It's a beautiful day to have a beautiful day, DMGM.
On this beautiful day, good morning two and three with
Baroco, San Fernando, TuneIn live at 10:30 and it's all on
the wrong radio. It's a beautiful day to have a
beautiful day. DMGM, Rock Radio.
Well GM everyone, we are back here again for another episode
of GM Web 3 on Rock Radio Takeover Show this week.
As we said before, Farooq is in Korea.
I've seen a lot of photos of that.
CFM looks like he's having a good time and Ovi's in Canada.
So we have cows and we have Mika as replacement.
Good to have you guys. It's been a good, good week so
far. No one's got the ball too badly.
Like I think. I think it's been a it's been a
solid takeover week. Don't jinx it.
Don't jinx it, OK? We're getting a lot of good
feedback. You're getting a lot of good
feedback for breaking it down. I didn't realize how normal was.
No one actually understood half the things we were saying for
the last. Year and a half?
Yeah, about that, yeah. But yeah, no, it's been fun.
The sponsorship deals are rolling in for me.
Are they? Have you got anything, any
modeling? Yeah, yeah, some big, big stuff.
No, not yet. How?
How is your follower account going?
Once you're going parabolic? At the moment, no.
It's not quite parabolic, but it's up and to the right.
I think that's the VC expression, right up and to the
right baby compounded growth. I'll yeah.
The bare model. My brain has just expanded and
of course that's. Good.
Crack and gives me wings. Sorry.
One day I'll nail it, one day I'll nail the crack and gives me
wings. They are here today, they are
here today. So it's gonna be two-part
basically day-to-day we're going to go through the normal top
five things and then we're going to go at the end speak to the
whole crack and team. They're obviously sponsoring GM
Web 3 for this month alongside some other stuff alongside
radio. I believe we have a site
alongside them, which is I think it's cracking aft.
Forward slash rug radio. I will double confirm that when
it comes up on screen. But yeah, we're gonna have them
in the studio towards the end of the show, which is gonna be a
big deal, but for now we're just gonna go straight into.
I've been told I'm not connected to the Twitter spaces.
Is that right? It was all going so well.
I told you Mando not to jinx it. But here we are.
I see, Yes, connected Sims. Can you guys hear us in the
audience? Hey, what's a good spaces
without being rugged? Am I right?
So true, so true. Back in the day it was just like
getting rugged like every 5 minutes or back in the day like.
Well, that no, no. You can only hit Can they hate
everyone now? Is everyone now connected?
Yeah, everyone's now connected. OK.
I think they could only hear me before.
Now they can hear you guys, which is, which is nice.
Blame somebody else. You guys stared.
You got a free pass there only people on.
YouTube My God, my God. Okay.
It's good. Everyone was saying they don't
want Faroak and OSF back. My God.
So I'm happy they didn't hear that.
Are we connected right now? Yeah.
Sorry, subject. Yeah, Okay.
So we'll get straight into it because I think we should.
We're going to try and speed it up through this show, but we're
going to do the top five things again.
I think we're going to start with a story that happened, kind
of we were talking about on Monday, I believe it was, which
is this creative past. This was the past that was
alongside Mr. Beast. You had that gamer come out of
the weekend and say, look, I didn't realize it was NF T's.
It's since developed. Since then they've postponed the
whole thing, so they're actually fully got cancelled for actually
mentioning the word NFT and that is not gonna go forward.
Yeah, I don't know what you guys thought about that, but I
thought it was kind of wild to see the whole thing got
cancelled because of NFT. So I understand one person's
objection, but now it just seems like a like a very, very
aggressive. Wait, it's all done.
It's cancelled, yeah. Christmas is cancelled it seems,
which is yeah. Can we pull it up?
Where's the okay pulling it up? My God chat.
Is this real? Is this real chat?
Is this real? Can you see that I got it?
No. No, we can't see it.
Yes, I thought he was in there. It says it's yeah, it's on my
side. There you go.
Mr. B's promoter creates the league postponed after gamers
bail amid NFT backlash. Influencer in the gaming knees
said they were misled about the blockchain aspect.
Now if users pausing the program and laying off stuff they came
out with like a really apologetic tweet yesterday or
post yesterday, basically being like sit here at the bottom the
crazily was an experiment. Blah blah blah blah blah blah.
The creativity community passes are not considered Nft's nor
token launch because they had no transfer utility, which means
there is no ability to resell. I mean, it just seems so
desperate to try and get out of it this way that it was really
that bad that you could transfer your Nft's.
That why is that what people are annoyed about?
Like the the surely that's beneficial that you'd be able to
transfer them. So I think it's kind of wild.
I feel like this is part of like a bigger thing from like you
don't just lay off 30% of your company because of this.
It feels feels like they needed an excuse to lay off 30 people
and now they may be found one. I don't know, but it seems like
a total knee jerk reaction. I totally agree with you as well
that the statement is just like pathetic, like stand up for
yourself. If you believe in the product
say yeah, look, we think this is a good way to push these sports
forward or you know, we think this is a good way of.
Empowering the community and giving them some decision making
power over the creatives, I don't know.
At least defend your decisions and your actions rather than
just like lying over like a limp fish and kind of, yeah,
pandering to the the most vocal minority of your kind of nature.
That was such a. That was such a visual with the
fish. It is weak.
Someone said. Weak league, I mean.
I don't know, maybe maybe no PR is bad PR.
Am I right? I feel like this is way worse
than the story that we heard on Monday.
Like, it's basically what you just said, Kelly.
Like, who cares if one person was like, I don't like NFTS and
didn't really get a project for you then to actually cancel the
whole thing because of that? I just think it's like that's
that is just really bad in my opinion.
Just go forward with it. Like just say that guy didn't
understand like it's not that big a deal that you're using
Nft's, not that we need to cancel the whole thing.
