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OpenSea Exec joins Coffee with Captain #1,118
Recorded: March 17, 2026 Duration: 2:55:43Space Recording
Full Transcription
I'm telling you. I'll sell you a percentage on Nebula.
Shout out to Fence Hill, set it up.
Surfing on the web and I'm shooting at three.
I've been golden when I got my tea.
I'm an alien boy from a different planet, yeah.
So I got my drink.
I'm riding in the 1920s Model T.
Ford, car, carol, Lord.
Call me Levi playing on the keys, boy.
And I'm about to put my gloves on.
If I said it, then I meant that.
Yeah, I like that one.
I'm about to get that.
Crash that whip with a drumstick whiplash.
I'm about to get them all.
Are you with that?
In a white boat surrounded by blue.
I want one, but I got a cop too.
I want to fly high in the sky.
Arms out wide trying to swim.
I'm a bird's eye view.
I'm on fire, Mickey, Bobby.
Cracking the pavement with me, Bobby.
I'm a Saki bomb.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
Bruce Wayne been a dog, and I keep it 101,
cause I'm feeling kind of spotty.
Sipping on some rock and I'm slipping out octane.
The only thing around my neck is the rock team.
Kick-pop.
Now I got coins.
I see where y'all going.
And Papa says Web 1.
Hello, Throne Web 2.
I was living a dream.
Now I'm on web three.
See, I fell.
And it is what it seems.
Topping the pyramid schemes, I'm telling you.
I'll sell you a percentage on Nebula.
Shout out to Vince.
Yo, set it up.
NFT Twitter, my team.
See him with the ghosts and we balling on the bronze head.
Credo, credo.
We can make a trade, get the members.
Feels not falling for the FOMO.
Listening to coffee with Captain.
You know we were a wide day local.
I ain't never gonna stop rapping.
Orlando, yeah, we working magic.
We working ethereum in a team.
I just went and caught me a habit.
Man, I gotta shut up.
Starting off with a big kick-bop.
Now I got coin.
I see where y'all going.
And Papa says web one.
Hello, hoes on web two. I was living the dream. Now I'm coin. I see where y'all going. Man poppin' since web one. Hello, hoes on web two.
I was living the dream.
Now I'm on web three.
And it is what it seems.
Popping the pyramid schemes, I'm telling you.
I'll sell you a percentage on Nebula.
Shout out to Vince.
He'll set it up.
We can no more to choose one.
Bunny got knowledge to move, son.
I'm shockin' the shades with my brother in suits.
Yeah, them blues is comin'.
Even though it's hard to pick, any mighty mo.
Soda on the mix, no biting lips.
It's time to go.
Index number one, no thumbs up.
You got to scroll.
Looking at the ghost in studio.
It's time to go.
Had a helmet on by myself until I met a mask.
Dad, wanted to have a face on.
So I had to bring my chainsaw.
Full ticket cast in the drive with my brakes off.
I'm A1, but a different kind of steak sauce.
GM, GM, welcome to Coffee with Captain.
Happy Monday, Tuesday, everyone.
Almost, almost had a good start.
As always, I'm Cap, no co-host today,
but we do have a special guest,
big time special guest joining us at 9 a.m. Eastern.
Might have broken a record this morning.
I'm not sure.
Well, definitely a record for 2026.
We had some pretty big shows back in the mania,
but can't remember the last time we had 215 reminders set for the morning show.
So a lot of people looking forward to asking some questions of Mr. Adam Hollander.
Per Adam, ask questions, yell at him, whatever makes you happy.
Looking forward to getting into that with Adam today.
I greatly respect coming in and not just joining us on the show today,
but we talk so often about communications and PR
and not just doing announcements of announcements,
but actually providing updates.
And we got a pretty big update from Devin yesterday.
Then CMO Adam joining the show today.
Not necessarily an exclusive,
but the first public interview
since the big announcement that TGE will be delayed
and some other updates.
So really, really looking forward
to getting into it with Adam today.
As always, if you haven't yet,
well, we kind of stopped asking for the love on the space, but
we're going to ask that this morning. We'd appreciate any extra. Those likes, the comments
down in the purple pill down below, the repost, all the above go a long way to get this room
warmed up for discoverability, help everyone else on X find us and make sure they know we're live.
Again, Adam will be joining us here in about an hour. Until then, we got several other, actually, trending topics, news of the day.
We got the Fed kicking off their two-day meeting today.
I've read some conflicting news.
If anyone knows, anyone deep in the Fed meeting streets can confirm.
I don't know if we get the rate decision today at 2.
I know Powell doesn't talk until 2.30 tomorrow. At least that's my understanding. I don't think if we get the rate decision today at 2. I know Powell doesn't talk until 2.30 tomorrow.
At least that's my understanding.
I don't think it really matters.
Everyone, CME, FedWatch, as well as Polymarket has it at 99% that we don't get any rate change
today.
So I think it'll be kind of a nothing burger, whether that be today or tomorrow.
But before we get into too much serious stuff, what's going on in the market,
I do have a few other items I wanted to get into.
Be Epic, thank you very much for the tip over there.
Happy St. Patrick's Day.
Yeah, a lot going on today.
Hopefully, I'm not wearing green,
but I am wearing a new shirt I'm going to show off.
It was Von Fronten.
I'll make sure Von Fronten's out there.
It was shoulder and arms day at the gym today,
and I actually chose to put on sleeves A,
well, primarily to support the divided house tonight.
We have, if you've been following the World Baseball Classic,
Venezuela scored three in the seventh last night to win.
Once again, they'll be heading to the finals tonight
to face U.S. of A.
And in support of the World Baseball Classic Finals, rocking my new Arepas t-shirt.
Had to show that off.
Seemed like a fitting day to bust it out.
Can't get the full view during, I guess, normal screen here.
But nevertheless, support.
It's a win-win for me tonight.
I've been printing.
I haven't missed yet in my,
not that I've went too hard in terms of volume,
but have not missed yet on my World Baseball Classic bets.
I've been all in on Kalshi for my sports betting recently.
And yeah, these were the two teams I picked to be in the finals.
Didn't even pick a third. I just, again, wasn't that deep into it,, these were the two teams I picked to be in the finals. Didn't even pick a third. I just, again, wasn't that, wasn't that deep into it, but these are
the two teams I picked. I got Venezuela at like 7%, and they're up to like maybe 30% now. Still
a big underdog, but if either one win, we win. Like I'm up, I've already locked in profits for
the World Baseball Classic. Haven't missed any bets yet. And I had, these were
the two teams I had. I had actually Venezuela to make the finals, and I had both Venezuela and U.S.
to win. So either one, either outcome, we were up on the Cauchy side. And I have several MVP
bets out there. I think all on the Venezuelan side because they were the best priced. But anyways, I digress.
Jealous, whether it's Squallow or King Squallow
or anyone else that might be making the game today in Miami.
I would love to go.
I actually like half serious, half joking,
talked about going to Miami,
making the trek down for the game.
But just too much going on.
And if I'm keeping it really okay, Zonko, thank you very much.
Rates are tomorrow, 318.
So meeting starts today.
Don't get a decision on the rates until tomorrow.
But again, not expecting any changes per the prediction markets and CME.
I think we will just, not necessarily nothing burger. I think what they
say will be as important as any, you know, rate cuts or no rate cuts. I see GM to all of our early
GMers. I know we got a few more here today to hear from Adam at the nine o'clock hour. But shout out to all the, those in the chat warming things up.
We got Risk Brian over there, Thomas, defending reigning community member of the month.
Actually had a pretty good, Payne doesn't even know this yet, had a fun conversation
yesterday afternoon. We've been doing this community member of the month for January
and February. We got supported by the Ape Co-Foundation, gave away some Ape to Teacher Katie in January. And then Thomas took home a BZ Claw poll for, wait, Thomas or Otis?
I can't remember. They were the two of the finalists there. But I see Thomas on my brain
in the chat talking about one day, 70 degrees, next day it's 20. My mother from, not Cleveland,
but sent me a picture from Cincinnati yesterday
with her back deck was covered in snow.
And she said, but it's supposed to be 70 later this week.
So congrats to all the Northerners,
all the Midwesterners on your lovely weather
this time of year.
I am almost back to full health
after my trip to Cincinnati
and coming down with just some head junk.
Not quite 100%, but we are, we'll say 90%, and I can deal with that.
Grateful for health.
And it did actually be a little under the weather.
It did, does make me great.
It was Otis was the defending champion.
No, that's not foreshadowing, Thomas.
I'm not saying you're going to win Community Member of the Month.
But finishing that conversation,
the good news is I think we may actually kick off,
we'll still do a Member of the Month,
but we might have a weekly giveaway,
a weekly prize for a Community Member.
You're going to want to be subbed to YouTube
to participate in any of those.
So if you're not yet headed over to YouTube,
it's pinned up top along with,
we're live on Abstract,
we're live on the X video feed, both on my account and the Coffee with Captain account. But if you've not yet headed over to YouTube, it's pinned up top along with we're live on abstract. We're live on the X video feed, both on my account and the coffee with captain account.
But if you've not yet checked us out on YouTube, head over there, give the show a like subscribe.
Would greatly appreciate it.
Might be a good day to get some clips and you never know.
You might get a comment featured in those clips.
But yet Thomas is not begrudgingly.
not begrudgingly,
he, you know,
giving his finalist,
Otis over there,
the love for Community Member of the Month.
But yeah, more on that tomorrow.
Yeah, the Coffee with Captain Account
is on stage, is he?
So I don't know
if you're not seeing that or not,
but it is on stage
along with our guy, Cheesus. And X has been a little finicky.
There was an update five days ago. For a while, I wasn't able to find any spaces at all. I was
asking Payne if I was losing my mind because on my account, I couldn't see any spaces. I had to go
to actually the tab bar to see it. They weren't usually just at the top of your For You page or
your following page. I was getting nothing for a while, but it seems to be back now. I think we're okay.
But yeah, if you've not updated spaces in the, or X, excuse me, if you've not updated X in the last
week, um, yeah, Joey's saying the same thing. Only see myself. I'm going to do a quick mic
check since we have cheeses up here. Uh, Adam will be joining us on video, but I, we would,
as always open stage here on Coffee with Captain.
We are going to field questions.
You can feel free to drop those in the chat.
If you have, I mean, any topics we discuss here in the first hour,
Turning Topics, News of the Day, etc., feel free to drop those questions to the chat.
Or you're welcome to join us on stage.
When Adam joins us, we will continue to field questions.
I did capture quite a few yesterday from comments, both on
my post for today's space, as well as Adam's. You're welcome to join us. I would just,
we'll repeat this a little later, but as always, to steal the phrase Steve coined,
we do pride ourselves on being able to disagree without being disagreeable here on Coffee with
Captain. So my ask is, as I said, I respect Adam for fielding the questions, maybe even an arrow
or two today.
Just be respectful.
That's my only ask.
Ask whatever questions.
I don't think there's anything off limits as long as it's professional and respectful.
Understand there's some frustrations around this.
I'm going to ask some hard questions.
I also, at the same time, I understand, agree the decision to delay.
The market's junk.
They got one shot at this thing.
And as someone who I've not been actively farming, I do have some voyages that I've
completed and been participating very passively, just doing normal activity over there.
But I do get a lot of historical volume.
And I want to see the TG go well,
not just for myself,
but for OpenSea as a whole.
I think it would be good for the space if it goes well.
And hard to see it going well this month.
Although, fear and greed's pumping.
Fear and greed's back up to neutral all of a sudden.
Did not expect like a hockey stick up
during the midst of this Iran crisis, war, whatever
you want to call it.
But fear and greed has been up, up, and to the right as of late.
Bitcoin, ETH, and maybe they're saying altseason might be here.
But Jesus, do you mind doing a quick mic check just to see?
You're probably going to get that echo, I'm guessing.
Maybe since I jinxed it, we won't get an echo.
But GM, sir sir welcome to the
stage uh other than a mic check any thoughts this morning uh gm uh clear to me yeah yeah hopefully
hopefully that goes away echo echo echo echo so weird are you getting that on your spaces is it
i am uh so it's so annoying yeah it is it is so annoying um no idea what it is but hopefully
it's minimized for the audience for whatever reason this last update guest speakers they get
an echo back when they talk i don't hear any echo you sound you sound crystal clear on my end but
yeah i don't i don't ever hear an echo oh my god wild uh i don't ever hear
oh it's gone now so we're good okay it's gone now joey just said they're hearing the audience
joey i'm curious is it gone now for you as well uh after and that's the weirdest part it only echoes
for like i don't know the first 30 seconds the guest speaker speaks and then the echo stops
yeah so weird yeah uh i i never hear it when I'm hosting MySpace.
So if people have it, it is what it is.
I mean, I don't know what they're doing.
It's been so long since they've updated anything with Spaces.
So who knows, man?
Who knows?
Yeah, maybe that'll be the actual next update we get from X is a Spaces update.
That would be nice.
Would be nice.
Anything else other than OpenSea?
We'll probably save those comments, questions
until Adam can join us.
Are you vested in the World Baseball Classic?
Myself?
Anything else on your mind?
I had one.
I've seen this PFP from Dort,
and I have no idea what it's from.
Dort is like my, oh, it's Deeple.
It's a Deeple to celebrate the big upcoming week for Shape.
I just answered my own question by going to his feed.
A few launches today.
We got Shape, a big week for Shape.
I've not been, I did a few things very early on, but I haven't done anything there.
I haven't been really keeping up with that.
Doodles AI Studios kicking off today.
Any of the stuff on your radar, any of the stuff that you're paying attention to,
or any other, I guess, news of the day or trending topics in your world?
Yeah, I do like the Doodles AI because that's something,
listening to the guys talk about that on low key space on Sunday, it was really interesting.
Uh, listening to dudes and, uh, Pocky talk about that.
That was good.
Uh, this morning, I'm not sure if you've seen it or not.
I'm not sure if you're a bearish holder or not, but you know, we actually can bring that
I'm not, but I was shouting out, thank you for bringing this up.
Cause I was shouting out the audience and our GMers.
I saw general Wags who's all every day is posting his, his bearish by the day. And, um,
I saw that they're doing a March Madness tournament, right? There's a, both a free and
a paid version. Tell us, I don't know the details. I just, I've seen it. It did pop on my timeline.
Yeah. So there's, uh, there's, this is the second March Madness. They did this last year. This is way nicer.
So there are, I'm looking at it right now.
There's one, two, three, four, five free tournaments that you can enter.
You don't have to have a bear.
You don't have to. Anybody can enter.
One of the entries, you can win bearish NFTs.
They have a token that's attached to each bearish.
It's like 10,001 tokens. And each of the other two prize pools, one is 444,000 BRR,
which at current values like 4Gs. Then there's 222,000 BRR. Then for anyone that's participating in Z or looking for an opportunity to get,
you know, some Z, they have two tournaments as well, where they're giving away 25,000 Z.
And the other tournament is they're giving away 10,000 Z prize pool. Each one has about a hundred,
you know, the biggest one is the 444K. There's 260
entries.
There's about 150 plus entries.
But then there's also some
paid ones that are .001
and it goes all the way up to
.025
ETH.
The cool thing is
even if you don't know anything
about
NCAA, there's too many teams, whatever, you can either manually enter a bracket or you can do AI-assisted brackets.
And there's like four different versions of what now.
I was trying to do it this morning.
It could have been just buggy
but there's chalk mode there's analytic mode there's chaos agent momentum and defense wins
so it the the prompts are set for the the agent to kind of pick a bracket based on how dj you
want to be um so pretty cool man yeah that is. Yeah. That is very cool. Actually. I,
if someone who is a kid, I got really into March madness. Like I would print out, I had like
brackets the size of my wall. I was deep in like in the fab five, fab five era and probably four
or five years on both sides of, of that group. I was just, I was, it was my favorite time of the
year. I don't, I don't it was my favorite time of the year.
I don't think I filled out a bracket last year,
maybe not the last couple of years because I haven't been paying attention.
And now as I'm an adult,
like I'm much more of a degenerate,
but I like doing things where I'm plus EV
and I don't follow college basketball.
So I'm not.
However, with AI kind of levels the playing field.
So yeah, I dig it.
I think it's a great approach.
I'll say she's got a cool chick on her approach where she's got a mint.
I think it's still live where you just, you've been a team basically.
And you're riding that team to the finals. They win, you win.
If they make the final four, you're pretty money.
But yeah, I think the AI approach to, I'm sure we're going to see someone.
I'm not sure. I mean, maybe probably this bearish tournament,
but I think we'll see someone win a big bracket tournament this year
with, they say, oh, Chad Gbti or Claude
or this AI model just picked all my picks for me.
Well, did you see Kalshi?
Oh, yeah.
Kalshi's, so you were talking like these tournaments have 150, 200 entries,
which may sound like a lot.
That's nothing compared to some of these large tournaments.
