HODL Podcast Episode 6 was originally published on February 22, 2023.
Join Drew, Skyler, and Joel with special guest Chris Sotraidis as they talk VV Checks, Doodles 2, Bitcoin NFTs, and what it takes to be a brand moving into web3. Chris has a background in as a technical writer, is the co-founder of Immutable Labs, and is an expert on brand engagement, helping some of the world’s largest brands like Budweiser launch web3 campaigns.
Episode Rundown
- The latest on Jack Butcher's VV Check's and Opepen NFT success.
- The launch of Doodles 2 and acquisition of a major animation studio, Golden Wolf.
- Bitcoin NFTs. What's an Ordinal? How can an NFT be on Bitcoin? What will come next?
- Brands are continuing to move into web3. What does it take to be successful?
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
Read the Full Podcast Transcript Below:
Welcome everyone back to the Hold on for Dear Life podcast. This is a weekly-ish podcast from the team here at Holder, sharing headlines and opinions on happenings across the wide world of web3. If you're familiar with Holder, we are a web3 CRM and marketing automation platform. All of the stuff we say in this podcast obviously is not financial advice and do your own research, but these are just headlines and news that we all are interested in as consumers and as a business, and we love getting to talk about.
What's happening in our industry. And today we have a very special guest and friend of ours, Chrises, joining us. So welcome Chris. Thanks so much for joining us.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.
And by way of intro a little bit I'll share Chris and I and us, cuz I first met through Jump DAO actually, which is a web3 DAO of marketers and a lot of us just traditional marketers that have gone down the web3 rabbit hole.
And so shout out to jump. But Chris and I have had a number of conversations and he's given us tons of really great product feedback over the last, 9, 6, 9 months or so that we've been building Holder. And so Chris has a deep background in web3 project management and writing. He is a technical writer in his day job, but also has worked at some of the world's largest brands like Budweiser, helping them launch their web pre campaigns and writes a newsletter spatial awareness along with his own podcast.
And so just an incredible thought leader and mind around web3 and brands and this kind of intersection that we're seeing across really not just even web3 even it. VR and the future of the internet. And so I thought it would be incredible to have Chris join us for this week's episode and just share some of his opinions and thoughts on where we are in the world of web3.
Welcome Chris. Thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks so much. Yeah, thanks for having me. Great intro.
Yeah. It's always weird hearing someone introduce you. I feel like in, in it never gets normal.
Yeah, Yeah. It's never gonna be normal. Yeah. Yeah. Let's jump right into some of the big headlines that we have.
One is, we've talked a little bit about VV checks and Jack Butcher and this which kind of kicked off the open edition Meta. And we talked more around like open additions and things like that in a previous podcast. But VV checks we are now in kinda the second iteration of this.
Maybe just to share a quick update on where we are with VV checks and everything that's happened there. Super Bowl Sunday, which was deemed super burn Sunday, was when checks officially disassociated into two different contracts. And so if you had one of the original checks, which are actually.
On opens sea VV originals are the new contract. So if you had one of the classic checks the first contract, you were able to migrate that onto a new contract and burn your old check for a one of, on, one of one on chain artwork, which is a big deal as he's been playing a lot with the metadata around the original kind of artwork and how he uses that as its own kind of form of expression and art and everything.
So this happened on Super Bowl Sunday and you began the process of you could burn, multiple checks to, to whittle it down. So if you had two of the 80 checks, you could burn both of those for a 40 check and ft and eventually down to a one of one, which is really unique. And so you started to see all of these kind of mechanics start to play out people, there's lots of unique things around how the artwork is carried through from one check to another as you burn them, the even down to the ID and just anyway, the kind of after the initial.
Burn. We saw a little bit of the drop off, at least in terms of purchase and price activity among the checks over the last, week or so. And then late last week really, they came roaring back and are back up to over a two week floor. And it's just been really exciting to see some of the new development.
So maybe just I'll open it up to the floor here, just as we've seen checks continue to evolve and visualize value and jack's kind of impression and thumbprint on this. Like, how are all of you thinking around just what's new with checks and why this continues to be an interesting project in the space?
Yeah, I feel like Jack
is the star child of Web three and NFT space right now, especially with art. Everything it feels like he's putting out is just pure gold from the post he's making on Twitter and working with the community actively on this check. The way that he was doing it was he was messing with the metadata.
So he was able to change the art of the NFT that was not yet to be burned. And for those at home who aren't familiar with what burning is, it is essentially exchanging and sending an NFT to a place where it becomes inaccessible in exchange for another NFT. And in this case, you were exchanging the one that he was messing the metadata with, which in this case was the art around it.
So he did everything from pay pays to, I think I'm saying that right, Pepe's. To, I think just recently he did the Facebook logo, which is super meta. Their company name is Meta. This is getting really weird because they just announced, I think yesterday or the day before that they are taking a page out of Elon Musks book and now charging $8 to be verified on Facebook and Instagram, which is totally hilarious.
And I have to imagine has something to do with the fact that now they're coming back and surging, I'd say in price because it really is just all meta. So he went and changed the metadata on the non on chain. NFTs to the Facebook logo made out of checks and it really, I would say is an awesome performance.
And the way he has rolled this out, I had just gotta say, has been excellent. It's really involved all of the community, whether you like what he's doing or you don't, you know what he's doing. And I think that in and of itself is great press for web3 and what this is all about. So really excited for what he's built and I'm curious to see where these all go.
His secondary project, I think it's called O Pepe, open Additions. He has now moved on to messing with the metadata of those. And now that he's doing that, those are ripping as well. So he's having a good time for sure.
Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. It's nice to see. Collections that are really playing with metadata in a different way.
