GM GM. Thank you for joining us here this morning. We're going to start the show here in just a few minutes. We'll give it a few for folks to filter in. Get our speakers up on stage while we wait. Here are some tunes.
Good morning and welcome to the Lucky Lead. Today is Monday, May 22nd. The sun is shining here in Chicago. The NFT market is seeing some green again.
We'd love to see that. I had a fun but whirlwind weekend and Indianapolis at Vcon may get into that on the show here today. We also have a very special guest today in Josie Bellini. We are super excited to have her with us here this morning. I see some friendly faces out there.
those just here doing research. I'm your host Tyler D. I'm joined today by some amazing co-hosts. We've got Emily loves crypto, a web 3 security expert and co-founder of the foolproof app. We've got Logan Hitchcock editor in chief over at Lucky Trader, Reppin the Lucky Trader account up on stage. We've also got Ghost, Content Star,
it well, dipping us toes in AI, and now rocking the new Bangor Opep and PFP goes. Good morning. How you doing? Good morning, Tyler. Fresh PFP here. It was a nice surprise on Sunday morning to wake up to my bed being accepted. So finally able to get an edition one open
happened, which I was really excited about and working all last week for. So really, really fun weekend. Awesome. Well, I want to dive into two Europeppin' story later this week, probably not today. We're going to be tight on time. Just quickly on the docket for today, we're going to start with some quick news and market talk. We're going to talk this in a
market rally. What are the drivers? What are the main headlines from the weekend? Then we'll get into our conversation with Josie, hearing her web three story, talking about cyber brokers and mechs and how she's maintained such positive community sentiment through this bear market along with much, much more before we dive in though ghost. Any housekeeping items to that?
Yeah, as always, a bit of housekeeping. If you enjoy these shows, Tyler does a great recap of the NFT market every morning in the morning, minute newsletter. He's up at 5 a.m. every day doing it. So make sure you give it a subscribe. We got that pinned to the top. And we've got our lucky truer spin off AI authority, which is an AI focused newsletter that launches every Friday morning. So if you're interested
and AI, make sure you give that a subscribe as well. We've got that pin to the top. Goast, thank you for that. All right, let's quickly get into our top story here and that's the NFT rally begins. So that the recent theme in the NFT market is that we dump during conferences. It happened this year during NFT NYC and consensus.
I think it's happened in prior years as well. Well, Vcon did not get that memo. The NFT market is seeing green with a few key collections starting to build some serious momentum here. So I want to run through a few of the biggest headlines from the past week that have been kind of moving the market. So one, the the Pudgy toys.
Have seen some major success on their launch as Luca has kind of gone on this media tour We've seen the floor price respond with pudgies up 30% to 5.8 the little pudgies in the rocks are both up about 40 to 50% as well So that's been a major story. We've got jack butchers Opeffin sing most full all-time high
sales almost every day across this past week. Those series won PFPs now at a 19th floor. The unrevealed floor up to 200% on the week as well at 0.52. Then we've got the three arrows capital, the Grails. The auctions have begun at Sotheby's and they've been beating expectations.
Even in this brutal art bear market, the outcomes have been pretty positive, led by that FDINZ at number 725, which sold for $1.016 million. A huge price tag there. We've seen Bitcoin NFTs seem to gain notable traction, taking three of the top five spots on the weekly volume board over at CryptoSlam.
and seeing buyers surged 180% to 30,000 plus. In the ETH market, we've seen unique daily traders rebound to the 8,000 or 9,000 per day level. That's up about 100% from local bottom. And then we had a blur farmer dumping event over the weekend, 350 doodles, 190 mutinapes. I think there was like 150
a lady's dumped as well. But I think my takeaway here is it didn't really tank the market. Doodles fell 4% on the week, mutants down 3%, but nothing catastrophic. So that's a rundown of the key headlines here. I really think all of them are important. I was really excited to see that blur
dump, get absorbed so well. I think there's been running sentiment that the end of blur farming is a ticking time mom and we're going to see all these farmers who accumulate these bags just sell them all off. I think we saw a pretty major sell off this weekend and it didn't take them work itself. I'm certainly feeling good about that. It feels like some real momentum is building, especially
And some of these collections that we talked about, and people are buying antithesis again because they want them and not just because of blurring symptoms. That's my read. That's my take. I want to get a few thoughts from our speakers here. Maybe first, is this a bull trap or is this a real rally that we're starting to see?