So yeah, I thought this. I feel like this is kind of a
part of the structure, like because I was thinking about it
a bit more basically that guy who opposed it in the 1st place,
he was only saying that because his audience who is there's zero
Moat they can just switch to like streaming another guy.
So they need to pander to everything that the audience
thinks or that they think their audience thinks.
So basically the whole structure of the fact that it's costless
to switch streams or look at somebody else, that everyone's
competing friables makes it like basically you just pander to
your audience's views as much as possible to try and get them to
watch, yeah. I feel like I don't know.
I think this is honestly ridiculous.
Like I don't know who's advising.
Like these people, I just don't understand.
Why is everybody just so uneducated?
They got to come to the TM Web 3 show.
Come on. Yeah, but this it just, it just
seems like they they just have no backbone.
So I think that's kind of kind of embarrassing for for kind of
everyone in the whole space that that has had to happen.
But yeah, I guess I think this is way worse than the the story,
the story up for Monday, but we'll see how that one develops.
The second story for today is that Meta Mask have announced
that they are going to do an offramp service.
Now this has been a big deal in crypto for a while.
Getting money in and out of crypto is going increasingly
hard. A lot of exchanges basically
have made it increasingly difficult because of various
different KYC regulations and just losing banking partners.
There was an operation Choke point in the US which a lot of
people pointed to. Now it looks like meta masks are
teaming up with PayPal and that you can get your money off
exchanges. It's quite funny that this was a
big headline which I think people were were pretty happy
about and then it looks like the fees to get money off is is 9%
on small they're they're already like they always charge a little
bit more for the swaps as well versus like some of the
competitors but 9% to get your money out is is pretty wild
this. Doesn't How much are the fees?
How much are the fees on cracking?
No, we use them. Yeah.
So what's what's the percent? Just to compare.
If you use Cracking Pro, it's minuscule.
Totally minuscule if you set orders.
If you're a price maker. If you're a price taker, it's
very, very small. If you're a price maker, it's
essentially nothing. And then to offer them to the
bank accounts like. I did it the other day.
It's like 2 bucks, maybe 8 bucks.
Nice. Wow.
And. Like a very very large
transaction. It's a lot, Okay.
Very. Very way less than 1%.
Yeah. Huge.
Wow okay.
Well you got the answer there folks.
Cracking No this. Is a classic.
But yeah, Sammy's a good follower in the space, but he
kinda goes through how the process is.
He is obviously based in the UK. You actually have to pass some
sort of KYC to get it, which kind of makes sense because I
think it came out via Moon Pay Looks like.
Anyway transaction took 5 minutes, he only took out a
small amount. Looks like he took out like £60
worth but still like. So this cost me £6 for a 60
pound transfer. What's £6 like?
Run it back, Turbo. Okay, okay a buck.
Yeah, but. I mean, yeah, for an A/C buck
transfer. I mean, at least at least
there's an, there's options. I like that there's options.
I think that that's good that it's the option is even
available on Meta Mask, yeah. Man, Yeah.
Look, I give you one, Yeah, you say.
What's your view on like PayPal in general?
Like a lot of people in crypto have been very anti PayPal for a
long time, including myself, since they kind of went totally
hammed with a like a terms of service policy, it was like 12
or six months ago, They're kind of seen as this bastion of
centralization, right? And I wonder is like?
This cheerleading and the company like that getting into
it, is that a good thing or a bad thing or just a thing?
Not gonna lie. Like I hadn't used PayPal for
over a decade. Like I thought it was like
boomer, boomer, web two payments provider.
Like who uses PayPal? Like I don't think I've heard
about that for a long time. And then recently it does feel
like they've made a bit of resurgence and particularly
started to push crypto a little bit more.
But it does feel very, it does feel very centralized.
It's almost like I would equate PayPal to using a building
society in the UK. It's like you go in, you know,
there's going to be like very standard, like bank style
regulations about what you can do and they're probably going to
call, call you and send you some texts for just like moving 100
pounds. It's like it's really quite
difficult and that that was my that has been my experience
recently of using it. That being said like who knows
that they they're bringing out a stable coin.
It's obviously it's obviously linked to a lot of different
payment solutions and internationally particularly
things to do with e-commerce. So I think I think it's, I don't
think it's the payment provider that I would ever try and use
but if it's going to be something in crypto then I'm
rather it was then it wasn't put that way.
So, yeah, I think it can be, I think it can be big for the for
the actual segment of the market that it corners, but I am not
really involved in that market let's say.
Yeah, with the with Coinbase, I mean it was it actually worked
pretty like back in the day, not, not anymore.
But I remember friends used to use Coinbase and then like take
it out with PayPal and it would happen like instantly.
But that was like 2 years ago, three years ago.
So it ain't like that right now. No, no, I look, maybe we see a
resurgence of PayPal, like PayPal, I guess.
I guess you've seen like it was obviously created by Elon and
whatever, so maybe they'll they'll push him back into
crypto. I think now Elon's trying to
make X basically like a E pal meets social media, right?
PayPal. PayPal.
Merged with Elon's company, which was called x.com.
Yeah, yeah, I remember. But he's but so now he's
basically grading it because maybe Paypal's decided that it
can go down that route as well. So maybe we'll see even more of
it. But they are embracing crypto.
You've seen Vista and MasterCard also make some moves into crypto
recently. There was a story even out today
that Visa's gonna start using Solana for USDC payments, which
was quite a big deal in the Solana community.
Like people are saying you know this is quite big big big, big
big payment provider now looking to move.
Those 9% fees are like are just crazy though.
I know credit card fees, although you maybe see them are
like 2 and 2 1/2 percent I think, but this at 9%, like, no,
I mean that's something that you actually remember, you know,
like that's that leaves a bit of a dent whenever you're trying to
move some money so. I think do a trade and make 9%
You're like have very happy and then you just spend it all on
the extraction. That seems wrong.
