HODL Podcast Episode 17

‍HODL Podcast Episode 17 was originally published on October 17, 2023.

Join Drew, Joel, and Ariana from the Hold On for Dear Life Podcast. In the episode, they discuss the new OpenSea Studio, Boss Beauties acquiring BFF, Gutter Cat Gang’s new owner, Farcaster, Pudgy Penguin toys, and their opinions on the FTX trial.

Episode Rundown:

OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, launched OpenSea Studio. It’s an easy way for creators to launch and manage digital art projects and collectibles without using code.
Boss Beauties announced their acquisition of BFF. Both brands share a similar audience and the same mission of onboarding minorities into web3 spaces.
Noah (@mauloadream), an activist investor, announced that he purchased Gutter Lab’s assets — he’s now the new owner of Gutter Cat Gang.
Farcaster is now open to everyone — users no longer need an invite code to join!
Pudgy Penguins has seen major success selling toys on Amazon and has now entered the physical marketplace — their toys are sold at 2,000 Walmart locations.
FTX founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is on trial — bad players give web3 a bad wrap in the media.

About Holder

Holder is a CRM and marketing automation platform for web3 brands and creators. They help businesses engage and communicate with their customers on the blockchain. With Holder, companies can manage customer data, track user engagement and automate marketing processes. For more information visit our website.

Podcast Transcript

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Read the Full Podcast Transcript Below:

Welcome back everybody to the hold on for a dear life podcast. This is episode 17 brought to you by the team here at Holder. If you aren't familiar, we are a web through CRM and messaging platform. Today I am joined by Joel Moser who leads our engineering team back from paternity leave .

And then we also have Ariana Layton, our marketing coordinator joining us today on the podcast. So thanks both for joining us. We've got a lot of news and updates to cover. It's been a couple of weeks Since we had our last podcast recording, but then also just a lot of news lately in this space.

To start us off today, we're going to talk about OpenSea, which is one of the largest NFT marketplaces in the industry. They recently launched the beginning of October. OpenSea Studio, which OpenSea Studio is their new no code hub for minting and launch pages and kind of contract creation.

they've been doing their like OpenSea, I think it was called OpenSea Drops. It was like the original product around a lot of this. And this is just kind of expanding upon that to have an entire set of tools. , this is starting to kind of bleed into a little bit of what manifold and Zora and some others with no code contract builders have built over the years. It just see them get into the space.

And, you know, essentially it just facilitates the entire launch process for any NFT drop and making it so anyone can come and, you know, create their own allow list create the NFT itself and mint them. They have various integrations of payment methods too, so it's easy to collect payment via credit card or let somebody mint with ETH across a number of different blockchains.

So but it's really interesting just to kind of see OpenSea move, more and more into the space. They were one of the first to actually to have a contract where anybody could come and mint an NFT on their contract.

This was their OpenSea what do they call it? Shared storefront. Yep. Where like they would let anybody come and you can mint an NFT on it. It was all within one NFT contract, which I think now, you know, early on it was super innovative, but now kind of, it's caused lots of challenges or problems in the space.

Because of that, people that launched collections on there, they've migrated off. So basically this is just taking that to kind the nth degree in terms of how to help artists and project collectors launch on OpenSea. So I don't know, open it up to both of you, kind of any thoughts, kind of seeing OpenSea launch this or just around where OpenSea is heading and their overarching kind of product suite, essentially they're breaking into.

All right. My first thought is this is a logical transition for them. I'm kind of surprised they didn't do it sooner which, I mean, yeah, they had the open, the shared storefront, but this is probably where they wanted it to be, but it was just, they prioritize other things probably from monetary reasons.

I mean, they're at. the number one marketplace. So, and then also with blur and so many other marketplaces coming out for their lunch, you know, they had to at least protect that before they innovated in other spaces because this is not directly the same target market necessarily because so much more it was collectors.

This helps them enter a different vertical basically. And it opens up another kind of revenue stream for them.

I do think to your point, Joel, this opens up another revenue stream for them around being able to take a portion of, you know, the mint which I'm assuming they are taking kind of a fee. I don't know exactly what that fee is, but taking a fee on the mint, which opens up another portion, but I think also it just kind of starts to build out.