Kalshi's giving away a billion dollars for a perfect bracket but it's not which is extremely low i don't think anyone's
ever hit it warren buffett used to do billion dollar bracket if you got them all right um
but the it's i think a million dollars to just the best bracket is that right yes yeah yeah a
million dollars to the best bracket a billion to a perfect bracket.
I mean, bro, like you, the only way you could hit a perfect bracket using AI or whatever.
I mean, it's either you're just extremely, extremely lucky or, you know, basketball's fixed all in all.
Yeah. I'm going to say maybe a little bit of both, but probably a lot on the luck side.
And a million to charity as well.
Nice, nice.
I am, Kalshi's crushing it.
Kalshi is, as of late, they are on a little bit of a heater.
I just found myself in a voice chat.
Didn't know how I did that, but I got it fixed.
But my point with the bearish thing,
there's nobody in this room that should have any excuse not to go enter
because there's five free tournaments.
You don't have to pay anything.
All you have to have is an abstract account,
and you can have a chance to win some cool prizes.
You could even win a bearish NFT.
And it costs you literally just a few clicks of a button.
We're taking a shot.
That team's shipping, man.
Free 99 is worth the price of admission.
No, nothing at risk.
This is the best part.
I mean, it's not just March Madness tournament.
It's like one of the best parts of crypto. Yeah, OpenSeaTalk, Adam's going to join us around
nine o'clock.
This show, if you're new here, welcome.
We run Coffee with Captain every Monday through Friday.
We start at 8 a.m. Eastern time.
We'll cover news of the day, trending topics, a little bit of cold open before we get into
that stuff.
And then we're off to do, we are fortunate to have special guests join us.
And when we do that, it's often the 9 o'clock hour.
So, yeah, 9 Eastern here in about 40 minutes, 38 minutes.
Adam will be joining us, and we'll jump into all things OpenSea and yesterday's news.
But there is actually, for a random Tuesday in March,
I guess it's not random, St. Patrick's Day, there's a lot happening.
We talked about Doodles.
We talked about this bearish team shipping and
their March Madness tournaments. And whether you're a bracket participator or not, this is
one of those things like there's often, very often, opportunities to win money, to make money,
to get claims, airdrops, without putting any capital at risk or very little capital at risk,
just by being a beta tester, being a participant. And these March Madness terms, especially when you
can have AI help you fill out the bracket, why not? Why not spend a few minutes? You never know,
you might get lucky and win the equivalent of a few hundred bucks, a few thousand bucks,
just for firing off a few brackets, which unlikely you're going to see that elsewhere,
except some of like the big, like we talked about the Couchy million dollar prize or billion dollar firing off a few brackets, which are unlikely you're going to see that elsewhere, except
some of like the big, like we talked about the Cowshee million dollar prize or billion
dollar perfect bracket, which is unlikely, much more likely to win a couple, a couple
out of a couple hundred, few hundred participants.
Anything, so you said you listened to the Loki space with the Doodles team.
My understanding is AI studio is essentially you can doodify an image, your PFP.
Like it's just a custom GPT, a custom LLM that will spit out whatever image you put in.
It'll do the file.
Is that accurate?
And I saw OG Doodles, they needed to register or claim
some credits for this. So my assumption is this is also a way they're going to monetize the brand
and it'll be, you could pay by credits or by tokens then to use the platform. Is that like
TLDR? Is that pretty accurate? Yeah, it is. I had asked them about that like if i take my pfp or you
take your pfp and put it in there they are they said the you know the ai is is you know has gotten
a lot better with with doodlefying another cartoon uh which was which was really cool um you know
i think a lot of the i think a lot of people are gonna if they actually go over there
and use it i think a lot of people are going to be surprised with how hard this team um you know
was was working and the things that that they're trying to do with this like from a from a brand
standpoint it's really really good um what doodles is doing because anybody can go in
and you can doodle-fy your life i mean the art i've always loved doodles art for that
is because it's like for me it's like common but it's also kind of like exciting art and uh
i i miss my doodle i i agree i think the art's cool i like the art i always i also i mean i guess i don't really miss my doodle but i i enjoyed my doodle it I agree. I think the art's cool. I like the art. I always, I also, I mean, I guess I don't really miss my doodle, but I enjoyed my doodle.
It was like, as far as art goes, one of the favorite PFPs I held.
And it is very brandable.
Like you see a doodle, not even just a PFP, you see something in like doodle font or doodle colors.
Like it jumps out off the page.
We did see a question.
Are they using dude for this
which if not i i hope no they're not and i i i asked uh paucy about that um will we see that
in the future where there'll be different like tiers and you can use dude token to get other
different things and you know you have your different tiers of chat subscriptions
and whatnot and um they said maybe in the future i thought that would be cool if they did do that
and you could you know all the dude that was used was just burned or you know giving away in prizes
or what whatever um but yeah nothing nothing integrated as of now. And I don't understand why brands don't launch with that in mind.
Me either.
Me either.
My feedback to them would be, find a way to incorporate, dude.
Why not?
Like, why would you?
Like, even if you don't want to burn it, if you just want to, like, if you need to cover the cost of this model, like, then charge the same equivalent amount and just keep the dude.
Or you swap the dude.
Like, give people a reason, some reason to go buy the token or don't launch a token.
I saw Joey flew up on stage with a hand up and then we got Loki as well.
We were just talking about the space Loki hosts with the Doodle team on Sunday.
Loki, if you want to get in here, we'll go to you next.
But Joey, GM, what brought you up this morning?
GM, so let me get this straight.
So the guys that left Doodles launched an AI image generation company where you could
G-boy all your PFPs and art.
And then the company they left launched an AI image generation studio that can Doodle-fy
your PFP and art.
So in the end, they all both launched the same thing,
but under two different brands and you have to buy credits and neither one of
them and both of them have a token that apparently you can't use to,
to on their platform. Am wrong sounds pretty close um yes
they're same but different um i don't know what way i've never actually that'd be a good way to
get back on is is uh see if uh austin wants to join us and talk about i'm kidding talk about the
dude launch but um i would love doing a fly on the wall, how a lot of it went down because yeah, that, that is, uh, seemingly at least on the surface
level, very similar products, but with different brands. I mean, one's a G boy and one's a doodle
and they're both AI image generation studios. I don't see the difference here.
DreamNet fixes this a kid. It's a joke. it's a joke loki gm what are we getting
it's a war room joke it's a war you gotta be there his uh is joey's question fair is it accurate
free feel free to connect some dots or fill in the blanks from anything we missed
hey gm guys gm everyone um yeah i mean i feel it's nothing really weird. I feel we are heading into a direction where every brand, every brand with a community, what's their goal?
Proliferating the brand. So once you achieve a community that's ready to effectively work for you, proliferate for you. So you're giving them a tool. So AI tool for content creation is one of them. So I think where we've seen G-Boy, we've seen Pudgy Penguins last
year on Discord, on Telegram, they were providing tools made by somebody in the community. We've
seen Doodles now with a tool that actually is more, is way more advanced, I i think than a g-boy or a pudgy penguin because it's really like train
on burnt house to art to respect all the rules blah blah blah so i think like uh there are there
are levels where you can provide uh your tool right so but i think this will be a playbook
and will be the norm for every brand um i agree i i think it is actually a good tool
and i think man this would have been awesome if we had it back during the pfp mania when everyone
was rocking a pfp and like you would have seen nfts everywhere on the timeline not just the pfp but
really cool stuff with it then and since we did weifact do a lot of stuff with that community
and the 3D designers, we saw Dashbow,
and you can do that now with your apes with Rida's product.
A lot of cool stuff is available now,
much more so than it was back in the peak mania.
And I don't want to say this is table stakes.
I know there's real cost, real infrastructure involved in this.
It's easier said than done
to create a custom LLN like this
that can generate this sort of output.
But I agree with you.
I do think it is a good,
if not great to have for PFP communities
that want to proliferate their IP,
want to proliferate their brand.
My question or maybe pushback would be, I don't know, I guess with Doodles,
it seems like this is like a big thing for them. And I don't know. I just don't know how successful
it's going to be from a revenue generation standpoint. Maybe, maybe I'm misreading that.
Maybe it's not that big of a deal, but that my read is like this is a this is like the product
that doodles is shipping is it just bigger because it's a bigger brand maybe maybe maybe so i i told
the guys imagine if they had this on a qr code on the side of the mcdonald's cups when they launched
yes then now you have people on facebook and Instagram. Everybody fucking doodle. 100% agreed. And I'm not just saying this because we had Cab on stage yesterday,
impromptu, Cab with Klaino's.
Klaino's said this previously on one of the last times we had him on
that they've had opportunities to do collaborations.
They didn't specifically name McDonald's or Crocs
or any one of the big brands at Doodles or, you know,
Doodles, Apes, Pudgies, a lot of partnering with massive brands,
Klano's stance was,
they're passing right now
because the time's not right.
A lot of these times,
these collaborations with these big brands,
these big Web2 consumer brands,
you only have one shot,
or you got to nail the shot
if you want a second shot.
And it's just not been right
from a timing standpoint.
And I agree.
I wasn't, like I was caught up in the hype
and I'm like, oh, this is great, congratulations,
big announcement.
But like, I'm not picking on doodles.
It's just, you mentioned like the McDonald's cup.
Cool, then what?
Like how do you, you got a lot of people to see the brand,
now how do they interact with the brand?
What do they do with the brand?
In something like this, had they had it live then, that could be a whole entirely different
journey for those customers that got introduced to the IP and then had nothing to do with the IP.
They didn't, like most people probably didn't even realize it was anything they could,
a next step they could take other than it was just a fancy holiday cup from McDonald's.
Joey, thoughts on that?
And then we'll get Drew in here.
Yeah, I guess I agree where I'm struggling
and I agree with Loki about proliferating the brand.
I don't think it's fair to compare it to Pudgy Penguins
because Pudgy Penguins on their website, their meme generators,
their sticker generators, their gift generators are all free.
Anybody can go on there and create something.
The idea that you're going to, like in order to proliferate the Doodles brand, or even
like with G-Boy, right? Like, cause there came a point with G-Boy where if you wanted to
create images, you had to buy credits. And then however many images you created,
you were in a tier and that's how much G-Boy token you got, right?
Or you didn't buy G-Boy, you had to buy credits, right?
So the idea of proliferating the brand at the expense of your fan.
I think I lost you, but, or unless you're done um you cut out there
check one yeah we lost him um his uh Dunkin Donuts delivery driver it's the doodles Cabal
uh you got he's coming back up but uh we'll see if he uh you might have to take a lap uh we'll
see Joey you back with us no No worries. We got you.
What I was saying is, like, proliferating your brand at the expense of your fans, right?
Like, in order to doodlefy your stuff and proliferate the brand, you've got to buy credits.
Like, that's very different.
Yes, except for the OG doodles holder don't have to buy credits.
They could claim free credits.
Yes, Joey got pulled into the DreamNet.
So, other people. Now, I don't know the right way to do this.
I also like to play the, and I'm not funny.
Like, I think it's a great tool.
Just strictly looking at it from a business standpoint,
a revenue generation standpoint, it is this balance of,
okay, we want to proliferate the brand.
We want everyone using this.
I don't think people are going to pay for this. That just don't. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong.
I just don't see a lot of people spending a lot of money to doodlefy or to anythingfy
because they're much more likely just to do that with a $20 subscription to ChatGPT or Claude.
And while those aren't perfect yet today,
they're pretty darn good.
And they're the worst they're ever going to be.
They're only going to get better from here on out.
And I think it's a,
just say it's a tough road ahead
if this is your core revenue generation product.
Thomas says,
can't post picks here in YouTube chat.
Just pulled out the Doodles Cup this morning.
Doodles, that Doodles Cup was great.
BlockMage asked, why would people pay money
when they can use a free service and get pretty dang close?
That's kind of how I net out.
I don't know if you can get pretty dang close
with the free Claude or free ChatGPT, but the 20 bucks a month, it is pretty dang close with the free Claude or free ChatGPT.
But the $20 a month, it is pretty dang close.
In some cases, it's actually image generation is the one thing
I still go to ChatGPT for over Claude.
It's really good.
As of late, it really got the image generation dialed in.
I think you should try Gemini.
I think Gemini does even better.
I need to use Gemini more.
I do.
I need to find a way to incorporate Gemini and Nano Banana into my more of my,
and some people are big Grok fans.
I still like, I'll use Grok occasionally when I'm on X,
but my, I guess my point being is
there's a lot of options that people are likely already paying for one or more of those
subscriptions. And I think it's a really tough ask to get people to pay for very niche AI products.
Zane adds, only people that care about Doodles will play with Doodles AI.
Probably. I do think there'll be some others. I haven't even thought about, I almost call them
Popkins, Doopies. I don't know if there's a Doopies community that doesn't hold OG doodles
that might pay for them. I don't know. I think it's a nice to have. I just don't see it as a
core driver of revenue or a core business product. It's more of like a help proliferate the brand.
And I think they probably better off to give it away for free and get everyone doodle.
Like you really paint the world with joy, get everyone to do the stuff.
If you're giving it away for free or maybe you can get it.
Or just as I said, yeah, give it away for free to everyone.
And then have higher tiers where you can access paid in due.
Yep.
Yep.
You know.
I think that is, I think that's the, or limit it.
You get like one request a day for free.
Anything else, if you want more, you got to pay for it in due. You got to, I don't know.
Easy for me to Monday morning quarterback or Tuesday morning quarterback today on this one. But I, yeah, Joey, your ex is, uh, is giving you a curve ball or two or three
today. Uh, let's go to Drew, Drew GM. Always a pleasure. I like, I start kind of sweating when
you jump up on stage. Is there some new security breach or something we all should be aware of
this morning or something else bring you up today? Every single time y'all say Joey's
ex, I think of Joey's actual ex, not the ex app. It's very funny. True story. Joey's ex is actually
Venezuelan. I hope you don't mind me sharing that, Joey. I think it's public information, but
speaking of divided households, go ahead, Drew, back to you.
I was just going to pop up to comment on the Doodles stuff. I mean, I think one thing that
you said that was super important is,
you know, the Doodles team thinks this is really great,
but, you know, I don't know anyone that asked for it.
Or, you know, I think teams in Web3 have to start, you know,
thinking outside of the box of like the team thinks it's great,
but no one else does.
And then the product flops.
And, you know, as much as this AI thing is cool and I have Doodles
and, you know, I'm looking at my McDonald's Doodles cup right now.
And as much as I'm going to use it, paying for it and not having something free
where you're essentially allowing your community or folks who are like brand ambassadors
to quickly make really good AI quality memes or GIFs or whatever it may be.
And then you're creating friction by charging forward or not having like a three-a-day limit.
Like if I were to go tell someone,
but they have to go buy credits, drop off.
I would love to see the statistics or the data
from a Google tag on the actual drop off rate
from people that got to that point
and then didn't buy credits to go through.
I would guess it'd be a lot.
It has to be a lot.
I mean, every single time anyone ever implements that
for any of these AI wrappers or anything else. I mean, you'll see it all over Reddit. Like no one wants to pay for
that. And you know, this is almost like one of the tools where you eat the cost and it profilates
the brand. I mean, that's, that's what you're paying for. Can we briefly unpack that? And then
we'll get to any other hands on stage. And then I do want to get a daily market update in here
before we get, we hit the nine o'clock hour and Adam joins us. Why is that? Why? Like I feel the exact same way.
I'm very willing. In fact, I would say my Claude and ChatGPT are probably the most two valuable
subscriptions I have on a monthly basis. Like I'm very willing to pay for AI, but I have, I'm like
completely not willing to pay for anything else AI that's not a general model like
ChatGPT, like Claude, like I don't pay for the Gemini Pro, but I do have Google Workspace and
I use it for there. I do have X Premium. I use Grok through that. So I'm very, very willing to
pay for the LLMs, but I haven't paid for a single, I don't think, a single other niche or...
I actually have. I did get some NUCO credits early on. Why is that? Any thoughts as to why
that might be? It benefits you, right? I mean, you're willing to pay for it because if you pay
for it, then you're, let's just say what, ChatGVT, basic models, $20 a month.
I mean, have you used it enough to where it saved you $20 worth of time?
Easy.
Absolutely.
I mean, I would say every day, it's probably an exaggeration,
at least every week it saved me.
I mean, shoot, man, I could do one image generation,
and it's, if I paid a designer one image, it's going to be more than $20.
Yeah, and time and effort and money. Like I think, I think over the next year, this is like a
realization for a lot of folks. And if you're not using Claude, if you're not using ChachiBT,
if you're not using Gemini and Grok, and you need to experiment with all of these for everyone to
understand your purpose for each of them, because each of them do have a very strong purpose
for you and one is better than the other
in that certain area, you're doing it wrong.
And there are things that we look at today
where it's not necessarily inefficient,
but with AI, you're like, holy shit,
I can't believe I was spending 15 minutes on that
instead of two.
Like it's just like the year of realization
where AI actually makes an impact in your life.
And if you add all that time up,
yeah, you could go get dinner with a family member instead
and with all the money that you saved
and all the time that you saved.
I think as humans, we're evolving to be a lot more
proficient and efficient.