I think it depends like if some of these are fixed fees.
Like he moved a very small amount.
So I can have met, well, not a very small amount, but he moved
60 bucks. So it's not like it's not
something crazy. I don't know if those fees would
lower, come down quite a lot as a percentage if you tried to
move like and then five grand or 10 grand.
So I'm not going to be doing that, but let's see, let's see
how it develops. And and the fact that they have
an off ramp, more off ramps is good just just because people do
find it difficult often to get their money out one way or
another. So I'm kind of happy about that.
Yeah, that was and obviously we kind of touched upon the other
thing there which was that Visa and Solana are doing a are doing
a partnership. Solana just you know headline
that Solana uses has hit a two year low, but it does feel like
some big applications are still being built there.
They're definitely winning some of like the gaps moving into
their ecosystem as well. What we did see yesterday
though, and what's long ago a lot of fun for back in 2021 and
2022 was how much it went down. And there's increasingly A
narrative that the L twos being built on Ethereum actually run a
lot of the same centralization issues that we used to FUD all
the L ones about. And this is to do with so the
sequences fraud proofs, but you saw yesterday that base which is
the big L2, which obviously Coinbases, Coinbases backing or
it's actually Coinbases chain, which is built on the optimism
technology stack that went down for about 45 minutes.
And we've seen this happen with Arbitram recently.
I think I believe it's happened to a number of different L twos
in the last few months, but it does feel as though that's not a
great look for for for base, the TV out of base, that's the total
value lot we've gone, it's gone stratosphere recently it's gone
up to like $400 million. So there's a lot of money moved
on to moved on to the base and to see something like that
happen kind of early. I don't know what you guys
think, but it doesn't make me feel super confident about the L
twos unnecessarily a safer future for for Ethereum.
Like people have said that they keep the security of Ethereum
because the the the transactions are eventually settled there.
But it does feel like they do run a lot of centralization
issues and this seems to be one of them.
I'll bring up, I'll bring up the story about it because I thought
it was kind of kind of crazy to see.
They did manage to to fix it after after 45 minutes.
But yeah, block production on base properly halted 43 minutes
after as developers rush to implement fixed.
They said we identified the delay and block production due
to part to our internal infrastructure requiring
refresh. I mean that sounds kind of bad.
We implemented a fix. It sounds like we just had to
turn it on and off again, which doesn't really that good.
The only job they have is to keep it running.
That's like. Is in some ways it was more
important than all the other things it does is just keep keep
processing blocks and yeah, it's not great that it's happened
this early on. I think.
I don't see it being like I think with when Solana got
footed badly it was because it was happening again and again
and again. If it's like a one off and it's
OK then could be fine. But if this keeps happening,
yeah, it's not a great look. Teo.
Carbo, really quick what do you mean running out of?
What does that mean, running out of block?
Like I know, like for the blockchain there's like, you
know, a block is composed of like all the information, but
like what does that mean here? In what sense?
Just process it. Sorry.
Yeah, they're just not producing blocks.
Like they just said, if the changes stopped.
And there are often different reasons for this.
They don't, actually. What I think was bad about this
is that they didn't really provide an explanation about
what happened. They just said internal
infrastructure requiring a refresh, which literally sounds
to me like a very centralized that's what you would if like
your website went down, you might ask something like that.
So a decentralized Ledger, you don't like to hear stuff like
that. So I don't know, they didn't
really go into the details about why it failed, but.
Like I said, I think the big big theme in in crypto right now is
L twos, right? Ethereum's actually making less
money at the moment as a blockchain.
So like the amount of fees being collected because a lot of
transactions are happening on L twos at the moment and people
think that's really good. I mean that is meant to be
happening with Ethereum. But what you are seeing that
then is people are also assuming that this, this new
infrastructure being built has got the same level of security
or at the same level of functionality as Ethereum did.
And that was actually what was peddled for a long time.
The idea that L2 is the safest, it's the most secure, it's the
best. And actually then they don't
tend to often be that way. And there are very different
reasons why. But I think you have to be very,
very aware that with some of these L twos you could be in
very similar sort of scenario as where people were in Solana back
in 2022, where some of these blockchains just stopped working
for hours and end. They just, they just stop and
your money could be stuck there and that's maybe it doesn't
matter when nothing's going on, but if if something's crazy
going on or like this massive load on the network which often
relates to something crazy going on, it's not, it's not a great
situation to be in. So I think just be aware of of
putting your money on L twos and knowing that this sort of stuff
I think is going to increasingly happen.
All this stuff basically, it's basically going to keep on
happening again and again and again and we're going to have to
sit here and be like you know, all that stuff we funded for
Solana for is basically what the majority of the theory of
ecosystem is headed towards. Well, this is awkward.
Sorry, I was just, you know, feeling left out with the
accent. You know what I'm saying?
I actually saw another thing to that.
If you saw the debate that's happening about block rewards
for Bitcoin, did you guys, did you see this?
I actually got into a big argument at a wedding with
somebody over this. Why do you have the most
scandalous? Like, like stories.
First your honeymoon, like you know the Harry Potter, then you
have like the wedding beef. Like you just always have these
like crazy stories anyways. Mando Mando knows this has been
a big, like a pet kind of project of mine for a while.
The The end state of Bitcoin. The end state of Bitcoin?
Yeah, yeah. Cali Cali does is not a big
Bitcoin fan. I have a big.
Fan It's not the end state. Yeah, so this is kind of flared
up again overnight seemingly between a bunch of this.
This is Dylan Leclerc. He's quite a well known laser
eye I think he maybe is a senior analyst at Bitcoin magazine
looks like, But definitely a follow in the space and there's
a big debate about like the future of Bitcoin and its
security. Everyone gets very bullish about
halving, but at the same time that could mean that the Bitcoin
network is become progressively less secure.
