Crypto Gathering Day 3: What it means for NFTs and Web3?

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0:43That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash R-E-A-L-B-I-S-I-O-N. Rick Rule. Rick Rule is a favorite of the Real Vision community. If you'd like to meet Rick and get a masterclass from the master himself, you'll want to head to the Rick Rule Symposium on Natural Resource Investing in Florida, July 23 to 27. You'll get access to industry insiders, elite bullion dealers, gold council members and uranium pros. Just head over to realvision.com slash Rick for tickets. That's realvision.com slash Rick. So just a little intro on today. Obviously, the topic is NFTs and Web3. We are going to be joined by Real Vision's Jeremy Varlow, who's also just a true DGEN and MF-er.

1:36And we're also going to be joined by Douglas XYZ, who's the founder of Wild XYZ, which is a Web3 platform that's dedicated to artists. And so they're basically trying to be the go-to destinations for artists to collaborate through application-based residencies, launch their collections, reach new artists. So that should be very interesting. You know, we're hearing a lot about launch pads and Web3 and ways to help artists, entrepreneurs, founders gain exposure and help them, you know, kind of gain an audience as well. We're seeing a lot of that come up. So I'm very interested to talk to someone that's on the inside of that and seeing how that whole process plays out.

2:22So we'll just wait a few minutes for them to join the space, and then we can get started. In the meantime, if I may, Elaine, I know you were mixing it up with the audience during our Crypto Daily briefing that just wrapped. If you would, what were your key takeaways from that conversation? um i think my key takeaway is everybody in the nft space sort of knows that you know 99 of nft projects will go to zero and i think before you go into any project that's the one thing that you should ask yourself but sometimes when we're behind our screens to ourselves and then you hold that conviction you go into a little spiral you believe what it stands for and you know you go into it without really figuring out who the team is you know for me personally when I go into projects I do the whole MI5 I do this speech to myself where I'm like I go into the projects you know I treat them as like an ex-boyfriend you never want to basically um uh get on my wrong and thinking if I can't find a face of the project, I'm out.

3:43Oh, I love it. Well said. Yeah, that's hilarious. You know, one thing that really resonated with me, especially at the end there, was what OSF was saying. I mean, obviously, he needs to tokenize his hair, right? Let's get that out of the way. But no, I think one thing he talked about were some of the red flags in identifying projects that are, you know, going to stick around or be successful. And I think, you know, what he mentioned there is identifying collectability versus if the value is derived from whether promises are going to be delivered and executed upon. I think that was a brilliant way to kind of differentiate between these two, because that's essentially how NFT started as collectibles where, you know, traders, people kind of trying to flex their digital assets.

4:36So I loved that. And I think that's a great narrative to keep in mind for the next cycle, for sure. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, just watching like the really big, you know, NFT people in the space that the quote from that comes from them, you have to be really sober when you go into these projects, right? Well, it was a great conversation with OSF, Mando and Sergito, three of my ultimate faves that really push, you know, the technology that's being worked out and being figured out in Web3. And it was just great to listen amongst them with these conversations. And, you know, as a community and Real Vision itself, just like, you know, if you think about it just a little bit about a year ago, even the macro people coming in our community, they're not necessarily engaged in NFTs.

5:28They probably don't even have a MetaMask wallet or they probably don't even care about NFTs. But the fact that they're using the digital asset terms, the jargon is so incredible to watch. You know, we talk about joking about like the guest's hair, OSF's hair. But, you know, a comment from Paul English, something so simple, just go, hmm, you know, he should tokenize his hair. That will bring in some money. It's just the fact that they're understanding the culture, how we're playing with NFTs. And, you know, NFTs and this Web3 world, I think a lot of it, the jargon is already so hard. but looking as a wider view as a community of how far we've become and we're playing tokenize you know lang tokenization and web3 language and we're having fun with it i think that's the most important thing about this space is that you know obviously you have your projects where you want to put your money but we do need to inject some fun back into space and just listening to rao over the past week when he says you know nfts are sort of more like the luxury items and a lot of big plays of sort of just looking across the scene and where to position themselves is an interesting thing that's brewing in the back.

6:38And I think that's something that, you know, we should look out for. No, absolutely, Elaine. I love that you said that. And, you know, speaking of things that are brewing in the back and behind the scenes in the NFT space, we are just joined by Douglas XYZ. Douglas, how are you? Thanks for joining us. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into this space and a little bit about Wild XYZ. We're really interested to hear about it. What's up, crew? Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Is that a punk, Douglas? Yeah, no, this is actually what I look like. That's a live feed of my face.