And I think that's what we needed for 2023 was, you're one, you're capturing the zeitgeist through these gamified check marks, and then it's like definitely a nod to Twitter's new meta of purchasing status. So it's like you're gonna make verified status, something you buy, then let's subvert that using NFTs and play off the culture.
So that's what's exciting to me. And I think that, I think the rest of this year we're gonna see a lot more of that, where we're gonna see collections that are a subversion of either mainstream culture or kind of building off of culture. And so the more we can play with metadata and try. New exciting things.
In, in the case of the burn mechanic, something that was definitely different, was inspired by Damien Hearst, the currency. Trying out new mechanics and seeing what works this, plenty of other people could have tried this and it didn't work out, but I think now Jack Butcher's gonna be a name that people will associate with originality in the space, and that's definitely something this year that we needed.
So excited to see where it goes. Yeah, I'd love to see more innovation and more innovation in the space is always better, but the thing that is interesting to me is that he did end up putting part of it, or at least part of this on chain. And as we've discussed previously, I'm a little bit of a non-chain maxi just because I don't know I'm more into that than any, a lot of the off chain IPFs stuff.
So that's that's one of the things that I think is interesting to me is that he's starting to play a lot with that. And actually in some of the communities that I'm in, he's. He has purchased some of the art of those on chain communities, and so everyone's like waiting for one of those to rip just because Jack is in that.
So he's creating I think you basically what you, and both you Skylar and Chris both said of he's creating a name for himself in this space and people are starting to really follow what he's doing, so it's gonna get interesting. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I I was reading an interview actually with him this morning.
They came out over the weekend in a newsletter called The Metaverse List, which metaverse dot Gigi actually puts out and they're incredible. So small plug for them. But one of the things I just thought I'd quote it here is so the Craig, the inter interviewer asks, it feels like a dirty secret in Web three, that despite claims of immutability, you can change the metadata of a lot of NFTs.
Do you think that's a bug or a feature? And I think that this is really just fun cuz Jack said, honestly, I think it's a feature if it's part of the philosophy or the rationale behind the project, I think that is the key to whether or not it makes sense. And I think that's just fun that he's, almost making fun of that a little bit, but taking that to his advantage and like the fact that he's able to change the metadata actually is part of the experience, it's part of the art and how he wants.
What he wants to move and do with the collection, which I find really interesting. The other thing too that I like about it is, and this touches a little bit on what you said, Chris like his background is in advertising and graphic design. Like he's been a, graphic designer with and done lots of projects with big brands in the past.
And so he also has this eye for like how to capture, design and culture and yeah. So I think a lot of just credit to him and how to capture a lot of this attention. And it is also if you look back at visualized value, like he's been stuff for many years. And it is not like he came out of nowhere or anything.
But back to the adage of, luck versus skill versus Putting in the practice to be in the right place and be able to take advantage of luck when it comes your way. But I think all of that, just to say, I think what he's been doing with it, it's been really cool.
You're basically just saying the not overnight, overnight success .
Exactly. I think to everyone, a lot of people, it kinda looks like an overnight success or you'll see people, poo-pooing on it sometimes on Twitter, but yeah, I. I just add one more thing on the Meta universalist quote.
I feel like there's nothing wrong actually with being flexible. I think that's actually a benefit more than anything. You have the option on Ethereum, and this'll kind of headline into something else we're gonna talk about today, which is smart contracts and what you can build with an NFT, whether it is completely fungible, semi fungible, non fungible and gas optimized.
There are so many different types of contracts out there and he has really leaned into some of the best parts of what you can do on these contracts, which is he ended up pointing a lot of the metadata to IPF’s. He can change the metadata as much as he wants. There's no repercussions to it. And in this case, it truly was a performance and people absolutely loved it.
And I think it's a great way to showcase and highlight the things you can do versus being on chain, which is more permanent, I would say, and really rigid. I think here, I'll just end with this. I forgot to finish the quote out, but with this collection, it really represents an evolving connection between an artist and a collector.
You can continue to have a conversation there and you can update things visually update the things that are being displayed visually. So I think that's too, just part of, it's meant to be a two-way, ongoing, conversation and connection between him as the artist and the collector, which I think is pretty cool.
To move on to our second topic, also keeping it in NFTs and major collections Doodles. Two over the last couple of weeks announced the launch of or doodles and announced the launch of Doodles two, which is really this ability to take your doodle and fully customize this on chain in particular around, the wearables and things like that.
And so they launched the duplicator, which launched January 31st for current DUP Doodle holders, where you could take this duplicator, run your doodle through it, and it creates the wearable items based on your traits. So there's something like close to 30,000 of these now already that people have created and they also announced a major partner.
That they are moving or that the Doodles two contract is gonna be on the flow blockchain. A lot of big announcements here, but I think the big thing to talk about or discuss is doodles has said in the past and this is when they brought on Pharrell, even I believe is their chief creative officer or chief brand officer or something in that realm, but it was around the same time period.
They were like, we were looking to build a collection that scales to millions of holders. And so that is being the goal. I think it's interesting just to, to talk about, and that's why, why did they make the decision to go to a different chain rather than Ethereum and how does a project scale to millions of holders and what will that look like?
Because I think it will look very different than anything today we're currently seeing, on the open sea homepage, to be honest. Yeah.
Yeah, I agree. The big talk of the town was like, We knew it was gonna be like an L two. We knew we, people were guessing and taking bets like, is it gonna be Polygon?
Is it gonna be flow? And then when the flow announcement happened, it was like, okay, this makes sense. There's other notable brands, brand collections like the NBA Mattel, NFL. A lot of other bigger names have chosen flow and I think, I think that might, the on chain scalability is definitely a big factor.
No gas fees for changing out the different items that the doodle is gonna be wearing is the other big thing. But I just think for scaling it just made more sense for, if you want to as people are always saying like on-ramp the next billion people or how many people are gonna.