And now we have the choice to do with that time as we please.
Well said. I agree. I guess so. If you're building an AI product, you need to ask that question.
What's the value prop for the customer? Why would they pay for this? And I don't know as if
novelty is enough. I think it's got to be productive AI. And for designers and people
that are deep in an ecosystem, that makes sense. But if it's proliferating a brand, I think you got to give it away. And I know that's tougher. Like,
it's not free to run these models. Like, that's the other challenge that these startups,
the crypto native brands are facing is the big models are subsidized by the massive rounds
they've raised. Like, they're bleeding cash. Like, it's very expensive to do this stuff.
And at least at the consumer level,
at the free level, at the $20 level, they're losing money. In most cases, most users are
losing money on today. Now it will change at some point in the future. But yeah, Gemini is pretty
cool. Thanks for door for, I got this pulled up on screen here. He, I saw this floating around on,
on socials on X here, but I hadn't, I didn't double tap it. I didn't see the prompt,
but yeah, this is, it's E-D-I-Z-K-A-N is the account that's making dope prompts every week.
This one did hit the timeline. I saw it on the timeline, but didn't do it myself. Dort just plugs it in for me. Pretty cool, pretty cool stuff. And so my point is like, he did this with
an ape. Bored Ape Yacht Club didn't have to roll out an AI generation studio.
No, they have one by way of Dashbow and Rida.
But this is just, this is Gemini.
And I think this is the free, not free.
This Gemini comes with, maybe it is free version.
If not, it's probably like the Google Workspace version.
So $9.99 a month or whatever you're paying for that.
Most people are going to already have it.
And I just, you're competing with giants in this world. I think it's very, very, very challenging
to build a business around these sort of products. I think it's much more advantageous to give it
away and leverage it as a brand proliferation tool. Yeah, it's E-D-I-Z-K-A-N underscore on X.
Thanks for that. I'll pull up the account here in a second.
I'll be a great take.
Great take, Drew.
We've been having X issues, so I'm just going to ask if I'm missing any hands.
I don't think there's any up right now.
Can you see me, Cap, or no?
I see you on stage again.
I didn't see a hand, but I do see you.
I did.
I'll go real quick.
So I don't believe in the credits model. I believe in on stage again. I don't, I didn't see a hand, but yeah, I do see. I did. I'll go real quick. So, um, I, I don't believe in the credits model.
I believe in the subscription model. Um, so like if doodles said it's to your point,
20 bucks a month, um, I think you'd get way more usage out of, you have to buy credits and how many
people forget they ever have subscriptions and just continue to pay that 20 bucks a month as a
revenue model for doodles. Right. Yeah. So I I'm not a fan of credits i think uh um and then the other thing is which
you guys did briefly talk on but again why is this not why can i not spend a thousand dude
for a monthly subscription and then you know it gives the token some actual utility they can burn
it they can do whatever they want with it.
They can give it away for competitions.
Like I just, I just don't understand why dude is, what's the point of dude at this point?
But yeah, if you're going to do this, by the way, just do a subscription.
Don't, don't make, don't mean to buy credits.
I agree with that thing as well.
I'm not.
And not that we need more subscriptions anyway.
Yeah, but it works.
It's a proven business model. It absolutely works. It works much better than credits,
especially for something like this. And maybe don't, don't make it 20 bucks a month. Cause
then you're competing with the giants, you know, five bucks a month, three bucks a month,
something that people like it's a cup of coffee. People aren't going to think about,
and they'll use your product and proliferate your brand. Uh, that's my, my unsolicited feedback.
proliferate your brand. That's my unsolicited feedback. Here is the E-D-I-Z-K-A-N account
that's created this prompt and Perdoer and others creating pretty dope prompts on about a weekly
basis. So thanks for sharing. Appreciate that and love the look. That's, and Diablito said the same,
I don't know how to pronounce the name, E-D-I. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It often more than just a name, but that's very, it's not a bit, it's very real.
Case in point, Rita, Ryda, who knows? We just call them both. But that said, it's 8.46. I'll
do a quick reset here right before the top of the hour, but I do want to get into a daily market
update because things are kind of popping off. So let me do a proper play in here. We've also
got a discount for all of you that haven't filed your crypto taxes yet.
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That being said, let's head over to coins first.
Let's look at the market.
I mentioned fear and greed mooning up to 43 now, all of a sudden.
We're in neutral after not long ago, we up to 43 now, all of a sudden. We're in neutral after
not long ago. We were in extreme fear, lowest of all time. On the 24-hour clock, where Bitcoin is
basically flat, it was up above 74K. It's now 73,770. ETH up almost 2% at 23.18. XRP up 1.93%
to 150. BNB down a couple percent. Solana flat down 0.41 at $93. Tron up a percent. Hyperliquid,
big winner, not only up 5% on the day, up 18% on the week. The other weekly winner I wanted to
shout out was BitTensor, up almost 40% on the week. I asked our guy Bunchu if they were still
working with BitTensor, with Billy Betts. Why did BitTensor run 40% on the week. I asked our guy Bunchu if they were still working with BitTensor, with Billy Betts.
Why did BitTensor run 40% of the week? Does anyone know what's going on with the Tau token?
Big winner on the week. It has given some of those gains back. It's down 5.5% of the day.
So if it's actually momentum and it's not just a short pump, maybe, maybe good time. This might
be my trade of the day. I don't want to break the streak and I don't know enough to really enter
a long right now, but being, having a seemingly hitting all strides on, on token momentum and
being down on, you know, five, five and a half percent of the day that that's kind of what I
look for when I'm doing these daily longs and shorts, which, as I said,
we are to pat myself on the back three for our last three. If you have another trade of the day,
let me know, though. I am open to suggestions. Heading over to NFTs, Hypers down 6% to 407.
Hypers up 2.9% in the day. 2907 is the floor there. Pudgies down a percent to 4.28. Apes down 2.8% to 5.2.
We've got Ringers are flat. Must have been a couple sales. Mutants down 2% to 0.77.
Little Pudgies down a percent to 0.47. Fidenza's down 9.4% to 17.4. Milady's flat at 1.31.
Squiggles down 4% to 2.39. VFriends flat at 1.26. Iiggles down 4% to 2.39.
VFriends flat at 1.26.
I've got an ask to real quick pause on VFriends.
Jeremy, I see you out there.
I'm going to DM you after the show.
I know he's busy.
I know it's probably not his focus,
especially if he's doing any sort of media tours right now.
I would love to get Gary on to talk specifically about the Fly Fish Club.
Nothing but rave reviews. I saw another post this
morning. Our guy Steve had a chance to attend recently. He wants to go every time he's in New
York. I saw some pictures for the first time today, more than just a single picture from
someone there. Here it's packed. Here it's crushing it. I just would love to do a deep dive
on Fly Fish Club. I think it's proof of concept that in real life clubs,
NFTs used as membership for these in real life clubs,
these restaurants.
I think it's proof of concept that it's working
and I would love to do a little deeper dive.
So no pressure, no obligations,
but I want to hit you up after the show,
see if we can make that happen.
I would love to get Gary on here talking fly.
Or if there's someone else that's more in the day-to-day there that he'd
rather speak on behalf, would be game for either. Just genuinely curious about
how things are going beyond just what I see on the timeline. And what I see on the timeline is
pretty few and far between, like not for the success they're having or seemingly having,
not nearly as many people talking about it as I would think. I know it's a smaller NFT base, but I think a big win for NFTs
and proof of concept of NFTs as a membership. Doodles are up a percent on the day to 0.5
on their AI studio launch. Clonex down 0.4%. Izuki down 1.8%. Gazer's flat. Not sure what
these other. Gemosis down 14% on the OpenSea News.8%, Gazer's Flat, not sure what these other, GEMISIS down 14%
on the OpenSea News, more on that coming soon. But that's our Daily Market Update
brought to you by Awaken Tax. Head to awaken.tax, use code COFFEE50 or return COFFEE50
to get $50 off your Awaken sub. Now that we've got that out of the way, we've got
a few fans, a few not fans of OpenSea in the
chat. You can put whatever you want in the chat. You're not going to offend me. I would ask, like,
you don't need to keep saying F OpenSea, fun, fun, duh. I get it. You're all free and entitled
to your opinions. That just doesn't really help. It just clutters the chat. It's kind of, it's just
spammy. We get it noted. I know you're not, I see you're not a fan,
but we'd just like to continue.
If you're, for those of you that are new here,
we're not, we're going to ask all the questions
that I've seen.
There's some tough questions.
Adam is willing to take the arrows and field them all.
I would just ask, be respectful.
If you're, if you want to come up and join us on stage
and ask him questions directly,
you can do that towards the end of the interview as well.
Just as I said, we do pride ourselves here on Coffee
about being able to disagree without being disagreeable
and would like to continue that theme today.
I'm not rare that I mute anyone.
I've maybe booted, probably I count on all my fingers
after 1,100 shows, the number of people we've
actually removed from the stage.
I think in the entirety of doing this for five years now, four or five years, we've
blocked two people who were just distractions.
They just weren't adding value and just would continue to go on rants that were nonsensical
and or disruptive and being disagreeable. But it's very, very rare. But I will use the mute
button today if we need to. I don't care what questions you ask as long as you're doing it in
a respectful way. That said, yes, shout out to Adam. Not an easy thing to do. Not something
needed to do. I agree. Much respect. Gratefully, he's coming on the show today.
But man, I don't envy any founders in this space.
I don't envy anyone dropping a token, heading into TGE.
Sooner or later, you're going to have to have not great news.
And I think it's much better to share head on like this as opposed to hiding from it,
not talking about it.
Went on a rant yesterday about stop the announcements. Like, just give us updates.
And we got an update yesterday. And we're getting another, it's getting followed up with real live update today. Greatly, greatly respect. They could have said, oh, we're just going to do
another, we're going to, you know, announcement of announcement and more coming soon. They're meeting it head on, and I do greatly, greatly
respect, again, hitting the stuff head on.
Did you get any kickback on that conversation yesterday
from anybody or no? No, no kickback. Actually, a few, kind of the other.
A lot of, now,
I'm not saying it's because we talked about it yesterday.
I'm not saying it's because if you missed it, just went on a rant about
the lack of communication from a lot of crypto native brands, from a lot of NFT PFP brands.
They'll just go dark for months.
And I think part of what attracted so many of us to this space is the whole building in public idea. I know it's very hard to build in public, but people feel vested.
Like, yes, I know they're not shareholders. No one holds, well, some people hold equity
for some of those that have went that route, but it's not like the core thing.
There's a lot of brand ambassadors. There's a lot of net promoters. There's a lot of
passionate people about these brands. No one is expecting an
announcement to run a floor price anymore. If anything, an announcement is probably going to
send a floor price lower. Outside of a token announcement, even those, it's going to be a
short-term pump. No one's looking for announcements to, I shouldn't say no one, very few people,
if they're baked in reality, are expecting any sort of an announcement to run a floor price. So the feedback was stop with the
announcements. Just give updates. Just let us know what's going on. Good, bad, and different,
like let us know and communicate frequently. Like the biggest, the fastest growing brands in the
world are communicating weekly, if not daily. You know, you got live
streamers that are popping off and going uber viral and they're streaming nearly every second
of their life. After the show yesterday, again, Jesus, I'm not taking credit for this. Someone
did ask if Pudgy was listening in because I didn't, wasn't attacking anyone. I did send out
a clip where I mentioned Luca and Garga. Yes, I mentioned, I don't, we don't need to see Garga
live streamed in his bedroom. That was a slip, Freudian slip maybe. I don't know. mentioned we don't need to see Garga live streamed in his bedroom.
That was a slip.
Freudian slip, maybe.
I don't know.
I truly don't care to see that.
I want to see that.
It just slipped yesterday.
But shortly after the show, Pudgies did launch a update, more so a recap if you happen to miss it.
I got it pulled up here on screen.
First few months of 2026 have been strong for Pudgie, for major brand partnerships,
products, experiences, and more.
Here are some of the top things you might have missed over the past few months.
They talked about Pudgy World.
They talk about their cast card or the Pingu card.
They talk about Pingu and Pauly taking over for Valentine's Day.
They talked about the Congressman Tim Moore repping of Pudgy as his profile pic.
They talked about the premium collectible and merch set with Man City.
They talked about the urban air locations,
the claw machines rather going live in these
urban airs.
They talked about this product launch with the world's largest toy fair.
They talked about Pingu being tradable in New York on Coinbase.
I saw all these.
I believe I saw all these.
I'd forgotten most of them.
Further driving home my point that it's okay to over-communicate.
And it's better to over-communicate than just go dark for five or six months at a time
because then you're putting so much pressure
on having to nail it,
having to thread the needle
and have a perfect announcement.
You're never going to make everyone happy.
In this space, like a portion,
maybe the majority of your stakeholders,
your holders are going to be not happy
with your announcement,
especially if you hype it up and announce it. You're making it harder for yourself.
I think it's much easier to over-communicate, communicate frequently, provide updates,
provide recaps, and do so in different channels. Not just one thing, not just X, not just Discord.
Got to do it everywhere. Thoughts on that, Jesus?
It's not difficult.
I literally, while you said that, went to Grok and said,
can you give me a 30-day recap on at Jesus?
That's it.
Yep.
A team could go, like, anybody can go do that.
It's not difficult.
Throw it out there.
Add a few other things in there the community might not know about.
No, shout out Figgy.
Got a follow from the legend there yesterday.
So that was great.
Other than that, no, I don't care.
It is what it is.
Good call out though.
Appreciate you bringing it up.
Let's do this.
We got about two minutes here.
Adam's going to join us.
I see he just popped in the green room.
So bring him up on here in a second,
but quick reset.
And I will ask for some help.
If you haven't already,
give the space a like, a repost, a bookmark, drop a comment. If you have questions for Adam,
drop those in the chat down below. We will open up the stage here in a little bit for
additional questions after we get through the ones I think we did a pretty good job
of capturing most, if not all, at least the common questions, the reoccurring questions
from just the different threads yesterday that were posted. But again, welcome to Coffee with Captain.
We are live every Monday through Friday at 8 a.m. Eastern time.
We are very fortunate that we'll get guests like Adam
join us at about that 9 o'clock hour to do a deeper dive
or a builder highlight or a product highlight.
And really excited for this one.
I will say this.
Crypto, many people are saying, what's the news?
All the crypto shows have turned into
geopolitical experts or AI experts, prediction market predictors. We've got news, as I mentioned,
I think maybe record at least for 2026 with over 200 people hit the reminder for this basis today.
So definitely bringing back out some excitement and some news in the world of crypto and NFTs.
Let's do a quick break. We'll bring Adam on right after.
We'll get a quick coffee break, and then we'll be right back with Adam from OpenSea here in about a
minute. Thank you. I'll be with Captain.
Appreciate y'all being here.
We got Adam from OpenSea joining us.
CMO of OpenSea.
I just saw Adam recently celebrated your one year anniversary at OpenSea.
Congratulations on that.
Did you ever expect this? I just want to kind of start there jumping right into
it. Is this kind of like what you anticipated when you got into the role? Is this like a little
shocking? He's just like, what the hell did I get myself into? Can I ask like, how are you doing as
a, as a human? What is this meeting expectations, exceeding expectations on the good, the bad,
or the ugly front? That's a, that's a very funny way to start the conversation.
Well, good to speak with you, brother.
Thanks for having me on.
Look, when you have days like yesterday and today,
there are two things that you can do.
You can go hide in the corner and you can, you know,
sort of wait for the news cycle to end.
And then you, you know, figure out how to rebuild or you can deal with it head on.
When I came on board at OpenSea a year ago, you know, wide eyed, bushy tailed, wanted to change the world.
I said that one of my goals was to be transparent and communicative.
And I am not always able to share everything that
I want to at any given moment. And there are a lot of business reasons for that. But in situations
like this, where I do have an opportunity to speak to what went on head on, I'm more than happy to do
it. And I recognize that some people are disappointed by the news that we shared yesterday.
I recognize that some people are disappointed by the news that we shared yesterday.
Hopefully, I can give a little bit more color context to some of that.
On the question that you asked me, you know, how am I doing as a human?
Look, at the end of the day, is it my favorite thing to have all of crypto Twitter, you know,
upset and disappointed and, you know, yelling at me? Of course it's not. I would always prefer that we
are doing things that delight our customers and where we're able to under-promise and over-deliver.
And I think that we have had a lot of those opportunities. This is unfortunately not one
of them. At least it doesn't feel that way inside of the moment.
As a human, look, I am still very excited about what OpenSea is building. And I came on board at OpenSea because I wanted to have an opportunity to move the space forward and change the way
that crypto is adopted at scale. And a lot know, a lot of people, you know,
know this about me, but, you know, I've had professional success well before I joined OpenSea
and I was actually semi-retired before I took this gig to run marketing for OpenSea.
