GMGM. Good morning, Ghost.
We're going to get started in just a few minutes here, and while we wait, here are some two.
All right, good morning everyone. It is Thursday, May 18th. It is the opening day of the con. So it does suspect things will be a little bit slower in Web 3 news and notes. I'm Logan Hitchcock filling in for Tyler D who is on his way or perhaps all
ready there in Indianapolis. Again, we run the show every weekday, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. Eastern time to talk about all of the important things happening in FTs and Web 3 alongside me this morning. Again, as always, I'm joined by Ghost and Emily are amazing co-hosts.
Emily, how are you doing early on this Thursday morning? I'm doing okay, how about you? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. We're going to talk about a couple topics here, but before we do so, I want to turn it over to Ghost. It's got any housekeeping items to take away.
Yeah, as always, usually the Tyler D, but today Logan does a great recap with the NFT market every morning in the morning, mid and newsletter. So please subscribe to that if you haven't already. And then we've got our next edition of AI Authority dropping tomorrow. So we'll get that pizza top, but subscribe to that newsletter if you like any AI news over there.
And I just saw a ghost. I just saw right before the show, a little AI NFT crossover parallel messing with some AI agents and prime token and all that good stuff. So maybe we'll have some Web 3 NFT AI crossover coming there very, very soon.
Let's save that for tomorrow. Please do subscribe to that if you want to get more information about AI. Top Story for today. Again, likely to be a bit quieter for those of us tracking the news back home, but the top story for today, Vicon. Start of the conference. Gary Vee's super conference. This is the second year
last year held in Minneapolis. This year in Indianapolis, a few states over. I'm back here in the host share because Tyler is actively there. So this is a three day super conference as labeled by the press releases in Gary Vee talking about things like marketing, pop culture, technology, innovation,
and blockchain, right? All these words that when you combine them together are synonymous with Web 3 overall. I want to spend some time talking about it, even though we are not there, given the massive, massive strength in the brands and the entities that will be present at
So a few months ago at this point in time, we spent a couple of shows talking about NFT NYC, the things that were happening there, the announcements from projects. Vicon feels like a little bit more of a buttoned up version of NFT NYC. And if you don't believe me, listen to some of the major brands that Gary V.
this morning. Lots of excitement for those in the industry. I know we are not presently there, but I still want to ask the question. Maybe I'll start with you ghost. Based on what Gary Vee has been able to do here, is Veecon very clearly the pinnacle of Web 3 events?
I mean, it certainly seems like a high profile event and there's some really impressive partnerships that he has lined up there. I hope that he has the people every day of him displayed prominently at the event there because I think that would be a definite showstopper there.
But it's definitely, definitely impressive. I would say probably this feels a little bit more organic than like a NFT NYC where there are a lot of other side parties, which I think are prominent, but like the actual conference itself does not feel like a really organic web 3 event there. So this does feel like something that
is actually really powerful and that people want to go to. Yeah, and you may notice there is no mention of Web 3 in the, you know, the conference description. There's no mention of NFTs. There's no mention of blockchain. You know, all those words that I mentioned before are synonymous.
in some way. Emily has an active Web 3 participant, a Web 3 founder. Are you, are you at all slated in any way that there's no inclusion of Web 3 or do you think this is actually in the best interest of participants that there is no explicit mention? Well,
We don't GaryVee is not exclusively Web 3, so that doesn't surprise me at all. I think that perhaps he did it to attract more of the locals that were around and like may not understand what Web 3 is or means.
I don't think that means it's like without that type of content though. So no, I don't feel slighted and like I understand why someone might do that.
I do think it's weird though that an entire...
branch of technology, not even like branch like evolution, is something that people are so vehemently opposed to without really understanding it and I'm not
I don't know, it's like a bigger thing to do, sect.
Yeah, I actually feel that the lack of inclusion may be a small positive for many of us. I do want to also, instead of talking about the potential excitement for this, perhaps if we were a bit more excited, we'd be present. I want to talk about the brands included.
which are listed, you know, and Heizer Bush, etc. Many of these organizations have already participated actively in Web 3 and Heizer Bush with ZED Run, Visa, you know, bought a punk that sparked that major punk rally. You know, we've seen others like LVMH
Louis Vuitton is going to be there. Other organizations that have in some way or another been tangentially or very closely related to Web 3 activities. Do we expect a major announcement from any of these coming this week?