Doodles, you need to have something that's gonna be able to grow with you and it just felt like flow blockchain was just the best choice. Yeah, obviously we can talk more about what, I think the choice of flow is interesting, but like talking about what el what are Doodles, ambitions long-term?
We zoom out and do like a multi-year thing, like where things are gonna be going. I dunno if you guys have thought about that at all. Yeah,
yeah. Fill me in a little bit too if you're familiar with the vision with these wearables overall. Because what they're allowing right now is with these duplicators you can buy, sell, and trade the wearables from Doodles.
. And then you have these on chain wearables are you familiar with what their plans are for these kind of long term? If these are gonna be metaverse wearables, like out of the Nike playbook, if these are just gonna be tokens that exist as a cool oh I have a Doodle shirt.
Yeah, curious on the plan, if you're familiar.
I'm not, cuz I don't think they've really formally said what the plan is, but I think the idea is, keeping things open. If you have these wearables is another thing people are trading and, if there's creator fees or welty fees, cool.
If there's not, that's cool too. It feels like it's just like another layer of being able to customize stuff and possibly getting to a point where, Doodles, ambitions, we could talk about they acquired Golden Wolf as a, having the ability for this multimedia potential.
Golden Wolf was responsible for the the trailer that was made, but for that, for the South by Southwest thing. When that came out it was like, okay, you're seeing this kinda almost like homage, like Rick and Morty. Meets some sort of acid flashback. I don't know, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be interesting to see what, where they go.
My, my thoughts are, some sort of unity or unreal based game with flow blockchain implemented and having the ability to have, this seamless ability trade different things that you've collected play off the whole collectibility factor and make it, make, make Doodles synonymous with, everybody's got a Doodle, but what is your doodle wearing?
Like now, instead of just now, instead of the emphasis just being, what doodle do you have? It's what doodle do you have? But what drip do you have? What do you have? What are you wearing? So it's exciting. I'm excited to see where this. Yeah. And along with the other aspect to add too, if you used a duplicator they're also giving everyone what they're called, these beta passes to doodles to experience.
And they have not like announced, to your point Chris, like much around like what this experience is. So will it be more of like a game like experience and go more of like they're out of yoga. I don't know. But kinda the only thing they do say is it'll be the, you'll have early access to the Doodles two experience, including character creation tools and more launching later this year.
So I think a lot of it is just they're leaning more into kind of the. Yeah, creative vibe around like how do I build my own character and a lot of this kind of ecosystem. But I think the, they have a ton of money to work with too. Like they're some of their investors, they raised that round not too long ago.
And I think they are really lean into just how do we create a mega brand. And I think you'll always see the original Doodles owners. Be like the largest or maybe they're more like, think of them as like the major shareholders. I feel like in this in like the company and then the owners of the wearables or all of the flow ecosystem or like using things and whatever the Doodles two experience is, will be more of the actual end, consumers and collectors.
And it'll be interesting how they evolve over time, what the original doodle kind of becomes in the ecosystem. What does like the relationship to the original Doodles become like?
I think it's really interesting to see a lot of these, Big, they were just mostly brands to start with.
Bored Ape was just a brand, like it was just a, it is a PFP basically Doodles the same thing. A lot of these they were really just representing a PFP. They didn't have a lot of, utility. People, joke about I think like Moon Birds I'm not saying I'm joking about it, but like people were joking about oh, I got a fanny pack.
Like that was the thing. There wasn't a lot of extra stuff to it. But seeing a lot of de Yuko having a game, doodles, building this experience, whatever it ends up being a lot of them starting to do this. Like they're starting to really formalize as a business.
They're starting to really figure out a way to engage more and more people and keep them engaged and not just be these like flash in the pan type things, like actually build something sustainable that's, that they, that can, they can continue to use. But I think there's also an interesting thing of, I.
Calling back to the PFP thing of the point you were making Chris, of yeah what is your Doodle wearing? I was like is a doodle your main kind of avatar or pfp or whatever? Is that, is that a thing too? And so I'm curious, which of these, as these bigger brands start to do that, like which ones are gonna be the most primary, what that are going to win out that PFP avatar market share?
Because there's only so many, and that's where I, I think we were maybe talking last episode that or maybe it was offline. I don't know that PFP.
Collections seem to be struggling more right now than just more art type collections because so many people have already decided what their PFP is.
And so I'm curious how that's going to evolve as more and more of these kind of bigger brands are starting. Build their ecosystem. And so it's are you only gonna use that in your ecosystem? Is that gonna be your discord? There's all these kind of interesting dynamics that, that will evolve as more companies start to do these types of things.
And I think doodles is making a huge jump here to say yeah, doodles should be your, primary avatar. So it's interesting, right? Yeah. Yeah, jumping off that think about a multi-pronged approach to engagement, right? You don't just want one thing. I think the future, some of these bigger brands are gonna be, it's got a game, it's got a TV show.
It's just it's like adventure time, right? It's it's not just one thing. Sure, maybe you don't like anime. Maybe you like first person shooters. Maybe you like Fortnite doodle skins or something in, in making, forging more partnerships. That's where I see things going. The difference between doodles and Yuga is that like doodles actually has a plan for scalability and increasing accessibility versus I feel like Yu's original collection, granted there are perme.
Of that collection, like with Newton and all that. But making it more accessible to people. I know it's like all over the place where some original holders don't necessarily like the idea of doodles being, saturated and having, cuz it like devalues the whole thing.
If you're making group of people and it's 10,000 people and now you're saying he's got a million people, then it's like, what's a club if everyone's in it? So if you can find a way to balance that act between having it be inclusive or whatever people are getting out of it, I think people get different things out of it.