They have two very different sides of their business. And like persona is really ICPs. And one is the like professional trader, which is for open seat pro. This is more focused on the analytics. This is the Bloomberg terminal, you know what I mean? For a trader. And then all of these kinds of tools, like someone who is day trading NFTs and using open seat pro probably has no desire or need or interest in more of the marketing forward side of things around the OpenSea studio and kind of that creator platform. And so I think you're seeing more of. the casual collector market, I would call it, you know, like you, like you mentioned, the casual versus professional. I think that's just, you know, that's their businesses.

How do we break across both those lines and build out an audience there? It's just exciting to see more tools being built for creators, especially in this realm.

That's not just about like, how do I get a quick buck, but it's more around how do I put forth you know, the best brand persona and how do I make it open and accessible for everyone? quite frankly OpenSea still has the best marketplace, the best liquidity, the best volume. An activity and so it's great to have it all integrated of I can, you know, versus a manifold or Zora.

I can mint my contract, create my allow list, get my leads, everything, on OpenSea and then just goes funnel straight into the marketplace. And they make it super easy. , I think it's a good move. It's interesting and, and good for the ecosystem as well as a whole.

In other NFT news, we've had a couple of big updates or semi big updates across the came full of projects over the last couple of weeks.

One is that the NFT project boss beauties is acquiring BFF.

Both of these kind of in particular BFF especially their mission was kind of more around how we make web three, more inclusive, more accessible specifically to women and girls, boss beauties, you know, has a very similar mandate though. Kind of BFF just started as this community and podcast and things like that, where like boss beauties has started as a, as an NFT collection.

So I think it's really unique and interesting to see them kind of combined forces. Supercharged their efforts around that front and kind of share this similar mission, we could have looked, but in Holder I've seen like the overlap between Boss Beauties and BFF, but like probably very similar collectors anyway.

The other. News and kind of NFT land is that gutter cat gang, which is another kind of semi, I don't know, tier two, call it NFT project has a new owner. So very similar to kind of the history of pudgy penguins, very prominent collector essentially kind of put up an offer to buy the collection. This individual Noah.

Put up 500 K of his personal capital into this newly formed LLC is going to purchase a gutter cat gang. And so he's been part of the community for every year. You know, he has a proposal for, this is what I want to focus on with the brand and he is the NFT version of an activist investor essentially.

So regardless, maybe just around kind of these updates, I'm curious kind of both of you around seeing some consolidation in the NFT world. I think. It's not a surprise to me as probably lots of projects are struggling and looking for exit paths and not just continuing down this road, especially as royalties and everything have just fallen off a cliff and a lot of brands taking, unique and different directions.

But this is only the beginning that we'll see. With a lot of projects brands and NFTs over the next 12 to 18 months, even.

Yeah. It's interesting to see some of the smaller players consolidated a little bit. Cause I mean, you had Yuga by CryptoPunks and you know, all of that. So it's interesting to see some of the non.

Top 10 start to change a little bit. It'd be interesting to see how the ecosystems in hopefully interesting and seamless ways. I mean, yeah, you can always see the overlap of who owns what. But I think how to reward people who own both is kind of an interesting mechanism.

You could already do that, but it's way more, I don't know, interesting or maybe more powerful if that's from the same. Team and not like two teams collaborating together. It's just a little bit more focused rather than just the pure collaboration sometimes can. Just not quite work exactly the way, you know, one team wanted it over the other.

So I think having it all under one roof starts to make things interesting. But also, it does seem like the Web3 world has always been about decentralization. Anybody can do. their own thing. So honestly, just to use the actual word centralization of projects almost feels like counterintuitive to the way the web three has been going with everything being decentralized, but also probably more in line with the way the markets really work in the way that the rest of the world operates where there are centralized players and, companies do eventually dissolve into others you get acquired and bigger companies enter different markets.

So it's definitely interesting. And basically buying innovation companies kind of, so. I totally agree. And I think it's interesting that head to your point, the juxtaposition between like the NFT projects that are say doing well and the, centralization happening. Pudgy Fingers is a great example.

you know what I mean? Luca Nets is running that company. There is no DAO like, and granted, like he does a good job of being community first and oriented and yada and all of that, which like, I'm sure is all very sincere to, but if this was purely decentralized, we would not operate in that realm.

And so it's interesting. Yeah. That you know, I don't know this case, but did gutter cat gang or BFF, to contrast this a little bit with the nouns down for, you know what I mean? Very decentralized, all open. There was a whole vote. They got to choose.