Do you expect that even if no plans at present time for these organizations to have Web 3 initiatives, a conference like this, further speeds up, I guess I should say speeds up, they're pushed into Web 3.
I'm not sure there'll be any major announcements. I like like Emily said I think that Gary Ve spans beyond web 3 to the point where he probably has a lot of partnerships and relationships with people of these companies that that kind of
drives it just as much as possibly the Web 3 angle there. So I don't see any huge ones coming, especially given the marker right now. I think it's still a little test C for major brands to be hopping in at this moment. So I'm not personally expecting any, but I'm curious to hear what Emily thinks.
Yeah, let's go to that, Emily. That was gonna be my segway. Do you think V-con with the inclusion of all these major brands, do you think this can be a catalyst towards more excitement for Web 3 and what's happening in the market right now? It is a time that has been largely deemed as unexciting and bearish.
No, what I think is really the biggest friction point right now is a lack of use for NFTs as we currently have them. We don't really have the infrastructure that makes NFTs
usable, right? What we have is a bunch of projects that sold a Web 3 good and then built Web 2 companies. And I think that's the biggest issue that we face. I think once more DAPs start coming out and more
I guess like more openings and more entrances for web 3 things. Things like using your blockchain identity, using your wallet to lock in something that I call decentralized user management, I think that's going to be a huge breakthrough.
as well as a lot of these projects stopping with this concept of road maps and actually just building dApps that support more than themselves. I think these are really the key points and this is why the rest of the world hasn't caught on because we built a bunch of silly shit and expected
people to come and play with our silly toys. And that's not enough of a pull for most people who are busy working whatever that is. We haven't made anyone's life easier. We haven't made an impact. We haven't done any of those things. But I think that's
technology is extremely valuable. It's just a matter of time. We're going to spend a little bit more time talking about some silly shit here in a little bit with some of our other topics. Go see better hand up, go ahead. Yeah, I was just clicking through the panel and the schedule of events and a lot of these different speakers and the panels.
I don't see Web 3 really mentioned in any of them. This feels like more of a business conference that happens to also have a Web 3 element that we're excited about because we're deep in this little Web 3 bubble. It kind of feels like more of a business conference here. I'm looking at women at the top, creating
a vision to business reality, culture of curiosity, business and Baltimore. So these feel like more of a high end business conference more so than a web-through-respecific conference to me. Yeah, and I think it's very intentional that that's the case, even though it does feel in some ways, or perhaps legitimately was, a V-con
and kind of born out of right, the friends and trying to provide utility to holders and key followers of Gary Vaynerchuk. We spent a lot more time, we're actually going to get more information, of course, throughout the course of this week about VCon, the activities at VCon, and then hopefully some breakdowns. Next week, once
people have been able to digest anything that's transpired, whether that be Web 3 announcements or other notable announcements. But let's talk a little bit more about some other topics. I do before we get there, I want to talk about some of the top news, powered by Lucky Trader, Ghosts. You can hold the key tunes there. We'll hit you at the very end.
So a few things that happened in the last two days here, they want to make sure you get past long full information can be found over on Lucky Trader. Looks rare yesterday, send its Raffle product live. There's a board ape up top five of the Zookies and then hundreds of packages of looks, tokens still available. You can now RSVP for the third art box, Marf a Weekend.
that is going live a little bit later this year. OS, that's OpenC and Blur, both made minor improvements or I guess you could say major improvements to some of the analytics capabilities on their sites. Just continuing that marketplace war while looks rare is continuing to innovate as well. Rumble Kongs, Inc. the deal
with CAA sports to help represent them. CAA sports represents notable athletes like Julius Randall, Jaden Ivy and others from the NBA, allts by Adidas, AirDrop, tokens ahead of its chapter 2, 3 tokens to each allts by Adidas and FT holder. So just a couple notable headlines again, a little bit
We're going to get a lot more interest from the native web3 community. That's Pudgy Toys.