7:18I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here, crew. You know, at Wild, we're building the home for experiential art, and it's a super fun time to be kind of dreaming big with a small and mighty team. My quick background and how I got into space, I live in San Francisco, so I'm out in the Bay Area. I am born and raised in Ohio for any Midwest United States fans out there. And kind of grew up in farm country there. Moved to New York City when I was in my mid-20s and had a tough time trying to find an apartment. And that became a catalyst to start my first business. It was a company called ApartmentList, which is a United States-based rental marketplace that I ran for about 14 years as founder and CEO.

8:06And so my background is in marketplaces.

8:12ApartmentList did about 2 % of all the rental moves in America last year. And we raised about$170 million, and it is about$100 million in run rate revenue. I guess I just mentioned that to say like I wanted to kind of bring this marketplace background to Web3. And I'm super passionate about the space. So how I kind of fell into Web3 beyond marketplaces, I was a collector as a kid. So when I was five, six years old, I started collecting football, baseball, basketball cards and coins and stamps. And fast forward to about a decade ago, I started making an annual pilgrimage to Burning Man. And I felt that was the most creative place I've ever been.

8:51and the best community I've ever been a part of. And I started producing my own music about four years ago. So I love music. And I really started to experience kind of the pain points of Web 2 as a creator, which I had never felt before. And then I met in my first piece off the Artblocks website in the summer of 2021. And it felt like the parting of the Red Sea. I realized then that like this, all these passions I have, whether it's like creativity, collecting, nostalgia for when I was a kid, getting to hang out with artists, it just like all clicked. And I felt super compelled to build something here.

9:38So that's a bit about my background. uh and coming back to wild we launched about a year ago and building the home for experiential art you know that is a that is a big uh a broad mission by design like we we are here to take big swings and try to make step change uh improvements uh to the space in the in the capacity that we can and uh what we're starting with is our artist residency so we have built um we're really just fortunate, honestly, to have this incredible group of artists that are spending time with Wild and building this ecosystem together. We're in our third cohort of artists now.

10:19It's about a three-month program we run, and the artists will get to learn from one another. We have tons of amazing topics, tons of amazing speakers, and at the culmination of the residency, they released their first of hopefully many collections on wild and so that's that's kind of what where we're at today so 70 artists there we just announced our curatorial board just another 10 artists I'm happy to chat all about but I'll pause because I don't want to talk too much there's too many amazing people here that for me to be on the mic so much well thank thank you Douglas for for explaining all of that you know really quickly I want to go back to apartment lists because I think this is this is awesome.

10:58I used, before I joined web three, I was a community manager in real life for a residential building. And, uh, when I tell you that apartment list was our best, uh, lead source, I am not lying to you. So thank you guys for, for making me look good in front of my former bosses. Uh, that's amazing. Uh, I love to hear that obviously. And, uh, yeah, what a small world. There's, it's really, really cool to see folks with that background kind of migrating over to the space. So that's wonderful. Thanks for sharing. No, of course. And I was going to say as well, you know, you have such great experience.

11:37And these are the types of people that I think we need to come into Web3 with that experience of having actually built products or services, software that's been used and successful in Web2, and then bring that over to Web3. That's exactly what we need. So, you know, being that you are. Is that like just for like the Tinder of apartments?

12:03Yeah, well, we have been described as that before. And so one of our board members actually was the COO of Bumble too. So, yeah, we, you know, it's funny. It's like you learn. It's a two-sided marketplace, not to get too like business speak. Doug, I just need you to launch a 10 ,000 PFP. The rarest trait is the mansion and just launch a bunch of houses. No, I'm kidding. As you were, sir. Maybe we'll have to do that at Wild. And I think you're onto something there. 10 % commission. You know my address. I'll DM you. Nailed it. She runs a tough bargain, Adelaine. She's a great negotiator. you know you are you know in the trenches with with these artists and that's kind of one of the I think the main or one of the biggest things that people kind of think of when they think of NFTs they think of digital art generative art you know our arts artists are kind of at the front of our mind when we think of NFT so I wanted to ask you what do you think or what have you seen are some of the biggest problems facing artists in Web3?