I think you put it well at the end there where people are starting to buy NFTs that they actually want instead of just trying to farm and I think that's a super important dynamic and maybe it's because people have shifted back to NFTs because meme coins aren't as profitable as they were a couple weeks ago and that craze is dying down a little bit but it does feel like
there is some organic volume and traffic of people that are buying it because they like the art or like the project and want to hold as opposed to just trying to get those those blur farming bids and we'll see what happens today because it sounds like blur is going to add a bunch of other collections so that might change in the blink of an eye but for right now there's definitely some optimism and it does feel like people are kind of buying things again because they want them
I appreciate your take there goes Logan same question and maybe I'll also add a second part which of those kind of headlines that that I ran through do you feel like is the most important or maybe one that I didn't even cover Yeah, I don't think it's somewhat tied to of course the just the attention
shifting back from meme coin stuff. I think it's overwhelmingly positive for NFT market participants that things are rebounding one. And then you mentioned, I think the most impactful headline from what you indicated was the blur farming, just the absorption.
So, I think it's largely just attention driven at this point.
positive, I think for many in the NF four NFTs versus meme coins and it might be something as simple as that. Yeah, I think that the takeaways from Vcon that I've seen have been overwhelmingly positive. You know, I left a fairly glowing review in the newsletter this morning. I will get into those takeaways.
probably on tomorrow's show at this point when D's is on with us. I know he was there as well. So stay tuned for that. Go some additional thoughts. Yeah, I just wanted I don't think that this was the most important headline, but I was pretty shocked to see the prices on some of those grails that got sold from the three arrows capital collection. And those were some shocking numbers. And I think that
a lot of people probably thought that three arrows were going to be completely underwater on those and the results were pretty positive there. I'm just curious what's the mindset of buying that over some of the other ones listed on the market because the buyer's premium and the fees that you rack up on those auctions. I mean, you get big headlines but it feels like you pay a lot more there as a
to as to somewhere else like natively in the NFT ecosystem. And I guess those are some of the grails ones. So those aren't always listed, but I'm just curious to hear your thoughts there. Yeah, you know, we talked about this a little bit. So I think it's two factors. One, I mean, there are actual grails in this collection, right? So they're, you know, much
much better than just flooring a tease that you're going to be able to buy. Most likely just off the floor on OpenC or a different marketplace. I think too is the provenance. Right? So like now, like one of the really cool things about NFTs about art is having that ownership trail that everyone can see.
And I mean the 3AC blow up is kind of a huge part of crypto history now. So I think there are there are likely some collectors out there who feel like there is a premium for that 3AC ownership problems. So that that's at least my take. You know, we'll see if that
But I thought the 3AC collection was going to be well underwater, like you mentioned ghost, and I think they're up like 300-Eat or something down slightly in USD, but that seems like a huge win there. I guess maybe before we move on in any reaction,
on your side to the market rally, are you buying it? Do you need to see anything more or any headlines that jumped out to you? I am so suspicious of it. I can't think of a plausible reason for it to be rallying. It just feels like we're waiting for a shoe to drop and I don't know what it is.
That's fair. I caution against calling for the entire NFT market has bottom because I don't think it has. I think there are collections that will certainly go lower. But I think the movement we are seeing in some of these sets is real. I do think the bottom is behind us for some of those.
the key question is the blur farming, like the next air drop is that just a ticking time bomb that will eventually go off or is it being overhiked? It's a really tricky one to say and I think like the hardest thing to figure out is even if it
even if the bottom is behind us, what is the motivation to move forward at this point? Like blur, blur farming truly felt like a Hail Mary. You know, there's so many projects out there that are releasing epically cool stuff and they're just going completely ignored. Like people are legitimately
innovating on the blockchain and in Web 3 and it's getting a thousand percent ignored in favor of a handful of projects with high valuations and high floor prices. So I can't imagine what specifically is going to drive those projects forward at this
point if like actual tech doesn't do it. Well it's a valid concern and maybe we'll talk about it here with what Jozy and a bit as the found over product that definitely is innovating. But before we get to that, I think this is a good kind of wrap up
on our rally. I want to just quickly hit the news. Today's top headlines powered by Lucky Trader. Trading volume jumps over 16,000 teeth on Sunday driven by those blur farmer dumbass, which I think accounted for about 85% of the action. Our blocks
is launching Pro Abyssin on Arbitrum as a new open generative art platform powered by the art blocks engine on that L2. Belir is adding multiple new collections to its blend and BNPL program coming later today. People memorialize Pudgy Pingwan's in a Saturday night every day, capping off a big week.
