Projects
![]()
No projects found
Investors
New
DAO Treasuries
DATs
Lend / Borrow APRs
Chains
Categories
Spaces
Vintage merch and merch stores in crypto on Coffee with Captain #1,053
Recorded: Dec. 16, 2025 Duration: 2:29:55Space Recording
Short Summary
In a vibrant discussion, crypto enthusiasts explored the latest trends in merchandise, innovative partnerships, and the significance of fundraising in sustaining growth within the crypto ecosystem. The conversation also highlighted the importance of unique project launches and token strategies that resonate with the community.
Full Transcription
Bye bye, bye bye, bye bye I'm telling you, I sell you a percentage on Nebula. Shout out to Vince, yo, set it up. Surfing on the web and I'm shooting at three.
I've been goaded when I got my G.
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, era, 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 for the drumsticks, whiplash. I'm about to get them gloves on If I said it, then I meant that Yeah, I like that one I'm about to get that
Crash that whip for the drumsticks
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 turn
I wanna fly high in the sky
Arms out wide
Tryna soar
From a bird's eye view
I'm on fire
Ricky, Bobby
Cracking the pigment
Whitney, Bobby
I'm a Saki bomb
Hiroshima, Nagasaki
Bruce Wayne been a dog, and I keep it 101, cause I'm feeling kinda spotty
Sipping on Ciroc and I'm sipping on Octane, the only thing around my neck is the blockchain
Now I got coins, I see where y'all going, been poppin' since web 1, hella hooked on web 2
I was living the dream, now I'm on Web 3. 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, blockchain.
Teeing with the ghosts and we balling like the brown jay.
NFT, Twitter, blockchain.
We can make a trade, get a memo.
Refuse not falling for the FOMO.
Listening to coffee with Capri.
You know we were a wide day lococo I ain't never gon' stop rappin'
Orlando, yeah, we workin' magic
We rockin' Ethereum entities
I just went and caught me a half-bitch
Man, I gotta shut up the 40
Now I got coin
I see where y'all goin'
Been poppin' since Web 1
Hella hoax on Web 2
I was livin' the dream
Now I'm on Web 3
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
Breaking them all the truth, why?
But they got knowledge to move, son
I'm shocking in shades with my brother in suits
Yeah, them blues is coming
Even though it's hard to pick, eeny, mighty, moe
Soda on the mix, no biting lips, it's time to go Index number one, no thumbspoint, where we dive into all things crypto, NFTs, web3, and cutting-edge technology.
Remember, nothing here is financial advice.
Early-stage tech can be exceptionally volatile and risky.
So grab your coffee and join Cap and Steve for today's conversation.
Welcome to the future.
Welcome to Coffee with Captain, GM, GM.
Thanks so much for joining us.
If you don't know if it's fair, drop us a GM in the chat down below.
Then head up and smash that like, repost a bookmark on today's space.
Greatly appreciate it.
It does warm up the algo and does us a real solid.
Also up top, you'll find the link to the YouTube chat as well as Abstract.
If you'd like to join us in either one of those, shout out to all of our GMers over
there.
We've got RDL, Machiavelli, and Von Fronten in the YouTube, as well as our loyalist over
in Abstract, Beepic Thomas.
Great to see y'all.
Excuse me, Jesus.
First time.
First time speaker here.
Excuse me.
As always, I'm Cap, joined by a co-host today, a very special co-host.
I'm excited to have Outer Lumen in the co-host seat.
Long time listener, long time friend, big time fan of her
and her big brain and more so even the big brain takes she'll bring on the show and her in-depth
knowledge of all things on chain and the lore that has been built here over the last several years.
Just a great friend. And we say, we joke that it's about the friends we made along the way.
And Outer is absolutely one of those that I'm extremely grateful that it's coming to my life and wouldn't be here if not for crypto and web three.
Similar to my former co-host, Steve.
Great friends that are direct result of this fine space.
I don't know what's going on with the space.
You fell off once again.
X doing X things. I think there might've been an update because I,
it's so weird how like the things they tweak sometimes on updates, like I share a lot of posts to the top of the, you know,
to the Jumbotron during this space.
And it used to be, you click a post, you share.
And like the first thing you see to share is to the space that you're in.
And then they moved it a little bit to the right. And to the right. And I went today and I was like,
they stop allowing you to share things to the top of the space? No, it's still there.
I just got to scroll all the way to the right. So I kid you not, if I want to share a post to
this space, I see copy link, I see share via, then I can send it via text message. I can send
it via Telegram. I can send it to Instagram stories. I can send it to Snapchat. I can send a direct message on Instagram. I can email you a
link to this space. And then, and then the option like 10 over is I can post the link to the top of
this space. I don't know who, like somebody who spent a little bit of time with UI UX, this is
pretty clunky. Do you agree? Like What's Elon and or Nikita doing?
It makes no sense to me why they would bury the quick button, the quick link.
I don't even know what you call it.
You can tell I'm not a UI designer.
But what are they doing now?
Or GM, by the way.
Great to have you on the show today.
Thanks, Cap.
Yeah, this is wonderful.
Yeah, maybe if you invite me to speak before co-hosting and then make me a co-host that
might work battling the the ui-ness of this but like we live in a time when justin bieber is
giving advice to apple on their ui so i you know i think anything's anything's possible at this point
um so yeah i but i think maybe this workaround may have
worked at least i was able to get up as a speaker i think we got you know you want to check you want
to see uh you want to i was gonna say you want to see if you can come off mute but you won't need
to we got your audio coming here so i think we're good i think we solved it three third times the
charm and yeah it is the i don't know if it's a proof of simulation or a sign that the apocalypse is near, but we have pop artists that are better PMs than tech companies.
They need product managers, UI experts, and apparently now storytellers.
The era of storytellers is a loss.
I was going to say storytellers.
I feel like we need to unpack that a little bit at some point.
I'm a little biased.
I'm not even like...
Like if someone asked me,
like, what do you do?
What did you do in your career?
What are you?
I mean, my first initial gut response
is probably I would respond,
I'm an entrepreneur.
It's like I could go down and,
oh, I built a wireless franchise
and then I built a phone repair franchise.
And then I,
I don't know what you can call like my crypto journey other than I'm a storyteller and so like I've never really like
that probably sounds weird I would think like I'm talking to one of my daughters she plays
across I'm talking to a lacrosse parents and they go what do you do it'd probably be pretty odd like
somewhere on the spectrum if I say oh I'm a storyteller, they'd probably
look at me like you go to libraries and tell a little kid stories. I'm guessing, right? Like
it just, it's probably an odd way to describe what you do. But if I had to, like you say in one word,
what do you do? My first word would probably be entrepreneur. My second would be storyteller. And
I don't just say that because I've told stories every day here on this app for 153 or 1053 consecutive weekdays.
It's what I did. It's what I did when I was building a phone repair franchise. It was
what I did when I was building my wireless business is the most impact, and I know this, I can say this today with the
benefit of hindsight and dozens of people who worked with me on my payroll in the past that
have reached back out randomly over the course of the years and shared things that had a tremendous
impact on their life. And nothing was a, nothing I ever, it's never been a, oh, this sales tactic
you taught me or this, it's all almost 100% of the time where someone reaches back out and says,
thanks for doing this. They don't say thanks for telling stories, but it's,
that's absolutely like my, my sales trainings. I just, I told stories. My sales trainings was
the most feedback I ever got.
Like their favorite thing of a training was always like the, I would rap usually, especially if it
was like a week long class or a franchise, new franchisee onboarding course, I would tell stories
that had nothing to do with the business they were building or the job they were trying to do.
It was about life and goal setting and success principles and
weaving into those success principles that I didn't create or come up with, but telling
real world examples, real stories that they could relate to, and it had an impact on them.
And so, yeah, I am a storyteller. I've been a storyteller at every step along my...
In sales, if you're good at sales, you're probably a good
storyteller. I wasn't selling facts and features. I was telling stories about the benefit that this
phone could have in their life and why they should switch to a smartphone from their
LG NV2 flip phone because of the stories of other people like them who were in construction.
And this is what they do with their OtterBox or, you know, it's just like, it's been something
that I never planned to be a storyteller.
But early on, I was in college turned on to leadership principles, success principles.
And the common, I think a common thread amongst all of them is they're good
orators, they're good storytellers.
And yeah, so I'm pretty excited that the world is waking up to the importance of, and it's
not like, yes, it is, but it's also more than just crypto.
It's, I mean, if you've been, everyone who's been in the show, you've heard us talk about
our disappointment that so many of these crypto needed brands, they don't bring on comms experts,
PR experts that are part of their leadership team.
It's often an entry-level intern
that's good at shitposting.
And that's a skill.
That's telling stories,
but there's another layer to that.
There's another level to that.
And so many here have not placed that emphasis
on their leadership team.
And now it appears that
traditional tech startups are also realizing hey we probably should put a more emphasis on
bringing on more storytellers thoughts yeah i mean look it's something that humans are known for like
at the very root of human, of humanity really,
and our entire collective history is our ability to storytell.
Right.
Like that's,
I don't know if you've ever read the book Sapiens,
but it's an interesting look at like the,
the act of storytelling forming our history,
you know,
for hundreds of years,
because before we had ways of, of, of hundreds of years. Because before we had ways of documenting,
and I think as ways of documenting,
we moved to technology prior to that,
it was verbal history.
That was history,
was somebody passing on their knowledge.
And I think it's interesting to see that
kind of rebranded right back to the basics.
Like we're looking for storytellers and tech.
I think it also comes off of AI a little bit too.
You know, like there's that like synthesis now.
I think Claire has this, Chris Silver has a great description, her bio of like taste being the new skill, you know.
And I think that that's a very similar kind of oh yeah thanks
exactly desperately seeking storytellers that the desperately part i find probably the most
interesting word out of out of the out of all the words there but it's also not lost on me that the
subtitle sorry to interject i believe the subtitle i'm guessing was probably crafted with ai based on
the m dash in there now, a real professional storyteller
that's a journalist
probably actually does use M-dashes properly,
but I would never use one in 2025 or 2026
because it's the flag that this was created with AI.
Whether it always is or not,
most people who use AI are going to think,
oh, that's an ai subtitle which is
i don't know well i just don't know that many people that normally would use an mdash except
you know someone who's super specialized it's just not like i feel like that's not even a skill most
people have like to like to to to properly put that in for any kind of reason you know but also
you know like look if you're're an M-user in the chat
and you'll claim this like OG M- status,
leave us a message with your M- skills.
My toxic trait is like the Oxford comma,
which was also, you know, a thing that came up on AI.
I don't know if you've seen the TikToks
where there's like kids crying
about how professors don't believe that
they actually did the work um so that that epidemic that like linguistic epidemic is is
definitely interesting to me in terms of just like you know i really did this assignment and
you could see all my you know now proof of of humanity is your uh your history on google drive
you know like put everything on on any kind of word processor
that saves you actually doing the work,
which I find fascinating.
Back to storytelling,
I used to be in data visualization,
like heavy information design and data visualization.
And there's even a term that we used to use in the industry,
like data storytelling.
And some people fell on the side of it
where they're all about this. And other people
were like, no, you know, we're just going to visualize the data and people need to gain their
own insights from it. And on the other camp of this was the data storytelling crew, which was
all about like, no, no, that's great that we're, you know, rigorously visualizing and making things
even more palatable for folks. But at the end of the day, you still have to point them to the story
in the data. You know, They can go back to the journal
and reference whatever, but if you're writing an article, if you're presenting information,
there is a story to be told there, even if it's just with charts. So it's neat to see data
storytelling to now just storytelling for me as a data and comms professional, but more in
the tech academic sectors,
like a science communicator, a knowledge mobilizer,
which is ultimately still storytelling
at the end of the day.
You know, for me, albeit it was visual storytelling
more than verbal, but you know,
I'm a good copywriter if it's like one sentence.
If it's like a whole spiel, I don't know.
I feel like there's people that are way more qualified than me
to like write good like long form
copy but if it's like
maybe it's because UI UX
design is my thing and there's a lot of like
short form copy that
that gets added on where you like read
the one word and you kind of know what to do or how to navigate
something that I'm pretty good
at but when it comes to like
crafting a long
narrative i don't i don't know maybe it's because i like like i've embraced the tldr like just give
me the give me the i heard somebody say it's not cole's notes anymore it's a different kind of
notes but i can't remember now what the gen the gen z notes are so if somebody is submitting the
chat knows what your version of cole's notes now is please please let me know. Cole's notes being like cliff notes.
There's cliff notes.
There's Cole's notes,
but that's like old school,
like book summaries.
But now there's like an app that does it.
And I heard somebody use that,
like that term,
just like whatever app notes,
cause that's their summaries now.
But I don't remember what the app was that now does the,
the,
the nice TLDRs and everything.
So unpack, this is, I'm on, I'm getting on the, uh, the couch here.
Uh, I need, I need, uh, outer to unpack my brain because you just made me realize or think about
something about my, my own storytelling.
I like my, I, I believe one of my strengths and skill sets is storytelling in real time, i.e. this show.
When I was building a global franchise, we had an engaging network call where we had a high participation of our franchisees because I didn't just read a deck. I didn't just spout off bullet points
or, hey, here's the five topics
we have to update our franchisees on today.
Rather, it was live listening via the chat usually
and answering questions and telling stories in real time,
reacting, thinking on my toes.
I enjoy storytelling by way of the spoken word.
I've been told at times, I mean, people have enjoyed an essay or blog or, but I don't enjoy
it. I have to force myself through it. In fact, if I go to my medium, I think I have maybe published
three articles in my life and I have probably 17 drafts.
I just writing like long form storytelling.
I don't enjoy.
I don't know why.
But if you ask me to jump on a space and tell the story, I could riff for a couple hours.
Why is that?
What's help me reconcile why I struggle.
Because my biggest opportunity, I feel, on this app and what I'm holding myself accountable to in 2026 is telling more stories via the written word, posting more.
And not necessarily long form, but I just – I need to post more.