Every individual had their own, say in it. I don't know if the BFF community did a vote and all these things. And not that that's, good or bad or anything, but it is just interesting to see All of this experiment, our last, two or three years play out.

I think there's a difference between community owned and community driven.

Yeah. I and you don't have to be community owned, to care about your community or have a strong community. I think. Yep. And I think some of the best brands like web two native, have been around for 20 years, the best brands in the world are community driven.

They our customer driven or whatever you want to call it. They are very in tune with what their customers want. And, you know, I mean, pretty much every brand in the world is famous for putting out something that their community was like, what is this?

This is garbage. So, you know, that's always going to happen. But that doesn't mean you also don't put out something that they're completely not expecting and it blows them out of the water. You know, it just blows them away and they're just amazed by it. Right. Cause you're going to innovate and sometimes innovation is going to go well and sometimes it's not some of the best ones, they make decisions even if they're thinking. about their community first. That doesn't mean that they're like only letting the community make the decisions.

So totally. And I think I think broadly too, I wasn't going to necessarily bring this up cause this is kind of a sidebar I hate it when people cover like layoffs and things like that.

In the news, you know, is that really like newsworthy necessarily? So I don't want to like bring something to talk about as like news, but the same like week we also saw. Some downsizing, at least at some of the major NFT brands that you go labs and some others even too, that I don't think we're like publicized.

But it's just interesting that like right now, like we were definitely in a period of Changing strategy, not that the business was struggling or anything, it was just like, we're right sizing or we're you guys, their statement was around, you know, reconfiguring the company around what are we best at and kind of where are we going to go forward and who are we going to partner with on certain kind of initiatives specifically on the gaming side.

But it's really interesting just to see like broadly in the industry. Everyone's kind of making moves right now. And like, this is really a time to kind of be very strategic around, what is your long term goals for the company? I think this is just in line where it happens probably to fall where a lot of companies are starting to run out of runway they're unable to raise funding, you know, and all of this is just kind of like happening all at once for a lot of these companies.

And so they're kind of looking to, different options for how do we keep our business going?

I think with that, Boss Beauty's acquiring BFF, gives them an opportunity to have a bigger impact when people partner with them they have a bigger audience and also they have a very specific audience. that was a strategic move and I think they'll start getting some partners with that it should be happens.

Yeah. Boss Beauty's has done a great job too, around just partnerships to date. Like I think, you know, they were one of the first to really lean in with Barbie drop. They've done a handful of other kinds of partnerships too, with like major traditional consumer brands. I think you're totally right.

And that would be a big opportunity for them going forward to just continue to, to double down in that arena. And who knows what one of the other headlines, to talk about too, or what's next, but in the NFT world specifically, this was, literally the day after we record our last podcast, we didn't get to talk about it.

We talk about pudgy penguins oftentimes when T Pain is here on the podcast with us. But pudgy penguins on September 26th announced that over 2000 Walmart stores around the country are now carrying their pudgy toys. So. 16 different types of Pudgy toys. They originally launched on Amazon in May.

They've had, incredible success on Amazon. now they are officially in Walmart stores. And so just back to NFT projects pivoting and finding different verticals. I think this world of, you know, Pudgy is going all down on this route of how do we Have a physical good and presence they're kind of marrying that through their NFTs that you can claim alongside some of these and get into their kind of immersive world called pudgy world.

But just another note around NFT brands evolving and this landscape currently.

It's really cool watching brands take their digital audience and then move into the physical marketplace then also seeing new people come in from that. what do you think their target audience is with the pudgy penguin toys?

I don't feel like I really know. I think it's definitely a younger demographic and audience, but I think there are starting to, it's interesting, like they're starting to kind of separate their NFT audience with

how we want to make money audience. The NFT are like their, their bankers in the, business corporate side of it where then like, but where we make money is like selling toys to kids. And, it could be a really interesting, you know, do they become the next Mattel or something like that?

And like, you know, that's what they're trying to be. But also , this is just Luca's background, he's created consumer products and toys like that in the past. And has a deep econ background has gotten toys into Walmart in the past. So I think he's just running the playbook.

He knows, you know, of how do I make money with IP. it's really interesting. I don't know who they're really trying to target. how many of the people buying the toys are just like pudgy penguins fans anyway. And like versus how many people think they're a unique toy that is kind of, I would say still to be determined.

I'm sure they don't even really care.