And so there are definitely days where I look back and I say, man, like I used to, you know,
golf three, four times a week instead of spending
80 hours a week on this and having all the crypto Twitter yell at me. But at the same time, the
reason that I'm here is that I deeply, deeply believe in digital ownership and the power of
blockchain and what it is that OpenSea is building and working towards. And I think a lot of people still view OpenSea as an NFT marketplace,
and that's how they even maybe still use OpenSea. We aspire for so much more. And the thing that
got me so excited to join OpenSea a year ago was hearing Devin's vision for what OpenSea could
evolve into if we play our cards right and if we invest deeply into the product.
And, you know, when I see a lot of the reactions that people are now having for, you know,
OpenSea Mobile and, you know, we've brought hundreds of people on in a handheld way to,
you know, test out that product. And when they can bring, you know, all of their wallets and
all of their assets across 25 blockchains together into one single portfolio view. And, you know, they can
buy anything with anything. And all the complexity is completely abstracted away to the point where
you can, you know, double click Apple Pay to bring fiat and onboard people into crypto. And you can
buy NFTs and trade tokens and swap major crypto. And you can do all of this in a way that, you know,
from my perspective, is significantly easier
than anybody has ever made it before this. That's what excites me. And I know that a lot of people
are really excited for the token. And a lot of people are, of course, disappointed by the news
that the token is delayed. We wake up every day thinking about the token at OpenSea
as a component of our larger strategy,
but it's a component of that larger strategy.
And so, look, I didn't come here to just try to sugarcoat things.
And so, you know, I don't want to appear tone deaf
and, you know, jump up on a soapbox
and talk about all the product things that I'm really excited about, even though that I am.
I know that people want to get to the heart of the token delay and some of the decisions that were made.
And I'm here to answer as many questions as I can and be as transparent as possible when answering those questions. And my hope is that people at least see
that we are showing up to take responsibility
for the decisions that are being made.
And the other point that I really want to get across
more than anything is that
we have never shared information at OpenSea.
And I definitely have never shared information personally
that wasn't 100% based on what we were intending to do in that moment at that time
with the information that we had. And, you know, I know yesterday and, you know, look,
some of it's for engagement farming. Some people might actually feel this way. But,
you know, you see people taking screenshots of things that I might have said eight or nine
months ago or four or five months ago. And, you know, look, one of the ones that, you know, has come to market over and over
again is, you know, we literally announced that the TGE is going to happen in Q1. That's the
information that we got directly from the foundation. That information was announced to
market. And then somebody replied and said, I don't think it's going to happen in Q1 April at
the earliest. And then I responded back, April's not Q1. Two days after I was given information that TGE is going to happen in Q1.
I didn't say that to create back and forth or the engagement farm. Really, at the end of the day,
it's a double-edged sword. Everybody wants communication and transparency. And I actually
try to jump into Discord and talk know, and talk to people.
I try to respond to people every morning when I wake up on Twitter.
And sometimes the things that I say are going to come back and bite me in the ass because
six months later, we make a business decision to make a change or do something a little
differently.
And I hope that people understand that it always comes from a genuine place of wanting to communicate
and wanting to be transparent and sharing information and making decisions based on
all the information that we have in the moment and at the time. But look, OpenSea is a sizable
business that is operating at scale. And sometimes things are going to change or be adjusted,
or we're going to move in a direction that we weren't
anticipating. And it's not always going to line up with every single tweet or every message in
discord or everything that I say on an interview. And I hope people at least can appreciate that
like, there's never been lies or deception. Nobody's getting together in a room and saying
like, hmm, how do we, you know, extract money from the community? Like nobody at OpenSea even talks about revenue or
money. Everybody just talks about how we want to build amazing products that bring the next
several million people into crypto and, you know, really affect our space at a level of scale that
is good for the reason that we're all here. And I wish people could see some of those internal meetings
and maybe feel a little bit better
about the intentions behind everybody
that is involved in building and making those decisions.
But regardless, yeah,
happy to answer any questions that you have.
Well, I do, we'll get to some of the tough questions.
I greatly respect you joining us today.
Appreciate you joining us today.
Not just joining us, but taking this stuff head on.
I certainly don't speak for everyone,
but I would much rather have yourself,
teams like OpenSea, over-communicate
and say some things that have to change
when information changes, market changes, whatever,
as opposed to just being in the dark
and keeping everyone guessing.
And to me, that is far worse than saying something,
and then things change.
So much respect for that.
And I guess before we get into,
like I do have some product questions
that I too am excited about.
And I'm curious if that's been also causing a delay.
I know most of the messaging yesterday
was around market conditions
as far as like the token delay and whatnot.
But before, can you, do you mind educating us on the foundation a little bit?
Like, what is the, because it's not, it's not like it was your decision to do, I mean,
maybe you played a role in it or, yeah, agreed or suggested, but it's, you've got OpenSea,
the company, the for-profit entity that, you know, manages OpenSea, and then you've got the OpenSea Foundation
that's launching this token. Can you help us understand what is that dynamic like? Can you
speak who's on the foundation or how the relationship actually works between OpenSea
and OpenSea Foundation? Yeah. So look, the OpenSea Foundation is a completely separate entity from OpenSea.
It is the OpenSea Foundation in or inside of OpenSea's products
for the token, then there needs to be communication and coordination that happens there.
And actually, a lot of the things that at least are currently planned for the token require that
level of coordination to be able to allow the token to be leveraged inside of our ecosystem.
And decisions related to the token, related to any potential distribution, airdrop, tokenomics,
those are all made directly by the foundation.
And the foundation has a director that is in charge of that.
They have their own board that makes those decisions.
And then they coordinate directly with Devin and
I have communications with the foundation as it relates to anything that needs to be happening on
the OpenSea Labs side to hopefully make all of this successful and to, you know, intercoordinate
as best as we can. But I want to be very clear that decisions for things related
to the token get made by the foundation, not even by Devin at OpenSea. Look, Devin's the CEO of
OpenSea. If he has a very strong opinion about something, he has the ability to share that with
the foundation. The foundation has the ability to then take that feedback to heart. And they
probably recognize that if the CEO feels extremely
strongly about something and they, you know, are relying on, you know, OpenSea Labs for,
you know, coordination and, you know, look, at the end of the day, I think it's not a lost point
that if it is the OpenSea Foundation putting out SeaToken, there is going to be a halo for that token based
on whether or not OpenSea as a business is viewed as successful or on a positive trajectory.
And so, you know, you mentioned products. Look, we had always had intention, if you go back
six months, nine months, all of the discussions that we had
internally at OpenSea, we said, ideally, we really want our new mobile app to be out, ready,
launched, and adopted in a meaningful way by the market before a token gets launched. And again,
wouldn't be our decision necessarily one way or the other, but the feedback that's shared with
the foundation is that we think that if we are able to launch this mobile app out to market, and it's as
incredible as we think that it's going to be, and it generates adoption, and it really opens doors
to allow people to onboard into crypto and onboard into OpenSea's platform in a meaningful way that's
unprecedented with our web-based products, that that would be a really good foundation to lay
before potentially launching a token.
And we today are at a point
where the mobile app has not actually launched to public yet.
We have a strategy at OpenSea
where we want to shift perception
that we are no longer just an NFT marketplace.
We are one of the best places to trade anything on chain.
And we do that by bringing all of your wallets together,
25 blockchains together,
by abstracting away all of that complexity
about which chain you're on
and whether you need to use bridges and anything else.
And we also are bringing in new ways
for you to engage on chain outside of NFTs.
And so you can trade major crypto,
you can trade meme coins and tokens. We have perps that hundreds of people are
now testing out on Hyperliquid. We have several other pillars that are planned
for being able to come into OpenSea, no matter what it is you want to do on chain,
that you can do that in one place in a really easy and seamless way.
But for example, that third pillar,
Perps on Hyperliquid, isn't even launched out to market yet.
Not even the beta testers or it is the beta testers are?
Beta testers are using it and beta testers love it. There are hundreds of people that are using it.
I've not been in there personally, but I've seen nothing but overwhelmingly positive feedback on
the mobile app and the Perps product from those beta testers on the timeline. And I guess so, not quite ready, not live to public yet.
Would like to have those live before the token.
I'm not gonna try to strong-arm you
in to get a date from the TGE.
I don't expect one unless you wanna give us
a date range or something.
But do we have it be an adjusted ETA
on when mobile app might go live,
when the Perps product might go live to the public?
Yeah, it's a great question.
So let me take one quick step back and share something first,
and then I'll get into that.
We made a very deliberate decision months ago
that the old OpenSea probably would have released the mobile app six months ago.
And we would have released it,
and it wouldn't have been particularly feature-rich,
and it would have probably had some bugs and problems,
and it would have had a couple cool things related to it, but it wouldn't have been this magical
experience that warrants the level of feedback that you're seeing on the timeline every day.
What we decided to do for mobile and perps was we said, instead of releasing it to market and
then iterating sort of live on it in public, what we want to do is we want to onboard several
hundred people onto these products. And we don't want to do is we want to onboard several hundred people onto these
products. And we don't want to do it, by the way, by just throwing a link out and having them jump
into it and hoping they might share some feedback. We have literally been hosting hundreds of 30 to
60 minute long sessions with every individual that now has access where they onboard live with
members of our team and members of the engineering team
watching the experience. And then we ask them questions about, what do you think? What's your
initial immediate reaction? What would you like to see that you're not seeing? What would you
like to see more of? And then every single day, our engineering team has been iterating on that
feedback. And our goal was that we want to make sure that with these products in particular,
for the mobile app, which we think is going to be the gateway for how the majority of people actually interact with OpenSea on a move forward basis. products are not just ready to release to market, but that they are truly impressive to the point
where anybody that uses it says, wow, this is way better than anything else that I've had to date.
This is way better than my expectations for what I thought I was going to get when I tried out
this product. And that's the foundation that we think builds real organic usage and growth
of the products that we bring to market and gives us
the foundation to do new and exciting things with the product, as well as, of course, big moments
like the foundation's TGE. And so we decided months ago to take that strategy. And actually,
we thought that we would be able to release the mobile app and perps a couple of months ago.
But we keep getting incredible feedback day over day.
And people are like, you know, if you guys could just build this, it would really sing.
Or, you know, if this section was there, it would really be, you know, special for me.
Or actually, I know that why you guys did it this way and this way, but, you know, I'm a cohort of customer that really would prefer to see it in this way.
And look, that's probably
a never ending cycle. I don't think we'll ever get it absolutely perfect for every, you know,
individual type of customer, but we are getting closer every single day. Our intentions are that
we want to release both of these into market very soon. I would personally be surprised if we are
not public with both of those products by the end
of next month. And I will just simply state that I'm not going to give a date right now because
we do want the flexibility that if somebody says, you know, hey, you really need to build this before
you release it and our whole team agrees and it's going to take us an extra week or two to do that,
then that's what we want to do. But we want to make sure that when people do download the app and they are onboarding themselves, they're not walking through it
step-by-step with three engineers and Zach from our team walking them through it. We want to feel
like that's going to be a delightful experience for almost anybody that goes through it and that
they're going to be able to connect all their wallets together. They're going to immediately
be able to transact in an easy, seamless way. They're going to see one consolidated
portfolio across major crypto, their NFTs, their tokens, and be able to view that in ways that they
want. And that they're going to be able to trade any type of asset in the app in ways that feel
better and more consumer-like than any other app that they've ever used to date.
And I don't know if you have access to the app yet, but the ability to go to an NFT collection
and see all the details and then just swipe and be able to bring that NFT into your portfolio
and to be able to buy an NFT on ETH mainnet with any other token inside of your wallet,
mainnet with any other token inside of your wallet, meme coin on base or with Solana or
anything else, it really is something that I think has been desperately necessary for us to onboard
more people into crypto. I agree. I agree. It's just too complicated right now for the masses
to get into an app and worry about, oh, well, I want to buy this thing on, I guess this is base, but I only have this meme coin on Solana and this wallet over here. How do I connect that
to this wallet? Oh, I have to bridge it and go and do this. It's just too complicated. And we
live in this bubble where we all get used to it. And then we say, okay, well, now I know how to do
it. So shouldn't everybody be able to do it? But that's just not the way the world works. Most
people just open the app, get frustrated for 60 seconds,
and then they delete it and they move on to something else.
And we really are trying to solve the bigger problems at scale
that are going to enable the space to grow.
And that's the reason that I came on board to OpenSea in the first place.
Well, respect the move.
I do think it's important for the space at large to
make the tech better, easier, hide the tech, make sure for the quote unquote normie or those that
aren't here and are already deep in the digital asset space or the collectible space.
Those that aren't here, they're not onboarding the way it has been. We need new, much easier
technology. Mobile, I think, it's table stakes in today's world. And
the crypto space at large has lagged behind on that. So I agree, it is very important.
Exciting to hear it might be live public by the end of next month. Can you speak to,
and I won't read Devin's whole post. I'll pin it up top for anyone that missed it yesterday.
One of the things that jumped out to me was zero fees for 60 days.
Starting March 31st, OpenSea reduced the token trading fee to 0%. Will that also include perps if the perp product goes live by then or considered different than the token trading fees?
Yeah. So look, we as a company would actually love for those 0% fees to extend to everything.
There are some real
complications there. And so on the NFT side of the business, it's actually very challenging to
go to 0% fees because the moment that you do, you invite huge amounts of wash trading into the
platform, which then create major amounts of artificial volumes. They depress prices, they
create things to trend on the homepage, and they just create all sorts of chaos. And so it's They're not public. They're not public. They're not public. They're not public. They're not public.
They're not public.
They're not public.
They're not public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public.
They're public. They're public. They're public. They're public. They're public. They're public. can go to 0% fees on that product, at least for OpenSea's fees, then I think it's very likely that
we will extend it that way during that same period. Nice. Two other, I guess, kind of related
product questions before we get into the C questions that most people are here for today.
And if we were doing the hot wing challenge, it might get increasingly a little bit hotter as we
near the 10 o'clock hour. But product related, any update on when we might see Solana NFTs or Ordinals?
Is that on the roadmap?
I don't know if that's been shared.
Is that something that is coming?
Or I know it's been speculated, especially after a competitor wound down support of at least one of those.
But yeah, can you speak to potentially Solana NFTs or Ordinals?
I can't share anything today.
The one thing that I will say is that OpenSea is made of a lot of very passionate people
that deeply participate and care about space.
And unlike a lot of organizations that just have a lot of employees that are there to,
you know, do their job and collect a lot of organizations that just have a lot of employees that are there to, you know, do their job and collect a paycheck, there are people at OpenSea that, you know,
will stay up late into the night, work on weekends, take on side projects because they are very,
very passionate about what they would like to see in the product. And so I can't speak today as to if or when we will have support for ordinals or Solana NFTs on OpenSea,
other than to say that there's, of course, interest because of some of the things that have happened recently.
And I personally own a lot of ordinals and deeply love the concept of digital ownership and digital assets on the
mother chain. I very much from a go-to-market perspective would love to say that every chain
that we support, we support all of the assets on those chains. And so these discussions are
continuous internally. To be clear, it is not a discussion as to would we love to have these things or not.
Of course, we would love to have them.
They very squarely fit into our strategy and our ethos as a company.
It's just a matter of opportunity, cost, and resources.
And there's a lot of things that are being built at OpenSea right now, some of which
now, some of which you all know about and some of which you don't. And every time that we decide
you all know about and some of which you don't.
to take on a new project, especially major projects, there's decisions that have to be
made around, okay, well, you know, those six engineers now, instead of working on this,
they're going to have to go and work on this for the next four weeks or eight weeks. And
we just have to constantly make those decisions about where we think we're going to get the
biggest bang for our buck and make the biggest impact in terms of where we're trying to go
as a company and as a business.
And so, yeah, that's probably all I can share on the topic is that being discussed, genuine
interest, can't make any commitments as to if or when.
But there's a lot of people internally at OpenSea
that would love to see both.
Fair, makes sense.
One more, you mentioned Hyperliquid in passing there,
talking about the Perps product.
Blocks, regular here on Coffee with Captain
in front of the show, posed a hypothetical question.
And I know the question isn't gonna be
any specific brands or protocols
or even categories for that matter.
But I am curious, like I flashed, we were doing the daily market update and saw the Gem Assist,
which was an NFT that followed that Gem XYZ acquisition.
Is there consideration of any other acquisitions at this time, whether it be a per platform or an RWA platform?
The one that Blox hypothetically posed was Courtyard,
you know, whether it be Courtyard or another RWA. Again, I'm not trying to put you in a tough spot
or ask, you know, what companies are you looking at or what categories are you looking at? But
is that something that is actively being considered? Are you looking at other potential
acquisitions to grow the product offering or bring in-house some of these brands that you've partnered with today?
Look, I'll say very generically that every company at the scale of OpenSea, whenever they want to
break into new markets, always has the decision of build or buy. And so OpenSea has had some
acquisitions. For example, we had Rally last year and Chris Madden, our CTO, was CEO of Rally.
And speaking on a personal level, I think he was the greatest asset that we brought over from that acquisition,
although we also brought over some great tech and some amazing team members and engineers.