The biggest gap between myself, the show, and others is – so I've been told by agencies anyways is they just they
post a lot more they they take what we talk about for two hours and they may spend you know a half
hour drafting posts with the help of ai and they fire off on the timeline what is it that what's
the is it a middle roadblock is it is it really a i just i have a i'm better speaking than
i am writing like what is that any ideas so i'm gonna unpack this from my own perspective because
i have a similar thing um i also have a lot of article drafts and i've written some
but i'd much rather speak in a space and just connect with people verbally so I've I've unpacked
a little bit of this for me and maybe this will relate to you maybe not so I have ADHD right and
for me there's like a mantra that I always have in my head which is if you can't start the thing
then the first task is too big and my perception of having a finished article is that
from now until the next second, I have the finished article. But for my brain, that's the
biggest hurdle ever. It's like, I'm this tiny person and the task is huge. And when I'm speaking,
the task is just to speak. I don't picture this show as a full two hour completed product it's gonna ebb and flow
as we chat or whatever and that is just like the easiest thing to do because the first task is just
to like open my mouth and connect with someone whereas the other task is to sit down and I'm
like 90 something percent extroverted on whatever like psychology profile and you know Myers-Briggs
whatever app you throw at me I will
always be like extroverted so I think that ties into it as well that like human connection piece
rather than me solo writing something so I have like a wealth of information I mean this is even
like my book is like maybe 70% done but I have to like write things in it and I've designed the
design things for the traits book but like to sit down and actually write the narrative so what's actually been helping me with long form and this and this is
almost like you know is this a cringe way to ai i think this is like the best way for me at least
to ai i will go and i'll prompt the thing that i want to say um and then it'll give me like i'll
ask it for long form content but what I realized I am is a great editor.
And so I've compared like,
when I've written something,
I've compared it
and it's like 95% I've rewritten the thing.
But I become invested in making it better
or correcting the AI sloth right away
because it's so bad
that there's a different part of my brain
that's now activated to go in and actually write the thing because I'm now editing and that's starting with a blank page.
That has significantly changed the way that I can now do more writing, which is that I'm using AI as actually the first task is too big because my first task then becomes just editing as opposed to writing.
big because my first task then becomes just editing as opposed to writing so and that's
worked quite a bit like I've applied to a couple of conferences and I've written a couple of things
like outside of the space that had to be written and it's been really great to just be like oh
well I know what I kind of want to say but I'm like starting this like you know one page you know
reply to whatever prompt conference you know describe, describe your blah, blah, blah. I'm like,
oh my God, my eyes glaze over anytime. It's like this kind of institutional intake of information,
right? But now I've just been like, hey, here's the prompt, like write me the thing. And then as
soon as I'm reading it, I'm like, this has nothing to do with me. So now I can like edit it very
thoroughly and make it my own so it's turned
me into an editor instantly as opposed to like a creative writer and that's been really really good
for me so so like and it's hard to even be like I guess I use AI in this creative writing but like
I really just use it to start the thing like you know I've maybe kept like five words in the
entirety after that but I needed it to like be really bad.
So I can then like get excited about making really good.
But yeah, back to my previous thing.
Like, I don't know if maybe it's just because speaking,
it's just that much easier for like certain,
like for certain brains than,
than that like long form narrative writing.
Oh, I think, I think you've also diagnosed me.
I I've never been officially diagnosed. I would now formally accept my official diagnosis and I have ADHD. Like I'm, I've all,
I've been convinced I have it. I just never went to the doctor. I don't, I self-medicate. I don't,
I know I'm just not on any pharmaceuticals and I don't really want any of my life, but
um, yeah, I'm, I'm near certain I have ADHD. I'm somewhere on that spectrum. And it's like a blessing and a curse.
Like I embrace it.
I know what I'm, A, I know what I'm good at.
There's a reason I'm not drafting a long form article every day.
Instead, I'm jumping on the show for two hours because I enjoy it.
And it's much more natural for me versus, and you did, like you unpacked it very well.
It's like, if I sit down and get to write something, all the thoughts can be my head, but getting from my head to paper, that's work versus
a natural flowing conversation. I can communicate the exact same thing. It's just to get to the
output is it's different between having a conversation with a friend and working. So maybe what I need to do is actually lean into voice to text more, more. Like I don't,
it's something I just haven't baked that into my daily repertoire. Every once in a while, I'll
start like doing something with chat. Oh, I'm going to use this. I'm going to talk to chat
GPT every day. And it just falls off. I've not created that voice to text habit. I never send
voice memos. I never voice to text. And just even talking through this, I think that's something I'm going to attempt to do it. Like, okay, I'm going to spend 20 minutes a day talking to text and see if I can come up with a written, have it help me write. And then, like you said, throw it in AI, maybe tighten things up a little bit, maybe help it as my editor or maybe be the editor.
I just, Dort asked, are we somewhat conflating oration with storytelling?
I mean.
How would you define the difference?
Well, I think an orator could be saying anything and not storytelling at all I could
just be reading someone else's story like I feel like to me anyways it would be like a great orator
will be reading someone else's written speech I mean a storyteller I suppose could be reading
someone else's book out loud but I feel like a storyteller in this case,
at least defined for me,
is that it's like a personal story shared
or like some kind of a, you know,
or if it's in the context of a brand,
it still ties deeply to the personality of the brand,
if you will.
Whereas an orator is like,
yes, like the act of orating.
Something else you mentioned before,
I used to public speak quite a quite a lot like for for
my own consulting agency used to have workshops and all the things and I remember the day that
I became a public speaker and I think maybe this is relevant for even this like idea of distinction
between oration and storytelling I had to give a talk was like, I used to work in public health sector. And this
is like a bunch of my research, very like nerdy, boring kind of like conference for most folks.
It's a lot of science research. And I had my notes were in presenter notes in like,
in PowerPoint. But the conference was so old school that their tech was old school that they
didn't support like the latest version. So they had tech was old school that they didn't support like
the latest version so they had such an old version that it didn't support my presenter notes view
and so i go up on stage they call my name i like walk over to the podium there's like 400 people in
the audience including my boss and like their boss's bosses and i realize as they bring out my slide deck and I look down,
like it takes me that like one millisecond to process that I now have no notes.
And like, first I just panic. I think I like just, yeah.
Like if you were, like I find metrics, like it would have been like symptoms radar.
My aura ring would be like, Hey, what's happening? Cause I, like, I just,
it was like it
was pure panic right because i just thought oh my goodness like i i i have no idea how i'm going to
do this because i was the person that would come up and would have like the paper or the presenter's
notes or however i would like map out what i was saying and i think that's oration even if even if it's my own stuff like the more I unpack this like that was me performing in some way on like a script and I'm terrible at that
and so this is the first time in my life where I was forced to actually just I mean what am I
gonna do walk off stage like I can't I have to present and so what ended up happening was this magical moment where I told the story of my work from me because I was forced to do that. There was no script. There was no notes. There was nothing I could read. There was no random prepared, you know, like references.
audience because I was I was almost like I was freed to just like give a really good talk which
I think most people would consider a good talk because what I was doing is speaking to people
like I was just speaking to people it was about my research there were some jokes that happened
there was I was just naturally like well here we go and that actually launched my like public
speaking and teaching career and made me be like I chased that dragon
for like a while like it was such a high to then like toss the notes and just connect with people
and talk about the work that I was doing whether it was like an artist talk or presenting and
teaching people how to do data visualization and the other big part of that is I I always talked
about me at first like this like first intro you intro. I made a couple of rules that I thought were interesting. For instance, I never let anybody read my bio. If I was speaking as a keynote or just whatever, no one was allowed to come up on stage with their awkward piece of paper and awkwardly read my biography.
And like awkwardly read my biography.
Like that was not, if I was hired to speak, that was not happening.
I would come up and I'd introduce myself because that was that bonding moment of me revealing like why people should listen to me in the first place.
So yeah, it was definitely like an interesting experience to be completely mortified but forced to discover what public speaking actually should be.
but forced to discover what public speaking actually should be.
And I think a lot of folks are not great orators unless they're willing to be
like very real and very connected to the audience and,
and not put the barrier of like preparation, if you will,
between them and the audience.
Yeah, I, I agree.
You also reminded me that I, Joe, we'll get to you here in a second. You reminded me of, again, I've spoken professionally most of my adult life, even before I was on stages. It was, since I was 21, 22, I've been leading highing sales teams and speaking to my teams.
I'm very comfortable on stage. I typically enter a flow state and don't think about what I'm
talking about. I never read off a script. I don't have notes. I just tell stories, talk to people,
and hopefully interweave something that is relevant to them.
I once, I got one of my core memories. I had a full blown panic attack one time
on stage. No one knew it, but I thought I was having a heart attack. And it wasn't because
something I was saying, I was hosting a panel, moderating a panel. And one of the people on the
panel was someone, it was a regional of mine on my team and speaking to franchisees. And they were
saying something that was out of pocket, out of line. They shouldn't have been saying it. I
couldn't, it was, I didn't have control over the story that was being told. And I literally had a full blown panic attack, at least an anxiety attack. I mean,
I've, I've had a panic attack that was, I ended up in the hospital over. It was may not, may or
may not have been at like two, three in the morning and other things led to that. But one
time in my professional life, I've been on stage and had like a, I don't know how to describe it other than a very severe anxiety attack, a panic attack. And it was because I lost control or didn't have any control or I did, but I didn't have, it was an awkward spot. Like I couldn't, it was relatively new person on my team. And anyways, long story short, no one else's cares, but it made me realize when people talk about fear of public speaking and stuff, like it was like my hands got tingly.
Like it was it was bad. I truly thought I was having a heart attack and it was just turns out I was just anxiety and panic.
But I can appreciate those who don't enjoy the public speaking element or it's not their not their thing.
the public speaking element or it's not their, not their thing. And I also, so if it is something
you enjoy, I think further reason to lean into it. And this conversation also reminded me one
of the actual sales tactics that a mentor taught me when I was in my early twenties,
he actually would draw on a write board. He'd draw an ax and he'd call it the fact ax and talk
about people facting people to death. And his, his his his simple tactic was facts tell but stories sell and you you can't like it goes
back to steve jobs you know one of the most powerful storytellers of our our my time and he
never would get up on stage and tell you about all the features of the new iPhone or the new iPod.
He would tell a story about, you know, it's a thousand songs in your pocket.
When every other competitor was trying to tell facts and actual features, he would just tell benefits and tell a story that people could relate to.
Well, who's the guy?
Simon Sinek, right?
Drew the circles.
Turkle, start with Y.
Start with why.
Like that's a very, I think he captured that.
And there was another ad guy I remember who,
when I was into this kind of thing,
I remember just even that concept that car companies sell safety, not tires.
It's very easy to understand that if you're trying to sell tires
and everyone else is also selling tires.
But if you're selling safety, that's something people are like,
oh, of course I want the safety.
I don't know if you've ever heard of this. It happens to be on my desk but i highly recommend this this is a guy who wrote to his son out of prison who is like one of the most interesting
copywriters of his generation it's called the boron letters and it's it's it's it's really just
like they're just letters um what was the other one you mentioned earlier the boron letters and it's it's it's it's really just like they're just
letters um what was the other one you mentioned earlier the boron letters and there was another
book you you dropped i meant to write it down or go get it my audible but i got distracted
um oh sapiens sapiens yes all right there's my next two audible downloads and yeah sapiens is
great um for the people listening if you that, it comes in a graphic novel.
If you don't feel like reading long form text or listening to it,
it has like several volumes as a graphic novel and I love graphic novels.
But this is really cool because one of the things that Gary did
because he figured out like email marketing,
like or sorry, mail marketing, like snail mail,
because it's like that generation where you would like go door to door sales
or you would. Yeah. So he like put soil in an envelope because he was
advertising like a cleaning business or a vacuum or whatever. And so the person would like,
you know, open the thing, make a mess. And then he'd come in and be like, let's clean this up.
He just created like these really interesting scenarios,
but also gives his kid like life advice throughout these letters.
Anyways,
it's,
I love it.
Yeah.
I had a colleague recommend that to me and I've been,
I've been going through it and,
I'm finding it really interesting.
but yeah,
I thought Simon Sinek,
I felt like Simon Sinek was a good thing to bring out because I feel like he nailed that whole storytelling.
If you pull all of the pieces away at the very root of it,
is that start with why?
Because that's what we ultimately want to know is the why, right?
Because that's also where I think your monkey brain
will buy the thing because of the why.
Deeply wired in you is not what it is.
It's like what will make you press buy now
and add it to your cart and check out
is not because it's a hoodie.
It has nothing to do with logic or ration.
It's emotions.
You go hook later and you'll rationalize
it to your significant other,
all the reasons you bought this thing,
but that's not why you really chose to buy it.
Yeah.
It takes a lot of people a while to,
especially in sales,
a lot of people realize that it's not,
you know, the thing,
all those features,
all those benefits,
that's not why.
It's the story that you can weave into it
that'll share benefits in their real life is why.
Joey, I'm not keeping you on ice, I promise.
I just have, I want to get Outer's take on this and we're bringing you in next.
And when you come up, I'm going to go.
I did not double fist the coffee this morning, so I'm going to go refill a coffee and I'll be right back.
But Outer, thoughts on this one?
It was another, this is like the viral post of the morning. It's making its rounds on X. I'm sure you've seen it even before. We've
talked about it probably. This person counters and says the radical truth. You cannot hire a
storyteller. The founder must be the chief storyteller. If you hire a CMO to create your
story, you've likely already failed. Founders often think I'm bad at marketing. I'll hire a
CMO to handle it. The storytelling isn't marketing. It dictates your product, the talent you attract,
your fundraising, and your culture. Steve Jobs once said, the most powerful person in the world
is the storyteller. You can't outsource the soul of your company.
I see where he's coming from, but I also will push back and respectfully disagree.
I mentioned the phone repair franchise. Now I started building, building my own brand,
ended up with merged with someone after about 20 stores and took on a leadership,
took on the leadership role there. I became the storyteller. I wasn't the founder of CPR
cell phone repair. I think part of the reason that the success and ultimately the acquisition was
they had myself who wasn't my title. It wasn't my role, but I absolutely very much was the storyteller on the team.
Now, my mentor there, the principal owner of the family office,
was a good storyteller in one-on-one situations.
He could get you to believe his vision and buy-in,
but over a dinner or at a closed-door meeting,
not necessarily on stage or at a closed door meeting not necessarily
on stage or on a network call do you agree with you chin here like can can these companies hire
a chief storyteller or does it have to be the founder i think there's a difference between having a story and getting help in telling a story.
I think that in this particular, like you cannot hire a storyteller and that the founder has to be the storyteller.
I think the founder has to have a story, right?
Like maybe they don't know how to tell it and maybe they need help with that.
But I think it's pretty clear, no matter who you hire,
if there is no story behind the product
and it's looking for a solution kind of product,
then that stuff is way more difficult
than a very clear founder.
And maybe that goes back to the point
that maybe they're not a good orator
and maybe they need help with crafting the story.
But I think that maybe this is like a,
I guess the way that I'm interpreting it is
the founder needs to have a North Star
for what they're doing.
And maybe they'll need help in getting that out.
And whether it's, you know,
like a 19-year-old intern posting in,
you know, TikTok comments
on whatever relevant thing of the day.
Like there's so many different ways to like,
there's all different vessels for storytelling too.
But I don't think it has to be the founder,
but I think if you have a founder who doesn't have a North star with their
company,
then that's,
that's problematic.
At least that's how I interpret that.