I mean, like them being kind of like cute and fun, you know, just adds to it. You know, some kids see them. and it gets them interested in just the ecosystem. I mean, especially if you're trying to build different brand building, separate revenue streams, right? Like, you know, all of that, I don't think they probably care at this moment in time, you know, at a certain point, the more eyes, the better a certain point, you know, they'll want to probably hone in on a specific target.

But if, you know, if you, if you're getting your product into Walmart, you don't really care.

Because anyone and everyone is going to see it. That's one of the points of Walmart. They were on Amazon before too. So you got all the people that only do online shopping. You got all the people who only shop at Walmart, if you're in all of those, you're just trying to get eyeballs.

So. Yeah, I do think Walmart takes it a whole different level where like Amazon, like I could have argued they're just selling toys to their existing audience and like that will be tapped out at some point, you know, but like going into Walmart, like this is, a much different audience than like, Where the digital Amazon audience could have just been consumed for the most part by raving fans of pudgy penguins NFT.

I think this is interesting to see like how successful it is because it is just a very broad consumer audience.

I was saying that like being in Amazon and Walmart is like you have like all of the consumers just about.

You can reach anyone. Yeah. I mean, by having the, both of them, I mean, cause my cousin was saying like, yeah, my demographic shops, Amazon two day delivery.

I want it now. I don't want to have to go to the store. That's what she was telling me. So I, was just using that as my backing data and she's right. Like, she's like, I just want free shipping. Like ship it to my house. I want it there in two days, you know or one day, I guess now.

And so I was like, you, get that demographic, you get all of those parents who their kids see something or whatever. And you know, they want it and you can have it in two days now. And then you have, you know, all of the people going into Walmart. You just have that broad demographic.

It's perfect timing for holiday season too. And yeah, I hope they release their numbers. They've been, you know, it's a NFT project. So all their data is non chain to date. And so this will be the first kind of data that's not on chain. And I hope to see them be. As transparent with that data as they can, but maybe more so than any other company even I think it'd be really interesting.

One other major update, I'd say in kind of the web three ecosystem over the last week Forecaster is now officially open to everyone. So Forecaster, if you're unfamiliar. Is a web three decentralized social network. And to date you had to be invited. Dan Romero, their founder is a I don't know, pseudo celebrity.

Founder, engineer, technologist and so, you know, him building this with their early team, got a lot of attention early on. They're backed by a 16 Z crypto and a lot of other really major venture firms. But I'd say they've been incredibly measured in their approach to growth.

Like they've only had. I don't know, a few thousand users really to date and that's because it was very kind of closed ecosystem. But the communities that they built there, I feel like has been phenomenal. Like I've loved Forecaster. it's a lot of engineers and nerds really, you know, interested in blockchain technology and things like that.

And they've kind of branched out over time. But and the, the conversations you see, they're just very. Genuine, it's kind of removed a lot of the fluff, at least that you're seeing on, on X, AKA Twitter today. But anyway, the whole idea though, I think this is kind of more interesting and cool is over the last couple of weeks now they're sufficiently decentralized.

And so anyone can sign up, they're charging a small fee to sign up. So there's like a 5 a year, fee. to use forecaster. Warpcaster is the public app that the Forecaster team created as kind of an example app. I think you pay 10 to use Warpcaster.

So it's kind of interesting too, to see just like, what is the demand, but mostly it kind of covers. Storage space. it's interesting that they have this model where at the beginning everyone is paying to be on the network where, you know, we've always grown up with social media platforms are free.

And so anyway, I think this will be really interesting to see how it continues to evolve and grow and see where growth from here takes it.

Yeah. It's cool that they finally basically like kind of fully have a platform open. Oh yeah. And now it's like full like dune dashboards. You can see everything. It's, it's really interesting to see. I think like there's a new app called flink, flink. fyi. It is more people signed up for Flink than for Warpcaster, which is really cool just to see.

And it's more in the style of like a Reddit style, kind of like from a design perspective. So it's just interesting to see , people start to pick how they like to engage on the protocol even too, which is really, really fun.

So is their main audience, you said developers, even with it open to everyone now, do you think it will still?

You know, I think it'll be, you know, it's like any platform, it'll be open and pretty. There'll be pockets of it where your, your feed and your graph and your channels you subscribe to are going to be, you know, tailored for you, but I think it's just that's a lot of what their early, you know, audience and connections and network were.