13:18And that could be for new artists kind of coming in or for artists that have already been involved in the space. What do you think are some of these issues that are facing them? Yeah, amazing question. We love artists. This is like, this is all, we get to spend all day, you know, chatting with some of the most creative humans on planet Earth. So we're obsessed with helping the artist community and building something that can be a platform that can be trusted. this is the sad one like the first the biggest problem for artists right now is the proliferation of um kind of the cash grab pfp culture that dominates the headlines like i talked to um of some very kind of renowned galleries uh over the like the last month here and what's what's happening is like they only you know they only know like they don't have this deep depth of knowledge that the folks probably listening to this call might have.

14:13And it's not, you know, they're just haven't like made the effort to get into the space yet. And so the baseline from which they're starting is every single headline about cash grabs and celebrities getting, you know, issued subpoenas and, you know, FTX going under and all this, all these very draconian scenarios that have nothing to do with incredible artists. And so, like, you know, you think of somebody who now most artists are sole practitioners. So their entire income and livelihood is tied to their ability to produce work and for that work to be successful financially, in addition to telling a story that is authentic to them.

14:57And so, you know, what happens is we are putting these artists in position by allowing these massive PFP collections that are cash grabs and shit coins that are cash grabs, it ends up actually becoming a huge, huge barrier to entry for more artists and creators to come into our space. And I think that's super sad. So you might be saying like, yeah, but that's the space. Like, what can we do about it? Well, we don't have to participate in that stuff. And we actually can be pretty vocal about saying like, hey, maybe stop doing these cash grabs because it's not good for Web3. It's certainly not inviting to artists and it's certainly not good for the longevity of the space.

15:43So, you know, that's where I would start. I would say it's like the biggest problem for artists right now is something that's completely outside of their control. But, you know, we you have big microphones. You know, we have a microphone like, you know, to the extent that we can start to make a safe space for artists. to kind of move their entire livelihood to Web3, we need to do that. And I fervently believe that this is the future, but it's not going to happen if we allow bad actors to be very vocal. And that's something that's super important to get the space right. It needs to be built on a foundation that we can all be proud of.

16:22Absolutely, Douglas, absolutely. I think that speaks to the whole idea of speaking with your wallet, right? If we don't buy these things, they're not going to be profitable and therefore they won't be constantly being released. But it seems like people are buying them left and right. And, you know, as long as that happens, there's there's money to be made. So they're going to continue releasing all these, you know, shit coins, derivatives, you know, BS projects, if you will. But you know what I have noticed? I've noticed the narrative kind of switching a little bit away from PFPs and people starting to talk more about generative art and showcase their generative art collections.

17:02Do you think that we're starting to kind of wake up to this or do you think it's just kind of a trend of like monkey see, monkey do? We've seen some higher profile people doing this and now we're following. What do you kind of think about why we're starting to see a little transition here? yeah rather than talking about the negative uh like i love this let's talk about the i mean before you get to the positive douglas i know you mentioned the negative and to jump in like this but i just want to say that speech that you just gave out sent a charge through me so i'm just going to send a few hearts and bjan if i may can i ask a question hell yeah i mean can i pull the soundboard out you can do anything you want this is oh well don't back to you talking about the positives let's fucking go hell yeah i uh much appreciate it thank you elaine um this is my new favorite twitter spaces just so everybody knows uh yeah so i you know like talking about the positives so So, yes, the conversations that we are having are going to kind of set, like everybody here that's listening has an interest in digital art.

18:18I think that, you know, we, here's one thing that everyone here can do to make this space better. You can learn about one artist that makes you happy. one artist where you actually get to know their story you didn't just buy their work because it looked pretty you bought their work because they're telling you something they believe in that you believe in and it's something that you want to share and I you know our team we get access to hundreds and hundreds of artists we get to have all these incredible conversations and you learn the story behind a collection that took two years to create and it was about somebody's you know close uh like somebody's brother that had passed away and it is so tragic but it gave them hope and it told the story in an authentic way to that artist and it is um it is an incredible opportunity for that artist to like express something that this digital artwork is the best way they knew how to express it and there was no better way to be able to kind of express and tell that story of what happened.

19:28And that, to me, is so powerful. And so when I have conversations with folks that tell me, oh, NFTs are the worst, you know, what a cash, FTX, I start to talk about people. Because talking about people and talking about artists and telling stories about collections is fun as hell. And it's awesome to get in front of a conversation that you know where it's going because it's somebody that, you know, to their credit, like they read the headlines and the headlines are bad. So why not just tell them something that they can remember that's positive? And so I love talking about the artists and I love that people want to showcase their work.