Like it,
I hope that,
I hope that that makes sense in what I'm trying to convey.
I'm probably not doing it as eloquently as I could.
No, I get it.
It's a good story.
Joey, GM, what brought you up?
And then after this, we'll move out of storytelling into some other Web3 crypto talks,
as well as a little bit of throwback and talk some vintage things this morning.
Joey, GM.
Hi, Roy. Hey. as well as a little bit of throwback and talk some vintage vintage things this morning joey gm hey um i uh i came up because we are a lot alike in that i don't like to write um
hold on um and i've tried to force myself into being like a writer for specifically for this
this app and it's not me it It's not who I am. Like
even in high school and college, when we had presentations or projects, I was always the
person that got up and spoke and presented. And I I'm just not a writer. It's not who I am.
And so what I was going to say is to, to your point cap is like, if you're not a writer,
don't force yourself to be a writer there's
a lot of people on this app that are very successful just by recording one to two minute
like they record themselves right like you they they get on the camera and they're like and they
pull up a chart or they pull up something and they're like hey let's talk about this today
and just talk and post videos instead of written content. And I understand that
a lot of times people, like they say like, Oh, written content is what reigns supreme on X.
I don't agree. I think you can get away with doing like short videos. If you prefer to speak
then write, because the problem is that if you don't like doing something, it's going to be
really difficult for you to create a habit in doing that thing.
So, and then I'm also a lot like outer where I don't like, I use chat GPT for my writing, even for emails at work.
Like I, I tend to write the way I speak, which is not good in business.
So for almost anything I do, I go into chat GPT and I'm like, Hey, I want to talk
about this, this, this, and this. And I just literally ramble into chat GPT and then it
creates, creates it for me. Um, so it's funny that we all kind of have some things in common,
but like, I just, like two years ago, I was like, yeah, yeah i'm gonna write one thread a week i'm gonna
do all this stuff right to try to up my follower count and blah blah blah because you know nft god
was on the timeline telling us all these things that we were supposed to do to get the algorithm
i could i think i lasted like a month or two because it's just not who i am i'm not a writer
like i struggle just to get up in the morning and write a gm post sometimes because i'm not a writer like i struggle just to get up in the morning and write a gm post
sometimes because i'm not a writer um and then the last thing i'll say too is the order storyteller
a storyteller is an orator like an orator is the overarching description of it that's a a orator is
a public speaker so and storytelling if you're a storyt, you're just an orator who is telling a story
They're not different people
They're the same person like an orator could be
Like Bruce buffer could be considered an orator, right? Like he he gets up in the UFC ring and he says in the blue corner
and it and he does it in a way that is just this this
He's just an amazing public speaker and the way he does it in a way that is just this, this, he's just an amazing public speaker in the way he does it.
So orator and storyteller are the same person.
Storyteller is just, you're an orator telling a story.
I disagree.
I think a storyteller is also somebody who writes articles or books.
They don't speak.
So I think the orator to me is somebody who is a verbal storyteller.
We're going to make the, like the actual you're referring.
Yeah.
If we're referring to a verbal storyteller,
they are an orator,
but if you're a storyteller,
you could just also just be a writer.
I agree with you.
If you would have told me we would have a,
Bruce,
Bruce Banner,
Bruce Buffer.
I know who you're talking about.
I have no idea.
I know who Joey's talking about.
If you would have told me we would have had that.
Is it Bruce Banner or Bruce Buffer?
What's the guy's last name?
Bruce Buffer.
Bruce Buffer.
If you would have told me we were going to have a Bruce Buffer mention
on Alder's first day of co-hosting,
I would have said there's no chance.
But here we are. Welcome to Coffee with Captain. Appreciate y'all being here. Jonah, I was going to go a bruce buffer mention on alder's first day of co-hosting i would have said there's no chance but here we are welcome to coffee with captain appreciate y'all being here jonah i was
going to go to you next we see oh they're back coming back again um x being finicky this morning
quick reminder if you haven't yet done so give us some love on the space hope gets hit this thing
warmed up x is being i'm guessing there's another update due to the change but uh jonah gm congrats
on the raise i pinned that announcement up top
speaking of telling stories um he says we're going to bring the creator economy on chain
to base it's going to be a great 2026 again congrats on the raise with coinbase ventures
i'm not sure if that's what she brought you up this morning or not but uh
gm take it wherever you'd like
maybe you're still showing up as
requested. Oh, really?
Yeah. Maybe.
Congrats, Jonah. Come up.
If you can hear us, maybe take a lap.
Maybe force close the app. Maybe check and see if there's an X
update. But
we are...
X is doing its X things.
Quick mic check, Jonah.
You showed speaker unmuted on my end,
but outer says you're still showing the rotating.
Maybe.
Check one, two.
Close.
So show speaker on your end now?
It doesn't have like the actual microphone emoji next to it.
So yeah,
it's rugging still.
Let's check in with Machiavelli.
Machiavelli is here.
Are you connected?
I'm loud and clear.
All right.
Sure are GM.
All right.
So it is working.
But yeah,
maybe Jonah take a lap and would be happy to get you back up here.
I had a,
I do want to keep things moving
though if anyone has any thoughts on storytelling feel free to drop it in the chat or we could
possibly circle back to it but uh good cold open slash in the news topic this morning and um
one thing i don't think i'm going to go here this morning. It was, it's, it's be a hard pivot.
I would just say maybe tomorrow we'll talk a little more about prediction markets.
Just some back and forth on prediction markets in the war room.
And it may be an odd hard pivot right now, but some talk about prediction markets as well as OpenSea's Wave 4.
I guess both in the news, but I don't...
Are we opening our chests? When is that? Is that this week?
The Wave 3 chest, I think you could open.
Okay.
Wave 4 just kicked off, I believe. Let me do go double check. I'm pretty sure Wave 4 just kicked off. Yes, OpenSea launched their Wave 4 treasure chest program. As I went to go find it, it was one of the leading news storiesback a lot of i mean people are fighting it like i don't
Wave 4 just kicked off, I believe. Let me do go double check.
I'm pretty sure Wave 4 just kicked off.
know what they're fighting at this point i i again i was on record i wasn't the biggest fan of them
launching this rewards program while they're also pre-TGE because of this very reason.
It doesn't matter how many times they say it, it doesn't matter how many times they communicate it.
People that were here from 21 till now are on board at any time and they've traded NFTs.
The collective most are going to feel like this program is diluted to their future C allocation.
Even if there's a separate bucket, which was what they've said and announced many times i get that i understand it took me a while to get it
but the reality is most aren't going to take the time to read most are
it just they feel or think that this is the pre-TGE farm.
In reality, it's a rewards program that's taking place pre-TGE.
They're not the same things.
And a lot of people were big time mad about it.
D-Farmer, you know, a whale, high volume user, collector, trader,
whatever you want to say.
It's been very vocal.
I just, at this point, I don't know.
They're not changing it.
Quint says, the waves will continue until morale improves.
DGMD says, could understand trying to sell the first seasons
as teaching people how to use the new mechanics,
token to wrap early, but this is just getting blatantly obvious
as a fee farm now.
I'll push back. I'll take the OpenSea arrows, if you will. Never thought I'd be doing
this. It's a rewards program. It's not that deep. Is it pre-TT? Yes. Do you think OpenSea should
drop the C token now? I sure as hell hope not. And furthermore, their foundation has said they're going to drop it in Q1.
I think it's probably late Q1.
So if you make me guess, there's probably at least six waves before TGE.
At least, maybe more.
There might be 10 waves before TGE.
It's like, take a deep breath, chill.
You don't have to participate.
You don't have to farm it.
They're not going to, you don't have to participate. You don't have to farm it. They're not going to,
they can't put this back.
They're not going to stop doing the rewards program now because people are,
are,
you know,
or they're pushing back on it.
It's part of their program.
All between now and Wednesday,
all trading activity counts towards your way for chest.
I just,
I don't know.
I'm with you.
I'm bored.
So I'm like, whatever. And I, I don't know. I'm with you. I'm bored. So I'm like, whatever.
And I don't know.
Maybe that's a terrible take.
It's fine.
You guys can comment.
But like, I just, I'm not going to change my buying behavior and farm, but I'm also not that persona.
But I think there are people that are that persona who are also greatly enjoying this.
also greatly enjoying this like you know um i don't know i think people had more feels about
Like, you know, I don't know.
their usdc change than they did about whatever chest is coming next like like you know yeah
and i also don't think i i don't think the farm maybe it is i don't think usdc
is is the is the wave that is the rewards program, the treasure chest, the voyages, is that impacting NFT floor prices?
Maybe.
No, me getting $22 or whatever it was that it, I remember that I opened the first chest and like, I only had one to begin with because I bought a bunch of art blocks things and whatever, right?
Like it was a verified collection.
Wasn't that one of the criteria if you buy something yeah like so just like my normal day-to-day behavior as a result of that
got me you know some chest that I don't even remember because it's not that deep for me I
just don't care but whatever I'll open it it's a chest 20 something dollars great like moving on
with my life like I don't you know somebody want a punk great congratulations honestly I guess for me it's just
really not that deep at all like I'm not there are greater things that are that are like
annoying for me about OpenSea's actual UI as as you know given that we like explored the hidden
folder one recently like or that I can't send direct
to someone's address anymore,
or that I can't shop based on like trait offer.
Like there's some things that I used to use
as a Power OpenSea user that are now gone.
And I understand why they're gone.
I'm sure when they did their numbers,
they're like hardly anyone uses it.
But there are a few people that like,
for instance, I had a whole article
written speaking of articles i feel like there's actually a good tie-in so i have in my draft a
whole article that i was going to release last year that would be relevant this year which is
kind of how we met in a way um which is on like gift giving nfts and i and i said like in my
article i suggest ones that i think are actually good gifts based
on like because they have some artistic value because they're like they're all like the price
of a greeting card anyways right like it's you know it's not going to break the bank i'm not
suggesting you buy a punk for someone to onboard them into the space or whatever right so but one
of the things i talk about and it was like almost an open sea article in a way is the ability to
directly buy to someone else's address and that's gift. Like you just send the one thing and you
go shopping, you add stuff to your cart, whatever, like that's the old way. That article is now like,
I'd have to rewrite it because you can't do that anymore. That's not a feature. Like all the things
I talk about that I loved about OpenSea are no longer available so the article is not obsolete based on
the new uh UI changes so I thought it was kind of hilarious like to you know I mean like I'm not
going to publish that I might revisit it and still suggest some of the any ideas why they would
eliminate that feature like it can't I can't imagine it was like a any sort of like drain on
resources to keep it on and you think it's just maybe an oversight as they've made changes
that you didn't think people used it enough?
Yes, I think it's probably just like,
you know what you do,
scope creep, need to have, must have.
And like, given how many few people
actually send NFTs to other addresses,
like it makes sense to me.
Like I'm not from like a product.
I don't know.
I'll put you, I don't know if it makes sense.
It makes sense.
Maybe I guess if no one was gifting NFTs.
But you want to talk about like you shouldn't use your hardware wallets to mint anything and buy stuff.
Like I often would use the I'm going to mint with this but send it to this wallet.
You know, I'm going to buy this thing but send it to this wallet of my own just because I wanted to buy with a hot wallet and transact with a hot wallet and send something to my vault.
That seems like a pretty good OPSEC thing.sec thing if nothing else like seems like a good feature that
i hope they bring back yeah i mean i like i wasn't gonna die on that hill you know like it's gone
it's gone whatever but it's something that i like when i'm shopping for art and there's certain
traits or certain things that i like or even in pfPs, like I love the fact that I used to be able to put an offer on a specific trait and like just see if someone's willing to give that up.
And I know some collections don't support that just like from the way that their contracts are set up, but I haven't seen that at all in any collection, even ones that I used to be able to make trade offers on.
that I used to be able to make trade offers on.
Yeah, I don't know.
There's a world maybe when I'm bored enough
or whatever where I'll go through
and maybe make a video on some of the UI callouts
and Justin Bieber it and be like,
hey, you should maybe fix some of these things.
But again, it's not that deep for me
because I know where to go
and I know where to buy the things I need to buy
at the end of the day.
Same, same.
Jonah, we'll get you in here next.
One quick take I will push back on.
I Can't Trade says, again, we're going to punt the prediction market conversation until probably tomorrow.
Just be a hard pivot.
And I do have some thoughts.
I just, we're going to punt that one.
It says, OpenSea is fumbling all your assets are correct.
These wallets are responsible for 80% of NFT volume and price collapse.
I think this is cope.
I think this is also an excuse for giving NFT teams grace
that they don't need another excuse.
The reality is most aren't communicating well.
Most are communicating poorly.
The idea of utility NFTs seems to be dying on the vine. And
I think we've had some conversations earlier this week, last week, like
there's things they can be doing. I'm not going to relitigate everything we talked about yesterday.
And they're just not. Most NFT companies, they're building their for-profit businesses
outside of crypto. Some are doing things on chain, some are
not. And most have now look at their holders, their collectors as customers. It just is what
it is. Now, I do believe, I will agree that I don't think NFT collectibles or utility NFTs
are meant to be traded at high velocity and high volume. I think that was part of the problem with Blur.
I think what OpenSea is doing is far better than incentivizing bidding,
which was a nightmare and down-only type proposition.
I mean, go look at the volume of these NFTs.
Maybe that some are having an impact.
It just, to me, it seems very different than Blur farming season where you'd see a whale come in and buy 100 NFTs, maybe that some are having an impact. It just, to me, it seems very different than blur farming season where you'd see a whale
come in and buy 100 NFTs and then hours or weeks later, days later, dump them into a
bunch of wheat bids and bring the floor down.
I'm not seeing that.
I mean, I'd be happy to be proved wrong here.
I don't doubt that the response for 80% of the NFT volume, but the reality
is there's no new buyers because they're not onboarding people into their NFT collections.
They're onboarding people into other products they're selling that aren't their OG NFT for the
most part. Some are. We are going to have a conversation on Thursday with another special
guest that is doing things differently as it relates to NFT and the utility of those NFTs. So I pinned that up top. If you've
not yet hit the reminder for Thursday, go hit the reminder for Thursday and then scroll in a couple
over for tomorrow. Big guest tomorrow and Thursday as well. Excited to be bringing back some more
interviews here on Coffee with Captain. And albeit unofficial, another founder that may have something to share,
Jonah GM, congrats again on the raise.
Hopefully the audio is working now on X.
Can you unmute?
Yeah, I had to update the X.
The thing was crashing all over the place.
So that's it.
If anyone's having trouble with the space today,
force close your app, go to the App Store,
update your X.
Anytime there's an X update, if you're not on the same version of the app that I am,
you're probably going to have issues. Go ahead, Jonah.