And so that's where it's a lot of, you know just Ethereum developers and things like that, that are part of the, platform. So yeah, I don't think so. I think it's just like where they've built a pretty good initial user base to span out from, yeah, being open definitely really opens the door for botters and spammers. So it'll be interesting to see how that kind of goes from here on out. I mean, maybe the monetary investment will. increase that barrier enough to reduce the overall, but you know, five bucks is really not that much.

So Let me look here. So looking at the latest, Dune dashboards, it looks like Forecaster IDs registered at 188, 000. But Broadcaster protocol wide metrics connected addresses is 10, 350. So I think they're definitely getting some bot traffic, and at least like ID registrations,

I haven't been on Forecaster yet, but I'm excited to get in there and see what creators and brands are doing and how they're building communities through the social platform.

Yeah, it's very, interesting too, because I have a brand account, like we're at Holder on Forecaster, but it's very non marketing brand.

Yeah, most accounts are not, in that way at all. More early Twitter days, I would say before it turned into kind of a marketing engine. And I think it's because there's no advertising, and any client can build their own advertising engine on top of it, you know, if they want to and just leverage the data in a more unique way that, you know, if we gain users, then we can monetize that user base if they don't want to, charge people to use it.

And maybe there's, , it's worth 5 or whatever to not use Warpcast or use a version or like I'm going to get fed ads or whatever, but so far nobody's create like a platform , that can do that or has done that at scale. We'll, see where it goes from here, but if you're in the web three space, like it's definitely worth creating an account, joining, just understanding kind of how they're building their product, how they're building their community.

What does kind of decentralized social look like? Yeah. I think it's important for, for the ecosystem as a whole.

One thing that I've just, I don't know, maybe came to the realization a little bit over this weekend, but just kind of think is cool. The, the fact that these platforms, you know, you can sign up for all of these different call it apps, applications, whatever websites.

Once I don't have to do anything. I sent up once and now I can log into 20 different websites because they're all just connected to the platform. I just think that user experience is really nice. I don't have to remember 15 different passwords. I have to remember one because it's one platform. And there's more to that.

I mean, sure, there's all these OAuth providers sign in with Google, sign in with Facebook, sign in with all of those. It's like, yeah, but there's like so much in those terms and conditions of like data that they're sharing across and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like a whole thing. And, and like, there's on, there's a complicated protocols on top of that.

Anyway, it's really nice to just have one database sign in. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely makes a from like an attack vector standpoint for security. it gives a single point of failure for a whole bunch of apps at the same time. But given the whole like security oriented nature of web three and blockchain technology is what's kind of nice about it is you don't generally have to worry about that nearly as much as long as it didn't make a mistake that's something that I think is really interesting with some of these platforms. That I'm, developing a new appreciation for almost in the way of like, can I just build something on the platform and not use most of it other than the login mechanism just to not have to manage the user base?

And I have to like make people sign up , for a different account. And like all that, it's like, you're already signed up for this account, you know, especially if you're in, I don't know, I just think it's a kind of an interesting thing. It's the same thing with like XMTP. I, you know, I can sign up for XMTP once I can use all these different interoperable inboxes.

Yeah. And that was one of the, one of the early things that more caster forecaster bill was signing with Forecaster. And not just like sign into other client providers, but like other places where you'd want to use that data or that, that ecosystem, I'd also highly recommend, I think it's really interesting if you're like a product person anyway from kind of learning perspective, like, but how you recommend like sign up for multiple clients, like sign up for Warpcaster, download the Warpcaster app. I then went to and signed up for Flink and it was really interesting, like to connect my Farcaster account to Flink.

I already have Farcaster accounts where I created it, et cetera. Like all the gas has already been paid. Cause I did it before, you know, they started charging, but I still had a 1 fee to connect Flink to my. account and my existing, you know, account and it was to cover gas fees, but I paid it via Apple on my phone through the Warfcaster app.

And it's just like this idea that like all of that costs, even like to OAuth and to Twitter or whatever, like that costs money somewhere down the line, you know what I mean? But I think as like individuals, like in the digital world on the internet, there are so many like quote unquote free things and we kind of forget that there's no such thing as a free lunch.

And so I think it's interesting where like this is kind of putting it, it's like if I'm paying like a 1 fee, like I'm thinking about like, Oh yeah, there is something happening here and it's a value to me. You know what I mean? So I think it's like putting value back on like, Actual applications and what's happening in the back end and helping people like better understand all of that too, which I think is really interesting.