Eventually we are going to run out of bitcoins right?
Or there will be no more. And in that world what happens
to the security of Bitcoin? Like what?
Who is the person securing the network right now?
It is the miners pipe block space.
Now we don't actually know what's going to happen but that
is 140 years away or something like that 120 years away.
But they are saying, but they are saying that the current
security of Bitcoin could be challenged even in 4-8 years
like with each with each hardening.
And there was a lot of people with the recent ordinals move
very, very bullish because this was we actually had them on GM
web, GM web three about from there five months ago saying you
know this is a Cambrian explosion for Bitcoin.
This is now the future of bit for Bitcoin because people would
start to pay pay essentially for that block space again.
And now ordinals has basically gone to 0 again in terms of
trading. And and it's because the the the
the devs, the the core devs of Bitcoin are very much against
any of these changes and they've made it progressively more
difficult. And there isn't a new view or
that, not really a new view but there is persistent view that
actually Bitcoin is going to have to change.
There's going to be some sort of tail emissions.
So instead of it being 21 million or whatever it is, it's
going to have to have some form of tail emission to make sure
that miners are, that miners are protected.
Dylan has come out and basically said that's stupid, that Bitcoin
does not need these tail emissions that eventually people
will always pay for, for for to mine Bitcoin because the hash
rate will come down and eventually with someone.
I do kind of agree with this, this sentiment up until the
point, and actually you should read the comments here because a
bunch of very, very prominent Bitcoin people are just fighting
out. Eric, who's a big taproot
ordinal's person, was basically saying like, you're an idiot.
And I think I saw the king of Thredles, Adam Cochran actually
come out. Yeah, here we go.
The problem is that Maxi seemed to be getting that the intention
was for payment fees to solve this.
When Satoshi left, that innovation faulted.
That went out the window. The hash rate changed neither
changes the Bitcoin produced per block nor the cost of
electricity. Bitcoin was a perfectly was a
perfectly planned predicted on the one assumption that it would
fall to good community stewards. Also, Toshi was gone.
It didn't. It felt the zealots who went
lacking in any ability to innovate.
So tribalism for profit. He basically goes into the idea
that Bitcoin is heading towards the disaster here because people
are not accepting that they basically need to change like
things need to be updated. It needs to become more
Ethereum, like in how the rewards are going to be like
Ethereum mostly has a burn mechanism alongside the
alongside the the fees paid for in gas.
Yeah, I don't. You have a strong view here, but
like what do you, what do you think is going to happen for to
Bitcoin? Yeah, I I think I thought the
ages that this is going to be a problem and with markets you can
never say you know this thing's going to happen in the future
because people iterate back from that constantly and the the
future is just is rated back to the present.
So if you know something certain is going to happen in the future
that is implied eventually in the price today.
So it becomes a a now problem very quickly the the fact that
there's not going to be any. Bitcoin to secure the network is
a huge and obvious problem. I don't personally buy into the
argument that like ticket fees or like fees paid to minors to
put transactions through will be enough to offset that.
And that's the whole argument here.
So I think Bitcoin needs to change.
I'm probably not the person to say exactly how, but it's clear
that, like, you can't just say, oh, it's a problem, but I'll
kind of be in the future and it's OK.
The only way that that that it's not a problem is that the if the
Bitcoin price like goes up by the same amount that the
issuance decreases, essentially that it's infinitely up and to
the right as the issuance comes down and to the down and to the
right, yeah. Exactly, but I think that the
previous argument was that you know.
As they become scarce, as bitcoins become scarcer and
scarcer like on those final blocks, when the reward is like
less than one Bitcoin or like no point, no, no, no, no, no one
Bitcoin. As you reach the asymptote of
the curve, then people like, wow, well the price will be so
high then. I personally have never bought
that. I don't think it's a good
argument. I think this intellectual
weakness underpins Bitcoin, which is a shame.
For once in my life, I agree with Adam Cochran that like.
It needed to kind of. Maybe there was another,
another. I never normally agree with them
as well. But it's interesting to say that
the, the solution which I think is the cleanest is this tail
emission that instead of basically there being, instead
of that being a finite Bitcoin, you basically say we're going to
have inflation of 1%, just some form of tail emission, you know,
like it goes to like 1% forever. And then, but the Dylan has come
out in this, this if you actually listen to the video
because it's worth listening to, it's about 3 minutes long.
He's like, if you do that and you know I will just sell all of
the fork, like if you fought Bitcoin to do that, I'll just,
I'm getting. Out like 0, the majority of
people who hold Bitcoin will agree with him.
I would argue the whole premise of the entire thing is that
there is a fixed supply. That is the whole.
Raise on debt of. Raise on debt Okay.
I don't understand. Why can't Bitcoin just be like,
I don't know, gold and just like chill?
Why does it have? Why does it have to have so many
utilities? Because for it to actually work
for it for like blockchains work by a consensus, right?
So for that security to be to keep the same level of consensus
around what the transactions are, you need to have some form
of reward for people to actually want to be able to prove that
consensus. Without those rewards, you could
never be able to do a transaction like no.
So you're saying if there's no rewards, if there's no rewards,
minors are just gonna be like, I don't wanna contribute to this
blockchain, so? Then the blockchain will just
not exist. It's not.
It doesn't just become some like physical gold after that, it's
just like the purpose for that blockchain that basically goes
to 0 because there's no one securing the chain.
You have something called a 51% which is the most.
This is the most likely way that this would all disintegrate.
But someone manages to convince 51% of the people who own
Bitcoin to change the like the consensus of blockchain and that
would be the main way it would go down, but it just there would
be like the transactions just don't happen essentially.
Block reward and fee structure I think is how you change this.
Not issuing more bitcoins. I think that is total.
That's a game over total, game over.
