As fast as things are going on now, what does the future hold for NFTs? The growth of the Web3 space has been phenomenal in the last couple of years. Industry thought leaders are positive that even more incredible developments are yet to come. Among these optimists is Matt Kalish of DraftKings. In this fireside chat at the NFTLA Live Twitter Space, Matt tells us why DraftKings decided to enter the NFT space and what the fantasy sports contest and sports betting company has in store for us in the future. Matt also shares his views on what the future if NFTs will look like, emphasizing the key role of players who are consistently working on projects no matter what the market looks like. Tune in for more!
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Listen to the podcast here
NFTLA Live Twitter Space: A Fireside Chat w/ @DraftKings On The Future Of NFTs, By NFT LA Live & Howl Labs
Welcome to another episode and another session of these Twitter Spaces by NFT LA Live. Along with me, I have the pleasure of having our usual cohost, the NFTs Zach Sekar. How are you guys doing?
What’s up?
Let's go. Let's get down to business because we are joined by none less than Matt Kalish. How are you doing, Matt?
What's going on, gentlemen?
Everything's fine.
DraftKings in the house. Get my fantasy team ready to lose. Let's go.
You never know what's going to happen in fantasy.
It's the sad truth but I like to pretend like I know what's going on and that this is a game of skill and I'm the most skilled. Facts. You're here to help me win my league, Matt. That's it.
I got the tips. I'm here for it.
Zach, are you playing fantasy?
I’m not.
Zach's on the bench.
I got benched again. I already knew I would've come in last. I didn't even bother.
It's okay. I don't make it every year to do my fantasy. This is my first time in this league so I felt the need to stand out. This is a very apropos conversation to be having. I got to make sure my DraftKings sets me up for success so I can win my prize pool.
You can't be one-dimensional. You got to have multiple ways to earn. Nothing is so easy in the bear market.
I'm a multi-risk platform. Let's go. For all my fellow geeks out in the audience, what's up?
Danny, let's kick it off. Let's get into some questions. I got so much on my mind.
Let's start at the beginning and tackle why we're all here and why did DraftKings decide to enter the NFT space. Matt, tell us.
Mainly aside from having a few ideas we wanted to pursue, we'll get into Reignmakers and that whole game in a minute but it was a cultural movement that during COVID, when everybody's on lockdown, a ton of interesting hobbies became very big. The hobbies of our typical customer at DraftKings. People were filling time and especially when sports got locked down and there were no traditional outlets for people who were playing fantasy sports betting. All that live content was gone and I quickly observed a bunch of things picking up steam, things as day trading, crypto and collecting sports cards. A bunch of these alt investments or hobbies became prominent. Even after sports returned in late 2020, it continued to pick up steam. You saw if you picked any of these markets like sports cards.
Crypto and NFT had immense growth from the end of 2020 into 2021. By the very start of 2021, it became pretty hard to ignore. It was coming up. I spent a ton of time with our customers. It came up in every conversation. That's what people were doing. Some were playing more in the physical sports space but I was also starting to hear more about things like NBA Top Shots or some of these projects like CryptoPunks, which were some of the early pioneers around ways to apply NFT technology to our collectibles.
For DraftKings, given our platform is all digital and online, the vast bulk of the company is through our apps. People engage through digital means, not physical. Stuff like sports cards in and of itself never was bigger or compatible enough with what we do. When we started to notice a lot of our audience and attention going toward digital collectibles, also considering all the potential around how NFT tech could apply to things like the gameplay in addition to collecting, it went deep. We’re starting to study the space and figure out what is it exactly to expect from DraftKings as it relates to blockchain or NFT tech to our business.
It was early 2021 through the middle of the year that we were thinking, studying and learning. By the latter part of 2021, we launched our marketplace including NFT props and exchange for peer-to-peer trading NFTs. Come closer to the end of the year, early 2022, that's when our vision around Reignmakers came to market, which is like a blockchain NFT-driven fantasy sports game.
That's super interesting and it's fascinating to think about how sports have evolved from the collecting standpoint because anybody who's a big fan of any sporting event loves collecting moments, memorabilia or trading cards. It is imbued value with that sentimental value of I remember that moment and that becomes meaningful to me, those players and things like that.