For some people they're just collecting NFTs. For some people they liked going to doodle putt, they like going to Miami and. Hanging out at events that they get to g go into cuz they're Token Gate. So I think that, maybe Doodles will succeed by having this multi-pronged multimedia approach where they've got a TV show, they've got a video game, they've got really cool merch.
And it can't be stuff that's just, it can't just be some, not that Flash exists anymore, but it can't be just some simple web game. It has to be something that really has lasting power. And I think that's in the space right now. And not to rant too much, but I feel like for some of these NFT collections, they want to be.
They want to be something bigger, but they don't have what they need for something to be bigger. And you really need to put the work in. Think about a AAA title, like Skyrim or the Witcher three. Those games weren't made in a couple days, and people forget that even just with the whole metaverse announcement of Zuckerberg happened in 2021.
So stuff like this takes time. If it takes a couple more years for doodles to expand and have a game that's like really worth playing and that leads to adoption. And finally, the first like real NFT game, if any brand can do it, it's Doodles. That's my opinion. I really think if there's any, if there's any NFT brand right now that can pivot into video games and actually make NFTs not feel scammy or feel like, take steam.
The steam community for example, they, there's no, there's, you're not allowed to have NFTs or any sort of on chain activity or anything like that. You can't use blockchains and be posted on steam. How are you supposed to grow if you make a video game? How are you supposed to grow if you're not allowed to have.
Stuff like that. So when are we gonna get to that kind of inflection point as a whole, where we'll be allowed to have those things happen. So I'm excited to see what happens. I think that, I think the acquisition for Golden Wolf means that I think at, there's probably gonna be a TV show.
Yeah. I think there, I would agree with you, Chris, and being very bullish on Doodles and their team. I think too, we're seeing more and more brands move to a multi chain approach too. The gods and their team even, shifting from Solana to Ethereum and Polygon, I think we're just gonna see more and more of that and people leaning into different chains based on, the utility of what they're trying to do in that space.
And I think the brands that are leaning into that I think are gonna be some of the winners long term for sure. Definitely speaking of multi chains I wanna shift a little bit too something over the last, I think this was in December maybe when this was first discovered or invented.
I don't know what the right kind of term or if this was an update, but we started to see bitcoin NFTs take off and be minted onto the chain in what's called ordinals. But anyway, Chris, you have done a lot of work in writing already around this topic. So maybe could you just catch kind of us and listeners up on, what is a Bitcoin nft?
I thought NFTs couldn't exist on Bitcoin cuz there is no smart contract layer, like all that kind of stuff. What is an ordinal? And then maybe we can dig into what we all think this means for the ecosystem and what's, exciting and novel or maybe not exciting and novel around it.
Yeah. Let's cue things up so people have some context. So yeah, you're right around December, before January 22nd, there are almost zero ordinal transactions per block and since January on Bitcoin, that's really blown up. So people are like, you know what, what's happening with the Bitcoin NFT space?
It really feels like in a very short span of time, all of a sudden people are talking about Ordinals trying to wrap their heads around what, in what an encryption is, what the tap root upgrades were on Bitcoin that allowed these things to happen. But I think simply put, like ordinals are just Bitcoin native NFTs, which for the people that are involved in that community, I believe they're referring to them more as digital artifacts and don't necessarily want them to be called the same thing.
So there's sites like Gamma and essentially that on a site like that, there's a Section four ordinals, and that just means inscribing images and texts onto the Bitcoin blockchain. It's important that, to mention that there is a distinction between Bitcoin native NFTs and Stacks NFTs, because stacks is another blockchain that uses Bitcoin as a consensus layer.
The reference to Ordinals refers to the numbering of newly minted satoshi. So if you know about Satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin is, 100 million Satoshi is to one Bitcoin, so being sequentially ordered, so each Satoshi can have an ordinal number between one and just an insane number that I have in front of me.
But I, I don't know, , Quintilian maybe, I'm not sure. But there are people that have gone into this about there are certain satos that are more rare than others and buying and interacting with them. We can definitely drop some really cool explainer videos. In later or something. But essentially, inscription is just metadata attached to a Satoshi store within a Bitcoin transaction.
So the reason why this became more possible was because of a recent segregated witness update. The inscription process involves two phases. First, like the top root out output is committed to a script that holds the inscription content, which is in serialized within the transaction as an envelope.
And the second phase involves revealing the inscription through another transaction by spending the amount or the output created in the first place, thereby displaying the inscription on the blockchain. So now there are ways to view this inscription data. And this is not necessarily the first case, but one case where the NFT and associated metadata are all on chain.
This can lead to. Issues and I think the biggest difference between Bitcoin NFTs and Ethereum NFTs is that Ethereum utilizes token standards as we know, like 7 21 and 1155 to create collections. But that's not how ordinals work. This optimization with Bitcoin's tap upgrade just gives more space.
To allow for this to happen. So these encryptions are fully on chain and that's really in contrast to having to utilize something like IPF’s to store metadata. Pretty interesting. And then I think, stacks became a little bit like, during the last bull run Stacks Token got up to I don't know, like three bucks or something.
But Stacks is essentially a Bitcoin layer for smart contracts. It'll enables NFTs, defi and dApps to be created a can benefit from the security of Bitcoin's network. And it utilizes a different programming language as opposed to Solidity, which uses an Ethereum. It uses clarity. And the consensus mechanism is proof of transfer.
So if you could think of proof of burn being destroy base cryptocurrency to min a new one, proof of transfer is you just transfer base cryptocurrency to mint units of a new one. The biggest benefits of this are that it can reuse energy that was already expended by Bitcoin, which is cool. But yeah, I'm excited with Gamma just because Gamma is leading the way and I'm bullish on, it as a brand, as being like the no-code NFT ordinal platform.