You think it doesn't work 100%. The other interesting thing on
this is that it's not a one sided equation in terms of.
The number of like the block rewards, it's also got the
inputs which are electricity and increased computing power, like
the cost of like iterations of GPUs basically.
So that's not static. The cost of computing power and
electricity are kind of going up at the same time as the bottle
of water coming down. So it's going to make this a
much quicker problem that they're going to have to solve.
Yeah, it's definitely a complex one.
I think we'll move on just because it's a very, very big
topic and I don't know if we have to kind of fix it for
today. But the next one I put on here
was just is COVID coming back? I don't know if you saw, but
like, Joe Biden's wearing masks again.
There's a bunch of different things happening in the US at
the moment where I think Jill Biden, his wife got got COVID.
So there's like a reason for him getting COVID.
But I know Cal again, you're pretty.
You have a pretty strong view on this.
Do you do you think? I mean, you know that OSF and I
had a bet on this like a month ago or a few weeks ago.
Yeah, I think, look, it's for various reasons.
It's. It's coming back the.
COVID. I don't know what variant it is,
but I just think. What do I think?
They're bringing it back for a variety of reasons, I think.
What's the best way to phrase this?
But come back to me, I'll have a think.
All right. Yeah.
Look, I think it's. You'll see.
On the There's a lot of cultural people now on the timeline who
just throw dirt at each other identifying so increasingly and
seeing stuff about COVID. And it's like, no, the twisted
timeline can be pretty, pretty divisive the whole time.
But it does feel as though now what I thought was kind of a bit
of a joke a few weeks ago, that they were gonna bring back a lot
of different regulations and mandates.
Now it looks like it could start to happen again.
So be wary. It does feel like COVID could be
coming back. We're obviously heading into
winter, so they'll be. Is this good for Nfcs?
Is that good for NFS? People buy our bags again.
People were mentioning crypto though, because obviously people
were mentioning that you know this.
If they do start to do this other stuff, it normally leads
to stimulus again. And if you're trying to shut
down people's businesses, like that's quite a big deal.
I really hope it does not come back.
But there was some, there was some chatter that, you know,
this could lead to this could. Can they stimmy again with
inflation where it is, or like the threat of inflation being
there or not? Before you had no inflation, so
you could just stimmy to the moon, stimmy checks for
everyone. I think they can see me again.
I don't think, I don't think there's anyone stopping them.
If they're going to start shutting down business, they're
going to see me again. But I don't think we're not at
that level. I just thought it's interesting
to see. But like now, I think from now
until January, now until February, we're going to see
more and more of this COVID stuff.
Well, I think, I think it is interesting because this
obviously affects our whole industry, like even if it's
like, you know, something different, it affects the whole
world. But I think people might.
I don't know. At the end of the day,
blockchain and and crypto and NFTS do have a way of empowering
people. So you know, I don't know, yeah,
it was a busy, it was nothing, a busy period.
I think 2020 for the crypto space, that it's not really a
silver lining to 2020 but it does feel as though yeah,
stimulus everyone you know be more indoors is is normally a
quite a big thing for digital culture.
And you're in your TM. Okay.
That's never in your Yeah. Fast track again.
Yeah, go on. Just gotta be careful.
This is not something I'm used to and they just stay up on
screen the whole time. So I don't really know.
I'll go to the I'll. Go to the farm source Adms.
It's like it's like a force of habit.
But you know, I'm, I'm getting a little interested these days,
you know, I would say. But yeah, no, it's really
interesting stuff. Honestly, if it wasn't for the,
the pandemic, I wouldn't have discovered, you know, Web three.
So sometimes what seems to be like a curse is a blessing in
disguise. So yeah, the final thing I was
gonna mention is this Justin Bieber thing.
I've actually shared this to Nelsons, but the Justin Bieber's
hit song 2015 company has been turned to an NFT by another
block from which fans could earn royalties for future streams of
the track. I think this story maybe came
out maybe over the weekend, but I only picked up on it.
As you know, on September 7th, it looks like this could be, I
mean, you've seen a lot of these back catalogs be sold to
different companies, right? Like I think Justin's made like
a few $100 million selling his back catalog recently.
But the idea that royalty payments could could eventually
be given back to users, I think it's quite a cool thing.
It does make sense for things like entities this like bespoke
packaging up of some brand and asset and then allowing the
revenue to be given to holders. I think it's quite a cool, quite
a cool thing and it's the first I've actually seen it.
Some of this we've seen music NFT's through other platforms
where you like buy the actual song as an NFT, but I don't know
if they really have royalty payments attached to them here.
It looks like while Accident will remain the rights holder,
fans owning an NFT, the track will then be able to participate
in a 1% royalty share in the streams of the song.
The accident spoke to the significance of fans, the music
industry, and how blockchain and music rights open up and target
new worlds of interactions. I mean this is like the
completely opposite of what just happened with with that crazily
thing like this, just at a like this is an interesting way of
giving these assets to people if you guys saw this or what you
guys thought of it. Fever.
Yeah.
I mean it is because this sounds like they actually are using the
technology the way that you know one way that it's supposed to be
used unlike the like I just I don't get it.
I I don't get what the whole crater leave but anyways not to
go back to it. I'm super excited about this.
I hope that this is the the you know path that we continue to.
To be on where you know you can benefit as like that's just so
cool. Like I would love if like, you
know, I could in a way own a piece of like a Drake song and
just like, you know, I don't know, I don't know.
It's just that that concept to me is very cool.
And I mean we're seeing like the whole royalty conversation in
regards to the film industry. I mean, I just saw Jesse Pinkman
from Breaking Bad. He was talking about how you
know he doesn't get any. Royalties from Breaking Bad
being streamed on Netflix and he and there's like obviously a
whole like a whole like the protest going on about that
stuff right now. And I feel like there is that
problem and there is a solution. So I don't know what like, I'm
just trying to figure out the gap.