last week to talk about all things and then also do if you're here, Little Sneak Peak will have Luca on the show next Friday. So make sure you're back here to listen to that. But for now, I want to talk about Pudgy Toys. Again, expected to go live later today, the latest IP expansion from the Huddled. We don't have really formal details yet about exactly what
two things that really stood out to me, Luca said about Pudgy Toys this week. First and foremost, regarding the launch, Pudgy Toys are Trojan horses for getting non-web three people excited about collecting digital collectibles. And then the second really key thing that stood out to me was, you know, based on comments about how do toys benefit all of our
Pudgy Penguin holders. He responded, "How does being financially independent and sustainable so that I don't need to squeeze the quiddity out of my collectors with endless mince sound?" Now, that's a topic very dear to us with expansionary and delutive collections. Emily, you've got your hand up. Feel free. Hop in about Pudgy Toys. What are you thinking?
Oh my god, I couldn't click the button. I respect Luca for identifying that he couldn't just keep minting NFTs and expecting people to buy them from him. But at the same time, I do not believe that
toys are the way or the answer here. I think that there's lots of companies that make money strictly by selling collectibles and forming collector communities out there and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Like I said before, I don't really see a reason for any of it until we have
If you have a lot of things that you can do, you can do it.
Technology is really misunderstood as far as what it's capable of. And I just think that what we really need to reestablish a bull marketer to re-get that really bullish sentiment is people putting the technology to use
And like we're just not getting it and adding, you know, IRL collectibles or like, physicals or whatever that is. I just do not believe that's the way. I think that's a fun little thingy to do. I don't really see how they're interconnected though. Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. We've all been somewhat critical, at least myself to speak for myself, not to speak for you, goes about expansion in this manner. But I really did appreciate the commentary from Luca. I want to add a note. It's not, none of the details yet are completely confirmed regarding the toys available, but toys that had previously been available.
or had recently become available that have been passed around in the last few days, Amazon links to them include a small component which allows individuals to kind of scan for a digital collectible. So maybe just a note there Emily about how exactly that technology would be used, I agree. It's not of course the same thing.
trying to pass it through in some way. Ghost, your thoughts on Pudgey Toys? Are you more or less bullish as a result of this? Or what do you think it overall? I would say I'm cautiously optimistic. I was listening to the Good Night Web 3 show with Faroque and
and they have Luke gone and I thought that I've always been a fan of Lucas but I haven't really been in the Pudge ecosystem so I haven't seen or listened to him a ton and hearing him speak about his vision for the project I thought was really insightful and interesting and he was he mentioned some of the stuff that you just mentioned about how
people can scan the code and get basically an NFT very easily without having to set anything up. And he also mentioned how there's going to be ways to determine if you're buying this Pudgy, where has that been shown in GIF. So it might be a certain Pudgy that has a million impressions on social media for
from its gift and you'd be able to tell that on their platform. So I thought that his stuff was pretty insightful and it sounds like he has a lot of experience of building other brands and companies. So I'm excited to see this new venture and it sounds like they've been cooking on it for a while. So I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that I'm cautiously optimistic.
Cautiously optimistic. Yeah, I think that's that's totally great. I'm glad you brought up the point about the the gifts and stuff. This is a collection in particular when you talk about potential mass appeal. You know many NFTs or NFD projects don't really own that I would argue against you know
We've seen multiple folks speak out in the last few weeks about the organic reach of Pudgy Penguins IP elsewhere. Alongside things like chimpers as well that have started to make the rounds on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok with millions and millions of impressions. Just starting to ingrain that IP in other people's minds.
I do want to also talk a little bit more about the point of holding or not holding the Pudgey. Many of those people who are interacting with or potentially seeing this IP are not going to hold the original Pudgey Penguin. Does it matter to you at all?
that you wouldn't own the actual collectible that we're seeing on, so the one on the shelf right, like, does it matter at all that it's not your Pudgy Penguin or that you don't own it or that somebody else actually owns that Pudgy Penguin? I don't know what your affinity is for physical collectibles, but would you care at all on that instance?