And I think the, to summarize what's going on, like what are the good things about this? I think the good things about this is that like most of the market cap and value for cryptocurrencies exist on Bitcoin, right? So that's cool, but that doesn't necessarily mean. It's going to be a good thing long term.
People are saying, the downsides to inscriptions is that the content's completely stored in the blockchain. That can be issues for like salacious or inappropriate content that you'll just be able to use like a blockchain viewer, reader and then see it. And these additional transaction sizes are resulting in increased transaction fees.
Average block size has increased as a result of ordinal popularity. So Bitcoin maxes are super not happy about this because, in, if you read the white paper for Bitcoin, it does not mention, having a use case for this. So a lot of people would prefer for, for things to continue where they were just stacks native NFTs or utilizing something else that was like, almost like an L two for Bitcoin.
Just some stats it's okay, so 500 megabytes of space for these new Bitcoin NFTs costing creators over $155,000. That's a lot of money for not a lot of memory on the blockchain, but. Who knows. My thoughts are like, it's possible that the community will band together and maybe make a update to this taproot upgrade to change it, to not allow this to be as much of a possibility.
And, but I think it's cool. You've seen the possibility that it's enough space where you can actually store a song on chain. So that's cool.
Or the entire original Doom game from ID software. Have you seen that?
Yeah, I did see that. It's a Bitcoin. I know.
Yeah. Yeah. I messaged my dad about that. I was like, cuz we, we talk about whenever anything we, our joke is always if it can compute something, you can put doom on it, right? Yep. That will be done. You're like at, in school using your T 95 calculator or whatever, and playing doom.
Now the engine's different. But the point is that you can, it can, it mostly works. So are we gonna see more original games like token gating stuff? It's, the possibilities are endless.
Yeah. I was really curious how when I first heard about this, my first thought was yeah, Bitcoin mices are not gonna like this.
And then it was like, yep, no, they don't, no . That was my first thought. It was like, yeah, I'm mostly an Ethereum, junkie I guess is probably the best term for it based on my current investment portfolio.
But the but yeah, as soon as I heard about this, I was like, that doesn't sound like Bitcoin at all.
That's gonna, especially, and then somebody I was just reading. The other day that the, yeah, price of transacting on Bitcoin has gone way up because of this. And I'm like, oh yeah, no, that that's not, that's not great . One benefit that this does have, which to dress one elephant, I suppose with Bitcoin is eventually there's not gonna be too much of an incentive for minors to continue mining Bitcoin because they will all be mined out.
There's a finite amount that can be ever mined, and eventually there's gonna be an inflection point on the chain on what is the incentive for people to be running? Some pretty serious hardware with the Havening coming up next year, that cost is only going to increase. If you've ever seen, just look up images of Bitcoin farms and you can see, massive commercial industrial complexes of people who have set up just absolutely insane rigs.
And some of the things that they've done with those is pretty cool with the energy that's existed that they're using for other better things. But that's a different topic overall. But eventually there's gonna need to be a reason for people to want to mine.
And the way that I believe these ordinal theory works today is that would be one incentive down the road for them to continue mining would be people want to transact and scribe on these digital pennies. I think the best analogy that I like to make with these that just makes it really understandable is you are like those penny press machines at a theme park.
You put your penny in and it presses some image on there. It is effectively ish, the same thing. And yeah, I think overall it's an interesting. Kind of time to be in NFTs land because you do have the Bitcoin maxis, which think that this should just be a financial network and only used for that, rather than be putting on a bunch of data as someone who is trying to create their own full, no full node to create my own Bitcoin NFTs.
It is taking so long. Now, Bitcoin, as we know, is probably the most powerful and secure computer network in the world. But at the same time, to load all of this stuff up, it is a huge pain because it just takes forever. It's all to centralize peer-to-peer stuff to get this set up right now. And it's already huge as is.
It has taken me about two weeks to sync the core node and then do the full node and then you have to index or which just takes a very long time. And this is. With two months in of making these ordinals and having no als, I am so curious where this is gonna be in five years, if people continue to inscribe things on Satoshi's, just how big this blockchain index is going to be, if it's ever going to be feasible for, there's always gonna be a reason for you to run your own node, which is to secure and verify your own transactions.
But it is also not going to make it any easier, which we talk about how do we bring the next billion people into crypto, into blockchain, into this technology. It's definitely not gonna make it any easier to be running these things on your own. Yeah. And I think in the next five years we'll see more, obviously in the last five years, if you had an ASIC minor five years ago and you could just teleport it to now, or sorry, five years ago, if you had what we have now and teleport it back in time, you'd be making some serious cash.
So I think we're gonna see another evolution for hardware. Just people are just dumping GPUs into trash cans being like, this is all used up. I can't use this anymore for mining on Ethereum. Same thing's gonna happen where, we're gonna see landfills full of asic miners and there's gonna be something new that's gonna be easier for node management or for, mining ri mining crypto.
It's just gonna be a matter of time before we get there though. Skylar, you are actively trying to scribe in an NFT. I'm Bitcoin. Chris. Joel or either of you. I guess I'm, I am not buying any ordinal NFTs right now. Or digital artifacts. Chris, are, have you gotten to the game at all? Or how are you thinking about it from like a collector perspective or you I wanna stay on stacks only.
No, I'll probably mess with it more. A few times I was messing on Gamma, the site went down, so it was just a matter of time. I think, it's just a matter of time before we see, what is the yuga of Bitcoin? There's gonna be something that'll entice people or push people for buying a collection.
And I had, in the article that I wrote, I had a few collections I thought were pretty cool that I thought people could check out that I was like, there's Pepe Punks Stacks, parrots Parrot Radio, mega Punt, project Indigo, which is like all on chain music. Just see what ends up happening.