Yeah, I was really, I originally came to talk about the idea
of storytelling, but first off, thank you. I appreciate it. It's been
a lot of work, and I don't sound excited because I
didn't have that much sleep and I
have to go to the gym in 20 minutes here. But yeah, I'm really excited for 2026. I feel like
I'm doing something that has purpose and that excites me.
That's awesome, man. That's, that's, when you talk about telling stories, I will say if you
feel it's purpose driven, it's a lot easier to tell real stories to where if it's just you're doing something for money or you see an opportunity in the market, often those are fake stories that you're telling yourself.
And most your audience can tell it's coming from a point of monetization versus passion.
And so respect for chasing your passions and doing something you're excited about
uh do you want to for those i mean we talked about it briefly but well i mean offer open invite we'll
have you back on to do a full uh actual interview at some point but for those that aren't familiar
you want to do a quick you know 30 60 second elevator pitch on what you're building and why
people should pay attention i mean never mind the people jonah i haven't caught up with you in a
minute and i want to know like what what is this new pivot? I'm here for it.
We're building something akin to OpenSea, but for the creator economy, not for NFTs or tradable assets.
But we've built what's effectively, if Opus, WAP, and Metal TV had a baby on chain.
swap and Metal TV had a baby on chain.
We've created systems that we're pushing out soon,
which we call Stream to Earn.
We'll have a cooler name for it in Web2.
But we've built an algorithm, a proprietary algorithm
that watches a streamer every half second
to determine their engagement rate
and how valuable their engagement is.
As well as with that algorithm,
it can auto-clip and auto-distribute content to all of your socials
or allow your clippers or your friends to share that content for you
and get paid in real time for it on-chain.
Everything tracked, administered Paymaster through our systems,
and we partnered with Coinbase, or Base more so,
through the Coinbase Ventures Fund
to start it on base before everything else.
And they seem to believe in our vision.
I really believe in our vision.
I've been a creator for a long time.
I've been in crypto for eight years.
I've managed several multi-million dollar agencies.
I've ran a small gaming fund.
I've testified in front of State Senate in Ohio for sports betting.
And this is my next big challenge.
I'm going to try and bring a billion dollars worth of value from the creator economy on
chain.
And I think we can do it.
Why on chain? I understand what you're doing
i'm excited i think it's a good maybe potentially great concept and speaking as a creator i'm gonna
speaking as a storyteller that's my new i'm gonna i'm gonna lean into this speaking as a storyteller
i can see value in it because paying our producer myself myself, I've talked many times, like one of the things we do well is tell good stories on the show.
Then we do poorly on repurposing those stories,
taking clips and sharing them on the timeline for people who don't tune in to
actually hear those stories.
So I love what you're building.
Why does it need to be on chain?
Why are you building on chain?
Why?
And then I guess the follow-up question would be why base?
Yeah.
And I do want to come back to storytelling
because I feel that I actually can provide value here
because I went to film school,
and I also wrote screenplays in college,
and I won awards for it.
So I happen to know a little bit about storytelling,
or at least I think I do.
But why base?
Well, I'll tell you for my opinion,
if you go to DeFi Lama and you go to the top 10 most used chains
by volume, liquidity, TVL, all these metrics you consider in DeFi,
base is in the top five.
And so if I'm going to do an EVM L2 chain,
if I want to be on EVM, I really don't have a choice.
It has to be base.
And I think the second reason is when I talk to
the average Twitch streamer, I talk to a content creator, Web2, when I say, oh, you can get paid,
I'll just send it to your Coinbase. That is an easier story for me to tell than to say,
what's your phantom wallet? Or what's your Binance wallet or hey have you ever heard of this new chain that
you know hasn't spent billions of dollars a year in marketing to to get to your mind share
it's just a very tough battle if you're trying to build a serious company and so I feel like I can
do it right with coinbase embedded wallets and base and why why on-chain? For one, the only strategic advantage on-chain has
over anything else in the world is speed to payment and processing. And I think that I can
increase and be more creative with how we pay creators and their ecosystem or their community
alike. And I think it's superior on-chain versus if I did it through a PayPal or through a
traditional payment software.
My AI doesn't rely on on chain, although I do have things we're going to release next
year that I think will be very different that involve creator tokens that people haven't
seen.
But my AI is about as Web 2 as they come.
I'm not trying to build a Web 3 AI.
I mean, that's really a stupid thing for someone to even pretend to promote.
I really believe that Polymarket and Calci had the best go-to-market
in the last maybe five years of crypto.
And I believe that they did it right.
And they did it right because they don't shove crypto in your face
when they're selling the product.
They just use crypto for functionality.
And I really think that's where that aligns with me and what I'm building.
It's exciting, man.
I'm not going to name names, but but i'm just gonna read some quotes um
i hate that i think i hate excuse me i hate that i think jonah's product sounds really good
followed up by someone who i really respect in the world of social media says it's
really awesome so you're on the right path uh, you know, your haters are in disarray
and people who know about socials and scaling very large social brands are, I think what you're
doing is pretty awesome. So congrats again. And yeah, man, I, you know, it doesn't matter the
market. It doesn't matter crypto or not, like getting, you know, raising around is never easy.
A lot more goes into it than most people have.
Especially if you've never raised.
People have no clue.
The back and forth, the no's, the meetings,
and Coinbase Ventures is the real deal.
So big congrats and excited to see more.
Yeah, I did want to go. I really am interested in storytelling
because before I was in business, I thought I was going to be a music video director.
I actually worked at Warner Music Group for a little bit, thinking that that was going to be
my path when I lived in New York. And the storyteller is, is not the person on camera, nor is it the writer.
In many ways, it's the director.
And this is someone who used to write.
The writer is hallucinating, but the director is the one putting those hallucinations in place to form, you know, a perfect puzzle.
That's the way I think about it.
And so a director doesn't have to be on camera.
I think there's this misconception in crypto
that the storyteller is someone who is on camera
or is writing threads all day.
That's not a storyteller.
That's an orator or a narrator
or the main character or a supporting character.
The storyteller is someone who is oftentimes silent behind the scenes,
just crafting the script for the main character and supporting character to read.
So I do find it interesting that people think an influencer is a storyteller.
They can be, but they're not mutually exclusive.
Yeah.
Fair.
I still am curious about Jonah's art school arc, or I mean, your educational arc.
I went to a college that many people would be surprised they would not think I'd get went to but I went to Sarah Lawrence College that's
where I went never heard of it doesn't uh the Ohio State University I don't think plays them in
in football no they're not a sports team uh but you know JJ Abrams and a number of other very
good directors went there.
So I know enough about this.
This is my domain.
I may not know sports cards and trading cards and NFTs as much as you do,
but storytelling, that's my wheelhouse.
Speaking of storytelling,
Alon and the Pump Fun team is going to have some stories to tell after this one.
I put it in the title.
I don't think it was a new suit.
I think it was a class action that was raised a while ago, but new charges, new complaints added.
And the new, I'm trying to find a better image here. So here, I'll share this. This is the, like,
Berwick Law, just they've got excerpts of the case. But the takeaway here, the news,
is the complaints, new complaints were added, including RICO charges, which which I'm not an attorney.
I'm not some expert on organized crime,
but that doesn't look good if you're listed as a defendant on that.
The class action alleges Pump Fund
operated an unlicensed gambling platform
estimating billions in user losses
with Solana-linked entities.
So if anyone is a legal expert and would like to weigh out on this, the stage is open.
Also, Andrew, I saw you came up and we lost you as well.
You're welcome to try again if you would like.
I am, again, no legal expert, not my area of expertise by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't think you want to be being charged with RICO charges.
Does this mean we'll see an airdrop pretrial? I doubt it.
I don't think there's going to be an airdrop.
I think also people talked about...
Who initiated this lawsuit? Is it the
who always sues people all day?
Berwick? Well, Berwick is the one
who posted this update.
The plaintiffs
are just a bunch of names from
class action.
I don't know if...
I mean, I'm assuming since
they're posting this, I'm assuming Berwick was the end.
Did they actually get hit with a Rico or a threat of Rico?
So like Rico is what they use on rappers.
The idea is it's like a carpet bombing where by being granted a Rico charge,
you can really go after anyone in the cadre
and basically have people rat on each other.
And they're all going to go to jail,
but one of them is going to get a lesser sentence.
So that's this, yes, that's my understanding here
is it's not just Pum Fun,
but now they've looped in Jito
as well as
Solana Foundation, the Solana Founders
like this is
much deeper than just
a pump fun thing. This is
and again, maybe
there's nothing here. Maybe it is just
I don't think it'll go that far.
I think people underestimate
the level of power and influence
a lot of these people have and their
legal teams and the power of their legal i i mean like there's definitely a chance that they can get
in real trouble but i mean we're talking you know our the president united states launched a meme
coin i mean does that make him part of the rico charge like we do we really think the president's
going to be indicted over a pump fund lawsuit or a bonk fund lawsuit like you know
not really i i don't think so either but i do i do think that
if if things were were below board if things if the demo if the democrats were in power
i'd say you're it's, but politics really shapes our laws.
And, you know, there's a very well-known saying, he who makes the gold makes the rule.
And it happens to be that our president really likes gold.
Don't disagree.
I also don't think there is, I don't think Solana and the foundation and the founders of Solana are going to go down defending Pump Fun if push comes to shove.
If there is actually something there, whether it's someone at Gito or Solana, if, it's a big if, I don't know.
I'm not saying they did things that were unethical or illegal.
If it did happen, I think they're more likely to get rolled on now or someone will roll over.
I'm sure they have ops, and I'm sure someone's going to roll over, whatever that means and whatever the consequence.
I think it's far less severe than what it would be
if Democrats were in power,
which, pump fun or whoever,
let's assume this all happens,
but I'm not very abreast of the case.
But if this was post-midterms next year,
I'd say, oh, they might be in deep shit,
but we're not in midterms yet.
So the Republicans still have a lot of control
over how the world works.
I agree, but I also don't think this thing
goes away in the next six to 12 months.
No, no, it'll be like a three, four year case.
Yep, yep.
So depending on how, you know, there's a chance.
Pump fund and Solana have so much money
that any time this other...
Lost you.
Sorry, someone's tried to call me.
Any time that the plaintiff even makes a bit of headwind,
the defendants are going to find whatever reason they can
to call mistrial or say not sufficient.
I'm not a lawyer, but there's so many ways that they can push the deadline back by years and years that it's just like, you know, I'll have children by the time they decide this case.
I also saw related or unrelated, someone complaining about the most disappointing thing from Breakpoint was pump fun or lack of pump fun.
And yeah, if like, here it is.
Pump fun is definitely the biggest disappointment at Breakpoint.
Bros made $2 billion, all things included, and didn't even plan a side event.
I don't know.
It would kill you to throw 0.01% of your total revenue to pay for a DJ in a nice place.
There's a world.
They may not announce, they may not speak.
They may be under gag order per their attorneys until this thing gets settled.
I don't think we're going to see a pump fund airdrop for a long time, would be my guess.
Could be wrong, but I think that these things are probably related.
I have a question for both of you.
I was curious about this.
I did not see anything from Breakpoint, like any coverage, anything.
On my timeline, no one's been posting about breakpoint things and i don't know if maybe because like actually i think i do follow enough solana people that i would expect to see that
because i obviously saw some hype about it before it was happening on my timeline it did you guys
see anyone posting about breakpoint and covering parties or anything like that like i just feel
like it happened and i thought maybe it needed to be a bigger deal than it was but i don't know if my
timeline is just serving me like things that i'm not seeing i'd like if anyone's listening in the
audience to like you know have you guys seen coverage of breakpoint by anybody like you know
there's usually somebody posting pictures of themselves that like you know what some some
events some dj things some party some merch
they got like none of that was on my timeline and i'm just curious the only coverage i saw in my
timeline i saw a few things i saw like soul jakey at a faux booth like selling hugs or memes or
something or ticker shills like just as a bit so i saw Souljakey doing a bit at the conference. I saw the Burb announcement from Spencer
and I saw the G-Boy announcement from Nuco.
Austin, and so he had Austin, I saw Austin's,
but had it not been for those announcements,
I probably don't see much from Breakpoint either.
It is interesting, someone else commented on
comparing like Solana to Ethereum
is the Solana builders use Breakpoint
as an actual place to go make big announcements,
i.e. Burr token coming in Q1.
Gboy actually launched.
They stealth launched at Breakpoint.
Whereas Ethereum builders
and probably other chains as well,
they're not going to eat Denver or DevConnect
for their announcements.
They do it on their own cadence.
And I don't know if that means anything or just maybe it's small sample size.
I don't know.
But yeah, that's all I saw was a couple announcements.
I wasn't there.
But yeah, I would be curious if anyone was there. What was the sentiment on the ground?
And do you read anything into Breakpoint being used as the announcement point for Solana builders,
whereas it's not necessarily the case with the ETH conferences?
Yeah, I don't know.
I mainly just don't know if like, because I think some people do to make those announcements,
depending, like I think people use an Ethereum, you know a conference or like a congregation of folks around the same kind of
topic to announce things but I think like when ETH Denver happens or anything like ETH related
my timeline is full of people like posting that they're there I just didn't see that for Breakpoint
and I wanted to like do a check-in to see if it's just my timeline bias or if really
like this thing happened and nobody cared that
it happened
but it looked exciting
at least
in the promo but maybe
that's my question about NFT Paris because that's
happening in a couple of months
again right I don't know if people
are excited about that I mean I'm
kind of excited because I went last year and had a good time. I hate that it's still called
NFT Paris. I hate that it's Paris in
February. Yeah.
It's so funny. I was talking to Andrew actually
and he was like, well, why don't they call it collectibles Paris?
I'm like, that's genius. Like, I don't get excited about going to something called NFC Paris,
but I would get very excited about going to Collectibles Paris.
And it's like a celebration of collectible cards and assets.
It doesn't have to be on chain, can be a mix.
Then I'm like, you know, that's fun.
Because the way I see it is like, you know, I want to go skiing anyway.
I happen to have an apartment in Slovakia.
Maybe, you know, I'll go there for a few days and then I'll go to Austria to ski.
That's how I would think about it.
And that makes me a lot more excited than an NFT event.
How does Jonah end up with an apartment in Slovakia?
Connect that dot for us.
My stepmother and a part of my family is from Bratislava, Slovakia.
And I went there.
I thought it was great.
And everything there is dirt cheap.
And it has a very fast-growing economy.
It's one of the few cheap places in Europe that's the very first world.
It's 30 minutes from Vienna.
It's like an hour from Budapest.
And it's like a few hours from the Czech Republic, Prague, and another few hours from Poland.
Good answer.
Yeah, today I learned.
Joey, I see your hand.
Go ahead and get back in here.