for that project after its successful Toys launch. And then punk 6529, admitted a fraudulent artist in three piece art, snuck into the memes program briefly for card number 100 before being replaced by artist 6529er. And just brief Web 3 in crypto news, the crypto
The market did shop over the weekend Bitcoin down to 0.4% at 26,800. ETH even at 1810, Pepe, the leading meme coin holding steady at around 660 million. And then President Biden says he won't accept a debt ceiling deal that protects wealthy tax cheats and crypto traders.
as the politicalization of crypto gets deeper and deeper. All right, well that is our headlines. We've had Josie patiently waiting on stage with us here. So I want to dive in to our conversation with her here. As a brief
If you're in the show for those who may not know her, Joseph is an absolute OG in the crypto and NFT arts base, a crypto artist since 2017. She's the founder behind cyber brokers, a product that has seen over $105 million in sales. Cyber brokers has been back in the headlines recently with the launch of their GSS Max, a
collection that lets users customize and assemble their own fully rigged 3D digital assets in a web-based creation process. We're going to talk about that and much, much more here with Josie here this morning. Josie, GM, how are you doing? Hey guys, thanks Tyler Logan and Ghost Emily all for hosting me excited to be on the lucky Trader Show.
Awesome. Well, thanks for being here. I think maybe just before we dive into the meet some potatoes of this, maybe give our listeners who may not know you just to kind of your quick Web 3 story in your path to cyber brokers. Yeah, the super abrogated version is that I studied finance and school
went to work in private growth management. And that was sort of my first introduction to the traditional financial system. I didn't know a lot about it before then, but started trading stocks and bonds for people and gained a lot of knowledge there and what people did to build wealth for themselves.
and it was something I was really interested in doing for myself. So when Ethereum and Bitcoin came back across my plate after I learned about it in college and written a paper on it, I was like totally obsessed with it the second time around and started going to meet-ups in Chicago, Bitcoin meet-ups in Chicago, started hosting some help put on.
one of the first blockchain and crypto conferences in Chicago in 2018 and became totally obsessed. And at the end of 2017 is actually when I first made a piece of crypto art, posted on Reddit and it blew up. And from that point, really, it was history for me. I knew this was an
industry I wanted to work in and I wanted to really be able to bring crypto to life through artworks. And I started doing that on the side and creating graphic design in logos for blockchain and crypto companies, but I'm super thankful that my collector based grew as I started
to travel around to conferences around the world for many years in a row and with selling physical crypto art. And I was super lucky like I said that the collector base grew and I was able to do crypto art full time. You mentioned the conferences and I wanted to just dive into
that quickly since, you know, we're just kind of wrapping up a big conference run here. What is the importance of fatenities conferences and events to you as a creator? Yeah, I mean, so conferences, I still go now and I absolutely love them and they were different and similar in a lot of ways.
back in 2018, 2019, 2020, all those years just sort of like as the space was growing. For me as an artist, there were no other artists at these places besides cryptography and myself. So we were like, I don't know about him, but I was calling
up conferences saying, "Hey, I'm an artist. I can't afford a $2,000 ticket." But can you just give me a folding table? That's all I need to all do the rest and I'll bring some beautiful art to your conference. It wasn't a thing, right? There were these huge exhibition halls with like all the new ICOs and all the new projects, but art didn't
it really exists yet in the conference setting. So it was really, really important for me to be able to go talk to the crowd that would be interested in my work. And it was such an amazing process for me to not only meet some of my still biggest collectors in person and be able to have the
really connect with my work there and me directly, but also be able to have those people be fanatics and evangelists and all of the things for other people growing to love my work as well. That certainly makes a ton of sense. Before we move on, do you have a specific event or conference that's your
favorite or too hard to call. I love a lot of them. I've been to many of the, you know, I was at the very first NFT NYC, a lot of the consensus conferences, Toshii Roundtable. I think it's really nice. We just went to
Paris this year for NFT Paris, which was their first real big showing. Honestly, they all have a different vibe. And I love being able to go all over the world to all of them and meet different people. So can't pick one. Sorry. That's very fair. And I think that's my takeaway. I just kind of got into the the conference scene.
that here this year, having just run the gamut from New York City to consensus to be con and inapolis. And they all are very different and have their own very unique themes. I think you nailed that. So maybe kind of point it back to you. So, you know, we talked a little bit about, you know, your background. I'm like, what? Why cyber brokers? And what was your vision?