Everything that they'll be something that'll be cool. Much like with Solana, when Solana came out, it was like why are people collecting on there until there were collections that were notable enough to purchase? So for now, it's learn about it. Maybe buy some for fun. Don't expect for the price of them.
Expect for it to be, not great for a while, but who knows, maybe in a few months there'll be a really cool collection with some utility that's worth using. And I think all the tools have come a long way in this space. So people that are bullish on Ethereum definitely need to be aware that there are plenty of really smart people that are working in the Bitcoin space now for NFTs.
And that this, could turn soon. Not necessarily the flipping, but just something to be aware of. Definitely. Yeah.
There's two things. One, there is a Ethereum community or a collection community that I'm a part of that is it's an on chain one. So he's doing a inscription of something.
He's it's not gonna be tied to our community. It's just like something for the community to be able to try out the ordinal thing in an easy way. So I was like, that's pretty cool. So I might do that. Yeah. Other than that, I haven't looked too deep into it, but I do think that to kind of Chris, your point, the, there are, it's, this is not like when, the Ethereum Smart contracts and NFTs were starting to come out. We are already familiar with how smart contracts work with how on chain like NFTs and this whole like, market already works and exists.
People are already familiar with it. So now, like you're gonna see a bunch of, quote unquote duplication of all of the stuff that we have basically on Ethereum and on, Solana and Card and all these other blockchains that have a smart contract framework.
And even on Bitcoin stacks, right? Like you have all of that already. You're gonna see some sort of duplication of that just in a slightly different way because it's a slightly different technology.
There's the, a lot of the innovation I think is going to be just how do we replicate that same functionality on the raw or native Bitcoin network, not on you.
Some sort of L two that uses it as the consensus. So that's gonna be really interesting. And and I think that's why you've seen it explode so quickly, because somebody's oh yeah, we'll need a wallet. Oh yeah, we'll need a marketplace. Oh yeah, we'll need a, and just fill in the blank from what you know about the NFTs, on Ethereum or Salon or any of the other ones, is just just fill in those blanks on Bitcoin and people are, somebody's gonna build that and there's gonna be, 10 solutions.
One of 'em is gonna win out. It's anytime there's new space in the market, that's how these things go. There's always all these competitors and then a couple win out.
There will be an open seat. Agreed . I wanna just talk real quickly about one thing you mentioned, which is the marketplace thing.
Just to share how early this technology is right now, if you want to buy an ordinal and inscribe satoshi you right now, I think like 99% of it is being done. OTC and the order books themselves are all Google sheets. So if you want to buy one from a particular collection, you have to first find their discord and then go into the discord, find a buyer and dm perhaps that person or speak with the founder.
Pretty much all of the things that in Ethereum's world that you say not to don't accept dms from people, don't do over the counter trading. Do it all through opens seat. There's none of that right now, and it is very challenging if you want to buy one of these to do. This is advice, but it is not financial advice.
If you are thinking about getting into Bitcoin ordinals and wanting to purchase one, I would go into it with a mindset of this is probably just going to be, an artifact and never worth something. And don't go in thinking that you're gonna buy a Bitcoin ordinal right now, and it's gonna be worth tons and tons of money in the future.
I promise this is exactly what happened with Ethereum with many projects that most people probably haven't even heard of, but did exist at one point that were particularly popular. And the exact same is most likely gonna happen with these. So if you do buy them, which it is very hard to do. Just be careful with it and don't go on with too many expectations.
One other kind of bigger topic is I'd love to shift and kind of Chris particularly we have you here on the podcast joining us.
I'd love to shift maybe more toward bigger brands and I would say like traditional brands moving into Web three and how we're seeing this trend among, major Fortune 500 companies leveraging Web three technology. I view the future where, Our like wallet addresses really are the new email addresses.
And for brands, like when you think of, NFT technology and blockchain, like this is just a completely different way to connect with a customer, to sell a product to a customer. And like it is going to, I think, technology on NFTs is gonna fundamentally change, how you interact and how you experience something experience a purchase, with a brand in the future.
And so I think it's really fun and interesting and exciting to see all these traditional brands also leaning into the space and leveraging it. I think there's a broad spectrum of are we doing this for a publicity stunt and some PR pieces written about us. Are we doing this in more of a web three native way?
But anyway, I think just to, to open the conversation, we're seeing more and more brands, every day launch NFT projects. What kind of where should these brands start as they're thinking about. Launching a web three campaign. And Chris, I'd love to get your opinion having worked with a lot of major corporations and brands around their strategies in particular in this front.
Yeah, I think partnerships, as cliche as it is definitely key that if you're not if you're not already active in the space, finding some sort of NFT project or some community that you can partner with to leverage, to to as like a rocket shift, like to get into the stratosphere that you need to have exposure because you're sure making a discord community, that's cool.
Having a lot of the thing, having an open mint, that's cool too. The brands need to partner with people that are already doing stuff to get more attention because it's difficult already right now for consumers to have a reason or a want for something.
And so that's where my head goes is start with the end in mind is what's the reason why someone is engaging with this. I think with Starbucks Odyssey it became more obvious that it's it's a loyalty platform. We're gonna have incentives and like some of the already, it's only been a couple months and some of these Starbucks NFTs are going for a couple of eth, right?
Like a considerable amount of money, a couple thousand dollars for some of these, some the more rare ones. But at the end of the day, it's it's a loyalty program, right? So if it's a loyalty program, how can we make it better? I think there are plenty of tools and as opposed to this time last year, there's a lot more tools for loyalty on chain and utilizing, especially us utilizing Ethereum.
So things have come a long way. or my heads out for new brands entering is, read the social landscape. Like in really dig into potentially sub subverting or be being consciously aware of trends in subverting them cuz that's what's working with NFTs right now.