I'm going to get one more refill of the coffee outer
And then we can maybe talk about some
On-chain holiday gift ideas
Or maybe some throwback vintage stuff
Yeah I want to talk about merch
I'll be right back
Joey go ahead
Yeah I came up when
Jonah was talking about
Like our president launched a meme coin
Now correct me if i'm wrong but i
don't think he launched trump i think the people that launched trump were the same group that
launched the trump nfts and it was all part of like a licensing agreement it won't matter the
legal care because trump already endorsed them and had dinners for them.
I understand, but I think saying that our president launched a meme coin is very different than our president licensing his name for somebody to launch a meme coin.
Like, I don't think, like, I think we're conflating two, two very different facts like trump didn't hire a developer and say hey
developer i want to launch a meme coin that i own like that i own that's mine that and let's work on
the tokenomics together you you can spin it however you'd like to spin it you know tomato
tomato but you're not getting a license without the president really understanding how those assets works, which he does.
He literally has TrueSocial combining with Crypto.com to form CryptoPredictorMarkets.
His sons are involved in several World Liberty Fi.
His youngest son, we all know, was doing meme coin cabals to even this day.
I'm not saying he's not involved.
I'm not saying
the semantics are irrelevant.
I disagree. I think him being
pro-crypto
and his world liberty
financial and everything he's
doing with Truth Social and pushing the blockchain
and crypto forward
is very different than publicly
saying our president launched a meme coin like he didn't launch the equivalent of you saying
he walks talks and waddles like a duck but he's actually a golden retriever it doesn't matter
it's like well that's a duck a duck is a duck yeah okay i mean it's not but it's okay you can
you can you can say what you want.
The reality is he didn't launch a meme coin.
His name and likeness was licensed.
We don't know and we will never know
and you have to be kind of comfortable with that
because that's just how it is.
No, it was listed on the...
It actually do know
because on the website for the NFTs
and for the meme coin,
it explicitly said who was launching both of them and it was that
third party that licensed and made a deal with him that said we're going to sell your nfts and
we're going to get autographed sneakers and dinners and all this stuff it wasn't him like
you can say it was but it was the me that Trump had nothing to do with world liberty fight.
He had nothing to do with crypto.com.
He had nothing to do with prediction markets.
He had nothing to do with literally giving pardons to multiple crypto influencers or crypto signifiers like the guy from Silk Road.
I mean, like, again, you can say what the legalities are.
In the court of public opinion,
which is actually what matters,
we talk about storytelling,
it matters a lot more than the actual courts
because I guarantee you through discovery
they'd find something.
But again, he's in power.
He's going to be in power for the next three years.
And by the time he's retired,
it's not going to matter anyway. So he already won the game, but the semantics of it have no
meaning. No, but when you're talking about a legal case, like pump fun, except he's not,
he's not being sued. He's not, he's not in the case. I understand. But when you're talking about
like what you, what your opinion of like the pump fund lawsuit and other crypto lawsuits,
like, well well our president launched
a meme coin so what does it matter like it does matter because he didn't launch a meme coin so
like it does it actually does because of precedence and if somehow in this court case they somehow deem
that meme coins are x y and z it won't matter that you got licensed. Another court case you could point to is Kim Kardashian,
who endorsed several projects who gave her likeness,
but she didn't own those companies.
She still got sued.
Didn't she?
No, Kim Kardashian got sued, like the other celebrities,
for endorsing FTX and not disclosing their endorsement of FTX when FTX collapsed.
They got sued for more than just FTX. I mean, there were several other projects. Maybe it wasn't
Kim K in particular, but multiple celebrities endorsed multiple crypto projects and were
sued well before FTX. Yeah, but they were it's because of disclosure agreements they did not disclose their which is what happened with all the stuff on instagram when all these celebrities were like
go buy this nft project because it's the next big thing and they weren't disclosing their paid
endorsements and they're paid and they're like according to the ftc or whatever it was
and they all got sued for it because they thought it was a new area, a new gray area.
You're talking about very different things.
So if Tom Brady is getting sued for endorsing FTX and disclosed it,
and FTX became a criminal enterprise or was deemed criminal after bankruptcy and all these other things that happened to Sam Bankman Freed,
bankruptcy and all these other things that happened to Sam Bankman-Fried, why wouldn't
that be the case for someone like Trump or another celebrity in the event that meme coins
are deemed to be this criminal enterprise through this RICO charge situation?
I'm not a lawyer.
I'm not a judge.
Exactly.
But we're creating...
Yeah, but the point I made was...
No, you can't argue semantics if you're not going to say you're not a lawyer.
That's the whole point. Lawyers deal sem't argue you're not gonna say you're not a lawyer
This is you're right Jonah. I forgot you are you know
I'm glad you realize this is my favorite part is we have two on lawyers debating Lee Lee's and
Law matter that was my point point I said the only thing I'm not debating anything I'm not debating anything you said if we're talking about legal well you're not a lawyer
what do you mean you just said it I said what what is legal about saying that according to to the
the launch of the Trump meme coin it was done by a third party not trump and you saying trump launched
the meme coin there's nothing legal about that and then i said then i said semantics don't matter
and you said and i quote well if we're talking about a legal case it does mr we're gonna we're
gonna tie this one off um speaking about uh we all have adhd or adhd we have uh we've somehow
inter uh we've somehow had lawyers debating non-lawyers debating legalese
and a Bruce Banner mention
and a Bruce Buffer mention.
And I don't know how I tie all this together
to vintage merch,
but outer,
I'm going to,
in storytelling.
Yes.
Can't forget about the storytelling.
So somehow we have to weave this story together
to bring it from a Jonah slash Joey debate into vintage merch.
I can do it perfectly.
Let me explain.
Metacritic.
There's the critic review and the fan review.
And the only review that seems to matter is the fan review, not the critic one.
So the court of public opinion wins.
So I looked up one of the Bruces i don't i can't remember the name anymore
but it's like an announcer of sports right which one buffer i think so which one is not the hulk
uh yes bruce buffer is the announcer bruce banner is the hulk okay so yeah i looked up the buffer
one just because i was curious um and i don't know if I had a chance to talk to you about this or not,
but you know how much I just do not care about team sports.
However, I did subscribe or whatever it is that I needed to do
to watch the Blue Jays series because it was so polarizing and really funny.
And I saw how committed people are to team merch and that reminded me of how
committed we have been in the space to nft and web3 merch and so that is the segue into talking
about merch not only because it's the holiday season but also because there's something about
being a fan of something or representing something that
you believe in which I think is actually an act of physical story way like you know you wearing
whatever it is that you're you're wearing to wrap it so so Cap and I talked about this and we were
like you know let's let's wear some merch uh first of all that we think is like you know
maybe a rug in the space or whatever
and i carefully thought about what i would wear and i am wearing it because i think it's like an
on-point funny joke but i also did prepare like a whole rack of merch to go down memory lane
not only that but even like like i have moonbird socks so for those unopened unopened. Those are a grail nowadays. I wear my $16,000
socks, but that's a
real grail. Unopened Moonbird socks.
Yeah, yeah. I wear my socks
and I use my fanny pack as my
travel for my toiletries
when I travel. It's my Moonbird's fanny
pack. I do have
a couple fanny packs.
I don't have them here, but I also
have beanies. I have a whole bunch of
things that like i kind of want to for those of us that do love if you're if you're listening you
may want to join on stream at this point because i'm going to be showing a bunch of things um but
i'll try to describe them as well but i wanted to get into merch but before we get into like some
of the things i have with me i uh i'll show you what i chose to to wear so
i'm wearing the mutant uh sweatpants remember those with like the green on the side and i have
the hoodie and the shirt that goes with them but because udi made it made a comment about ordinals
being dead i wore my x-verse ordinals shirt i figured if ordinals are the the apparently the
the biggest drug,
I'm like, why not?
Can we, can we talk about just for a brief second before we jump into the
deeper into the merge conversation? Is, is he shitposting?
Is he serious about burning ordinals?
He's not.
I think he's shitposting.
I thought it was a shitpost.
I just had to confirm.
I thought for sure.
He's very real. It's very serious.
It's like the company Northstar. We're killing ordnance.
Okay.
I will screen share in a bit
because I do want to talk about also
like what's happening currently in merch,
like the current apes merch drop.
Like there are still things happening,
but there's also fun websites
that I've pulled out of merch
that you could still buy
because the Shopify store
and the dropshippers are still good to go, even though project drugged and i thought that was really funny um so it might even
be considered vintage but i feel like the first like kind of quintessential piece of merch that
we should talk about is the this is like you know the hollow t and the og hoodie right like isn't
that kind of like where,
like for most people, I feel like this is the starting point.
Both grails.
The hoodie is a literal grail.
I have one.
I have one that I wear occasionally.
I'll bring it out for like my Sunday best.
And I have one that's unopened.
This is also a grail.
That shirt is a grail.
Of all the Web3 stuff i've been to all the
crypto conferences you'll see you'll see merch obviously that is the most especially in an ape
event it's the most common piece of merch i see at 88 fest this year and it's there's no reason
other than it's just it's a grail like it wasn't first but i don't know where it fit in the
chronological order of things but that that t-shirt is by far – in fact, they just did a recent one that was kind of a – we'll say a derivative of that one.
But that OG T-shirt that's that – like neon?
What would you even call like the –
Hollow.
Hollow, yeah.
Hollow.
No, but that's what people were calling it. Yeah. Yeah. It is. I believe for my anecdotally, I think it is the most common,
the most worn piece of board of yacht club merch you see out and about in
the wild.
Okay.
So then,
cause we'll do the apes thing and then we'll move on to some of the other
projects.
I feel like this is a bit chronological.
I really wanted to find my,
my invisible friends hoodie.
It's still in storage.
So I didn't have time open page,
not a rug.
Um, but i'll i'll
show another piece of uh of merch while you're while you're going through yours oh is this the
hundreds because i'm here for it yes yes also my that blue the blue hundreds hoodie is was my daily
grinder for years like i've worn that piece of that that merch more than anything else combined
yeah yeah such a good one then i also love i love the white hoodies this is the just like the i i
skull whatever bayc but then there's also the trash one that i have like i i love both of the
white ones but they're hard to keep you're like i don't feel like wearing them as much as i should
because i don't want to like i mess them up or get them dirty.
I have a little FOMO over the white hoodie.
I didn't get that.
That was an NFT NYC merch,
and I didn't buy any when I was there.
Actually, someone sent me a white T-shirt.
I like it.
I'm a fan.
But yeah, I don't wear it that often.
But yeah, if I could go back in time,
I do regret not having picked up that white hoodie.
I like it.
And then this is like the og mutant you know the of course the mutant drop was was huge so i i think this is
such an important like i have this in white as well because they dropped both the t-shirt i don't
know they dropped a white oh no no i know the t-shirt t-shirt yes yeah yeah yeah they have the two t-shirts um then for me like on i mean on my
journey having been an employee of yuga i obviously have some yuga merch as well which
is super fun to have um this was who who remembers lest we forget can we pause on this one real quick
because yes i've been i've been beating up these NFT companies, these NFT brands for utility, driving value accrual back to their holders, back to their supporters.
And we used to see it in things as simple as like merch drops.
I think this was a part of that release too, right?
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah.
It was fun. It was cool. It brought excitement.
It was fun.
It was cool.
It brought excitement.
Like,
Yeah.
yeah.
Why?
Why?
Yeah.
For those listening,
I brought up the tracksuit,
the neon Adidas tracksuit
and the hoodie
and the beanie.
Like,
I love
merch.
I've always loved merch.
So like,
for me,
it's kind of exciting
just to like,
assemble and share
some of this stuff.
Okay.
Okay.
Speaking of rugs though um i have
pixel vault i thought that was really great to bring up and i have um i think i have i had
somewhere the the meadow hero like hats and all that stuff too yeah here this is like this is the
pixel vault because i finally did a merge drop.
So I got everything from there, which I thought was interesting, but yeah.
Oh yeah.
This is the, do I have the, the t-shirt?
No, maybe I don't.
I also had like the, the, the meta hero shirt and yeah, I don't know.
There's like, I feel like the adidas segue makes
sense you know the tracksuit better get me something after gfunk to call my money yes
that's but i do wear i mean i rock climb so i wear a lot of these shirts and you know some
people ask me about them but i think that that's you know that i like my tracksuit like i have you ever
worn it yeah yeah i'll wear it i don't wear it together uh but i'll wear like the pants with
like i'll pair it maybe with the white um mutant shirt or i'll wear this with like you know more
black stuff like i you know unless i'm dressing up which like i know we've hung out and sometimes
i'll like actually dress up, dress up.
And other times I'll just look like a crypto bro.
And it's it's funny now because like I, I guess I think most people know by now, but like I had breast cancer and I had a full double mastectomy in the summer.
So I don't actually have like I have a flat chest now, which I love, and I don't wear bras.
And all my shirts fit me so much better.
So I'm more Crypto Bro now than I've ever been, which is wonderful.
But I've revisited all of my merch and I'm like, man, this is just fantastic.
Anyways, this one is hilarious because I actually...
Do you remember Applied Primates? PTM?
Yeah, of course. Well, this is great, except you can't wear itates? PTM? Yeah, of course.
Well, this is great, except you can't wear it if you're, like, picking up your kid from school.
Because they wrote Fuck It Saturday on this one.
This was, like, for, like, the main anniversary.
But it's a great hoodie.
Like, I love this on the side, on the sleeve.
I'm showing the yellow Applied Primates hoodie for people listening can't see
and then i'm gonna like get out of like the classic merch stuff for a second uh well maybe
not yet i got i got one classic i the one single time i wore the tracksuit i wore i've wore it once
i wore it long enough to take this picture and that's the only time i've ever uh i've ever put
it on but But yeah, I
have wore it one time. And not
that I wear it one time, I also still have a
second set still
in packaging in case they ever do earn up to $10,000.
I will...
If anyone's buying, if anyone would like one of this
full outfit, hit me up in the DMs.
There's a number. I would part with it for...
You know, I, I, there's a number I would part with it for, uh,
you know, I have an item like that,
that I'm willing to part with for a number. I'll, uh, I'll show it to you guys.
I have this.
Oh, I have one of those in packaging too. It's actually a pretty quality blanket.
Uh, I'm, uh, I don't use it near, it's one of those things like I have a dog,
so I don't, I have one open that I don't even know where it's at It's in probably storage as well
And then I have one unopened
That is another grail that
Someday if our collectibles don't go to zero
These will be actual real grail pieces
So this is
This is an actual trait in the alien friend collection
It's like a GM hoodie
And it's literally what it looks like
In the collection Wait is that site still live yes it is i might buy one of
these for christmas true story if anyone's looking to holiday shop for me there's there's what i would
like i'm kidding don't buy me anything i'm about to get into like i'll share my screen and i'll
show you some of these sites because they're so funny like i found some some banger sites but
but this is still available and i have like a bunch of them.