We're talking about when people are looking at stepping in and doing something competitive. There's a lot of sentiment that goes into the players and the history of those players, what big plays they've made in the past and how we allocate our attention to those individuals. It's fascinating that blockchain technology is leading us on this path where we can do a lot more than what we've historically been able to do by way of capturing those moments and then creating value where people can tap into that and use those as reward systems for other people. I’m excited to have somebody as big as DraftKings thinking about this and involving themselves in the space. What's your experience been so far? Are you currently hoarding all the Bored Apes? Is that what's happening?
I have my bag of NFTs, some pretty sick ones. There were pretty nice wins in the bag and also some things that didn't go so well. I'm sure, like anyone who is in the mix, picking up stuff from drops, there are a lot of things in there that are like a graveyard of NFTs and there's some pretty decent stuff. I have something in the range of 1,500 total NFTs in my wallet and I make my wallet public. Anyone can look. It's something that I’ve labeled my wallet. I want to make sure everything's transparent.
I also make a good amount of content. I have a podcast that I do with Gary Vaynerchuk called Props & Drops. I do tweets and Instagram. I try to be pretty open with it because it's a cool space and hobby. I try to remind everybody that I have no idea what I'm doing from a moneymaking standpoint. It's a hobby that I do for fun, assuming I'm going to lose all the money I put in.
Please understand that if you're ever looking at any of my blockchain transactions. I’ve collected tons of different projects. CryptoPunks was the number one biggest win. Over the years, I’ve probably bought and sold 50 or 60 different punks. I currently have 4 or 5. Punks are something very close to me. I don’t know. I got in the mix some stuff like Veefriends. I like projects where there's actual operation and the team over the course of time that's going to exist and works on the project.
Some of the ones that I took shots on were in addition to stuff like Veefriends, like Cool Cats or Bored Apes. I'm down to one Bored Ape. I never wanted to have 1 bag but I had 4 at one point. I’ve been dabbling in everything, trying to feel it out and getting a sense of where everything's headed and what projects I want to move into. The thing I always forget to do is sell things that are down because it doesn't feel good to sell things that are down. I find myself bag-holding a bunch of projects.
I’ve got you beat there. I'm holding 20,000-plus NFTs. Consider yourself lucky if you didn't get it earlier because you'd be an NFT hoarder, not a collector. That's what I consider myself at this point. It's in the namesake. I'm the same as you. I keep my wallet open and accessible so everyone can see my shame. You're naming legit projects. In my opinion, you made some pretty good calls right there early so keep at it. You're crushing the game, it sounds like.
I was expecting you to name sports-related things or somehow your wheelhouse. You're looking at projects you think are interesting or maybe even that draft thing. Let's talk about a partnership. Is it important that they're directly related to sports?
I don't believe that from the standpoint of DraftKings as a brand. The sports connection's pretty undeniable and that's the bulk of the way people think of DraftKings. The interest of people playing on DraftKings is broader than that. Some examples are stuff like trading stocks. Everybody's into that as a risk-reward game, even if you're not a professional investor. A lot of our audience prefers speculating, taking some shots on things that they believe in. One thing that often surprises people is if I get to my physical collection, stuff that I have in my office, I collect sports and TCGs. I have probably 80% TCG and 20% sports cards. It's a mix that I don't even know why. I tend to like gameplay.
When I was talking about Reignmakers and applying gameplay to NFT, I always found it hard to not gravitate towards utility. When you're collecting like Magic: The Gathering or Flesh and Blood or Pokémon, there's an actual game there. Yes, the collectible value is undeniable but also this idea that it's an actual game that has been adopted that people are playing actively. It's something that I always thought enhanced the appeal of TCGs. I found myself gravitating a little bit more towards whatever like MetaZoo and that kind of stuff over sports as an overall balance. That shaped my opinions and I don't think I'm alone, either. A lot of people think that way.
That's how I got in. TCGs were the first area where I was like, “This makes so much sense.” I remember the IRL version of Pokémon and going out and trying to find somebody to sit down and play a game with you versus going and hoarding packs of it. It’s so much sense that we have this great thing called the internet where we can go on and find people to match up with and own those digital collectibles as trading cards and be able to have some level of utility of gameplay. There is the collector component to it but there's also this action that you can take with it that gives it that enhanced value. That's cool.
Even stuff sports cards, I find myself even if I hold them, I'll typically putting them up for risk on bets or something, side props on weekly fantasy leagues or something with my friends. It's cool. It's nice to admire but I like having something to do with it. I'm always very actively trading and stuff too. All my sports cards or whatever I have, I'm always checking the market. Even if it doesn't have utility in and of itself, I view my sports cards as I'm actively trading in the market.