Between the problem of like all these creators not getting
royalties and then you have the solution where it lives in Web
Three and the gap between the two.
Yeah, look, that is the whole strike going on in the US right
now, which is what you just said.
A lot of that is linked back to the I replication of stuff.
There is some talk about how those rights could be
distributed in the future. I think part of that's like bad
contracts that people have signed that they've now realized
they deserve infinite liability to whatever hell the.
No, but it's it's more that, it's more that it wasn't like
part of the ethos And in our, you know Web Three it actually
was. I know right now we are
struggling with the whole creator royalty situation.
I again, I I don't think that that's gonna last like I think
it's gonna, we're gonna go back to the Web 3 ethos, which is,
you know, rewarding creators and and holders and stuff like that,
or collectors. But it's it's more than just
like bad contracts with the whole Netflix thing.
It's more just the ethos of the film industry of the music
industry and artists and creators really suffering.
So that's at the beginning. What was so interesting about
web Three to so many artists and creators is the whole world T
situation and and the actual ownership of of things that
you're creating or being a part of.
So I think that like I said, there's there's this gap and
obviously it's. A lot needs to happen to get
there, but we're on. I feel like the the right track,
but it's not gonna be an easy track.
I mean, these big companies are not gonna let these things go so
easily, but I definitely think that the way to go is what we're
doing in Web 3, which is the royalty situation, yeah.
There was a company which I think Blau was like set up which
is Royal which did, which did royalties.
I don't, I haven't really heard from that them too much over the
last six months. But this is the first like big,
big artist that is that is now moving in this direction.
And to be honest the people who've bought all these back
catalogs, they are just like profit maxi hedge funds or
private equity firms. So if this takes off, I do think
that they will be drawn to the money from it and they will
automatically start moving some of this stuff up.
And there is benefit to both sides like there is clearly
money in these things. People have been buying them for
that reason because for once you go to the streaming platforms
particularly back the back catalogs of big artists, then it
just becomes like a money printer for for like forever
essentially like I think I don't know they it's been crazy how
much has been spent on some of these recently, right.
I think Taylor Swift sold sold the ton.
Bieber sold the ton. All like your all the rock stars
from their 80s and 90s have all sold them.
But yeah, someone needs to build this platform if Royal is not
going to be the person that does it and someone needs to do it
because there's I think there is something here anyway we will
bring up. I think I've invited cracking up
on stage today. Are they there in the audience
that did invite them cracking. I've invited them again if you
want to request crack and we'll have you up.
We're going to go into what they've been doing.
They're always going to be a sponsor for us for the next
month. I think they've got some cool
activations even with Thread Guy and the coming up they have not
requested yet. Can you guys see that on the
Twitter space? I think are they there?
You guys are there. You guys are in the back Okay,
so I thought you were coming up on spaces.
You guys are both muted. But yeah, we have Andy and
Washington here from from crack and ft.
Thanks a lot you guys for for coming up and sponsoring the
show. How you guys been?
Whereabouts. How are you guys?
What's up guys? Nice to see everybody.
This is very cool. So I'm based out of Washington
DC What show you want to talk about you?
Well, my name is Washington, but I'm actually from Australia, so
I'm, I'm based in Brisbane and it's not GM, It's actually
technically it is GM. It's 1:00 AM in the morning.
It's always GM. You guys haven't been doing the
big conferences and going to Singapore or you're going to
Seoul or Hong Kong. You got any of those coming up?
You guys are just sticking around.
We'll both be a permission list next week, so our bags are
packed for that. Nice, I was about to say.
I'm surprised that the whole team wasn't already in Singapore
at this stage. So yeah, it's obviously a
pleasure to have you guys as the sponsor for the for the month.
I know for Rogan and OSF are big fans as well and we love what
you guys have been doing. But yeah, it's good to hear that
you guys are making a big question to NFT's.
We've obviously seen some of the stuff you've been doing
alongside some of the communities already.
The big one that we already know about is with D guards and the
points parlor. But I know you're building a
whole marketplace. So yeah, maybe it's good to get
a little refresh of of what crack and R obviously people are
probably aware that you're in exchange, but how you're gonna
expand the business and what you're planning to do in NFTS?
Sure. Washington Do you wanna kick off
for the discussion of the platform?
Yeah. So let me think, I think back a
couple of years ago we saw NFTS taking off and it was.
Pretty clear to us that you know NFTS are going to be at the very
least a pretty big component of the crypto ecosystem and at the
best and the ideal situation, the one that we believe that
it's going to be like a cool component of everyday digital
life. So you know, it was a no brainer
for us to to to build out an NFT marketplace even though the
first renovation was, you know, this capability gap.
Of building the marketplace. I mean, our product strategy
very quickly became wanting to create like a really secure and
normally friendly gateway into the NFT space.
You know somewhere where you didn't need to know how to
install Meta Mask first, or understand concepts like Gas and
signing transactions, and worrying about block times or
whether the NFT you're going to buy would be like a rug?
We didn't see that platform when we got started working and even
today we don't really, you know sort of see that we see a lot of
our we we don't see our competitors, you know, doing
what we're doing, which is focusing on becoming a bridge
for the next 100,000 first time users of NFTS.
Yeah, that's ultimately what, you know, we care about and
that's why we're building the platform that we're building and
my own pretty long experience in crypto.
This told me that the very best platforms are built in the
middle of bear market. So here we are.
Yeah. Look, I kind of agree with you
guys. I'm glad that you guys are
making a push during the bear market.
It's obviously a time to win market share.
We've seen some other big marketplaces, big exchanges, try
to make a push, But it's good to see how you've done it already,
like some of the partnerships you guys have been doing.
And yeah, it's interesting to see how you guys are gonna
develop it to get into a little bit differently.
Like how are you guys looking at how other people have done it
and how you guys are gonna do it differently.