Be aware of what people are doing and find a way to either make it better or be ironic with it or utilize the power of memes because they are real and they do have social clout and value. So that's where my head's at for this year.
Definitely. Yeah. I love that. I think too, the, just paying attention to what's tapping into the marketing, how do you participate.
I think like a great case study is even Is Budweiser and Bud Light. And some of those brands even were like, when they purchased beer.eat and purchased a noun, and they are like active. I think Bud Light is actually the one that's doing a lot of the work, more of they're brand team with the nouns ecosystem, but they're an active participant in the nouns ecosystem owning one of the beer nouns.
But it's just like that kind of stuff. You do not have to launch an NFT project or a fully on chain loyalty program, to do some of that and be engaged in the ecosystem and taking part in really like a cultural, paradigm shift that we're seeing and just a new kind of internet culture being created.
And so I think there's just even like a lot of opportunity there. I think too, like some of the just most recent kind of things in my timeline, NAS and Boss Beauty recently did a co-op kind of relaunch I think called O Nity. Yeah, identity is like the new brand and, this is a new NFT drop that they're doing.
But back to the partnership side of things, NAS finding a way to partner with Boss Beauties is a perfect, partnership opportunity and combination there. And NAS does not have to be the web three expert in that kind of sense, but they can find kind of ways to partner together in Boss Beauties and bring them along in that direction.
I think a lot of the Web three native brands are looking for partnerships in that arena too, because it helps them build a broader audience that helps them build their brand as well. So I think that's a, it's a perfect place for a lot of brands to start before maybe they even launch their own collection or launch or start selling their own kind of products on chain, if you will.
Yeah, I definitely think the end goal for this is people are gonna be using this technology whether they think they will or not. I'm gonna quote directly something from a previous guest on this show, Keith Alaska. The internet back in the eighties and nineties did exist at the time. People didn't really get it.
You could use it. It was weird. And then all of a sudden comes, an interface for it and it just made sense and people got it and they use it. And look where we are today. 20 some odd years later with that interface, people are using it. You just know you might not know how the internet works.
I bet I could ask my entire family if they know, and they would all say no. But none of them really care because the internet is the internet to them. It works, they use it and they're able to do things on it. Like they would want to, and I think that's gonna happen in Web three as well. And I think the brands that are recognizing this early, that are recognizing this fast, the Budweisers, the Starbucks, who have built some of the greatest loyalty programs in the space, realizing that this is where the internet is going to be, this is the technology that's gonna be in use, might as well start now.
And I think they are going to greatly benefit from this first mover advantage. You're still early if you're a brand listening to this, thinking about your own strategy and the Chris's and Drew's points partnerships, I would. It's definitely a great way to go leaning into the ecosystem. The things that are meta right now are definitely going to be the ways to make positive entrances into the space.
Although I would like to think and say that most in the community will be a bit forgiving on making mistakes along the way. I think we all are. I think a great example of that is the Porsche NFT launch. There was a lot of FUD going on with the way that they launched those, but look at where they are now.
They're sitting on a great floor price, which doesn't really mean a lot, I would say, for many projects, but in their case, maybe it does because they're a luxury brand. They intentionally chose the e ecosystem because of that, and from what it seems like their community sentiment is overall positive right now.
So they came in, subbed their toe, figured it out, and they're chugging along and they're doing great and. That is gonna happen totally fine. And the more brands that I think we continue to see move into the space the better and recognizing that this is the future. So now is the best time to start.
Yesterday was the best time, now is the second best. Yeah. The, you've still got time to fail
is really what it comes down to. It's still new enough. There's still people that are not gonna use it until, the internet dies. Obviously the internet won't actually die. But I was just using, calling to the people are, would only use a cell phone because their rotary phone no longer works.
That's the reason, there, there are people that are gonna be that far deep in the like, old school technology. But yeah you've still got time to fail to try something. If it doesn't work, you're not out a lot.
Definitely. A lot of these brands have plenty of money. Sure. Is it a gr is it the best investment?
In the short term, maybe not in the long term, I would argue probably. Time will tell. There, there is a chance that all of this just like dies. I don't think that's gonna happen. I don't know how that could happen, but there's always a chance, right?
So yeah. NADY Yeah. Making sure you, right?
Yeah. Making sure you're, when you enter that being aware that, people will remember how you entered, how the experience was and what the collections ended up looking like. I think Budweiser's a great example with the Heritage collection, right? People really love that collection.
The floor price has been pretty consistent and they've delivered on a lot of the utility that wasn't initially really promised because the space changed. I think this year's gonna be a lot about how can we continue to immerse people in this. And I think, yeah, you guys are right that we're to a point now where wallets and doing stuff and making stuff is becoming more seamless.
And if we wanna use the analogy of a cell phone, yeah. There were cell phones in the nineties and until Nokia came around, they, a lot of them were pretty crappy. So like, where are we in terms of the cell phone, if you're gonna compare it to using Meta Mask or using an Ethereum wallet.
I think we're like, maybe in 1994 or 1995, like some people have cell phones. You're like, oh, you have a cell phone in your car. That's who's gonna call you in your car? And just even the concept of having a phone, like, why do I need it? I have my office phone and I have my home phone.
Why do I need a phone? Like the that's the point where we're at, where people are starting. The reason for needing, wanting to use this stuff is dawning on people. And with brands engaging in it it's a lot more exposure. But what brand is gonna enter the space? I think maybe it'll be Starbucks where it's.
And, I talked to my sister about this longtime Starbucks fan what's gonna push you to making the thing? Oh, like an actual reason big surprise. Like for not everybody is interested in collecting art and people aren't also sold on collecting Ethereum art yet because you just see it like, oh, it could crash.
