit forward
and I'm so stoked about it so
that would be my ask of people totally understand
and if you can't afford the $30 book and get it
just give that tweet up there a like or
retweet a comment so maybe someone who can grabs it
all right well Steve this has been
just an incredible conversation
might call action folks if you
listen to this conversation and
you're not fired up about this
book you might need to check your pulse
just go out and buy this thing
this sounds awesome it's going to be an incredible
read I'm going to be buying several
and giving them out to friends
Steve thank you so much for your time we wish you the best
want to revisit the conversation a few months
down the line and see how
with the book tour but this is certainly
so thanks again for coming on
thanks for having me I really appreciate it
awesome well folks we are going to go ahead
and wrap things up there before we go
there are some big mints on the list
pizza ninjas that started
alien queen choose freedom coming at
noon summer wagoner improve American
and then thank you x terrains
it's another busy day it drops some major
ninjas likely the headliner here finally
debuting after their delay
so check out their twitter page for all
these details and then the arts team
we've got alien queen summer
wagoner and thank you x doing their
drops today so check those out if
you are interested but folks that is it
that's our show we'll be back tomorrow at
10 a.m eastern thanks to our listeners for tuning in
thanks to my co-hosts thanks to add some
and steve for coming up our sponsor
wasabi for sponsoring today's show
everyone enjoy your thursday
let's make it a great day