What are the main things you're gonna be trying to achieve over
the next six months? Yeah, I think, I mean, I touched
on it a little bit earlier, but I think the one big area that
we're different is our focus, because our focus is, like I
said, becoming the default gateway for people to enter into
the NFT space. I think there's plenty of
competition. Between other marketplaces right
now fighting over trading volume of Apes punks and Azukis on a
day-to-day basis and you know that's nice and we obviously
want that. But I think for cracking, our
priority is to grow the pie, not just fight over the scraps at
this point in history, but I mean to get into some specifics
about where our marketplace is different.
Like unlike a lot of other NFT marketplaces, we're a custodial
marketplace, which means that you deposit your NFTS into your
cracking account like you would Bitcoin, Ethereum or any other
token. And you know your NFTS are held
by us in our, you know best in class security, get together.
But that allows us to create a marketplace that's off chain,
which means that you can trade instantly.
You don't have to wait around a few minutes for for things to
confirm. It doesn't cost any gas to trade
and you can trade in like over 200 crypto and Fiat currencies
really easily. And you've got access to to
Kraken's awardwinning 24/7 support, which is pretty, pretty
killer. But on top of that we've also
got some nice quality of life features like we aggregate
listings from other NFT marketplaces.
So right now you've got access to thousands of NFT's that are
for sale from your Kraken account.
You just use your funds today and and go and buy something.
We also simplify cross chain payments.
So let's take for example youths which are on the Polygon
network. You know you don't have to go
and do all that nonsense of wrapping Ethereum and then going
to buy you know, your youth that way you can just buy it on on
crack and we take care of that in the background for you.
And I think at the moment we've got just over 400 collections
from Ethereum, Polygon and and Solana.
And you know, just to reinforce that point about security, we do
like a background check on every collection that we add to the
marketplaces And we personally, sorry, individually I don't
review it, but we have devs to do it.
We we individually review the smart contract and audit the
smart contract of every collection that we add.
And the reason we go through that is we want to give, you
know, our clients the confidence that you know when you buy an
NFT at any price point you're buying something from a
legitimate. Project or community.
So now I think we've got a lot going for us and we have a lot
of really cool stump, a lot of really cool things coming down
the line as well. I think we're gonna be adding
collection offers, sweeping carts, analytics, a lot of the
things that you'd find on other marketplaces.
But we're also gonna be building some really cool auto conversion
stuff. So if you've got Ethereum and
the Nfd's being sold for Doge. You know, you don't have to go
and leave and convert it. You will just do the conversion
process in one click. So making the the whole purchase
flow a lot easier. And we got some really amazing
stuff happening with Williams that's gonna be coming out soon.
I'm so hot for them that I'm like wearing this swag every
single day, so. Yeah, yeah.
There you go. I.
Was just gonna add on to that, I think kind of in summation of
all that, I mean ultimately. I think what we're trying to do
is be the platform of choice for consumers when they're thinking
about kind of dipping their toe into the space.
Because at the end of the day, you know, the way we look at it,
it's not about centralization or decentralization, Maxis, like
we're adoption Maxis. And so we're going after it
through what we think is a safer, simpler, easier
experience. And like, that's honestly what
attracted us to to rug radio, right?
Like. I've been familiar with rug
radio since this inception. I minted the membership pass
back in January 2022. I used that to mint the Genesis
NFTI think I got a scarce too. And I was pumped because it was
like one of those Pepe ones, which is like my favorite.
I just followed the growth and evolution ever since, right?
And so I think while this partnership is actually with
cracking more broadly, I'm sure we'll be engaging in this crypto
content as well. I mean, Washington and I
obviously are focused on the NFT marketplace.
We want to leverage the rug radio platform to get cracking
NFT in front of the community. You guys know this better than
anybody. Attention's hard to get in this
space. I think it's doubly so for NFT
marketplaces, which are about as popular as, as rotten fruit on
the sidewalk right now. So some days I feel like we're
just like shouting into the wind.
So I think it's really great to get a partner with an
established voice in the community.
And help bring attention to what we was trying to do.
So we're, I think I speak for both of us.
We're really excited on this to come together.
We're fans and listeners of rug radio, which makes us even
cooler. Although I got to say, Mando,
I've I've listened to several wrecked radio episodes at this
point and I still haven't won a goddamn NFT wheel spin yet.
So. I'm.
Hoping my luck changes here in the future.
I kind of hope that you don't win now cuz then it's kind of
like I kind of rigged it going forward but you're kind of out,
you're kind of out of winning it now from now on.
But yeah, it's thank you. It's great to hear that you're
radio Maxis. We've been obviously around for
a long time. As you can tell it's fair market
vibes throughout, but that's why it's nice to speak to people
like you like you clearly can try and build it out.
I think there's a lot of in what you're saying, like we just
wanna get adoption. At this stage, it's very, very,
very clear that one of the main hurdles to getting people to buy
NFT's is just the onboarding process.
Like you have to go through 10 different stages to buy NFT's.
We for where it was thought different marketplaces were
going to come in and kind of fix that and never really happened.
So it's great to see a massive, massive player like Crack and
obviously one of the biggest in America, but also around the
world come in and to make that process relatively seamless.
I think it could really help as well as, like you said, you've
got some cool stuff coming. I know you have a big
partnership with Williams F1, which I mean we've seen a bunch
of different F1 related Nfts and it'll be cool to see how that
develops. I think I heard something about
for a guy getting involved, which I think will be, which
will be cool coming up for a guy and Leap I believe are both
going to be. I don't even know how much they
know about the F1, but maybe they've watched the Netflix
series, but that's about it. Yeah, I'm, I'm really excited
about this. I think this is like a perfect
time to you know have a new marketplace like I I need some,
I need a marketplace like honestly, OK, I'm going to be
real, like no shade to blur, but the user experience like hurts
my brain. And I I'm actually excited with
the user experience with Kraken because I I just like the colors
of the website. Like that matters to me because
if I'm going to spend time on, you know, like I used to spend
so much time. On Open C and I mean it was
good, not great, but that was just kind of like the only thing
there. But with crack and I feel like I
could spend time on the website and that just makes me happy.