You know what if Bitcoin, if Bitcoin's at 70k, everyone's oh my God, it's a future. If it's down to 15k people are like, it's pretty much a scam. So , once we move away from this volatility. And you're right, like people don't does everyone understand how our car works? No.
It's but we gotta build the highway for people to drive on. Before we can have this revolution happen. One thing I'll add just on the Starbucks thing, this was funny, over the weekend, I had a friend ask me, cuz I was explaining the whole Starbucks launch into web three and they're like, what is what's the incentive?
Why does Starbucks wanna do this? And there were many reasons I gave him, but I think my favorite that I think clicked with him was as part of these Odyssey experiences, I can now tell you the following. I can tell you the first house blend that they blended. I can tell you what their logo means.
I can tell you when Starbucks was incepted, I can tell you how many stores they have. Why do I know all that information? Because as part of their odyssey experience, to earn a stamp that you have to go through these like virtual tours and you have to answer these questions. Now granted, a lot of the stuff is online.
You can like cheat on these if you wanted to. Not a plug to do that. But the point is I am now like even more of a Starbucks evangelist than I was before where I was just going in, scanning my code, getting stars and points. Like sometimes I'd get a free drink. Now I actually know the history of Starbucks and to Starbucks that is invaluable, to have more and more people know about their brand, cement them in history as who they are.
And I think that alone was like, oh, that makes sense. There's things like that, that they're doing that I think are really great and people will continue to be creative with the ways that they can use this technology to build their brand. If anything, there's like immediate things like that I think that you can be really leaning into to build new fans that are currently in this space right now.
But then people in the future who are gonna be inevitably using this tech.
Yeah. And I think the only, just. Oh, what's the word I'm looking for? Caution. The only word of caution that I would give to people especially most people that are in the NFT ecosystem today is like we use this term around, onboarding the next million people or billion people or whatever.
And that onboarding does not just mean, someone to dump your bags on. Which I think is what the mass majority of people in the like NFT space really want. It's just oh yeah, don't worry when the next million people come on. All of my bags are gonna be very expensive. But no onboarding the next million people means more things like Doodles, which the wearables like floor price is like $14 right now or something like that.
So it's gonna be more things like hundreds of thousands of digital collectibles and they're going to maybe be worthless even. But it's more around kinda the technology around how you connect with the customer and how. That relationship between you, the product you're buying and the brand that's selling that product.
But that's the only kind of caveat or note when we think about, oh, these brands bringing, millions of new people into Web three and into NFTs. It may not be in the same way that you, as the collector degen want it to benefit you personally. To be honest, it'll be probably across the board, like falling floor prices and very large collections and things like that kind of dilute some of what we've seen for sure over the last, 24 months.
I don't wanna flood anyone's bags, but I really don't think that NFTs in their current form right now are going to continue existing. Like we're talking thousands and thousands of dollars when we talk about exactly that million.
People do not want to pay thousands of dollars for certain things. There are people in the ecosystem that are doing right now, but I think a lot of that is based on churn, which is, oh, I want to bring more people in because I can now sell my bags, make a little bit of money. And that's like a lot of incentive right now, which I don't think is going to be sustainable at all.
We're already starting to see some of that right now with the wars, with open marketplaces now reducing the amount of royalties that they take in. And there are a lot of creators who are going to be hurt by that, but it's also probably going to incentivize or disincentivize, I should say. NFTs as a vehicle for money making.
I don't know we'll continue to see. I'm not particularly bullish though on like the PFP project, which is why I think brands like doodles with what they're doing and expanding out and taking this multi-pronged approach, I'm super bullish on taking like a wearable, as an example, you made Chris like a shirt and bringing that into Fortnite or bringing that into Roblox, where kind of the newest generation of human beings are playing games and spending their times in this metaverse and being able to interchangeably bring in like a shirt from doodles and that's your drip, right?
Oh man, you've got the rainbow sweatshirt swag. That is cool and especially if it's acceptable as far as like price goes. People have complained for a number of years, I'd say a long time about like even just buying a $60 game. and you get a ton of value out of a $60 game, regardless of the game you buy.
I'd say 90% of games probably worth the money that you pay , but I can't say the same a lot with NFTs and, the price that you pay. Are you getting that same value? And I think once those two are at an equilibrium is when we'll see more mass adoption where the price of things like NFTs in their current form more meet the accessibility of current consumers, which is, okay I could afford, a $15 doodles shirt and use that in my Minecraft, use that in Roblox.
I see it in this animated series that they're coming up. That's cool stuff to me. And I think that's what I'm bullish.
I totally agree. Yeah, it's a niche thing right now. I mean that, that's why I was in the headlines a few years ago with crypto punk span oh my god, $150,000 for a crypto punk.
At first the only people that could afford it were people that were early to Ethereum or celebrities, right? So how do we get regular human beings in that aren't gonna drop? And I agree that I think some of these NFTs that are on Ethereum and some other chains will be viewed more historically in that, like the floor price of crypto points as just using that as just one example will be something that will probably always stay high, because it'll be, it'll have that historical value and it'll be viewed that way.
So I agree that the pivot towards, especially as we, see the adoption and evolution of mixed reality how are we gonna tie some of the uniqueness of NFTs into a space that, you want to be, you want to be unique in. Yeah, definitely.
Completely agree. And with that we will wrap it up.
Signing off for Holder if you wanna learn more about Holder, holder.xyz. And then Chris, where can listeners find you? Maybe subscribe to your ck where's the best place for them to connect with you?
Sure. I'm always available on Discord, but spatial awareness.dot com immutable labs.io is a good place to reach me.
Or you can reach out on LinkedIn. I'm not gonna give you my personal number, but if you're nice, maybe we can have a phone call. Yeah, those are the best places.
Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, Chris. And with that we are signing off. We'll talk to you all later.
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