I love this hoodie.
It's always like GM is such a classic,
like,
you know,
non-offensive,
like really nice thing.
another rug,
but like really cool merch is the cool man universe tracksuit.
I can't,
I can't get behind that one.
That brings up PTSD for me.
Yeah,
I know.
I know.
and then I really like the mmerch
release i don't know if you guys were in tune with that you'd have to buy the nft what is it
and then like oh yeah so mmerch um is this like wearable brand but you had an nft so each of these
is a unique hoodie in the collection and they're all traits so like the color of the hood is a trait the arm is a trait
the the waist this band is a trait the body is a trait i actually have another one somewhere
we talk about bringing the fun back like this was fun like incorporate traits into your merch like
this is you may be like why the hell are we talking about merch well a it is the holiday
season um we found some vintage merch that you can still go buy from brands that are grown.
You want to talk about Braille's, like hard to find merch.
And this was fun.
Not just a regular black hoodie that you want to sell your hold or something.
Be different.
Incorporate your trades.
Do things that your collector base might want to collect.
It doesn't seem that hard.
I know it's not easy to ship customized merch.
You're usually dealing with MOQs and things like that,
but bring some of the fun back.
And I mean, this one has one of those tags for scanning
and they had, if you were wearing this
and you scanned it at the door in a couple of New York galleries,
you got in like two openings.
So they like really, you they really leaned into that. Imagine that, an NFT
brand that shipped merch
that was custom to their collection and also had utility
baked into it. Well, and these guys,
their NFT was the hoodie.
There's no PFP
project. A merch is a
merch brand. So everything they've
released was all about the merch, their
merch first.
This I love, which merch brand so everything they've released was all about the merch like their merch first um this this i love which is a taproot wizards item we don't have a merch store our merch is pretty exclusive you have to come to our parties and we always have different merch at our parties
but far did this like keyboard pink situation i think this was for um nft paris last year
but i quite like it this steve, and I have like five of these.
This is the Coinbase Bitcoin white paper hoodie. Absolutely love this one.
And then I think my favorite t-shirt is probably the worm. And that's because this is like the
number that I am in the worm sequence when the worm came to me, which is I'm the 825th person
to have it. I'm familiar. So they customized it. For those that aren't familiar, do you want to
quickly explain the worm, what it was? And then my question is, how did you, I didn't know you
could get a, you could get merged. How does that happen? Yeah. So the worm is actually my favorite
NFT project of all time, like ever, because you cannot buy the worm. The worm has to be given to
you. Um, it's just like a smart contract that's written
that upon a transfer function,
you get a soulbound token to your wallet
and then you keep passing it on.
I don't remember where it's at now,
but it's, I don't know, like on the site,
it's trackable.
And something, because I love the team that made it.
They are like absolutely wonderful humans.
They actually made two bins for Moonbirds, right?
Which was passed around.
If you guys remember that
yeah same team same concept but for a while people would come into the discord like demanding the
worm or offering like cole who made the pudgy penguins initially apparently came into discord
and was like i'll give somebody like 15 eats for this or whatever but like the more people ask the
more you didn't want to give them the product which is kind of like the antithesis to
um you know the one who has the gold makes the rules in a way because in the worm you actually
had to like be part of the community to be given it so it was quite coveted and at one point they
launched merch and you were able to go on the site and uh and they knew what number you were
so they embroidered the the number that you got the worm on the merch.
That's pretty simple.
I don't know if that store is still running.
Actually, it's one I didn't check, but we could check.
But I also got into the habit of making my own merch for conferences.
I just put my name and all my NFTs and wear that so people could identify me.
And then I'll tell one more story.
And then I'll go into just kind of screen sharing.
The Mutant Cart cartel shout out
I got this shirt from the mutant cartel from two people that like were a huge part of it at the
beginning and they were the first two people I met IRL like just post pandemic when traveled
opened up in Canada I went to LA and we ate at the board in Hungary and they gave me the shirt
which is like an OG mutant cartel shirt, which,
which their stuff evolved,
you know,
it's obviously,
that's one of the nicer t-shirts I've gotten in the space.
As far as the quality and the fit,
like they made some good,
some good merch.
The hat,
I can't do the,
I can't do the snapbacks,
the flat bills.
I look really weird.
I get to stick with my dad hats.
Let's go over the hats.
So I have a moon bird hat.
I got mutant.
I got more mutant.
And then these are like, these, these are, this bird hat. I got mutant. I got more mutant. And then these are like,
these are,
this is funny.
I love,
I love the wizard one.
I also love the MF for one.
This is like,
I haven't seen the MF for one.
That's new.
Yeah.
That one's great.
And then,
I got the Bitcoin one for Sarah's art project.
And then of course,
part of like Yuga merch.
Ooh.
Got the,
like the Yuga,
the Yuga employee merch is next level.
The other thing, like here's some alpha.
If you're ever at an Ape Fest and you want a limited supply, a limited edition grail,
go up and give one of the staffers who's been hired for the weekend,
tell them you'll give them, I don't know, 20 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks for their t-shirt.
And they'll give it to you.
They'll sell it to you.
But there's like...
This is one of my favorites. Yeah, that's yeah i'm kind of jealous i gotta i gotta go grab
some hats i'll be right back because now now we're showing hats i can yeah these aren't all
in storage i gotta go uh show my real uh uh you know my real attraction to merch because my hats
have been worn uh too too many times but to the point where I'm coloring them in with fabric pins
because they should be retired at this point.
Yeah, I'll be right back.
Can you see my screen, by the way?
Can now.
Okay, perfect.
I just wanted to make sure.
Yeah, I mean, i love merch in general because i think like i'm interested in where people are
going to take their merch like the people on the team um one other merch store that i like and i'll
and i'll share the merch store in a minute but i also might as well show the some of the products um i do have
a lot of lucidia merch which is like fuck renders metaverse um but i think the merch itself is really
cool like if i go climbing and i'm wearing this people generally are like oh what shirt is that
just some interesting designs on it that i quite like um i think i've gone through most of the
things that i have i also made like my own merch out of my quantum cat.
Like I just made like a dress shirt and the pattern on it is like actually my cat.
But if you look, look far away, it just looks like a pattern.
But yeah, I want to get into and share some of this like as promised stuff.
So these are stores that you can still order merch from,
I believe,
because they seem active.
So of course we talked about the,
you know,
the Adam bomb squad collaboration with,
with ape,
with the ape,
the one that you're wearing basically.
I mean,
I might as well give a,
give a shout out to,
to this merch store.
Another one that's still active is Cool Cats.
They have these beanies.
I'm like, maybe I do want one of these beanies.
Just to add to my collection, I used to have a Cool Cat.
Probably one of my best flips in the space or one of.
Do you remember Little Lemon Friends?
I had forgotten, but yes.
They still have a merch store.
I'm assuming these products will ship,
but maybe not. This is like, again,
DYUR. The Alien
Friend thing, I'm pretty sure will ship.
I'm going to buy...
Is that... Oh, it's 70. I thought it said 25
bucks for a second. I'm definitely buying one for 25
bucks. Even 75.
I might treat myself.
They have all the sizes. It's just the one color, right?
Yeah.
They used to, I think, have a black one, but I think it's sold out.
This one was cool.
They have this one.
But I think, like, I haven't bought anything except their beanie.
I did have a, I think I had an alien friend's little beanie.
But, oh, yeah, here it is.
Hang on.
GM hoodie is, like, it's, like. This is little beanie but they're oh yeah here it is gm hoodie is like it's
like uh this is the beanie that goes with it but it's one of those like sea captain kind of ones
it's not very deep so it sits on your head kind of like yeah and i'm like look i'm in canada like
i need my ears covered if i go outside so so this is more i don't get a rockabini too often down
here but hoodies are another story so i I think I'm definitely in the market.
This hoodie is great.
I have several of them.
I love it.
Might get another one just to have it in case everyone else is going to go and, you know,
buy all the hoodies.
They're going to be like,
Sean usually listens.
I'm not sure if he's out there today.
They're going to be like wondering
what the hell happened when they start,
when they sell like 17 GM hoodies today. Like like why is our site like what what's going on and like for the record i have like
zero endorsement from any of these places like not affiliated blah blah blah i am just like as
you can tell like a full-on collector of merch and have been since the beginning so
this is this is just fun for me um who remembers uh
garbage friends this is uh i mean look at this quarter i had though like i'm not mad about it
it's pretty funny what else did i pull up oh yeah the superlative uh secret society okay
i didn't i don't think i took an L on that one because I think I
minted or got them super cheap. That was one that ran
up big time. I definitely round tripped
this. But I do like this.
I don't know if they're still active.
I might look into it because I actually think this shirt's
really cool. I like the
black on the pocket. I actually
like the designs of their merch.
I was looking through this and I kind of
I'm sad I missed this drop because this shirt's ridiculous. it i i actually like the designs of their merch i i i was looking through this and i kind of i'm
sad i missed this drop because this shirt's ridiculous it's so funny um what about creature
world remember yeah i mean for a while the creature world that one right there that one was a
that was a grail you saw that thermal slatter a lot of these events i can't pull that off but
they i think only the small i think everything else is sold out.
There is a small available.
What else do I have here?
Oh, yeah, this is Lucidia.
So this is Fuckrender's store.
Quick digression.
Is Fuckrender still around?
Is he still active in this space?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, no, he's still around.
This is, I guess, like...
I'm now coming out of, like, the rugs
into things that are maybe semi-still active.
But, like, that shirt that you see on screen, this is shirt like i actually own it and i quite like it um divide has
that hoodie it's a it's pretty good hoodie like i don't know this merch is interesting to me
uh we were able to claim some of it with like points um i i've never in the sapi seal ecosystem
but they're still alive and well it looks like as far as their merch store and i think
like the account is active and posting things they had a telegram sticker so not dead of course the
pudgy you know everyone's probably been to this store doodles have really interesting merch too
um yeah it's kind of cool somebody i think i saw a post uh somebody was sharing their Izuki stuff. Uh, so there's definitely like,
this thing looks cool.
The little through gate hoodie,
the burb,
you know,
burbish.
Like I,
I like this too.
Come and get one.
Yeah.
that's the other one,
right?
That's not the snapback.
this is,
this is the dad hat that came.
I don't know.
Is it at a party?
New York party?
Maybe.
Was it?
I thought it was, um, I really don't know when I got york party maybe was it i thought it was um i really don't
know when i got this i thought it was part of like the the socks like i thought it was a reward i
thought it was a nesting reward no well i don't have that one but like look it might be that i
do and it's in a box somewhere i wore it a lot it is it is uh you can tell the white is like brown
from from sweat i also after wearing these hats and running them through the end of the ground,
I realized that it's much better to go to the gym and the sauna with dry fit material
as opposed to regular hat material because it ends up looking like, can you see this?
This is actually gross.
Even like, I wish you could all feel this hat.
It doesn't feel like a hat.
It is, but it's the grail.
It's the first hat i have another
one in storage yeah it looks like crap now i actually multiple times i've used fabric pen
to fill it in the black and and yeah this is this is one i will still rock from time to time although
i should not wear it in public i don't really wear baseball caps except i do i do wear like
the mesh back ones because it's like in the summer when it's hot but i just made this one for myself it's just like the wizard face and it's like super super easy goes with like a yellow
sweater that i made for myself too that i like i do have an ordo hat at least i don't think they've
yet i shouldn't say that i'm just kidding that was a joke i like the color i do too it was unique
oh yeah somebody liked the the cool man universe.
So these are the pants that go with it with the,
like,
like it was actually a really nice merch set.
even though,
you know,
I don't know if anybody bought anything from the Berber store.
Like if there's anybody shout in the comments,
if you,
if you enjoyed any of the smell,
it doesn't look like good quality.
I just,
I haven't bought it yet.
It's like,
I know over engineered probably doesn't make sense with merch but it's or it's just not me like i i don't know
i didn't i'm sure the quality is great i actually saw the jackets in person the 1500 jackets they
were extremely high quality but okay i could i would never even think about wearing it it's just
completely fair enough like i don't even i don't i don't know who they're maybe it's like modern street wear i don't know it is like so far out
like a lot of this stuff is like am i gonna wear it every day no but i might wear it once or twice
or wear it to an nft event i would never like you couldn't you wouldn't catch me in like that
burb jersey or that burb jacket it's just completely not my i'm not their demographic zane is though um oh yeah sweet okay do i want to know
um if the beanie is good and if and if you got the yellow one i'm curious so this is the new i
think revamped um hoodie from coinbase for the the bitcoin white paper um i do not own this one i
haven't purchased this one yet.
So I don't really know
or cannot comment on the quality of this.
I just have like three of the original one.
I also like...
I think this is creative, what they're doing.
I saw that.
I didn't see the actual store,
but I've seen some posts.
So like, this is back to having fun with merch.
So I think I'm going to get this pin because like, I mean,
if you guys know me, I collect everything.
Like I, I, I even have like, you know, this is one of my pin boards,
but I'm really salty still about the fact that I don't have a diamond nest
pin. This is not okay.
And you diamond nested, right?
My bird is still nested.
So yeah, they...
Still.
K-Rod Rugja.
Tell Zane, tell your guy Spencer,
he needs to take off those zipper pants
and make it right with all the nesters
who deserve a diamond pin.
When diamond pin?
That is funny.
I'm still waiting.
I'm still waiting.
Yeah, it's a thing.
Man, these applied primates like the
the mega mutant pins are so crazy i i thought i mean i'm not gonna wear it it's like huge but i
do love it the worm also has their their pin which is pretty great yeah i mean i have a bunch like
from other people too and stuff which is like on a different board that i don't have here but i was
thinking about getting this on chain one to add to my collection. Something else to point out, since you have this Coinbase thing pulled up, it's a pin.
It's on-chain.
They're selling it for $6, not $60 or $600.
Stop selling collectors overpriced merch.
Like, I understand you need to make money, and sometimes you're running smaller supplies.
It's going to cost more because it's a lower quantity run.
Stop gouging your collectors.
The reason a lot of brands give away free merch is because it's marketing.