But that's always a decision.
But that's always a decision.
I, of course, cannot speak right now to which the company might be considering or what areas we might be moving into,
other than to say that we have very meaningful ambitions at OpenSea to evolve well beyond the way that most people perceive us today. We do desire to become a one-stop shop for people to come to
easily trade culture and trade digital assets and trade anything on chain. And it's a natural
extension for us when you think about, okay, well, you can trade major crypto, you can trade,
you know, meme coins and tokens, you can trade NFTs and these types of digital assets. You can now
trade perps on Hyperliquid. There are other things in market right now that are potentially
very obvious next steps for that strategy. There are probably ways that people will transact and
trade and engage with culture on chain that are either not popular right now or maybe even haven't been
invented yet. And the whole reason that OS2 was rebuilt from scratch was to create the rails to
allow for that level of scale. And so what a lot of people feel when they think about the original
OpenSea and OS2 is they see a slicker interface. Maybe it's a little faster. Maybe it's a little
more feature-rich. But the real power of that was lighting the old product on fire
and starting from scratch with a new mindset
that we are going to become a very different type of company
and you need to have the rails built to allow for that type of scale.
Even the mobile app and the way that it's being built right now
never could have been built on OS1. And the integration points and the, you know, mirroring back and forth between,
you know, your wallet and your account so that you do something on the desktop and then all of a
sudden it, you know, happens on mobile in a seamless interconnected way. None of that could
have happened. And so, you know, that was another, by the way, really difficult decision that Devin
had to make well before my time at OpenSea was, okay, you know what, we can keep trying to compete,
we can keep trying to build head to head and keep up with, you know, everything that's happening
in market at the time with, you know, Blur and Magic Eden and everything else, or we can take a
step back, eat our vegetables, recognize that our entire product and platform is not what it needs to be in order to be a real
player in the markets that we believe that we should. And he took an entire year. And there
was a year, if you remember, where a lot of people were saying things like OpenSea is dead,
nobody uses OpenSea anymore, everybody's going to use these other platforms and these other
products, and they're not innovating and they're not adding. But what was really happening behind the scenes is they were taking a step back to be able to take three steps forward. And I think in hindsight, that was a really good decision. OpenSea is in today and building the types of things that we are if those decisions hadn't been made.
And I genuinely hope that this is another one of those moments where on the surface,
it might feel to people like it would have been better or easier for us to proceed forward
or for the foundation to launch its token right now.
But I do think that if we are able to release the mobile app and generate adoption in the way that we believe that we will with a product as good as the one that we've created, if we're able to add pillars and allow people to trade seamlessly across any asset, any blockchain, all your different wallets together in a way where all the complexity, again, is sort of put to the side or abstracted away,
we're able to create an experience that is just as good on mobile as it is on desktop and vice
versa. I think that really does create a much better platform and foundation to have big moments.
And I'm hopeful that in hindsight, we'll look back and say, we're really glad that we did that,
even though it was very
painful at the time. Yeah, I would just add, not just Devin's moves or visions, like you mentioned
Chris and passing there with the acquisition rally and that talent that was acquired, yourself,
my friend Steve, like the talent, the team, it's not that long ago, I'm old enough to remember
when people like a running joke on X used to be like OpenSeas for employees.
And the reality is,
I think they had far more employees
then than they do today.
It's just that you're like,
the team is insanely talented.
And case in point today,
like taking this stuff head on,
it's not easy.
It's not fun announcements to make,
fun updates to give,
but you're meeting it head on.
You're doing what you all believe
is what's best for the business.
Getting into some of these tough questions,
but this was just posed by DudeLifts in the chat.
It says, NFTs are notoriously late to broader crypto trends.
There's been a ton of tension between labs and foundations.
See Uniswap and Aave, and it seems like regulatory trends
are leaning towards the ability for companies
to just launch equity tokens or app tokens. See Back backpack. So his wonder is, is the foundation model
outdated? And is OpenSea is just going through the motions unnecessarily when newer approaches
maybe give you more alignment with the community and more flexibility as a company?
Yeah, I'll be candid. I don't really think I can comment on this. I am not a lawyer. I am not deeply read up on all of the regulatory and what's possible as a US company under new guidance. I know enough to be dangerous. I pay attention. I read a lot. I talk to our own legal counsel at OpenSea, but I'm not an expert enough to comment on whether or not a US-based company like OpenSea could successfully launch a token that would accomplish what we ideally would love to see accomplished with a token like C. And so the current model is that this is the foundation's
token. I don't believe that that is changing. I think it's set up in a way that hopefully can be
very successful when the foundation does decide to share a new timeframe and launch it. I think
it's an interesting question. I would love to hear from somebody that is more of an expert on the answer to that, but I don't think I'm the right person to ask.
And with that, I know it's ultimately win is the foundation's call.
Challenging question that you probably can't answer exactly, but maybe if you were to put a percentage chance on it, is TG going to happen?
Is there a chance that they decide we're not launching a token?
Is that even in the cards at all?
Like scale one to 100, 100 being yes, it's absolutely going to happen? Is there a chance that they decide we're not launching a token? Is that even in the cards at all? Scale of one to 100, 100 being yes, it's absolutely going to happen.
What percentage would you say that there is going to be a token launch, let's say in 2026?
So look, there is never once, not one moment in the year that I've been at OpenSea has anybody questioned whether or not are we going to have a token?
And so I really can't say anything other than that. This is not my decision. And so, you know,
look, if it was completely my decision, I would tell you 100% certainty the foundation will
launch its token and it will launch it at a time when it can be really made successful.
It's not my decision to make, it's the foundation's
decision as to how, if, when to launch the token and Devin is able to provide feedback to them,
I'm able to provide feedback to them. And so, yeah, all I can say at this moment is that
there is full 100% intention by the foundation to launch this token.
There are a number of people at the foundation that deeply believe in the ability to do this and the ability to do it successfully.
But that is also dependent on a number of factors.
And some of those factors relate to watching what OpenSea is doing and the traction that OpenSea is getting with its own solutions and products and the way that the token can be integrated into that ecosystem, some of which
is market related. And I know that people don't necessarily like the answer. It almost feels like
a cop out to say, you know, market conditions. But the reality is the market is not where ideally
you would want it for a token to be released under these circumstances.
And I'll also say this, not everybody on crypto Twitter is privy to all of the data and information
that need to go into a decision like that. And so I can't share that information. I'm not legally
allowed to share a lot of that information.
But I will simply say that OpenSea's token is not just like a pump.fun token launch where,
you know, you type the name of the ticker and the supply and you click enter.
You know, there are huge factors that go into how this token actually gets built,
how it gets distributed, what the long-term sustainable
strategy is for making it part of an ecosystem of a company that, you know, is at the scale and
has the ambitions of a company like OpenSea to be associated with that brand. And so I will simply
note that, you know, to the point that you made, there are a lot of extremely intelligent, hardworking, capable people that wake up every single day to build OpenSea.
And so, you know, you mentioned, you know, Devin and Chris Mattern and, you know, Steve.
And I will tell you that the people at the foundation are, you know, equally capable and reputable.
People at the foundation are equally capable and reputable.
And when those people all look at a set of data points and information and make a determination that they believe it's in the best interest, not, by the way, just for Open Foundation launches the token, they get to keep their promise. And then all of a sudden, the token chart looks just like 99% of other token charts, which is, you know, goes up, up, up. And then all of a sudden, it goes down and down and down and down and down and down and down. And then you have a whole nother set of community sentiment problems where everybody's complaining, saying like, hey, can devs do something like, what are you going to do to make token price go up? And at the end of the day, sometimes, you know, you're a little bit
damned if you do, damned if you don't. But the decision was made that if we aren't
extremely confident that not only can the foundation launch its token, but that we can
make that successful, not just in the immediate term and like the days
afterwards, but for years to come after that, that it was better to delay. And I have to say
that when you get enough really smart, capable, intelligent people in a room that are making
points based on the data they have access to, and most of them come to that conclusion,
it's hard to argue the point. At that point, it shifts from them come to that conclusion, it's hard to argue the
point. At that point, it shifts from, okay, well, if that's what's happening, then how do we do right
by the community? How do we communicate this effectively? And the other thing that I'll just
note, this just happened last week. We had an event scheduled for March 30th.
And I even went on interviews, you know, as recently as like two weeks ago, where I was
recorded saying like, man, wait until March 30th.
Do we have some things to share with you guys?
And we were planning on sharing a lot of really awesome stuff at that event.
And by the way, we had scripts written for that event.
We had all the slides. We had all the animations. We had all the marketing around it. We had met
with our PR firm about who we were going to give exclusive interviews to to preempt some of that
content. We were recording. I mean, I can't go on and on and on. There has been months and months
of preparation that have gone into the foundation's TGE and making this
announcement. And literally two weeks ago, I was spending 60, 70 hours a week working on this.
This was our project. We had every intention that the token was being launched. And there was some
really exciting, very interesting mechanics. And I can't get into the details because we're not ready to share them now.
But now we're postponing that event.
And I hope that everybody understands that when the decision was made to postpone this
TGE, we spent a few days figuring out how to best communicate this and how to try to
do it in a way where we can start to rebuild trust and
credibility with the community. But then we did just come out and do it. And we came out and
said what Devin said in his message yesterday. It's not fun to do this. I would always prefer
that we know exactly what our plan is. We know what our timeline is.
And then we execute against that plan and it all goes well. And then everybody, you know,
achieves what they want to out of it. It hasn't played out exactly like that related to this
aspect of what we are building. And all I can say is that, you know, doing some of the things in the way that we did, you know, saying, look, there is no way to delay TGE and continue a rewards program.
And so we're basically canceling it. We're done. No more waves.
Being able to say that, look, from when we said it's happening in Q1, we gave you information that we believed at the time you could rely on.
It turns out that you couldn't.
And so if you participated on OpenSea and traded on our platform in any of the waves after we made that announcement for Q1, which covers really the last four and a half months
or so, but the last four waves of the program, then we're going to give you an optional ability
to get all of your fees back.
And combined with what you got out of your treasure chests, you're going to give you an optional ability to get all of your fees back. And combined with what you got out of your treasure chests,
you're going to probably, in most cases, even be plus EV on the trading you did on OpenSea.
And by the way, you got to basically trade for free during that entire time frame.
And making sure people understand that if they do keep their treasures
or if they have treasures from previous waves, that they are going to be honored,
that the foundation is going to still
meaningfully consider those at TGE.
And then most importantly, to say,
look, we are going to be releasing these products into market
that we've put our blood, sweat, and tears into,
tens of thousands of hours into building
and onboarding and collecting feedback,
things that we believe will move our entire space forward
in a meaningful way.
And we're going to drop the fees down to 0%
because we want you,
even if you're frustrated with OpenSea,
even if your mindset is, you know, fuck those guys.
They said they were going to TGE
and then they didn't in the timeframe
that they said they would.
We still want you to go and try the mobile app.
We still want you to go and try the Per app. We still want you to go and try the Perps product
because we really believe that we've created things
that are better than anything else that exists out there
and are gonna hopefully be the premise
for millions of new people to be onboarded into the space
that we know and love and participate in every single day.
And I know it's not perfect.
I know that there are maybe other
things that I've seen people suggesting on the timeline that maybe we could have done differently
or structured differently, but these were the decisions that were made. And, you know, in this
optional fee refund, you know, we're putting close to $12 million into a pool to, you know, refund
back to users. That is not an insignificant amount of money,
no matter how you slice it.
And I am very respectful and actually kind of proud
of, you know, Devin and the company
to be in a situation where we say, you know what?
We didn't live up to our end of the bargain.
We said that we were gonna TGE in this timeframe
and then we're making the decision to push it out.
And the people that relied on that information,
we need to give them an opportunity to say either I want to hold on to my treasures and I believe in what they're doing and what they're building. And I want to participate in TGE when it comes. Or, you know what, let's go back in time and kind of give you an opportunity to, you know, spend your fees differently or invest differently. And so
that's where we're at. I think I picked up what you're laying down there as to the why,
why refunding fees from waves three through six and not one to two. But it was one of the most
common questions I saw yesterday after this announcement was why not refunding or why not
get the options for those that were in wave one and two to also get refunds? Can you do you mind? Are you able to answer that directly? Why? Why exclude waves one
and two from the from the optional decision that was made very simply was based on exactly what I
just said, which is that we had never given a time frame for TGE until we did. And the moment
that we did, that was the line in the sand as far as many at OpenSea are concerned, that that's the
promise that was broken. That's the commitment that was broken. And so when we said it's going
to happen in this particular timeframe, we gave people information that we believe that they
should have been able to rely upon. Turns out that we made a different decision. That's on
the foundation. That's on not the community to have that decision get made on their behalf.
And so anybody that relied on that information and might have traded on OpenSea as a result
or, you know, participated in our rewards program as a result, those are the people
that we feel we owe it to to give this option back to.
And as I said, it is not an insignificant
amount. We're talking about more than $10 million that is potentially going to go back to the
community right off of our balance sheet at OpenSea. And legally, that is not something that
the company had to do. It's a major step that's being taken, obviously not maybe getting us the entire way
based on a lot of the feedback that we've seen on the timeline, but a step in the right direction to
rebuild trust with a community that, whether people want to believe it or not, does deeply
matter to me, to Devin, to everybody that works at OpenSea, to our business, to the future of our
company. And look, it's not lost on me. Look, I run marketing for OpenSea, to our business, to the future of our company. And look, it's not lost on me.
Look, I run marketing for OpenSea. This is a difficult foundation to market on top of right
now. You know, when you have all of crypto Twitter, you know, frustrated and angry and disappointed,
it is very hard to then make announcements about products or partnerships or mints or drops or any number of other thing
without this being, you know, a cloud above it. And it's not my favorite thing to make,
you know, my job at OpenSea significantly harder. I want people to be able to trust in what we share
with them when we share it with them. I think one thing that we learned from this and, you know,
a lot of people say, you know, well, why aren't you giving a new date? Why isn't the foundation announcing a new date? Well, what the foundation
is learning from this experience is that announcing a date and recognizing that we weren't
fully lined up to be able to execute on it, that really wasn't a very good decision. And now we're
having to kind of eat our vegetables as a result of that.
They have an idea of when they would like to be able to do this, but they're not going to share it externally until they are 110 percent certain that that is going to happen and they're going to execute on it.
And candidly, I agree with that decision. I don't ever want the foundation to share a date or a time frame again,
unless, you know, by hell or high water, it's going to happen because you can't do this over and over again. It's going to take us a little bit of time to rebuild trust and maybe credibility
with the space. I hope that we can. I believe in what is being built and created. And I think
people are going to genuinely love the products that we're building.
And we have to hope that people might be disappointed or upset or even angry right now.
But over time, hopefully they give us the opportunity to rebuild that trust and credibility
with them.
It's fair.
A couple more follow-ups on that.
And then if there are any additional questions, feel free to drop those in the chat. We might have time to open up the stage as well.
We just, again, ask, disagree. You're welcome to disagree. Just would ask you to do so
without being disagreeable and be respectful, keep it professional. A good question from Stass
that I hadn't thought of, but Stass asks, will we be able to refund any specific waves, like only wave four or wave four and six, but not five?
Or is it all or nothing?
Do they have to choose the entire refund of waves three through six, or could they choose a single wave to refund?
That's a really good question.
I'm not prepared to answer it yet.
Okay.
That's something that, look, I mentioned that these decisions happened last week.
That's something that, look, I mentioned that these decisions happened last week.
We literally have to meet with our engineering team to figure out how to build the system that will support these refunds.
What I can say is that we need the current wave to finish, which will finish up in a couple of weeks.
We then need to actually build the front end system and the contracts to enable these refunds.
And it probably will happen sometime in the
mid to late April timeframe. If I were taking a guess right now based on some early discussions
that we've had, but we have not yet gotten into the details around things like what you're asking
right now. If that's something the community would really like to see, I'd love to hear that.
Part of me, I guess, in the back of my
mind thinks like, you know, either you really believe in OpenSea and the, you know, TGE that
the foundation is, you know, building upon and you'd kind of want to keep your treasures, or maybe
you're, you know, really angry and pissed off and you just want to wash your hands of it and maybe
it's more of a binary decision. But if there are people that
say, you know what, I'm a little upset and I'd like a little bit of my, you know, funds and
fees back, but I'd like to, you know, hedge my bets and keep a couple of these off to the side,
I could see the argument for it. And I suppose we'll have to talk to some members of the community,
talk internally, figure out how we structure it. And like I said, if there's enough people that
really would like to see something like that, I would love to hear it. And so please, you know,
if that's something that you would like OpenSea to enable, post it, send me a DM, throw it in the
Discord and, you know, any feedback that you have, you know, we do read all of the messages, even if
we don't respond back to every single one. Quick question on this current wave then, the current reward wave. Will there be other voyages
in this wave or anytime in the future prior to TGE or once the season's done, it's nothing else
until TGE? So what I can say is this. There's going to be no more waves as part of our Treasure
Chest Rewards program. That's ending on March 30th.