That's really important to me and also.
I want to ask about the customer service because that's something
that's interesting to me because I know the customer service from
like Coinbase and you know other like, you know that's.
Terrible. Market it's just it's like like
I literally I have like 1 issue I think I got logged out of my
Coinbase about like two years ago and I called the the
customer service and that was like I literally never used the
platform again like I just I. I deleted my account.
I was like, I don't care about this.
This is just awful. So I'm actually really curious
cuz you seem really excited, Washington, about the customer
service that you guys are providing with Kraken.
So I'd actually like to hear quickly about that or what
you're excited about with it. Yeah.
No, our customer service team are just fantastic.
We work with them literally on a day-to-day basis.
What's really good is the relationship that we have that
if at any point a customer comes to them and says I don't
understand what's happening with this, they have a Direct Line
with me who's the product lead of the marketplace to say, hey,
they don't understand why this is happening.
And if it's a bug or it's a problem that goes directly onto
the feature pile that like, all right, hey, we need to go fix
this because we're getting direct feedback from our clients
that they don't like something or they don't understand
something. So hey, let's go and improve the
UX here so that people actually understand what we're trying to
do. So I think that relationship
that we have with CE and Product is really, really tight.
And any time there's like a really tricky question where
we're really on top of things to get there problems sorted out.
So yeah, that's what I'm personally excited by.
Yeah, the coin bases and our competitors are compared to us.
We're just phenomenal. I like that energy.
Well, I mean too, it's like, how
do you want to connect with somebody, right?
A lot of times you're funneled into one way to connect with
anybody. If you want to connect with our
people over chat, if you want to do it over social, if you want
to call somebody, if you want to e-mail somebody who wants to
e-mail. But if you do, it's there.
Like there's all those options there.
I don't think most other exchanges have.
So I think however you want to get your support, you can get it
too. But what else?
Yeah, What else have you guys got planned to like?
Push it and make people aware of it.
We're going to see some big, big like marketing stunts or
activations or this kind of thing.
Yes. Look, I think one of the best
ways to engage with the community in general is to give
them free stuff, right? Kind of.
So in most of our community activation so far, we've been
really focused on trying to have like fun, but provide
interactive ways people can get involved and like engage and
like win stuff. So.
Just example, earlier this year in conjunction with the March
Madness basketball tournament, I don't know if you guys saw this,
but we held our own NFT tournament where the community
could create kind of content, compete for prizes.
We ended up giving away $50,000 in NFT's over the month and the
community got to showcase their creativity.
Mando, you mentioned earlier. More recently, we did the Dust
Labs experiment with their points for activations, which
was awesome. We get a ton of a positive
interactions with that, not just the D guys and youth community
members, but other folks in the space who were just kind of
touching that event. And then most recently you guys
mentioned to the F1 partner Williams, we're giving you
individual NFT holders the opportunity to have their NFT on
the rear wing of a car. So, like, that's the kind of
stuff that we've been doing and we've got a heck of a lot more
plan. Because at the end of the day
we're really interested in like providing the best NFT
experience both on and off platform.
I think a lot of people are just focused on the transaction, but
to me that's actually one of those boring parts of NFT's.
It's really about I think off platform community engagement.
So that's another way we're trying to separate, can we
provide those regularly And by the way for people that don't
even have crack on accounts, right, we're not like a walled
off garden that is only accessible to some people.
We may have some of those kind of more loyalty focused programs
in the future, but we really are about trying to broaden it,
bring people into the space, see how much fun it can be because
the the 2021 NFT Vibes were just Immaculate.
I think most people would agree we're we're not there today for
a variety of reasons. We're trying to get back there.
Love that. Anything that anyone can do to
get us back to those times is much appreciated by us for sure.
Every every little helps. Has the NSD on the back, the F1
car been sorted? Are they have been already been
selected or is there still an option?
So we had our community vote last week, so four of this of
those have been selected. And then on Friday we're going
to reveal the driver's choice. So Alvin and Logan Sergeant are
actually handpicking the rest of the finalists that will go on
there. So that'll be coming later this
week. That's awesome.
All right. Well, that would be a cool thing
to see. Yeah.
Look, it's great to speak to you guys.
I think we're gonna have you and maybe even the rest of the team
on a few times over the next month.
I know when Faroak's back wants to make sure he hosts you guys
as well, but this has been a really good introduction to you
guys coming to the space. I know you guys have been
sucking around various different projects and pushing it, but
it's really good to have this kind of formalized sponsorship
and relationship now with you guys for the next month.
There's gonna be a lot of drug, radio crack and content I think
gonna be produced over the next the next month, which we're
looking forward to. And yeah, we're just really,
really grateful that you guys are, you guys are partnering
with us. So everyone in the in the
audience, I think it's worth taking a look at them.
Obviously we've all had big, big dreams about the revolution
happening in marketplaces, blah maybe it wasn't.
Whatever was hoping this could be maybe a direction and yeah
thanks a lot guys and it was great to speak to you.
I think I think we're probably yeah, I think we're probably
going to wrap it up there though for today we're doing slightly
short shorter shows with with it being a reserved stuff, reserved
but better I would say at the same time but we're only we're
only doing how long it goes. But yeah, it was great to speak
to you guys and we'll have you guys on later.
And thanks again, Cows and Mika, we're probably going to come
back again with the the top five or top seven things hopefully
again tomorrow and on Friday, which will be even more
interesting. All right.
Thanks a lot guys. Really appreciate it.