And so anyway, I would highly recommend people go through just like that experience. Cause it's just kind of a good, I don't know, UX to think about what is, what does a UX of the future where like everything has a cost because everything actually has an inherent value, look like. Yeah.

The contrast there is that in a decentralized manner, like, People are running the network for you, so you are paying them to utilize the network with a lot of centralized applications, Twitter, all these big conglomerates they've written off the cost of allowing people to sign up for free because they make enough money off the data that they get from you when you sign up or.

They make enough money that they think they're providing enough value in their platform that you're going to sign up and you're going to stay long enough that you're eventually going to pay. It's like, they've decided that that value is worth it to, you know, allow you to sign up for free and whatever that cost is.

But when it's decentralized, somebody's got to pay that cost. Yeah. Who runs the bill? I mean, like Ethereum, the network can't front the bill. I'm the one running the node. That costs me money. But there has to be some incentive for me to do it. And the incentive is when people execute code on the network that, you know, in a roundabout way, utilizes my machine, even though technically it doesn't, because it's a hot thing, whatever, way too technical to go too deep into that.

But basically like when it uses , the code that I'm running on my machine, I get paid. It's kind of what it boils down to. It's not exactly how it works, but close enough. Yeah. So that, you know, that, that's, what's just kind of really interesting is that it's now like the community and human serving humans rather than like this whole business and whatnot, getting in the way of human serving humans.

It's, I don't know, it's such a weird nuance, but there's something to it. Yeah. And this is just, it kind of brings me back to like maybe it's the like. I don't know if it's like eternal optimist in me or it's like delusion. I don't know. But in that, like, this is inevitable, you know what I mean? When I think about what we're building at Holder, when I think about web three technology, the ecosystem, the culture of it, The economy structure, like it is a better way.

And I just feel like it is inevitable that we will get to a place where that is how technology ecosystems interact, you know which I think is, is. That's what excites me about a lot of this for our final maybe news headline here. I don't know if anybody will have anything necessarily mind blowing at all to share about this, but I feel like we , can't get through a whole podcast without kind of stating the obvious that like, I think one of the biggest headlines and all of crypto right now is Sam Bankman Freed's trial that is going on.

In the state of New York. And so he is front of a jury trial and yeah, they're taking the prosecution testimony right now. So today or Friday, I think was the block five CEO before that was the CEO of Alameda trading. Sam's former girlfriend and their CEO. And so it's just been really interesting.

I've been reading, a lot of the trial feedback. And I would just say it's kind of nuts just how much money a that FTX had and just like the lack of safeguards and oversight when you have. That much money. And I don't really know if I have much of a good recap on it, but Ariana, you put some good notes in here, I think you're right in that, like in general, in the web three space, kind of bad actors like SBF and FTX kind of give the ecosystem a pretty bad rap, but really there was not a Bug or anything malicious in any smart contractor in any like blockchain technology that caused FTX to happen.

It was, you know, people and technically it was all on their balance sheets in fraudulent accounting that they were doing and none of it was on a blockchain or, you know, transparent or immutable in any way. It's just, I think kind of gives more value to the actual technology itself.

That If they were using a blockchain for all of this Everyone would have seen it and it would probably not have happened because people would have been like, Hey, why is money being transferred out of customer accounts and into this account? And there's, lots of, of issues there. But anyway, I feel like we couldn't go without mentioning that because it's such a big headline these days happening in our world anything from either of you around kind of Thoughts on FTX or the trial or anything that's like stuck out to you over the last couple of weeks

Yeah I think just overall the worst part about it is that it's bringing web 3 into the headlines when again It's not the technology that caused this problem.

It's just a bad player who did really there can be bad players anywhere. It's disappointing that it's putting web three in a bad light across all of the media, but I think people will start understanding blockchain more and possibly be good for the future of it.

I don't have much to add, but my one thought is to your point about like bad press. And you know, they always say like, you know, no press is bad, like any press is good, whatever. But I think right now when AI is really having kind of a heyday as like the, in being in the spotlight. You know, and I'm sure there will be a time when it has some sort of negative thing that comes down because like every trend seems to kind of like have a, an up and a down. The downside is that, you know, as far as trends go, web three was replaced with AI.

And then how with web three kind of being negative or having some negative press. It just kind of puts AI just like a little higher up. Because I think from just from an innovation standpoint, they're both still new enough. Web three , it wasn't called that at the time, but blockchain technology, you know, has been around for over a decade, you know, I mean, AI has been around longer than that.