We are then going to enter into a 60-day period of 0% fees, and there will be no reward system in a traditional sense sitting behind the product.
The product will speak for itself, and the incentive to use the product is that it's
cheaper to use than anything else on market, and simultaneously, we believe, better than
anything else on market.
And we would like people to come in and experience it. As Devin shared in his message, it is not lost on us that
when you remove the treasure chest rewards program and you remove the 50% of fees being put into a
prize pool that get redistributed, that effectively means that the fees are higher without the rewards
program. And we are going to need to make some changes and put a system in place
that will make our fee structure competitive at OpenSea
after we get through this 0% fee period.
And so we have a lot of discussions going on right now
about exactly how to accomplish that.
And I think that the likely outcome is you will see a system put into place
where people that
make OpenSea their home for trading, people that use the app consistently to trade different
types of assets on chain will effectively be able to get their fee rate down to a much
more competitive level than those that might use it very casually from time to time.
And again, we're not prepared to share exactly
what that's going to look like,
but we've set a timeframe for ourselves,
which is that two and a half months from now,
we have to be ready with that because if we're not,
it's not lost on us that we can't go live
with our existing fee structure with no rewards program,
no information about an upcoming TGE
and expect people to necessarily meaningfully use it,
even if it is a better
product because the fee structure just simply wouldn't be competitive with a number of other
platforms and solutions that are out in market. Makes sense. I won't pry on specific use cases
for the token. I get that you're wanting to launch the thing and some of that might be some secret
sauce on what the token will be used for and whatnot. Are you able to speak to like goals
of the token? Like what is the, is there an overarching goal behind this? What, what leads to a successful token
other than number go up? Yeah. I have to be a little careful in the sense that I can't share
more than I'm allowed to share. And I wish that I could, like, I wish I could show you all the
presentation that was planned for March 30th.
I think you'd all be really impressed with what the foundation has been cooking. But what I'll say is this. The intention has never been for C to be a meme coin, to just be launched
and forgotten, and the entire utility of the token to be what you can sell it for at any given moment. The intention has always been for it to be a meaningful part of OpenSea's platform ecosystem
and for there to be reasons to hold it and to use it.
And that's something that has always been taken very seriously and very deeply
in all of the planning for the token on the foundation side,
as well as integrating
the token in on the OpenSea Lab side. And so I am excited about when SEA comes, whenever that is,
what it will enable for OpenSea as a company and as a business and for me as a marketer. And I think the market will really appreciate the really interesting ways that
we have thought through the implementation of C on the foundation side and on the labs co side.
That's all I think I'm comfortable saying at this point. Otherwise, I risk probably crossing
into territory where I'm going to have a... Totally get it. No, I totally get it.
Appreciate the answer. Appreciate you being here. And I totally understand, totally get it. I still
had to ask. One more question, then we'll get to these hands. Appreciate Loki. We'll go Loki,
an idiot, and Zard's on deck. But before we go to the hands,
most main reason behind this delay, market conditions.
The question is if market conditions are the reason for delaying,
what is the catalyst that OpenSea is requiring for a token to be,
or the foundation is requiring for the token launch to be successful
that's only possible with improved market conditions?
Are you looking at, you know,
it's somehow pegged or defined by the direction of Bitcoin?
Is it, are market conditions less about token value and trending market or
more about crypto's overall lack of daily active users? Anything you could speak to on like,
what is a good market or good market conditions more about price of Bitcoin or alts or daily
active users? How do you, what can you speak to on that? I would say that the discussions that have been had over the last week really focused on three major pillars, one of which is market conditions, which is very simply, this is not a great time to launch a token with the tokenomic structure of an OpenSea.
And so, you know, people have to recognize that, you know, OpenSea has been around for seven years.
OpenSea has seen more than $40 billion of volume flow through the platform, millions and millions of wallets.
And this is not just some random token that can be launched.
And, you know, regardless of, you know, where the FDV ends up, be viewed as wildly successful by the broader community. And so the market conditions
do play into this, but it's less from the perspective of like, hey, you know, we really
want the token to be as highly priced as possible, you know, when the thing launches. That's not what
the foundation is thinking about. The foundation is thinking about, okay, well, if the token launches
and we're distributing X percent of supply at launch of this token and it's getting distributed in these ways to these types of users under these circumstances, is it going to be viewed as successful by the market and the community based on their expectations of what they need the token to look like and what they're expecting to receive?
and to look like and what they're expecting to receive.
And at the end of the day,
the market conditions are one aspect of this.
The second aspect of it is something
that I alluded to earlier,
which is that our products very simply
have not been released into market
in the timeframe that we wanted them to
and been really adopted in the way
that we wanted them to in a pre-TGE sense.
And that's something that we believe at OpenSea.
It's, of course, up to the foundation
how they want to take that into account or not.
But I think the foundation does believe
that if we have major products
that are major catalysts for our business in market
and that they're receiving a lot of positive attention
from the market,
that that is broadly a good thing for the token. And then the last thing would be adoption of those products. And right now we
have a lot of volume that's happening in token trading on OpenSea, but we do ask ourselves,
how organic is that volume? Are they using OpenSea because they love the product or are they using
OpenSea because they want to farm the rewards program or because they want treasures or because they're expecting
TGE to come? And we think we have these catalyst moments where we have these products that we're
really genuinely proud of and excited about that we think are better than anything else that has
ever existed before them for what it is that they are accomplishing. We want to get those into
market. And then we
want to see, are people willing to use those products, even if they're not being heavily
incentivized to do so? And that is a really powerful foundation to build a business on top
of. And of course, to have major moments like have the foundation decide to launch its token on top
of and use it as an accelerant. And so I think all in all, the decision was made
that it would be better for launching a token. And by the way, not just better for OpenSea,
but better for the community. If OpenSea can get these incredible products to market,
if we can drive a lot of people into them and generate adoption of those products,
and then hopefully also simultaneously end up in
a position where the market conditions are more conducive to a successful launch and be in a
position where we look back and say, it was probably better that we held off. There's no
specific catalyst. It's not that we need this number of users in the mobile app or we need
Bitcoin to be at this price. It's something that the foundation will continue to measure and monitor against,
combined with a number of other factors. And when they're confident that they can do this
in a successful and sustainable way, then I am certain that they will make the decision to do so
and announce all the details. Makes sense. Makes sense. Do you have time for a few more questions?
I know we're running up against 10.
I'm here as long as you'd like me to be.
I appreciate you, Adam.
We can get through absolutely anybody that's raising their hand.
I'm in no rush.
Greatly appreciate it.
Just a reminder, and I'm looking at the state, most known entities, a couple new connections
today.
So I will reiterate, ask whatever questions you like.
Just please do so in a respectful manner.
We can disagree, but do so without being disagreeable.
We're going to start with Loki.
Loki, GM, appreciate you being up here today.
Question for Adam.
Hey, GM.
GM, Adam, GM.
Thanks, Chris.
Hey, I'm very surprised.
Today, you found a very, very strong adversary.
I couldn't think one day we could find anyone able to talk more than you.
It's been like an hour and a half. Like, wow. Congrats. No, I mean, you asked already all the
good questions and some of them Adam cannot answer. But I think what I got today some two important things like first
that it seems like the reason of this delay it's the you don't you're not ready with the app yet
more than the market condition. I see a lot of critics regarding you guys don't have to wait for
mark better market condition blah blah blah. So I think this is a good reason
that makes sense that people can understand and accept. And the other thing is something
I think is the first time I hear coming from OpenSea that you are not launching just a Minkon, just a random token. There are plans and you have a plan to achieve something great
that we still don't know.
We can have a hint.
Probably will be linked to your, of course, to the new app.
So that's very positive for everyone that's expecting
it's waiting for the token.
So I guess my only question is, do you think we are going to see at least this year?
I mean, it's in the cards.
So look, I'm not in any position to share timing.
In fact, even if I wanted to, I couldn't because I don't have any timing indication right now from the foundation.
What I will say, you know, related to, you know, the comments you made, I think, you know, the way that Devin positioned this, he was probably a little damned if he did, damned if he didn't.
I think if Devin had, you know, in hindsight, put his message out and shared more about, you know, the product delays and information, I think people would have been like, well, you had a year and a half to build those products and why didn't you build
them faster and release them faster? And I think that there was probably no reason that could have
been given where the reaction from the market would have been like, oh yeah, you know what,
we get it. The recognition is in the reality, it's a combination of all of the above. And so
is in the reality, it's a combination of all of the above. And so on that side, it is what it is,
but it is definitely a number of different factors that went into this decision. It wasn't
like people got in a room and were like, all right, well, price of, you know, Ethan Bitcoin
is shit right now. So I guess we should delay this thing. Like there was, you know, I don't know,
20 hours of discussion across, you know, conference room tables about don't know, 20 hours of discussion across conference room tables about the pros and
cons and what could be done. And if there were different options, if we could share a new
timeframe, that there was all sorts of stuff that was going back and forth. And this is the path
that was decided to be taken. And like I said, I know the foundation will share a new timeframe
when it is confident that it can execute on that timeframe.
And, you know, look, of course they have in mind, you know, what they think might be good
new timeframes for this, but we're just not at a point where they're ready to share it.
And, you know, not even close to the point where they would be ready to commit to it
to a point where it might not change again.
And I think that, as I said earlier, I personally,
my desire is that the foundation should never share another timeframe unless they are extremely
confident that they are going to achieve it. And I would actually prefer that they don't do that
far in advance. I don't really want the foundation personally to say, hey, you know, it's going to be
here in five and a half months.
Like, I would much rather that we just build behind the scenes, get it ready.
And then at the point that it's ready to launch and we're ready to do it, then we are able to do it over a much shorter time frame.
Again, that's not my decision. And so I can give my feedback. I can share my advice.
I can give my feedback. I can share my advice. But right now, I think conceptually, everybody
understands that this situation that we ended up in over the last 24 hours is really fucking
painful. And nobody wants this and nobody wants to deal with this. And this is a really difficult
place to put OpenSea, to put me, to put Devin, to put Chris, to, you know, market on top of. And this is just a shitty situation that we don't want to be in.
And so let's learn from it and not do that to ourselves again.
And as far as the token being more than a meme coin,
I have personally said that in a number of my X articles,
but I don't expect everybody to remember everything I wrote, you know, nine months ago.
But without question, you know, there is no intention
to just launch C as a meme coin where, you know, the only utility of the token is to look at the
price and decide whether you think you can sell it for more or less the next day. Like that's not a
value add to OpenSea's ecosystem. And if OpenSea wanted to do that, it would have and could have
done that years ago to, you know, probably a bunch of fanfare,
made investors a bunch of money, and then you'd have a token today sitting at basically some
worthless amount that it would be impossible to resurrect it from, and you'd lose the opportunity
to actually have a token that represents a meaningful component and value of an ecosystem.
And so I'm quite happy and excited that OpenSea did not launch a token
before I came on board and before they were ready to design it in such a way that it could really
have an impact to the actual lab side of the business outside of what the foundation wants
to do. But yeah, there's a lot of coordination and a lot of very interesting innovation happening behind the scenes related to this token. And I really wish I could share it with you. I was so excited to have that presentation happen on March 30th. And it will still happen. I really believe that.
really believe that. I'm so excited for when all that can be shared with the community.
And when it does, I think a lot of people look back and say, wow, like those guys were really
planning something. But that's all I can say for the moment. No, good question, Loki. And
I agree. I'm glad they did. I know a lot of people said you should have launched this during the bull
or during the mania. The token would be zero today, if so.
Most likely.
Like, it just, it would have ran its course, and people would have dumped the token.
They might have made a bag, and then where is OpenSea today?
You got, you launched a token once.
Like, you got really, quite frankly, one shot at this.
And to have what you're building, the products you're building, to leverage it as a tool, as a product, not just a liquidity event for historical users.
I'm a historical user.
I love a big airdrop of C token.
But looking at it from a business standpoint, it's just not, you know, I want to see it
also sustained.
I want to see it long term.
I do believe it's the best for the crypto natives, for the fans of us that are those
of us that are fans of digital
collectibles and NFTs. Like, do NFTs need OpenSea to be successful to maintain relevancy long term?
Maybe not, but it sure helps to have a leader in the space that is making these efforts to actually
make it easier for new users to come in and use the product and start collecting and onboard in this space. So I'm glad that it's not hit the market yet and you're dotting your T's, dotting your
I's, crossing your T's to make sure everything is as optimal as possible when it comes time.
I'll say one quick thing on that point.
I know that a lot of people view us as an NFT marketplace, and I see a lot of comments like OpenSea should just double down on NFTs and stop with all this stuff with the tokens and perps and everything else that's going on, and they should just things for NFTs and to be able to support artists and creators and digital
assets and digital ownership is largely by expanding the horizons of our business and being
able to drive the revenues that we are using there into these other things. And so, you know,
you look at, you know, just even the last few months, you know, we had our entire team out at
Marfa and we did, you know, almost two dozen video interviews with, you know, artists on the space to, you know, give them, you know, we, you know, went out to Art Basel and, you know,
we were, you know, a big part of, you know, Zero 10 and, you know, really bringing digital art and,
you know, digital ownership out to the masses in the art space. And we are building into our
marketplace platform. We are adding to Creator Studio and we're doing all of this. And by the
way, not to mention the very first native app to trade NFTs on your iPhone,
which is just going to be a delightful experience. We care deeply about the foundations of where
OpenSea came from. I am here largely because of my passion for NFTs and digital ownership and art
and collectibles. And people see, obviously know, buying things and talking about things. And, you know, even when it comes to like statues behind me or Pokemon cards, like
it's just ingrained in me that I care about this stuff. But expanding our business beyond that
is such an important thing that we need to do to continue to meaningfully grow and support it.
And having a mobile app that maybe you have millions
of people coming into primarily to do token trading or perps or prediction markets or anything
else, but then having pop-ups for when there's, you know, mints from amazing artists and, you know,
tokenized Pokemon cards and everything else. Like this is all part of one big ecosystem.
And I think that the way that OpenSea is viewing it is the right way.
And I think we're going to be able to make an impact at scale. But yeah, that's-
I didn't have a chance to go to those other events. I was at Art Basel Miami,
and I don't know if Zero10 would have went off and been as big of an impact for NFTs and the
digital art space as it was, if it wasn't for OpenSea's support of that. And much respect. I do think, is there a world where digital collectibles and NFTs continue to succeed without OpenSea?
Yeah, possibly. But it's a heck of a lot easier when you have a big player like OpenSea that's
supporting creators, supporting the artists, and the collectors. I've said many times on the show,
I don't know if it ever got back to you or not, but with some of the stuff that the BizDev team
has done recently with some of the allow list and OpenSea users, you get access to this drop or you get this X copy.
Like it's bringing back like the heyday of NFT vibes.
Like OpenSea, quite frankly, is doing more for NFT collectors and holders than most of the NFT PFP collections are doing lately.
And they don't have to do that.
Like that's, is it going to, is it creating tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of magical internet money for those holders?
No, but nothing is today.
Like the effort, the intent of aligning with the holders
and doing good for the creators, the artists, the collectors,
it's been very evident.
And we hadn't seen that previously,
not just from OPC, not from any other NFT marketplace
from my perspective.
And I would love to, I'd love to see more of that.
And again, why I'm rooting for this
to be a successful C-drop,
not just a liquidity event for myself and everyone else who might have been a user of the platform.
Let's go an idiot.
I appreciate your patience on stage.
I don't see the hand anymore, but X has been a little finicky.
If you'd like to get in here with a question, Brad, go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, gentlemen.
I'll try to be brief out of respect for anybody else that might have questions.
Actually, more of a comment than a question.
I hear you addressing the negative feedback from X a lot.
I think there's two big mistakes that maybe more business-oriented people like yourself make in Web 3.1.
And you've already obviously identified it, announcing timelines too early.
Clearly, you've learned that lesson.
The other thing is I don't think that I
find often you guys don't know how to interpret. There's a decoding that needs to happen on the
feedback from X. And I think you guys, you got to keep in mind that a lot of the negative feedback
that you're seeing on X is from kind of two sets of people, people who are either overly emotional because they're down bad
and they were in desperate need of a STEMI, right? Or people who are deliberately being hyperbolic
because they get paid off of engagement. So, I mean, I don't know exactly how to get around that.
I don't know if you guys need someone on your team or just a friend who lives on CT or whatever to
kind of help you guys decode that
feedback mechanism because X is a great source of feedback, but there is a necessary decoding
process, I would say. And other than that, I mean, you know, I think you guys, I think it was obvious
to most people that this TG was not going to happen. I saw a lot of people speculating, but he said this.
I think it was obvious to most people.
And I think you guys were kind of playing like a game of chicken with luck,
hoping that markets would improve and they just didn't, you know?
And that's the way it goes sometimes, you know?
So, you know, no frustration.
I think the option for the refund is, that's great.
And yeah, you guys keep killing it. Your product is the best product to buy NFTs on. For sure, I'm on it for the refund is, that's great. And yeah, you guys keep killing it.