You get people wearing your stuff, proliferating your IP.
proliferating your IP. If you're selling a sweater for $170, now that's a bad example because people
bought that, not extractors if you're selling things for fair prices or in line with market,
but just because it's going to a crypto native community doesn't mean you should mark it up
two or three X what regular retail would be. I'm not saying give it away for free to everyone. It'd be nice if collectors or holders got at least some sort of a discount
versus what you're selling it to the general public for. Someone used the example recently of,
hey, holders, yeah, you can have exclusive items or you also could get a free pair of socks or a
free bag if you're like little things. It's not, someone took offense yesterday because I said
Doodles should have got their holders a free cup of coffee at mcdonald's it's not about a cup of coffee you
don't care about a cup of coffee the point is show intent that you're aligned with your hoarder base
yeah that's all yeah this is the the worm uh merch store but i don't know like if they're
fulfilling these or not i mean it seems like they are keeping track but it's hard to say since they
say mid-june and that's like
I don't know how many years ago but the store launched when they hit a thousand wallets
so that that's that was the celebration so anybody who had a thousand or or under as their number for
when they received the worm had the like the actual custom embroidery on the side and then
you could just get the t-shirt without the embroidery and that's the path of the worm i think so right now it's in wallet 152 so yeah that the 1529th
wallet one feature that they added that i thought was really cool was that you can steal it now
on contract you have to go through and like execute a stealing function um but whoever had
this has had this for 14 days so you can now actually go in and and steal it but it's really
cool that you know it was passed around and then you know went through many evolutions but i just
i love the i guess this is more of an art project than anything but i i think it's it's such an interesting concept just to like
put something out there that the very like idea is to proliferate and share it and not so much about
you know financial speculation so yeah this trip i know this maybe wasn't the emergent intent but
this trip down merch memory lane is also like I asked about Fuckbinder. Some people asking about Creature World and Danny and love.
Never forget the Creature World NFT NYC party.
Creature World merch is the best merch.
It's not hipster enough, but I dig the designs.
They look like adult Teletubbies is the other side of that.
Love creatures.
All Danny had to do was give more art.
Is Creature World still a thing?
Is Danny still in the space or no?
I actually don't know, but I'm kind of interested in this green creature hat i think it's hilarious
i don't know like i i i was what i don't know is like how active like this is so here's what i feel
like i need to do i need to study like where this merch is shipped from because if you're just a
drop shipper then they're just going to fill it and drop ship it regardless whether the company's still around to get you
know the funding or not but it's tricky because i don't really know like which are still active
or not from some of these projects like i don't know if in creature world you know if i clicked
on these jeans and i was to actually order them if i would really receive them or not because i
don't know who's fulfilling this i'd have have to look into it, but they're cool.
Like it's,
it's, it's neat.
I agree.
I like this merch.
Like this,
these guys too.
Like I,
I enjoyed,
I enjoyed some of the designs.
Like they're a little bit different than,
you know,
like,
like this,
like Jean moment.
Like,
do I like it?
Maybe not for me,
but it's interesting that they did something like just out of the box a bit.
You know,
I had forgotten.
I agree.
And that like, so again, overarching point out of the box, creative, you know? I had forgotten. I agree.
So again, overarching point, out of the box,
creative, tie in your traits, bring it.
I almost said, don't just make a black hoodie with your logo on it.
Bad example right now.
I get what they're doing here.
And I think the zipper hoodie,
paying homage to the OG hoodie makes sense.
I like those socks actually also ask if you bought
anything from here no I didn't I none of it I don't I don't know it just didn't resonate with
me I have and I probably I have a ton of Bordeaux Yacht Club merch I don't need anymore I'm not I
don't have I have too much I can't wear all that I have today I'm not a zipper hoodie person if I
didn't have the OG hoodie,
I absolutely would have bought the member exclusive. I love what they did. I love that
they made it member exclusive. My feedback wasn't directed at Bordea Pia Club, but I do think
it'd be a nice perk, some nice utility for your holders if you gave them a small discount.
Or, hey, spend $150, get a free pair of socks. Spend $150, get a free bag that was given away free at ApeFest.
Those are little things that cost you very little,
and it just shows better alignment with your supporters.
I also forgot, speaking of rubs, I forgot about this one.
The best free piece of merch I ever got, as far as quality goes,
was the Artifact shirt at art basil 23 maybe 2023 2022
artifact did some cool merch not even the shoes but it's it's actually making me kind of sad going
back down this because there was so much i feel like we've lost the creativity we've lost the do new things why is that i mean maybe some people are like just over merch in general
and not even just merch but that's just an easy example right it's like
incorporate your nft incorporate technology into your merch if you're gonna do it incorporate
your traits do things that's not just a black hoodie with your logo this is what hey guys gm
y'all hey hold on we'll get to you in a second.
This is what I was going to say.
With the Fuckrender store, for instance,
we had a bunch of resources, a bunch of things we were collecting.
And so we had the option
to actually reduce
the number in the collection. We burned
a bunch of things, and as a result, we got
store credit. We got points.
And so we went in with our points
and then just ordered a bunch
of merch that and like actual cool merch because i like buck render and i like like i mean separately
he has his own store where he has like you know like his chain links he has like full-on gold and
silver jewelry with some of that stuff he's a 3d like you know sculpture artist as well i didn't
share it here because i think that's i feel like maybe doing down the line at some tuesday maybe
we can go down into like artists merch because i think that's a bit different than like project
merch and i can definitely highlight a couple things for you know people are interested in
that kind of thing but specifically to like lucidia and that ecosystem like to your point
about innovation like it's not innovative to give us, but the idea that it was thought through and like, Hey,
this kind of game that we had going is now like sun setting.
Everyone has these resources.
Let's burn them up and give you guys hoodies and shirts and things you'd actually genuinely want to wear,
but also not bad quality.
Like I actually,
like I wear this shirt a lot.
Like it's heavy cotton.
I like the feel of it.
You know,
it's not necessarily great for over the last 30 years.
There has been one.
Sorry.
I mean,
I just shared a link and auto played the video.
I appreciate Zane sharing.
Cause we asked about Danny and creature world and Zane,
who's really dialed into the world of social media and creators did share.
I'll pin it in the,
in the comments,
if anyone's curious,
uh, said he's doing
some really cool stuff with anthony poe i'm not familiar with anthony poe but he goes on to say
that you know they they're he's doing a dope project with anthony poe right now they're
crowdsourcing an album he's also does fun side quests does creature world pop-ups activations
once in a while that's cool like i think i would like to see more of that and Hey, maybe it's on me to pay
better attention, but for a while we got into the collaboration meta, right? It was like back to the
pink, the, uh, the highlighter track suit was, it was board at Piat club, pixel vault, G money
collaborated with Adidas and ship some merch. I'm not saying it's all just collaborating with known apparel brands. I would like to see more of this. If we want to get
outside of our crypto native bubble, I do think partnering with other creators, other brands,
it doesn't have to be famous streetwear brands, especially if you're just going to do logo swaps.
Like do something more is my suggestion, whether it's incorporating tech, whether it's
you talk about rewards.
Like, I'm not expecting any magical internet money to come from any of the NFTs I'm holding.
I'm not.
But it'd be nice to have some sort of like, oh, you get access to this drop because you
have an NFT, or you get a discount, or or you get free shipping or the only way to get this
cool collaboration is you can redeem your points instead of a token. Like there's so many ways it
doesn't have to go back to a TGE or free magical internet money that they can drive value and show
alignment with their holder base. And it just feels like very few of them are even trying anymore.
Oh, in my rant.
Sorry.
It was,
it was,
we have a speaker as well.
I think somebody was trying to say something.
Yeah. Quirky,
go ahead and get in here and then we'll go to Poppy.
Yeah.
GM y'all,
man,
what a trip down memory lane.
Can you hear me?
Gotcha.
Man,
my little quirky brain and squid was about to blow up a hundred thousand
times listening to you guys go down memory lane
and all the things that popped into my little skull here. So bear with me here for a second,
because I love that discussion and just going through it all. It brings up some serious memories
over the last three plus years now. It's crazy how long it's been. But first of all, Outer,
I know you're from Toronto. I'm from, you know, basically Southern Canada, aka Minnesota.
And so I noticed you said toque at one time and then you said beanie.
Can you please like clarify when it's a toque and when it's a beanie?
Absolutely.
When I say it, it's a toque.
And when you say it, it's a beanie.
But you said the word beanie, which is confusing to me.
Well, I also changed my currency to USD on every single website I shared because I understand that.
Okay.
Gotcha.
In the Eastern times, most folks are probably tuning in from the US, but it is called the toque in Canada.
Yes, it is.
But Beanie is also great.
I think they're both okay.
Okay, good.
One thing that is wild,
that I also down memory lane.
Who remembers the Wanderers?
Remember the Wanderers?
It's like a super OG project,
but they're in gaming.
They're still doing their thing.
They released some exclusive merch,
and this is the tightest thing ever.
I like the look,
but not very functional
but i think the memory lane is important and and like i'm glad that you're saying that you enjoyed
that because when when when cap and i were like chatting about you know me kind of joining every
tuesday i'm like what do we want to do and i'm like the first thing i want to do is go back
and like you know from knowing him and steve for ages and always being on like the forefront of
like oh are we getting this merch or like i don't know it just we're all kind of merch people and
like you seem like the right kind of thing that i think most people can relate to
so yeah if you have air um if you're listening please in the comments share it because i'm
gonna look through like i saw some mizuki in there like i'm excited and i love collecting this stuff so yeah i don't know there's there's something about that nostalgia
that we've all been through that unites us and i think like it's almost like a merch nft wrapped
if you will for me like here's here's all this stuff i've collected over the last however many
years um yeah I don't know
totally yeah it's adding up it's funny how that goes but yeah I'm having a bit of FOMO because
I'm here watching or just listening in on X but I know that you guys have the video so I'm gonna
have to go back and review the game tapes because I want to take a look at all this cool stuff you're
talking about I can picture it because I was there when a lot of it dropped but I want to be able to
see it in the in the true living color but it actually kind of reminds me a little bit captain you might i know you're not much of a
sports ball person but captain it reminds me a little bit about like you know all of the merch
that championships like are printed for right like the team that loses the super bowl there's
still like thousands and thousands and thousands of things that are printed and they end up shipping
them like over to overseas and like clothing other countries that can't afford clothes.
And like somewhere, somebody in Africa
is wearing a Buffalo Bills Super Bowl championship shirt,
you know?
And like, I feel like this is kind of like what it is
just on a different level.
Yeah, it's not just someone or somewhere though.
Those NFC or NFL championship losers
or Super Bowl losers, that merch,
it's now being worn by an InfoFi farmer in Nigeria.
Yes, exactly.
And I feel like that's kind of like some of this stuff should end up over there.
But no, but I think a point, though,
and it's very interesting in like quite time that you guys are talking about this.
And I think it serves and is maybe worth getting into a little.
But there are lots of interestingly, and even just last night, for instance,
There are lots of, interestingly, and even just last night, for instance,
I think you guys know, like, Jillian, Valentin, and Mad Potters from World of Women now,
and they used to be with Megadeth Digital.
Are you familiar with them?
I think you are, right?
No, that's a good call-out.
Like, I don't actually know if World of Women have merch or not.
I should look.
Yeah.
So, it's not about World of women per se but uh so megadeth
digital uh jillian valentin she's like been around the space for a long long time awesome person i
met her at nft nyc actually uh at the quirky's nfc nyc two years ago that poppy set up and i know
he's on stage here but uh they they ran and spearheaded megadeth digital which it which was
legitimately the band megadeth like like Dave Mustaine and the entire band
was behind an NFT for like two plus years, almost three years. And, you know, unfortunately,
last night was like the last space that they had officially because the band decided to
no longer support the digital army part of it, but are still like going through with a lot of digital things because of their
efforts and because of them buying into it in a very innovative way,
kind of like how Avenged Sevenfold, another very popular band,
they actually still do have an NFT project, the Deathbats.
Are you guys familiar with those?
Yeah. Shout out Lal Basal, one of my favorites.
Exactly. Exactly. So like,
it was interesting because last night was like
very sad like kind of somber honestly because they've you know worked their asses off for two
plus years and had the full support of dave mustaine and the entire megadeth band which is
one of the best bands and best selling acts of all time almost right like so much so that and
they've had so many like real things
that they've delivered to me personally,
to people all over the world.
Like for instance, I was able to meet the band live.
I had a live meet and greet
just because I held a Megadeth digital NFT.
No questions asked.
It was so smooth.
I was able to meet them in my hometown of Minnesota
when they came, like was in line, met them, have pictures with them live in living color. And like they have
merged at school, but like, it's, it's kind of sad to me because here we are like being a bit
nostalgic about projects that rugged. And yet there are all these other projects that people
maybe haven't heard of that didn't rug, that delivered like true value, true, awesome things,
memories for days and yet you know
they unfortunately go away because of a lack of support of the space overall not because of anything
they did and yet they have all this cool stuff like i mean we got beanies and hoodies and shirts
and actually like you can still buy some of it of the last bit of it and um but they've delivered
over and over and over and over again and um it's just interesting to me how we have nostalgia for things that like
legit rug,
but we don't necessarily know about all the other smaller projects out there
that have done so much for the space.
And that's even including quirkies.
And I know that like,
yeah,
I'm quirky,
quirk,
that quirk.
And I love the quirkies.
I'm not hearing it.
I'm like a soapbox,
but like for three years now,
like they've delivered merch and like NFC enabled gear and things and are
still around. Right. And I'm sure like we can get more into it.
And I know Poppy has been,
been taking the helm and has been doing some awesome, awesome,
awesome stuff with it. And it's not about the quirkies.
I'm just saying overall in general,
there's a lot of lesser known projects that are out there that are still
doing incredible things that aren't rugging, that are delivering.
And I think that are still making waves
and making NFTs and making these communities
into something that will have support
for a long time to come.
So I just wanted to say those things.
My head was exploding.
But also too, I forgot,
the reason I came up here to start
was because of the mention of Bruce Buffer.
And his brother is Michael Buffer.
He's the let's get ready to rumble guy.
And that brought up so much nostalgia for the Jock Jams original, original.
Like that was the best album.
One of the best albums of all time, 1995.
I must've listened to that 800,000 times before all of my sporting events growing up as a nine-year-old.
So I just wanted to throw that out there too.
Great, great nostalgia though.
I love, I love where you guys went down this rabbit hole.
And I just had a lot on my mind that I wanted to get out there because uh there's a lot of fun in this
space and i think a lot more to come great great callback this whole show since the bruce buffer
bruce banner mentioned i've been attempting to figure out how i could connect the dots to uh
celebrity death match in miles lane that's that's where my head that's been in my adhd brain
hell yeah how am i gonna yeah no match mentioned out of that exactly let's get ready to rumble i'm i'm almost certain that
he was in cartoon form in one of those celebrity death matches during the super bowl you remember
how like do you remember the super bowl death matches where they would do it at halftime uh
yeah no those are wild those are wild times back to the the Motorola Razr and Celebrity Deathmatch era.
That's what I'm here for.
And also, you know what we need?
I think somebody should drop some snap-off pants.
Not zipper pants.
Not hoodies.
Snap-off pants, you know?
Yeah.
We're going backwards as a society.
The new Adidas collab.
We'll have the...
Hey, Poppy.