Ironically, it just didn't have quite the level of sophistication that it does now. And people were dreaming about AI back in the seventies. So you know, sci fi was way ahead of the curve on that. Which I think we've discussed before. It's like, and what's interesting about web three is that I can't point to a sci fi movie back from the past that really showcases.

Web three much. And I think that's still one of the hard parts that people don't understand.

Yeah. I totally agree. One of the other things that kind of baffles me with this is like it just remembering that , this is a jury trial and like the testimony of all these people. https: otter. ai This is like, it is what they did had nothing to do with blockchain technology in any way.

You know what I mean? And like, this is just very sophisticated, financial fraud in many ways, you know what I mean? And just like what the company does is very sophisticated, FinTech products, you know what I mean? So like, also like nothing related to blockchain, like it's all just like, you know, all of their lending and then things like that.

And I'm just like, man, you have to get , you know, 12 jurors of, , your peers or whatever, just like random New York citizens. The like a understand this stuff to be able to make a call of whether his person's guilty or not. Anyway, I'm just kind of thinking about that quite often as I read updates.

I mean, part of that is so much of this would not have happened if you had to be like registered with the SEC, but because there was a lack of understanding of what regulations were in place around all of this technology. This happens and now it's complicated. Whereas if you had to be regulated, you had to be registered with the sec, you had to, whatever.

If any of that was in place, this is like literally cut and dry. There's a playbook. They literally run the playbook of this is how you know, you're going to get fined this much. I mean, you just like run through the steps of this is what happens when this happens, but because there wasn't any regulation still basically isn't.

Yeah. And it drove them to, it's now complicated. So also like other countries, you know what I mean, to incorporate the business and things like that, which I think is also like, I've talked about this probably before here, but like that should be the last thing that we want because driving companies to places where, you know, there's no regulations. We just need clear regulations in the U S so that, you know, what I doing is above board or not above board.

And so then individual consumers, you know, are the ones making the choice with their dollars of like, So I want to work with a company that's based in the U. S. because I know I can get my money back or I know that they're, you know, sec regulated. And so if something bad happens, you know what I mean?

Or whatever it is, but like there's regulations and safeguards, et cetera, where like doing business with a company, you know, not based in the U S or whatever, there's not quite as much those standards where today the option is you just do business predominantly in less like other than Coinbase, you know, with companies that are more or less, you know, might not have entities in other countries and things like that.

But yeah. And to be very clear, I'm not even saying that, like, we need crazy amounts of regulation or we don't, or whatever. Like, I'm not even saying one opinion or the other. It's just that to your point, Drew, that like, it not being about the technology and the fact that this is just complicated.

Financial fraud. It's like normal financial fraud would have been very easy. Like they would have unraveled this very easily. And like the playbook would have been cut and dry on how this goes and plays out. But because of all this technology in place that we don't have regulation around, it got complicated.

That's what, at least that's what it seems like regardless of whether or not we need crazy regulation or what that should be, I think is irrelevant. It's just the fact that there was.

Yeah. I'll also just highlight like FDX was founded in May of 2019. So like this all just exploded to like, think of going, you know, from zero to, you know, tens of billions of dollars in the matter of like 24 months or something is also just insane.

So like, I do understand that in itself is kind of very. Difficult the like company infrastructure that they had with the sophistication and complexity and just like, honestly, like it was harder to probably manage all of that weird way that it was all configured.

And to do that in two years, yeah, I just think lots of contributing factors, I guess, , and just growing that fast, but still , it is obviously terrible what happened and it'll be interesting to see where the court and the jury kind of lands also typically I would have said probably in most cases, like someone would have not bled, not guilty, you know what I mean?

Or like, would have settled at least before it, especially in these kinds of crimes. You know, usually they settle before you go to court, but which is what two of the, , defendants did. But we'll see. Anyway, I'm not a legal expert by any means, but it's just, you know the talk of the town and kind of hard to, to get away from.

And I've been reading a lot of like Carly Riley over price jpeg, there's a handful of other folks as well, and Axios cryptos was doing a really good job of like keeping up with it. So those are just ones that I read that are always interesting . So I watched a lot of suits, so, you know, yeah, exactly, legal stuff. No, exactly. Well, with that, I'm going to sign off for us here on this episode of hold on for dear life podcast.

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