Your product is the best product to buy NFTs on.
For sure, I'm on it all the time.
I keep the window open all the time.
Keep killing it.
Thanks, dude.
I really appreciate that feedback.
You know, look, of course I agree with you.
I know that some of what happens, you know,
there was actually someone about a month ago
and they were ranting like really negatively about something
related to OpenSea. And Devin, our CEO, reached out to them via DM. And he's like, would you be
willing to chat? Like, I'd love to hear more about your perspective on this. And they actually said,
oh, actually, I'm not nearly as negative on this as it appeared on the timeline. I really was just
engagement farming, but let me give you some feedback. And, you know, we were laughing about
that internally, that sometimes you do have these moments where you have to interpret a little bit about, you know, what people are doing and saying because of that.
I would say that I think there's a third group of people, which are people that are just really passionate.
I think that there's a lot of people that they wake up every single day and they really do care about the space and blockchain
and digital ownership and nfts and they really do care about open sea because we sit at sort of the
epicenter of a lot of the stuff that they care about and you know look most people in this space
are financially motivated you know i i think we would be kidding ourselves if we thought that, you know,
a majority of people are here
because they love the art and they love collectibles.
And I find myself in the minority a lot of the time
because I buy NFTs just because I really like them
or I want to be part of the community
or I dig the art or I, you know,
just want to have the provenance
of having this thing in my wallet.
And I hope over time that more and more people collect for those reasons,
other than, you know, purely financial. Those that are here for purely financial reasons,
like I get it. Like some of the people probably were expecting their stimmy and, you know,
they can be disappointed, frustrated. I get it. I empathize with those people.
It's not our intention to mislead at any moment.
We're always operating with the information
that we have at the time.
But at the same time, we are running a business.
We do need to make sure that we are building our products
and releasing our products in a timeframe
that we believe is gonna create sustainable success.
And the foundation is also essentially a business
in its own right and needs to make sure that when it launches its token, that it believes that it can do so to fanfare and success and create something that's sustainable beyond the initial launch.
And so there's a lot of information that a lot of people don't necessarily have access to at any given moment. And so, look, I'm never upset or angry at the feedback that I see on X. It's not
lost on me that when people are screenshotting things I said from nine months ago, they're
probably, for the most part, engagement farming or, you know, just trying to jab at me out of
frustration. And I don't, like, get angry or upset over that stuff. You learn to sort of build a bit of a thicker skin in positions like this
over time. I do read every message and whether they're engagement farming, whether they're just
venting, whether they're passionate and they, you know, really want to share this. And I think to
the point that was just made, I have to interpret that sometimes. I have to ask myself, what lens
are they really sharing this and how do people really genuinely feel?
And by the way, I'm in a bunch of group chats. I have people that I talk to one-on-one all the time to try to get a sense of what's the reality sort of on the ground right now related to what
we're doing. I want the feedback. And even if the feedback is really negative, we are using that
feedback to try to make better decisions.
Absolutely. And just to be clear, I'm not saying that those are the only two groups of people that are critical.
There is legitimate criticism. I'm just saying, you know, the stuff that goes the most viral comes from emotional and hyperbolic places.
Anyway, thanks again. Captain, if you need to rotate me down, go ahead.
If there's requests, otherwise I'll just aura form your stage. Thanks again, guys.
Appreciate it. Great. Yeah again, guys. Appreciate it.
Yeah, great question.
Appreciate you asking.
And yeah, I, again, appreciate you being here.
Appreciate you taking these questions.
I know not everyone's going to be happy.
There are some questions.
We'll get to the rest of the hands here.
I saw Zard's.
I don't see your hand anymore.
But if you did just want to get in here, I said you were on deck up next.
I did just want to make sure you see the feedback.
There was, I mean, getting some multiple in the chat saying, advising me to push back on not including wave one and two.
Starting waves and farming implied TG.
It's not coincidental that the waves with the most volume isn't included.
I don't know if you want to comment on that.
I know you already addressed it.
I just wanted to make sure you saw the feedback.
I don't know if anything can be done or changed at this point, but probably the most recurring
negative comment I've seen today
is the, I think, appreciation of the option for a refund, but excluding those ways one and two,
at least as far as specific announcements other than just like, I'll drop it already.
That's just some direct feedback. Yeah, look, I very much appreciate the feedback. And of course,
I heard it in Discord when I jumped in for an AMA yesterday.
I've read it a few times on the timeline. Look, this is the decision that was made. It's, you know,
a very significant decision, even in the current state, as I shared, you know, there's more than $10 million that's being committed to refund back to the community. I want to be very clear that the treasures that people have earned,
regardless of wave, if they came from, you know, our beta, if they came from waves one and two,
or if they came from the ones that were offering this optional refund,
they are going to be meaningfully considered by the foundation when the TGE happens.
And I will tell you personally, for me, I'm going gonna be holding my treasures. I'm not gonna be taking a fee refund back
and I would be making that decision
even if I was not CMO of OpenSea.
And so that'll be up to everybody to decide what to do,
but I wanna be clear that even though
we are not offering a optional refund for Waves 1 and 2,
that doesn't mean that those people
are being left out in the cold.
It means that yes, we are telling you that you need to hold on to those treasures a little
longer. And I believe that the foundation will meaningfully take them into account
when the time comes for TGE. Very fair. Zard, did you still want to get in here with a question
for Adam? Yeah, yeah, that's okay. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, we got you. GM, thanks for jumping
out. Yeah, so I've got a comment and a question for Adam as well.
So the comment, first of all, was that obviously, yeah, the token thing sucks.
But I mean, how many times have we been in the space where we've seen, you know, bodies release a token and then it just kind of dumps just because they want to rush it out there?
So I think obviously this is long term going to be the best decision.
I think that you guys reacted well in the sense of stopping
the farming. I think that's a good idea for now. I also think that offering a make good in the,
you know, in the fact that you'll offer a refund and the fact that I think you said there was
about 12 million sort of queued up for that. I think that's an awesome job. I think the other
thing as well here that maybe some people aren't aware of is just quite like the fielding of questions that you've had on the timeline and also on the Discord.
You've had a lot of negativity from people. And I think for anyone having to deal with that,
I know it comes with the job. I know it comes with the job. I'm just saying, I think
for you to have dealt with some of those comments, you're a braver man than I. I mean,
it must be hard. It must be hard but um I think the fact
that going back to your point as well Adam where you said about you read every single message I
can actually vouch for that because um I've had my my criticisms about OpenSea over the years I mean
I joined you guys in 2021 I've been a huge huge fan of the platform and I do feel like it kind of
lost its way for a couple of years but I genuinely
think towards the back end of last year I started to see a real change and when you put out a tweet
saying about you know I listen to feedback I actually put that theory to the test and I sent
you a DM and you actually replied to it and I think that but the most important thing that you
can have as a marketplace is the the feeling from feeling from a creator or a user that they're actually listened to.
So I think if people feel that they're being listened to, it's an incredibly important thing.
So I just want to say, you know, kudos to you for that.
Now, the question that I had, just to sort of sidestep slightly, because I know Chris asked this question about ordinals earlier.
I know Chris asked this question about ordinals earlier.
With the closing of Magic Eden, obviously, there's a whole community, for example, on 8 Chain, that are looking for a new marketplace.
And obviously, OpenSea is our default and everyone wants to go there.
Is there going to be any possibility that there's going to be some better visibility for some of those chains that have essentially been dropped and ignored?
to some of those chains that have essentially been dropped
and ignored, because obviously we'd love to have a new home
on OpenSea and really feel like this is the default marketplace
for everyone to come to and for a community
to really sort of thrive.
Yeah, so look, we support 25 chains on OpenSea.
We support thousands and thousands of projects.
Obviously, every project wants to be
up on the homepage. Everybody wants to be featured and talked about and have their IP incorporated
into videos. And so there is no way that we can solve that problem for everybody. What we can do
is meaningfully consider any projects or blockchains that are really doing a lot of interesting things and generating
attention. And then we can help to hopefully amplify that if we think that there's something
to do there. We have an entire business development organization that sits underneath
marketing at OpenSea that works with hundreds of projects and blockchains and partners at any given time and tries to find ways that we can work together to make one plus one equal three and to try to deliver value to the community, value to OpenSea users, value to their users, visibility through things that we're doing.
And then, you know, hopefully you've seen and many have seen over the last six months or so that we've put a huge amount of investment and energy into our creative content.
And so you see these videos that we're putting out with, you know, have dozens of different IP, you know, interacting and, you know, showcasing announcements and things like that.
And we're trying to rotate new things in and out of those to provide that level of visibility.
in and out of those to provide that level of visibility.
It's very important to me that OpenSea consistently feels
culturally aligned and relevant with those that are building
and actively doing interesting and meaningful things
inside of our space.
And so I don't remember our DM conversation
one-on-one exactly, but I think I made an introduction
to our business development org.
And I would say that the best path is to start having discussions with them
and get them excited about what you all are building and then figure out from there
if there's ways that we might be able to support or assist in any way that we can.
And as far as specific chains go, look, that I agree with completely.
You can go to OpenSea right now and you can sort of sort your homepage by chain.
But when there's 25 different chains
and most people are just viewing the entire whole,
then everything on every chain
is kind of competing with everything from every chain.
And if you want something on 8 Chain to trend,
then it's gonna be competing with things
from Base and ETH Mainnet and Abstract
and Solana and everything else.
And so it's a matter
of how do we um make sure that we're partnering at the chain level at the project level and doing
so in a way that's actually scalable and where we can support uh in a bi-directional way does that
answer your question yeah i think yeah i think definitely that that ability to sort of customize
your home page so it could just be chain specific.
I think that that was a huge potential for the future, I think, because then you can sort of work everything around it.
Obviously, include some more stats in there, I think would be really cool as well.
And, you know, as a huge fan of the other side as well, I'm really excited to see how that's going to sort of filter in more to OpenCT.
Because I think even from the token level, there's a lot of potential to sort of really expand
the fun of a token launch as well
into something like the metaverse.
So I think, you know, something like the other side,
for example, or even what Pudgies are doing,
it's definitely worth exploring.
But yeah, no, thank you so much for your time, Adam.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah, look, appreciate you.
And I really encourage you,
go to the homepage on OpenSea
and just click on the ApeChain logo in the top middle.
And you're going to end up at opensea.io slash discover chain ApeChain. That is a copy paste link that anybody
could treat as a homepage for ApeChain. And that page has its own projects to discover. It has its
own tokens to discover. It has its own featured section. It has its own trending. And that's
something that also is making its way into the mobile experience. Obviously, we need to do a better job of working with each individual chain
to keep that information exciting and up to date and to be partnering with the right new things
that are going on. And that's no insignificant effort when you have 25 different chains to be
doing that with simultaneously. And so curation of the site is a factor. But I
have a member of my team that is responsible for that. She is responsible for curation as one of
her, you know, pillars of her role as she wakes up every day on OpenSea. And it's something that
if you have feedback on how we could do a better job, I would be all ears. Awesome. And I'd say
the feedback across the board, like, you may not get the answer you're looking for, but they're listening. They're taking in the feedback and they're showing up. They're
here. Like there's a lot of other, I mean, I wasn't going to name names, but PumpFun's been
teasing a token, promised a token forever. I don't see their leadership team coming on spaces and
fielding tough questions. Like just at least hearing the feedback, giving answers that may
not be what everyone wants to hear, but greatly respect showing up, taking it head on. And speaking of taking it head on,
Jesus, question for Adam? Yeah, no, I'm here. I mean, bro, you guys have covered so much today
and answered so much stuff. Adam, thanks for doing that. I've tested everything that OpenSeas put out.
for doing that. I've tested everything that OpenSea's put out. I was OS2 tester,
tested the new website we have now. I'm testing the wallet. Zach and the team are just absolutely
smashing it. I mean, as soon as there is somebody reporting a problem, like, I don't know what he's
doing, but it's like immediately fixed. The one problem, the one problem i had i logged into my wallet it showed my balance as
like one billion dollars one day and uh i was like hey can we please keep this error and make it like
into full effect um that was probably one of the wildest things that's happened but he quickly
you know got that fixed um but other than that i mean for people that don't think the team is actually
working i can i know hands-on that because you know i knew chris and these guys from the floor
when it was the floor app so you know and then seeing them join open c and then i was like happy
and sad when i seen adam join open c because like adam was my nft guru he would post
a project and then all of a sudden i was like i'd buy it and it was like just it was it was wild we
had some i had some fun time superman was the last one i think but either way like you know i'm happy
with the way things are going is it does it suck we don't get a tge yes um one
of the questions that somebody had asked me or it was a comment that made was made last night
when we do get to the point of the uh redemption and we decide to redeem our treasures
are these treasures uh there's a couple kind of sides of this question.
He was suggesting,
and this is full DGN mode.
He was suggesting have the treasures redeemable as an NFT.
And then you can trade the treasures on OpenSea,
but also buy other people's treasures at maybe even a discounted price
and stack even more treasures
that are
meaningful towards TGE.
If we don't go that route,
if our fees are past a certain dollar amount,
is there going to be any like tax forms and things like that we have to do to
recover these fees?
So great questions.
I saw that suggestion online.
That is something actually we debated and discussed at the very entrance of this program six, seven months ago. ownership. And at any rate, I don't think
it's likely we will implement that, but I think it's an extremely fun and interesting suggestion
and something that I will put a little more thought into under our sort of new set of
circumstances. As far as the refunds go, they are being treated as refunds of fees already paid.
And so there should be no tax implications as a result.
That's something that, of course, we're going to confirm with our finance team and the way
that this all gets rolled out.
I mentioned details soon, but as of right now, the information that I have is that,
no, there should not be implications on that side.
Okay, cool.
Well, the same guy who made that one comment just asked the question in the abstract chat,
but I'll let Captain ask that.
Sure.
You see it?
What's your level in Pokemon Go?
Important question.
I've been playing Pokemon Go since the day it came out.
I only play maybe five minutes a day now,
and so it's more like I'm in line at Starbucks
and I'll catch my Pokemon for the day. But I will note two things. So one is I own every Pokemon.
And so I have all 940 of the released Pokemon in Pokemon Go. And I do keep up with that. And for
anybody that plays, that's a feat that probably would take thousands of hours and travel all
around the world at this point to accomplish.
And so I remain proud of that.
And years ago, many years ago, six, seven years ago, when I had a lot more time on my hands and I was in my semi-retired state,
I decided I wanted to get world-class good at the PvP that exists in Pokemon Go.
And I managed to. I actually got up to rank 21 in the world
on the global leaderboard
out of millions and millions of players.
And I received a shiny luchador Pikachu out of it
that is one of the most rare in the game
that is something that I'm still quite excited
and proud to hold in my account.
So yeah, Pokemon's one of my only real vices. And
now that my kids are really into it, like my six-year-old loves Pokemon Go. Like he'll ask me
at like six, seven o'clock at night, you know, after I finish up, you know, work for that day.
And he'll be like, can we go in the car and like, you know, go spin a bunch of PokeStops? I'm out
of Pokeballs. I'm like, I need to catch this. And it's really fun to see your kids get into the
stuff that you're into. And, you know, he's ripping packs now and, you know, we get to do that together. And so very rewarding
for me to be able to do that, especially at the end of a difficult day.
A lot of love on the background, a lot of love on the, the Pokemon grinding from Zane. And that
question came from Hans. Hans, a legend over there, a longtime friend of the show here. Grace,
we're going to go to you next, But since I invoked Hans' name,
I appreciate the Pingu tip over there on Abstract.
Also, overdue.
Really appreciate it.
I got gifted a couple of genuine undead recently.
This is not a...
Please don't...
You don't need to gift me NFTs whatsoever.
But I at least wanted to shout out Hans
for a couple of fire genuine undead.
My first two,
even so went as far as match me with a space ape here
in the Genuine Undead world. And yeah, just greatly appreciate you. Greatly appreciate
you tuning in every day. And thank you very much for the generosity. You are a legend.
Grace, GM, did you still have a question for Adam?
Yes, yes. First, I would like to make a comment. Yeah, I pinned my article on the top. So I realized that for the OpenSea's YH campaign, there's a lot of new users. Some people, they are easy to use. And they trade the NFT.
It's their first time.
So they really are the new blood of the NFT market.
So in my article, I also, you know, state NFT plays the critical, actually a milestone in crypto, the history of crypto.
Because, you know, the first time we're owning
digital arts. So also being a marketplace for NFT, I also think OpenSea plays as a milestone
in the history of crypto as well, you know, because the golden time we all remember. Yeah, so let's make the NFT great again.
That's mainly my research paper about NFT and OpenSea
because I think these two together
plays a milestone in the history of crypto.
And anyway, I do have a quick question.
A question is, I noticed in Cato,
is there any incentive for writing articles?
I noticed OpenSea's name in Cato,
but I'm not so sure.
I just, that's why I'm asking.
So is there any incentive for the, you know,
writers to post articles about OpenSea?