I think in this case, I think you'd want to be excited because it'd be your IP that you own the digital version of and seeing it spread to the rest of the world and getting it to the hands
of other people. So I don't think that I would look at it as someone else. It owns my IP there. I would say that it's spreading something that I own the inherent rights to as the collector and seeing it on the shelf of someone else would be cool.
Emily, I want to ask, we talked about the mass appeal. I would imagine children are a pretty key potential demographic for Pudgy Toys, potentially. Is this something that as a mother, you'd be looking to establish, or that a child would be interested in? Can you comment on that?
I mean, no, I don't know. Like I asked my kid, I asked my kid if she liked the Pudgy Penguin, like the mock-ups or whatever. I like showed her a picture of it and then I like put it next to one of her like Thai stuffed animal creepy large eye things and I was like which one do you
you like better and she did not really feel compelled in any specific way about the Pudge of England. I'm like that's one kid sure but like what I think is what I think is going to be troublesome for them if they really are trying to get out into kids is that like it's not a
barcow, unicorn, rainbow, uh, sequinie, flippy, whatever, right? Like it is art that looks like it's for children designed for adults. And I think that that is, um, is something that hasn't really been openly discussed or addressed, right?
like the kids don't like the kids aren't going to be like oh man that red shirt with the igloo on it is so sick I want to collect that one trait right like that's just not how kids think they're like this doesn't have dinosaurs on it and I fucking love dinosaurs find me something with a dinosaur and like
I think that's kind of an unrecognized challenge at this point. Maybe I'm not sure about like, you know, if that's get over a bull or what, but like in my limited
single child experience like that's that's really what I've seen a lot of it doesn't if it doesn't like meet that kids criteria of stuff They like it doesn't get bought and if it does get bought it doesn't get played with and like being able to To collect something like like my little pony who's
got launched in the 80s alongside a television show and they all had personalities and the kids are trying to like collect all of the dolls to go with the personalities. It's just like I think IP is a lot more complex than this. I think like there's a lot of challenges with the
the whole talk of IP rights and I don't think that that is an especially web 3 discussion but it's something that people think is web 3. I just I feel like the whole thing is very confused. Yeah, I'm actually really glad you brought up my little pony topic. I don't know too much about my little pony but I want to ask ghosts.
On that front of you know kind of launching in parallel with a potential show is it too early to do something like this do they would should they have waited a little bit longer until the IP was perhaps you know rounding into form on millions of devices prior to launching a collectible are they at a
a potential loss here because not enough people know about the brand yet or is this totally fine in your opinion? I don't know, maybe they'll grow an organic community of people that just like the Pudgey-Pag ones because it's a good show or because they like that IP, not because it's an NFT.
that's kind of been their whole strategy for Instagram and some of the other channels. They don't really mention the NFT web three side of things. They're just kind of growing that IP. So I'm a big fan of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks and just doing something instead of kind of waiting for the right time. So I'm okay with it. Yeah. Okay. Emily, you've got your head up.
Yeah, okay, so something else that I want to point out is that like having a show isn't a make or break either. I can't tell you how many Terrible terrible terrible television shows that my daughter wants to watch and like they clearly only managed to put out six episodes or a season because they get no traction
in that's an expensive production to make. Like, there's one that she's been into lately that I'm like this won't last and I know the entire studio is like from Disney because my brother-in-law worked there and told me his friends were working on this
show and we wanted to check it out and we do it and like it is lame as fuck. Like I just don't think that people really understand even if you get a show into production how hard it is to keep it into production or how hard it is to really break through and maintain this
This, you know, this, this leverage, like it's, it's a completely different type of fame and content creation and marketing that needs to be facilitated and it's not a matter of like garnering the eith of 10,000 wallets. It is significantly more complicated.
different type of like navigation and like weird pettiness that goes on in Hollywood and production studios like I just think that people are really underestimating the challenge I think it would be super cool if someone did breakthrough and make that happen I just don't see it is very likely
Yeah, I think I can speak for all of us and saying that whether we own or do not own Pudgy Penguin, sorry, we are actively rooting for someone to build a playbook like Luca has and see success. Of course, beyond Web 3 for the sustainability of the entire ecosystem.