when you decided to launch? Yeah, so the crypto art for me for so many years, like I said, it was this, it was the way that I could bring crypto concepts that were a lot more difficult for other people to understand and even for myself, but the way I could bring them to life through artwork. And I had the same like obsessive pivotal moment that I
I had when I started learning about crypto was I had when I started learning about the metaverse and I had this moment where I really understood that this was going to be something that was really big and actually had a lot of parallels with cryptocurrency with digital ownership, decentralization, interoperability, user empowerment, all of those things that
Crypto had, the Metaverse also had. And so I decided, okay, this is what I want to bring to life next. And with cyberbrokers, it was super important for myself and Ben and the team when we were first starting cyberbrokers to have this be long-lasting
and literally live forever. So we put, it's a collection of 10,000 in one characters. We put all of them, all of the art, all of the metadata, 100% completely on chain, which if you know that's not typical. So it literally will live as long as Ethereum. It's a, you know, code in a contract
on Ethereum and we started creating content around cyber brokers more collectibles within the ecosystem like most recently Genesis Mechs and gamified experiences around them. So we're really bringing the metaverse to life through the collection of cyber brokers and it's been an amazing ride since.
That's really cool to hear and it's been fun to watch the project evolve. Maybe let's dive into Max a little bit more. This is the big recent development in your ecosystem. So, man, where did this idea hatch? How has it evolved over the past months? Yeah, absolutely.
It's extremely like the concept of the open Metaverse is extremely important to me that it's not controlled by a single entity organization like it's it has the same principles of crypto like I said like the openness the decentralization so when I wanted to build we but the team wanted to build something that was
really hitting that emphasis and in our story we set up in chapter one that we had mechs within our universe which are obviously these huge, you know, robotic machines that are cyber brokers and other characters within the world pilot to get to different places.
and venture around the metaverse. And when we went to build these, we were like, we need to do something bigger and better that's ever done before, which is always sort of our standard whenever we create anything. And we decided that not only do we want these to be fully 3D and rigged and
Metaverse Ready on day one, which means they're usable in, you know, Nifty Island, Monoverse, On Cyber, WebAverse, all of the places. So not only are they usable on day one, but they're also customized to whatever the user wants to create. So we had this run of different quests and puzzles where people
people could collect these meck parts for free depending on what quest they completed and then they got to assemble their mechs and mix and match 17 billion different combinations and then also the next step was like custom coloring them all the things and they got to at the point
It was really, really exciting. And even if you don't own meck parts, you can go to our website and play in the sandbox and just see the process of creating. So you can check it out. And then also this was a really, you know, amazing backend technology that we built so that we could create more assets like this in the future.
And I imagine just so much work went into this launch. Like as you mentioned, having everything be fully met averse ready at time of men. That's certainly very ambitious and different. Frankly, then we've seen a lot of other collections go, right? Who will do a met and then kind of try
to backfill some of those features and capability down the road. So now that all that effort went into the launch, what's next? Do you kind of let the users play and start to kind of watch them build this out? What's your next focus to you? >> So Safari.
people have been playing and going to meet ups and doing all the things with their max, which has been amazing. But now we've really been hunkering down and focusing on building more environments and games for people who own max and own cyber brokers to play with. So actually we have coming up pretty soon, which
We haven't fully announced yet, but we'll be talking about it this week. We have some exciting new quests and missions coming up that are not only for cyberbroker and mech holders, but also we're going to be inviting other communities to just come check everything out and play with us as well. So we have some, like I said, exciting
experiences coming out that really, you know, let people have fun, but also teach people who don't know about what's going on, bring them more experiences that are seamless and immersive and give their digital assets, you know, some use and some fun with the whole community.
I love that idea. It's fun watching this play out and hear it from you firsthand. One concept I kind of want to come back to, and this is a bit of a high level question, but you've mentioned the "Metiverse, the Open Metiverse" as being an important kind of drive.
a part of your vision. How do you think the interoperable metaverse is going to play out here for us over over the next few years? Do you feel like we're close? Who are some of the big players? Kind of what's your prediction for how this might play out? I think COVID like did an interesting thing where it definitely taught more
people about it and even with Facebook's fail of meta, like it did bring it to more people's eyes. I think the people in the in the virtual world space always have this thing like oh like this this will be our year this will be the next thing. I personally think the meta versus
much bigger than virtual spaces. For me, it encompasses all of the different, you know, the experience layer of the internet. So it encompasses things like AR, you know, like obviously VR, these gamified experiences that are not just in
like VR worlds. So it's a lot more immersive and a lot broader than people think. But I think that there's people are in the metaverse without even knowing it in a lot of ways. And what I mean by that is there are, you know, billions of people that you
They're using filters on Instagram and that is, you know, they're augmenting their reality. So I think obviously with things like the Apple VR headset coming out with AR being a huge part of our life and now, you know, augmenting people's shopping experiences and
eating experiences, all of those. I think it's just going to become more and more as our lives obviously have gone more and more digital. And now I think it's really important to start teaching people about digital ownership and property rights and all of those things that come with a digital life.