20:09And I love people that, you know, go to gallery. I spent like an hour last night on gallery.so just like trying to like clean up my collection so I could show it to people. And so there's just, it's something that everybody can do. It's fun to do that. And then I would say, like, after you've done that, maybe do it again and learn all about another artist and another collection. Because these stories are real. And the platforms that you love to go to, that you trust, that you engage with, they are telling authentic stories for artists. And that is what I believe will carry us through kind of dark times that we're in right now.

20:45Go ahead. Penny, you don't need to raise your hand. Go ahead. I didn't want to interrupt. Hi, Douglas. Hi. Can I just ask? How has all these royalty battles been impacting your one-of-one artist? Because the marketplaces are such a mess at the moment. A lot of people choose not to pay the royalties. Is it kind of like getting your artist down when they sell a piece on the secondary and the buyer chooses not to pay the royalties for them? 100%. It's devastating. the artists rely on that as income and let's look at it from this perspective you're an artist that you know maybe you haven't gone to web3 you've been making money and doing you know museum shows doing gallery shows you have somebody that represents you in some capacity and then you finally in 2021 decided to like make this leap to web3 and you know you you launch a collection oh my gosh it's successful and amazing and all your hard work starting to pay off and then one day, you know, a marketplace comes along and then says, we're not going to honor royalties anymore.

21:56And so now, you know, you're paying your mortgage, you have kids, you're renting a place, whatever it may be, every circumstances are completely different. Somebody's sick, you know, so you got to pay for school for someone like there's all these incredible expenses that arise as life goes on. And then all of a sudden, your income gets taken away. Because people want to like day trade um your art and and could care less about you know basically what the story is behind a work now i come bearing gifts because i get frustrated by that but there's nothing that's outside of my control you know that's outside of most of the people's here's control because we don't run marketplaces in the space that are racing to the bottom and zero fees um so here's how it can be empowering for artists i um encourage artists personally to focus on launching new collections.

22:44When you launch new collections, you empower yourself to control your financial destiny. Because what we're talking about with a race to the bottom on commissions and royalties is a discussion around secondary sales. When you launch a collection, you control the economics because you determine what the artwork is, what the collection is, the story that's told, the platform that you're releasing on, and all those things are within your control. and so if you want to empower an artist go go that path and if you happen to buy something on blur or you happen to buy something where where royalties were not honored then feel free to go spend time and i've sent east artists when when i i did an otc deal uh and they didn't get a commission and otc deals are kind of part of the space too i get hit up every single day for people that want to buy something RTC.

23:39But you can pay that commission. That is up to you. That is not up to, that's up to the purchaser. So you get to make that decision. Yeah, it must be so disheartening for you. Sorry, Penn. I felt like Douglas just slapped me in the face and just reminded myself to be a good person of why I'm here every day. Sorry, Penny, as you are. Yeah, I was just going to say, it must be so disheartening for them when they've put in all that work they've got a preconceived notion in their head of the royalties they're going to get moving forward they promote their collection so people want to get into it on the secondary and it's of no benefit to them a lot of nft groups i'm in um they're using the analogy of well when i buy a second-hand car i don't pay ford a royalty because they created it and it's annoying because it takes away from the whole ethos of how this all should have began and i don't know how on a whole in this space of web 3 we can change people's minds at the stage we're at now and maybe um maybe we don't need to because maybe there are bigger opportunities that lie ahead.

24:58This royalty treatment, you know, was, was, and these, and these numbers are just kind of based upon like people's best thought about what probably made the most sense and felt the most fair three years ago or two years ago. And so maybe we need some new ideas around what the long-term royalty discussion holds, but I would just like stick to this. Every time an artist releases a new collection, they hold the keys to that safe. They get to determine where and when it happens. They get to determine the price of it, the economics of it. And so it's very empowering to think about creating new collections.

25:35And I hope and expect that in this digital age, you know, that it does break down some of the massive barriers to launch work and some of the massive economic hits to launching work in a physical space prior to Web3 being kind of indoctrinated in this artist community. And so I really do think that, you know, like a lot of these collections don't have an insane secondary volume either. So like we're, what we tend to focus on are the like most renowned collections that trade on something like art blocks, art blocks, which I love. And so, you know, there, we, we, we have massive volume on a lot of these on the secondary market.