That's enough on that, though, Ghost. We've got about five minutes left. You mentioned you may have some other topics from the last few days of news. Go ahead. Yeah, I wanted to call out some of the things. And Tyler hit on a couple of those in the tweet that I had pinned. I thought the Bitcoin frogs. I mean, those are leading the total volume for the entire space. And it feels like a kind of flying
crazy to see the frogs all the way up there. And then I wanted to call out the the on one force move to they moved up 50% overnight and then they're at a 1.5 before now so pretty impressive move there. Interesting to see what they have cooking if you have any opinions on those looking curious to hear your thoughts. Yeah, I'm really intrigued about the on one
or stuff. I know we talked about worldwide, the kind of community campaign that they had launched last week at this point, partnership with Horizon Labs, new ownership right at the beginning of the year. We talked about just the massive, massive market that anime brings to the table.
I think there's room for more than just a zuki, right? And I've seen others tweet something similar. So I think it's a really interesting one to follow. It feels like one of these things. I'm very, very bad, like very bad at buying on the way up. You know what I mean? Once something goes up,
We have a tendency to do that. Oh, well, we miss the boat type thing and then just never buy back in. It feels like one of those moments in time for on one force for, in my particular opinion, where I'm fighting my own thoughts about like, oh, well, it's already back up to one and a half each floor. Why would I buy now?
So if I'm just keeping the back of my mind as we continue to see more news about that, then of course the Ordinal Madness, it's difficult to ignore at this point in time. Bitcoin frogs, yeah, 2.2 million in volume over the last 24 hours. And then of course we just put up a post at luckytrader.com commenting on this.
Bitcoin in particular, NFT volume, track by crypto slams, data courtesy of crypto slams, 38 million in the last seven days, which dwarfs Solana, dwarf polygon, right? Some of these other chains that were the secondary or, you know,
tertiary chains in terms of NFT trading when compared to ETH and now in the span of a couple months despite major complexities in onboarding major complexities and user experience Bitcoin ordinals are Dominating I guess it's an okay work
I know we're trying to ramp up our coverage over a lucky trader of the ordinal market. So if you have things that you think we should be paying attention to, please feel free to hit us up on the DMs or shoot a tweet over our way. Emily, do you want to add any thoughts about either one of those on one force or Bitcoin ordinals? Have you gotten any ordinal NFTs yet?
No, but I've inscribed a bunch. I haven't yeah, I haven't like worked on buying them really at all. I don't know that part is still a little elusive to me and I'm kind of a type of person who like
to understand every like nook and cranny and niche how things work and I just don't understand the Bitcoin blockchain super well right now. On one force only force whatever the hell they call themselves that's an interesting one I am
It seems like people are really bullish on secondary teams right now, right? Like we're seeing a lot of that resurgence of a project that comes in and someone's like, all right, this project exists. Let's turn it into something. And I gotta say I do respect that, right? Like they're not out there being like, what are
just mint a new thing. We'll create all of it. They're like, "We like this thing too. Let's come in and revive it." I think that that's pretty cool. I like seeing that. So I don't know, like whether or not they're able to be successful, whether or not they
They've got some wallets that are bonding up the floor. They've got some friends who are insiders and they know what's going on. It's tough to say. And any NFT collection making moves in this market is going to get attention. So, yeah, I mean, maybe their timing is impeccable.
Yeah, anything making a move in this market is definitely definitely news. I can attest to that. We'll talk perhaps a bit more about some of the projects that are making moves. Opepin goes to setting may have an update for us to share tomorrow. So we'll save that for our casual Friday show.
As for today though, I think that's a good place to wrap it up. Ghost, I will politely allow you to cue the end music for today. A few things dropping to pay attention to. We have the invisible friends physical collectibles happening over at OpenC. There is a general public
period available if you're looking to get a physical collectible and you're not into pudgy toys, perhaps it's invisible friends. We also have a D-God's live auction taking place later tonight for those in Bitcoin Miami and then last but not least
Sorry, my screen has frozen your last but not least generations by Anna Lucia and G's band quilters taking place at Noon Eastern time a collection of 500 generative quilt NFTs But that's it for us today folks. Thank you so much for joining
We'll be back again tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your day.