No, that makes it to a sense. I think as we think about onboarding the next wave, continuing this education, continuing to paint this picture for how an interoperable metaverse can play out, what it actually means, is going to become increasingly important. I think a lot of times it's just like
taglines to jokes and people don't really understand what that universe actually is. So I definitely appreciate your thoughts there. Maybe switching to a slightly different topic. When I think about cyber brokers in your ecosystem, I feel like there
just incredible positive community sentiment. And that's rare in the NFT market, especially in the PFP sector, which I think cyberbrokers probably bigger than just PFP, but it's in that category. So, you know, I'm curious from your
perspective, how you've been able to maintain that positive sentiment, how you've been able to manage holder expectations during this bear market cycle, which is seen 90% plus of projects start to trend more negative. Yeah, thank you, by the way, I really appreciate that.
For us, I would say a majority of that has to do with the community that is part of Cyberbrokers. We were really, really fortunate that on mint day, the way that we set up Cyberbrokers was extremely fair and anybody who had ever even collected my work followed me on
Twitter, follow me on Discord, follow our newsletter. Anyone that was even like, is 1% interested in anything that I was personally building or doing or attached to were, uh, allow listed for cyber brokers. So we had a really interesting community straight from the, the start of people
who are actually here to want to collect cyber brokers and be in this ecosystem. And then from that day forward, our Discord has always been extremely positive with people that are excited to learn, excited to hang out with community and you know, game with each other on Wednesday nights, like people who are meeting up
at conferences and we're going in the bars together after and just hanging and getting to know each other. So it's really become like as cliche as it sounds, it really has become a bit of a family. And I know a lot of the community is protective over that and excited about bringing new people into that. So it's been really positive from the Discord, the Twitter
And to be honest, like bear or bull, where the team is building things and the community knows that. So obviously we just recently launched Shuttas' Max, which is in the bear market. And there's already some things coming down the pipeline that we're really transparent with our community and talking to people about
what we're building. So it's been pretty exciting seeing the feedback. Yeah, I think certainly the level of delivery that you and the team has not has has helped, but I feel like you know your comments on holders who actually want to be there and be a part of the community is going to be one of the more important themes and
that we see in the next year. And I think it's going to be much more important for projects to try to find those core community members who actually want to be a part of the project, not just because number goes up. And it's going to be a bit of a shift. Well, Josie, I want to be conscious of
your time. You mentioned some fun, exciting things coming down the line. Is there anything else that you can share with us here today or anything you want to leave our listeners with? Yeah, if you're not in the cyberbrokers community yet, follow our Twitter and if you can join our discord, but at least follow our Twitter because we have some quests coming up where we're inviting
other communities, they're not cyber worker holders to join us and play along and some of the lore and fun game things we have coming up. So definitely please join us for that. And if anyone has any questions or thoughts, feel free to hop in our discord and just come hang with the community and share in any of those things.
Awesome. Well, Josie, we so much appreciate you coming on the show today. It's been wonderful to hear your story firsthand and kind of hear more about where the mechs have come from and your management of the community. So this conversation has been awesome. Thank you for being a Tyler and thanks everyone. For our listeners that
That is it. That is the show for today. But before we go, what's dropping today? We've got a few different mints on the list. We've got memes by 6529 coming here at 11 a.m. Eastern. We've got Hot Wheels Fast and Furious coming at 12 p.m. Eastern. We've got Fish
smaller at 1 p.m. then met a mass by David Rees coming later today time TBD. I think the most interesting drop of today likely that hot wheels drop coming on the metal virtual marketplace which is powered by a rareble later today. It's fast and furious theme cost about $20 a pack other than that. I think it's
going to be an interesting week for the memes by 6.529 ecosystem. There's a jack butcher card dropping on Friday that might lead to some increase in demand on that season three set. So something to watch out for here this week. All right folks, that's it. That is our show. We will be back tomorrow at today in Eastern. Thanks to
our listeners for tuning in. Thanks to Josie. Thanks to my co-host everyone. Enjoy your Monday. Let's make it a great day. Bye everybody.