That's my question.
Yeah, we don't have a formal relationship with Kaido.
And so they do have a dashboard where you can see sentiment
and how many people are posting.
But OpenSea has never suggested that there are any incentives
or reasons to try to escalate on those leaderboards or anything along those lines.
And so it's something that actually at one point a lot of people were pushing me to do.
We decided against it because I actually think that to some extent those programs have the
ability to incentivize a lot of very inorganic engagement.
a lot of very inorganic engagement.
I would love to find ways to create organic incentives
for people to write about OpenSea
and to talk about what we're doing
and to share with their friends.
And we have some ideas there related to referrals
and the like that you'll likely see in the coming months.
Again, not to say anything negative about Kaido.
In fact, I look at those dashboards
and leaderboards all the time and I even pay attention to like my yaps and, you know, things like that. And so
I just think that, you know, for us, as I mentioned earlier, one of the most important metrics for us
moving forward is going to be making sure that people are using the product because they love
the product and because they organically believe that it's the best product in the market to do their trading and to interact on chain. And we are always trying to make sure
that as we are, if we are going to build incentives, that we do it in a way that
is encouraging real users and real people to engage and not just, you know, bots or farmers
and, you know, people that might create accounts on Twitter for the hope of an airdrop and the like.
So anyway, that's my current stance on it.
Love the team over there.
I think it's an interesting product, but no plans at this moment.
Oh, thank you.
Yes, I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Yes, thank you for answering the questions.
Again, I want to say thank you for making this a great platform and being knowing a lot of new users.
They really love it.
It's wonderful.
Yeah, because not only trading NFT and the tokens.
So it's a full, I think it's a fully functional platform.
And, you know, we love it.
We'll support it.
And again, it plays an important milestone in the history of crypto because, you know, we can trade digital arts.
And we let's work together to make the NFT great again.
And being a Chinese community users or collectors, we love to, you know, collaborate with OpenSea and with the captain.
Okay, so let's work together.
We have a lot of buyers too, so we work together to make the NFT great again.
That's my point.
Thanks for joining us.
Stay great to connect and appreciate the questions, comments.
Adam, you got time for one more from Iron Shag and then we chat here.
Appreciate it.
You've been taking far longer of your time today than we anticipated.
This is important.
I'm here as long as you'd like me.
Great.
Greatly appreciate it.
Iron Shag, question for Adam?
Yeah, I'll be as brief as possible to respect your time.
Apologies if it's a little noisy.
My 3D printer's ripping in the background.
All good.
Apologies if this has been asked and answered, but I've been kind of in and out this is on my laptop i don't have i don't have it up on my phone
um i guess my biggest question is so i've been inactive in web3 for about a year or so and i
just came back and about a five days six days ago and to make a comment I first
thing I did was jump on OpenSea and I gotta commend you for you know I I've been away from
the app for a while or away from the platform for a while and I come back and I can see the
differences that have been made the the things that have been made since. And I guess being away from it and coming back,
it's like you really see the differences and how much better it is.
And so flowers to that, you know, that's it's appreciative that, you know,
it keeps getting better and better. But to my question, should we,
again, I'm just coming back.
So I'm just finding out about the treasures and the waves and all this stuff.
So should we continue claiming those chests or should we just let that go now?
Or what are we looking at there?
Should I bother to go through that process or not?
Because I haven't done it before.
I don't even really know a whole lot about it.
I'm just learning.
The space has been quite helpful for learning a lot about it.
But, you know, where do we get from there?
First of all, like, wow, what an interesting situation.
I would love to talk with you one-on-one as somebody that took an entire year off and then came back to a completely
different platform. And I would love to hear the feedback about what you liked, what you didn't
like, you know, how you feel that it's improved. And so that's just a really interesting
customer situation that we don't run across nearly as often. Thank you for the comments.
I'm glad to hear that you feel the platform has improved.
As far as the, you know, sort of rewards program and, you know, I guess I'll call it preparation
for the foundation's TGE, I will reiterate something that we've said over and over again,
but it seems that no matter how many times I say it, everybody still wants to hear it.
Historical volume and historical activity have always been considered
separate from rewards activity from the perspective of the foundation. And so for somebody like
yourself, you probably didn't really engage with our rewards programs over the course of the last
year. That doesn't mean that if you were a meaningful participant on OpenSea for the years before that, that your participation and volume and engagement during that period won't be considered by the foundation when it comes time to allocate token at TGE.
its current state on March 30th. And so you do have another two weeks or so that you can
continue to generate volume and there will be a treasure rewarded in the final chest on March 30th.
You will then have an opportunity to either keep that treasure a few weeks later or to redeem it
for the fees that you paid as part of the announcement that we made yesterday. That'll
be a decision that's completely up to you in terms of whether you want to hold on to it as it's meaningfully considered by the foundation at TGE, or do you want to get some
of your fees back immediately based on when we made our announcement. We are going to go through
a period of 0% fees for 60 days after that. So for all of April and all of May, you will be able
to token trade on OpenSea at 0%. And we hope that people use that as an opportunity to really experience token trading inside of
our desktop application as well as mobile.
And then we will make announcements on a move forward basis as to any other kinds of rewards
or incentive programs that we put into place that will mostly be focused and geared around
ensuring that our fees remain competitive for those that make up and see their home for trading.
Awesome.
Iron Shag, any response or follow-up questions?
No, not much.
That kind of takes care of it.
I just, I mean, I still hold a GEMISIS, so I guess I'll be claiming that and keeping that.
That was a question from the chat.
Is there anything you can speak to about the future of GEMISIS?
Any comments on GEMISIS?
Mooncat asked a couple times in the chat about what's the future of GEMISIS look like?
He might hold one or two of those, I think.
Yeah, I think he's got a couple in a wallet somewhere.
He probably forgot about them.
Love that guy.
I can't share anything about that at this moment.
I will note that GEMESIS was always released as a, you know, sort of collectible in the moment to represent, you know, your status at that time for using, you know, the prior product.
It was never promised that it would have any additional utility. That being said, we do recognize that there are a lot of people that hold them,
a lot of people that care about them,
and it is part of the discussion with the foundation
as to if that is something that should be taken into account.
I cannot confirm nor deny that other than to say that
it's something that has been part of discussions
around allocations. Awesome. I mean, I think that's probably about as best as you could hope
for today. So appreciate you taking that one. Adam, again, truly appreciative of your time today,
far longer than we anticipate. I thought we might have you till 10, it's 1043 and you're still
hanging out with us. Is there anything we didn't ask you today? Is there anything that you're
hoping to get across or hoping to share with the audience today?
No, look, I really appreciate the stage and the opportunity to speak to the community.
I far prefer this kind of setting where, you know, we can have an open dialogue and an open
discussion. And for anybody that is listening, you know, if you heard something today that
surprised you, if you, you know, changed your perspective a bit on, you know, OpenSea or decisions that
we're making, you know, I encourage you to share that.
I encourage you to either share it publicly or to, you know, send it to me, you know,
in a one-on-one DM if you have questions, concerns.
We are genuinely waking up every day trying to move this space forward to build incredible
products that are going to bring more people into crypto. We deeply care about our existing users
and our existing community. It is never our favorite thing to wake up in the morning and
make decisions that we feel are going to disappoint you or to frustrate you or have you,
God forbid, lose trust in OpenSea or our communications with
you. I recognize that this was a moment where we had to kind of eat our vegetables and recognize
that we made a commitment and then we made an adjustment. And I do think that we've taken some
really significant steps to try to do right by the community under those circumstances.
We'll continue to try to do right by the community moving forward. The foundation, I'm confident, will announce a new timeline
for TGE when it is ready and when it believes that they will be able to execute with a high
degree of success and to create something that is genuinely sustainable and not just a meme coin to
be released and forgotten. And I am happy to do more of these kind of discussions
with the market.
And so if there are, you know, Spaces events,
you know, folks writing articles or otherwise,
then, you know, ping me and the team
and we'll try to set something up.
And I really appreciate the opportunity
to just talk openly about everything
that we're building and doing.
And I hope that most people that are listening
share some of the perspectives of the people that got up on stage,
which, you know, feels to me in this moment like,
all right, you know, kind of sucks that the token's not happening right now,
but at least these guys are waking up with good intentions
and are building towards a better future for digital ownership and crypto.
And that's something that we are really genuinely excited about.
And hopefully we'll get some of these new products
into your hands soon.
Respect.
And I'll say even for the ones that didn't get the answers
they were hoping for, in particular,
I mentioned regarding like wave one and two,
why aren't those being refunded?
They've even followed up and said,
respect for answering the questions for being here today.
And it does mean a lot.
We were very often very critical about
crypto native teams and their communication or lack thereof.
And no team is going to move perfectly.
No one's going to make everyone happy.
But I think from my perspective as an active participant and active user
of OpenSea and many other platforms,
this is all I can really ask for other than,
I don't know, like five, six figure bag of C kid.
The other thing I could ask for is just is the communication is give us updates.
Let keep let us know. And also, I understand that it's not always your decision.
There's this unique dynamic of labs and foundation and and and you can't always some and sometimes
TGE, you just can't share things before they go TGE or a product launch.
Like sometimes you just got to keep stuff close to the best,
whether it be legal or otherwise.
And I appreciate you showing up today, answering everything you can,
and taking this stuff head on.
And I just, I doubled down or echo on the ask to keep sending the feedback.
If you're listening today and you've got thoughts or questions or concerns,
pass along to Adam and the rest of the team.
Appreciate you all getting up early and working to push the space forward.
Not just getting up early.
I know no information other than what was shared today, other than I did get a text
from a team member like 1022 last night regarding this interview today. And so it's up early. It's
late nights. And I know from my interactions with yourself and other team members, the team cares
very much. And that matters. You're not going to be perfect. It's very, very hard
to make everyone happy here,
but the team cares about crypto,
about NFTs, digital collectibles,
and really, I truly believe
wanting to push the space forward.
It's a tough spot you're in
and again, respect for showing up
and taking this.
I think a lot of these errors
on behalf of the foundation
and great respect for that.
It's a tough spot to be in, but I think OpenSea is very fortunate to have yourself and Chris and Steve and many others on the team that have done a lot of good.
We got it from Iron Shag there who checked out for about a year and just coming back.
Tremendous changes, not just in the platform, but in the communication and the team, just a 180 from where it was 18 months ago, 12 months ago.
It's been a very noticeable, positive change.
And that has me bullish on, much more bullish on the C token today than I would have been
18 months ago.
18 months ago would have been an instant dump for me and I would have said thanks for whatever
it was.
Now it's like there's very much so intent going into this and thought and will it work?
Who knows?
But at least the intent and the effort is going into it and certainly rooting for not
just the C token but OpenSea at large.
I do think it would benefit the space at large for OpenSea to win on this one.
So thanks again, Adam.
Really appreciate you being here.
And we'll let you get out of here.
Again, I did not mean to take you this long, but appreciate your time.
You're welcome back anytime you'd like
to share any updates.
Greatly appreciate you sharing
with the Coffee with Captain audience today.
And we will certainly stay tuned.
When you're ready, I know you'll probably
do your own announcement following
when this thing does actually drop.
But if you want to follow up on that,
the stage is an open invite.
Really appreciate you, brother.
Thanks so much for the opportunity.
And thanks for everybody for listening. You got it. We'll get you out of here. I do have one quick
read before we let everyone go before we wrap up the show. I'm going to do a quick play in a quick
read. Hang out with me for like 60 more seconds and we'll let everyone get on with their St.
Patrick's Day. This is Keeping It Real with DOMA.
For some of you, if you're new here,
that might be the first time you've ever heard of Domain 5.
Might be the first time you've ever heard of DOMA.
This segment is keeping it real.
It's a focus on RWAs.
We do it a couple times a week.
Just a brief segment talking about the $26 billion RWA market, that infrastructure being built right now.
McKinsey, not me, not crypto Twitter, McKinsey is projecting that RWA market grows to $16
trillion by 2030. So from $26 billion, which is up from $4 or $6 billion last year,
incredible year-over-year growth,
all the way from $26 trillion, $16 trillion by just 2030.
The gap between those numbers is infrastructure,
settlement rails, custody, oracles, compliance layers.
Doma's angle is the internet domain
system is one of the oldest, most robust global registries ever built. 30 years of ICANN compliance,
390 million records. It's not new infrastructure. It's legacy infrastructure being unlocked.
We're still early. Tune in today. We're actually kicking off a new series called Doma on Air
with the Doma leadership team. That's going to go live this afternoon at 3 p.m. Eastern time here on X and YouTube.
It'll be on the Doma's YouTube and Doma's X.
Honored to be hosting this series with,
today I'll be joined by the Doma leadership team,
Fred, who you might've got to hear from last week,
as well as Michael and Bob.
Again, more, if you're curious about Doma,
if you're curious about how you might be able to tap
into the liquidity of domains you might own,
or if you're curious about how you might be able to tap into the liquidity of domains you might own, or if you're interested in acquiring shares or tokens that represent a stake in other domains,
tune in today, bring your questions, but excited to share more of that with all of you in this new
series. It will be, again, live on X, YouTube, and we'll share the recording or link tomorrow
on the show as well if you can't make it this afternoon. But bring your questions for the Doma team.
More on that soon.
And appreciate you being here today.
Thanks for the questions.
Do appreciate everyone for being respectful of Adam and the OpenSea team.
I know not everyone got the answers you were hoping for.
But I hope you can at least attempt to put yourself in the shoes of OpenSea and that leadership team and where they're at.
And if you were them, would you just drop the token before you had your products ready to go?
In their case, an app, Purps products, and market conditions that aren't great.
And if you're questioning market conditions, again, I reference PumpFun.
I'm vested in MegaEath.
I'd love the MegaEath TGE to happen.
It's not just because of historical volume.
I've got a Fluffle,
and I was in one of their Echo rounds,
and I'm just patiently waiting.
But I'm also glad that MegaEath hasn't rushed that TGE.
And this is one where it's not just historical volume,
it's actual real investment dollars
that are just sitting until they go
to the TGE. Not making this PVP. Every team is different. I know OpenSea's been around for a
long time and they could have dropped this a year ago. I genuinely mean it. I'm glad they didn't.
I'm glad they're doing it right, or at least doing what they believe to be right,
as opposed to rushing it just because they had set a deadline and things change.
And I do not envy their position. I would not want to be in Adam's shoes. I also don't think
he needs to do this. As he said, he was essentially retired prior to this. He's done well in his
professional career. He'd done very well in NFT and crypto trading. And I don't believe he needs
the quote unquoteunquote job,
but he really is passionate about the space, obviously passionate about collectors.
The one question I didn't get to ask him was about his career, his lore as a Nintendo gameplay
champ. But someone who's very, very clearly passionate about the space, very clearly
passionate about collectibles. And I meant what I said. I said it with Adam on the show.
I'll say it with him off the show.
I have noticed a significant, significant improvement in OpenSea.
I was a bear on this C drop just in general.
And I've come, I've 180 flipped.
I don't care about the timeline when it drops.
I want it to drop right.
And I'd much rather it drop right and have a chance of long-term sustainable success
than just drop now
so we can just rush the exits
and capture some liquidity.
The team is really loaded with talent.
And I also meant what I said about them
doing good for the NFT space at large,
the digital collectible space at large.
What they did at Art Basel
and the supporting of the 010 exhibit there was huge.
What they're doing for collectors
and allow lists and whitelists
like they're, the biz dev team doesn't
get enough credit. You know, obviously I'm close
with Steve. Steve worked as a leader
on the OpenSea leadership team. He was
my co-host here for a thousand episodes.
This C token could open
at zero. It's not going to change my friendship
or relationship with Steve. But yeah, I am.
I do want to see him do well. And there's a reason I'm friends with Steve. They are very passionate
about this space. And I don't think there's another team top to bottom that has the talent
they do and truly, genuinely cares about the collectible space as that team does. And I will
ride with a team that I feel is doing things the right way, communicating to the best of their abilities with the information they're allowed to share.
And I appreciate you all tuning in today, bringing the good questions, some tough questions.
But everyone was respectful, not a single person disagreeable on stage at least.
Got a few sideways comments in the chat, but to be expected.
And if it makes
you feel better to get that stuff out, by all means. But I do appreciate y'all being here.
If you're new, we run this back every Monday through Friday at 8 a.m. Eastern time.
We'll cover news of the day, trending topics, market updates. We'll have a couple of segments
from time to time. And we're very fortunate. Often we get guests like Adam to join us at that
nine o'clock hour for a deeper dive, whether it's a CEO, a founder, someone on a leadership team,
or even just a subject matter expert on a particular topic
that I might not be well-versed on.
But that being said, join us today at three.
If you want more on the RWA world,
specifically DomainFi and what DOMA is doing,
tune in to DOMA on air.
And until, if you missed that,
or you're not able to make it, be back tomorrow,
8 a.m. Eastern time here on Ko-Fi.
Appreciate y'all.
And as Steve would say, hope you all have a wonderful,
a wonderful day, everyone. you