26:15There are a lot of collections that don't, you know, I would say 99 % of these collections don't have massive secondary volumes, certainly not in a bear market. So when you're talking to an artist and they're concerned about royalties, they have every right to be concerned. But I would say that like I would usher people, you know, the second empowering piece is ushering people that want to collect your work to platforms that will honor those royalties.

26:40Well, spot on, I think. You know, one of the things that in Web3 that I love so much and I think what attracts a lot of people is just the power of community and the ability for artists, founders, creators to just connect and relate with their audience and fellow community members. Now, I see, I guess, you know, just because I've been so involved in the PFP world, I guess I see how that can come to fruition with those communities. You know, you get an individual PFP, you kind of use it as your digital identity, if you will. Maybe you're creating a brand on top of it. It's different from the other collection or other pieces in the collection.

27:25Now, for an artist that is delivering one-of-ones or maybe different variants of pieces in their collection, how would you suggest or what do you think, how can they go about creating and fostering their own community? Start small. Artists, so here's the, you know, we hear lots of discussions around utility. What's the utility of this collection? You talk to like, you know, it's a very difficult thing to argue with. If you want to win a discussion, basically any time in life, ask someone what the utility of something is. What's the utility on that? And so the utility of art is completely up to both parties, the collector and the artist to determine.

28:16But here's the easiest utility to provide for any artist out there, any creator in any capacity. It's human connection. So any artist can create a connection with somebody that collects their work. The best instance of this is like one of the first pieces I bought off of a drop in 2021 from an artist named Jeffrey Scudder, who's brilliant and I can get into it on a lot of different levels. But I bought one of his pieces called Radical Digital Painting. And then I didn't really actually know how Discord worked at that time. like raise your hand if you've been confused by how discord works at some point now i love discord uh but at the time i had no idea what i was doing that's why i like you know i saw some link maybe on the openc page and i went to this discord and i just like kind of joined and then i got in there and it's overwhelming i was like there's got to be thousands of people in there or something and i just said like hey you know i kind of like waved and said hello i hope everybody's having a good day.

29:15And the very first person to respond to me and strike up a conversation with me was Jeffrey Scudder, the artist. And I was really blown away. I'm like, oh, you're the artist. Oh, like, and then we just struck up this great conversation. And so I mentioned the word utility. The best utility that I've had in this whole space is human connection. It's a relationship with the artist. And by purchasing a piece of their work, you're contributing to their journey. but it also is fulfilling for you and so um i think a lot of artists are hesitant like you know you're an introvert you know you you spend a lot of time in front of a computer you're a digital artist you're a badass like take the time to try to like get outside that comfort zone there's growth in that uncomfortable area of like hey just reach out to somebody that if somebody takes the time to join your discord um say what's up to them i do that in the wild discord all the time because it's fun.

30:16And those people are generally very supportive. And so for artists, the best utility you can create is a conversation. And then all of a sudden, like, hey, it starts with one person, starts small, and then it's two people because their net promoter score of you is going to be really close to a 10 out of 10 because that's going to be a great discussion. And then they're going to tell their friends, hey, I just met this amazing person, Jeffrey Scudder, and I'm telling you on Twitter spaces right now. And somebody else is going to say, hey, this guy's awesome. And so that ball like really starts to pick up a lot of inertia and roll downhill.

30:49And so it starts small, but like one turns into 10 relationships, turns into 100 relationships. And then when you're still in a collection, you've got 100 people you can reach out to, you've got an audience, and you can start to host your own events and have those dialogues. So I say start small. Yeah, I think that's, that's a great piece of advice. You know, A lot of things can be overwhelming, especially entering a new space. Just take it one step at a time. What's in front of you? I love that message. And I think that can be, you can take that in any walk of life, I think. So Douglas, let's talk art now.

31:26We've been talking about artists. Let's talk about the art. So what do you look for when you are purchasing a piece of art? Not all of us. I don't always have the best eye for art, but I want to add some pieces to my collection. But I want to speak, you know, hear from you. What do you look for when you're purchasing a piece of art? I know we know about the artist's story. I think that's one of the most important pieces of it. But how do you look for that to showcase itself in the artwork that you're purchasing? Yeah, epic question. And this is like the fun part. I think that one of my biggest vices in the space is rushing into things.