Poppy, can we do a quirky snap off pants
please i'm already on the phone i'm already on the phone with the vendor like that's such a good
idea like there's nothing more there's nothing more powerful than being in public and ripping
off your pants people get scared and then you have actually pants underneath that's pretty powerful i i say this is what we need and then i'm thinking about some of the
the crypto degens i'm not sure if this is the best thing for for crypto degens
you'll have like people you know it'll only take the one person who only has underwear on to ruin
it for everybody, you know?
Yeah.
In like unrelated but related, someone needs to ship some crypto deodorant or crypto antiperspirant or like that and breath mitts.
Like true story, I'm not going to out the individual.
I had a compelling conversation at Art Basel.
Like good conversation.
I wanted to continue the conversation. I couldn't because... And I say this like
not insulting anyone.
Like, maybe they have halitosis or something.
They can't do anything about it.
It was repulsive breath.
And I'm sure my breath sinks at times.
But I also...
I'm in a public event.
Breath mints and deodorant will get you
far in life.
At least you're always got that toothpick in, right?
Is that what you got, a toothpick?
I've never done the toothpick thing, but...
No, I mean your PFP.
Is that a toothpick you got in there?
The Philips Sonic, like, Philips toothbrush.
That's the meta.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, see, I went down to Art Basel for 12 hours.
I was in Art Basel for 12 hours i even i packed up a portable toothbrush you
know like you got to do what you got to do but you got to stay clean no but the real clubs
what what just happened here is captain just gave somebody the next pig mint right like
the project called hygiene utility is you get dropped deodorant toothpaste you know stuff like that every month
uh you meant a mint did you see what you did there you meant the mint
yeah not a bad idea hygiene web restart who's launching hygiene toiletries i know we gotta get
out of here soon or get out or out of here soon
we got a lot of shoutouts for Bad Bad
in the chat from Dillo and others
Drew B2 Shoes says
did you miss out on Bad Boy? A few that came back from
Art Basel are going up at 8pm
tonight. Merch Upgrades Collection
goes live by 7pm. Got a little sneak
peek for you. Only 50
edition chipped. Only 56 available We had D'sm. Got a little sneak peek for you. Edition chipped, only 56 available.
We had Deez on the show a little while ago,
and Bad Bad may not be a blue chip.
They're doing merch right, in my opinion,
in the sense of corporate into the NFTs,
gamifying it, making it fun like just it's not
just a traditional standard merch drop to sell to their customers but rather working with aligning
with their community and their collectors and doing fun stuff so yeah i just i we got they had
several mentions i wanted to i wanted to shout them out because of the multiple mentions in the
chat and um that's super fair and i think like look we're not gonna be able to cover everything and i think
maybe we'll do a part two and like you know at some point sometime because there's like there's
crypto mores there was like what was that um there's so many projects i feel like at some point
ones that are still here and ones that are not so if you guys have suggestions
dm me your merch suggestions and we'll like look into it like i'm always collecting this
do you do you have do you have quirkies or quirk life apparel i came late to the space i don't know
if we got in the mention no i do not have it as in i do not own any but i did pull up the site
uh when i saw you come up so I am I
am looking and I see that there's like a cork life um a bunch there's a bunch of collections
street life legacy yeah anything probably you gotta wind things down but anything uh real quick
you want to call attention to or direct anyone to before we uh wind things down yeah what's your
favorite piece no I mean I yeah, yeah, I didn't.
I jumped up because I heard the apparel conversation
and I was just going to double tap, Cap,
one of your monologues there.
You were talking about just the holder side of things.
So obviously I acquired Quirkies in September. I've been a part
of the ecosystem for over three years. One of the first things that we did was evolve the, uh,
Quirky streetwear to Quirk Life apparel because we didn't want to just be in a box of like,
oh, this is only streetwear. Um, though it is our core competency and we're going to, you know, lean into that
culture. Um, our audience is not like the quirky NFT holders. Our, our audience is, you know,
the world we want to build this brand, uh, to be globally recognized and respected. We're going to
be building the whole web to infrastructure. We've already started through socials and ads and physical
events. Uh, and that's what we did at Basel. We didn't, we didn't do a, like a web three
activation at Basel. We did a web two activation to, you know, put our brand out there. Um,
so it's going really well, but one of the things that we are doing for holders, if you own any
quirky asset, uh, there's four different tiers.
If you spend X, we give you a gift card to the store for the next purchase.
So if you spend $100, you get $15 back.
Spend $2 back.
Spend $375, I believe it is, you get like $30, $40 back.
And then if you spend $500, you get a hundred bucks back. So we, we put together a tiered system so that if our holders are participating in our buying,
you know, we're essentially giving them back most of the margin that's in there.
And, and we throw, we try to throw free stuff in all the boxes. The, I think the bigger
thing that we're trying to tackle at the moment is
international because we do fulfill and manufacture here in the U S.
Um, and we're sourcing like really, really good stuff. Um,
so I don't want to sacrifice, you know, if we're going to go to Europe,
let's say a manufacturer there. Yes.
People could save money on duties and taxes taxes but is the quality going to be
sacrificed i'm very careful about that canada is crazy we're having people we had somebody spend
300 bucks and their their duties were like 250 in canada um which is really tough. That has been a problem, especially even like more so now.
But yeah, it's like I have to be pretty purposeful about what I want to collect
because I know I'm going to pay just as much as the actual merch
in tariffs and duties just to get there.
Yeah, it's really, it's horrible.
This was my first experience.
And like, Quirky's has a ton of Canadian holders.
Honestly, a very good percentage.
And a lot of them participate, are active.
And, you know, I wanted to send like free skateboard
or free hats and, you know, I was talking,
Drew B did our fulfillment.
Drew B is great.
Bad Bad, I double tap that as well.
Like Bad Bad is one of the most underrated
projects in this space, especially because of what they're doing. But, um, you're like,
you're like, Oh, I'd like to do some merch. You don't have to do it yourself. There's people in
this space. That's their core competency. That's what they do. Well, you can link up with other
on-chain builders, partner with them and save yourself a ton of headaches. I'll say from
personal experience, I went international and it broke me.
Like I lost thousands of dollars
attempting to fulfill products internationally.
I still to this day have return mail still coming to me
that's basically been floating around the globe
and it finally makes it back to me
and I can't even get in touch with the end user.
It's really, really difficult to distribute stuff globally,
especially when you're talking a few hundred items. It's just, it's not feasible for most startups. It's just not.
No, it is difficult. And it breaks me because like, for example, great holder, great friend,
just really good dude lives in Europe. He bought some we send it to him it gets to the mailbox
he can't find it you know it then then i get the notice like hey it's headed back to the warehouse
and i'm like oh my god like so there's challenges but that's part of being in business part of a
startup but like we are very whatever whatever our holders do with our apparel brand it's it's going back to them like that's a
big part for me i i to me that's not a business model of ours i get it could be a business model
of others it's not a business model of ours um and you know it is quite difficult i will say
druby is the the best and if i mean he's even been just super helpful in ways that don't even benefit him.
Like he's not a guy who has his handout. So yeah, I do double tap that.
If you want to help with merch, at least shoot him a DM and pick his brain.
I'm sure he'd be happy to help. But, but yeah, I mean,
the last point I was making is like outer you'll relate to this.
I couldn't even send free stuff to Canada because if I send a skateboard, even though it's free, they would have had to pay tax on the free
gift. So it was like a double whammy, but we're navigating through these things. We're working
through it. Um, you know, cap, I know at some point next week, um, I think, you know, we want
to lose like my favorite show on, on web three. And there's something pretty big we're doing next week that I,
that I would prefer to, you know, talk about here first.
Let's do it.
So we're, I think we're going to do it.
My favorite.
Bring back the announcements and announcements.
Yeah, I'm here for it.
This is great.
All right, guys.
So we're making an announcement today that there will be an announcement tomorrow for an announcement next week that'll have an announcement attached to it
there you go perfect okay i do have to run but i'm gonna do two things before i go the first thing
i'm gonna do is i'm gonna answer a hizzy who asked me a question on does outer have an opinion about
merch being almost 100 designed for men yes i do it's great uh i'm i have two modes which is i dress uh like a tomboy um so like
and also like i can style those things in a way that i like so i i like it but i'm probably one
of few people i know there's been a lot of complaints by women uh but the the truth is
cap knows this like if i'm not wearing like, the dude bro merch, which I actually love, I'm so stylish that nothing that you can create that's female, I would wear anyways, because at that point, I'm wearing, like, Chanel.
So, like, or whatever.
Like, I'm going to wear, like, something high brand or something vintage.
Like, that's very feminine and stylish.
Like, full-on dressed up up high heels kind of thing.
And that's very rare because it's probably like maybe 10 times a year that I
will do that.
And other times I'm literally like in a t-shirt.
So yeah,
I'm not like the good spokesperson to ask.
Yes.
Design more ladies,
merch ladies will love it.
But I'm like the worst person.
I'm releasing ladies polo this week.'m like the worst person i'm releasing like ladies
polo this week literally like i was just not wear any of it um and then the other thing i want to
say and end with is um thank you for having me on the show i'll be back every tuesday uh so i'm
excited to be here which is really nice it's been a while it's been a crazy insane year so this is this is a very nice like
a nice thing to start just pre and then continue uh into into the new year so i appreciate you
having me and we'll see what other fun things we can come up with pleasure is all mine really
enjoyed the conversation grateful that you're taking time out of your busy schedule just to
spend it with us sorry for taking you at least 24 minutes longer than we planned, but greatly appreciate it.
And yeah, really looking forward to our Tuesdays.
Yeah, see you next week.
Have a great one. Mosher, if you want to get in here real quick,
go ahead and then we'll send everyone off
into their Tuesday.
Guys, I'm pretty sure Pappy just said everyone
in the audience gets free t-shirts.
Did I hear that correctly
or am I hearing things?
Yeah, listen, we'll find a way to get it done.
Everyone in the audience at NFT NYC event.
Send the bills to me.
I'll pay them.
No, I think it's a really interesting conversation about merchandise
because it's something that I've had like a evolutionary learning lesson on
and like the crossover into collectibles.
We've been talking about it regularly on my show
and I still haven't got it, to be honest with you. I'm still understanding like the crossover into collectibles we've been talking about it regularly on my show and i still haven't got it to be honest with you i'm still understanding
like the aspect of collectibles the aspect of merchandise the crossovers there and then
like you know i haven't got to this stage yet where it comes to like if i see someone walking
down the road representing a web-free brand i would absolutely absolutely lose my mind. And I'm yet to see that other than
at like specific events. Right. And I think that's quite a meaningful milestone, but I think in
between those phases, I think I completely understand where, you know, when you look at the
web-free trajectory and landscape where we're at right now, it really does make sense for
web-free brands to like open up that avenue for people to like socially signal the brand that
they that they love and i think there's this aspect of like you get to actually you know
because there's the intangibility of like web free you can't actually hold any like you you know you
can buy nfts or web free assets you don't necessarily have like physical aspects to them
so like being able to have you know handle the collectible the merchandise in you know have them
in your hand as david Horreff would say,
is quite an important aspect of things.
And I think obviously it opens up an income stream
for these web-free brands to sort of continue to thrive.
And I think above and beyond that,
it seems also that with the collectible aspect of it,
I don't know whether you guys have sort of touched upon it,
is that nostalgia is a business model right now that we're seeing.
I mean, if you look at, you know, fanatics and whatnot on this, that,
and the other, which again, I'm still trying to understand.
It does seem to be that, you know, front running the narrative of,
you know, we're going to release something now with the prospect of it
potentially being collectible and desirable in the future.
It's quite a compelling offering.
So I really find it fascinating.
I really, I just find it really interesting.
So I'm very grateful for you bringing up the subject. And I, I appreciate Chris,
your after sales ethos of like chasing around worldwide returns, because I remember when you,
you launched your board shorts and we did that show where, you know, we were sort of asking
questions about it, about avenues and stuff like that. And you were like, yeah, I'm a hundred
percent in. So yeah, I appreciate you for that as well mate yeah nope um appreciate the kind words and um it's still part of the journey right that's it's
i think the overarching point is there are people here in this space bad bad is a good example of
ones that von fronten my friend over at bonga granted scaling outside of this outside of crypto
outside of web3 but there's a lot of people here.
James Costa, Clubhouse Archives, they've spent decades in the apparel business, in the fashion business.
And you don't have to do it all yourself.
You don't need to have 100% of the pie.
Partner up with people, especially if you're doing, if it's not your core competency. If you're building a merch or apparel or streetwear brand, that's one thing.
But if you're looking to do a one-off drop, you don't have to go out at it
yourself. There's a lot of people here that would be glad to work with you and support you. And
you probably pick up some new eyeballs as a result as well. So I saw proof out of DJM flew up.
I got like 30 seconds and I do have to shut down. Any quick comments?
Nothing related to this at all. I just wanted to jump up here and farm you can send me
my invoice to my uh to my dm thanks for allowing me up cap it's always a pleasure have a good one
respect uh respect the cloud farming uh appreciate everyone joining in today two last takeaways i
pinned up top actually there's a couple of of actionable items one is if you scroll a little bit, you'll see a post from Kane
from Infinex.
Go double check.
I wasn't aware. I had some
crates to go claim.
They went broad on CT, called
the CT Mafia, kind of like if you've got a Monad card,
you probably could go claim some Infinex crates.
That's pinned up top. Make sure you get the correct
link and see
if you've got some crates available for you there.
Infinex should be a pretty decent TGE if I were to guess.
Also from Simple Farmer, if you hold Yuga assets, it looks like you can get some mocha.
So some actual utility.
If I'm going to beat these NFT brands up for not driving value and access or value accrual, driving perks to their holders and utility.
I need to at least give credit where it's due.
And it may be $7.
It might be $700.
I have no idea,
but there's a couple of actions you could take there.
If you're either on CT or holding you assets.
And then last but not least,
the homework for all of you,
two reminders up top.
The carousel died on us, so we can't do that anymore.
But Wednesday and Thursday shows I'm really excited about.
Big guest tomorrow.
Really excited to bring on someone who's building a publicly traded business, revolutionizing housing, and now in the crypto space, building on chain.
And last but not least, big guest on Thursday as well.
Both those are pinned up top.
We'd appreciate the miners. We'll get you out of here. Thanks for everyone who joined. Appreciate
what I had in the conversation and special thanks to outer and co-hosting and pulling together all
this merch stuff. I enjoyed the trip down memory lane. Hope you did as well. And as Steve would
say, hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful day, everyone. Thanks for tuning into coffee
with Captain powered by a point. we hope you enjoyed the show and
remember nothing we discussed today is financial advice until next time keep exploring stay curious
and we'll see you soon have a great day welcome to the future Thank you.
Insights
Project L
Token L
P