Are you guys looking at employing that at some point where we're going to have a digital trading card that becomes the default prize? Do you see that as the future reward for digital participation? NFTs are a viable option for a lot of companies to find ways to reward participation in their platform.
In the game we put together for Reignmakers football, we did a partnership with the NFOPA so that we could offer real player IP in the NFTs. The core way the game works is you buy packs and break them. It consists of different players. Depending on your luck breaking the pack, you can get a basic pack where maybe it doesn't even return the value to something that's multiples of the value.
There's this concept of scarcity where the NFTs have everything from the core, which is the most populated tier, to what we call Reignmaker. There are only eight of every player in the Reignmaker tier for the whole season. You can have that experience. People enjoy so much breaking packs, trying to pull something scarce. There's a secondary marketplace where people can list things for sale or buy cards from other players.
The essence of the game is you use your collection to compete in fantasy contests that pay $1 million plus per week in pricing. This season in the Reignmaker football league, we've paid over $13 million in cash pricing with no fee. It's people using their collection. The only cost is buying the NFTs. By competing with your NFTs and using them in fantasy run-ups, you're competing for all of these millions of dollars in pricing as well. There are things like leaderboards, collection achievements and lots of things. There are lots of ways that you earn using your collection.
As we look ahead in future years as well, the ability to keep competing for more cards from the current season and persistence of some utility year in and year out of your collection. We've tried to merge all of these different worlds. I feel a lot of the customers and people who jumped in right away had to say, “This is the merger of everything I liked between fantasy, collecting sports cards, trading NFTs or trading sports cards, opening packs.” It combined everything into one experience. That was the v1, that's our day one product that over the course of years will keep improving and making it better. It’s a bright future and intersects a lot of super interesting hobbies and interests that people have.
If anybody's reading and they don't know what we're talking about, Reignmakers, DraftKings and those packs are approachable too. I'm on the website looking through. You have different tiers and options. Simulating the digital pack is such a smart idea. Top Shot put it out very early and you guys are iterating on that and smart because it does simulate something familiar to those collectors. Zach, did you want to jump in? You had a question you wanted to ask as well.
First, maybe an observation. Listening to Matt talk, you're doing stuff that you find fun. It's like you get to play with all the stuff that you'd be doing anyway and building cool projects and games out of it in that world and trying to bring in a lot of new people who aren't already crypto junkies. I can't think of a better way than to give them a place to have fun. Along those lines, we've been seeing some companies, bigger, not Web3 brands entering and avoiding the use of the word NFT. Do you think that terminology is already on its way out?
I don't think it's on the way out. In the short-term, there are some negative connotations with people that aren't invested in the space or haven't put in the work. The connotations are any NFT is a scam or there's no inherent value to digital assets. If you're talking to anyone new to NFT or someone skeptical, the types of things that you'll hear are like, “It sounds like some scam, rug pull or Ponzi.”
Only through getting exposure to the space do you realize it's like anything else. Jason Tatum, RPA rookie, it's one of his best cards. It's my favorite card I own. The thing is like plastic cardboard worth $0.04. It's not the value is the physical products it's made from. It's collectability, which is driven by demand. It's like anything that people want to own that's scarce, that is coveted, has demand and is collectible and therefore, there's a market for it.
Once people realize digital and physical, there's a very limited difference. As long as you gravitate towards quality projects which have an audience that has demand, a legitimate purpose and team behind them and utility, even in some cases, just the art in and of itself has demand. As long as you're in that situation, there's no distinction between NFT and physical. That's the piece for mainstream collectors and fantasy players. As more people appreciate that, INFT will be a fine word. Short-term, it's a little tough and in certain cases, I’ve noticed companies moving away from digital cards. They'll call it things that aren't NFT, for sure.
It's the friction points too, making it easy to access. Speaking in terminology that people understand. It's the stuff on your website being priced in USD that is smart. Creating those on-ramps where people can understand where these marketplaces exist and what their legitimacy of them helps with the ecosystem. It seems you guys are doing all the right moves. We talked a little bit about people what constitutes somebody you would want to partner with? Have you been on the hunt at this point? What kind of partnerships are you looking to secure over the next year or quarter? Is this scenario you guys want to keep expanding in? Is it other blockchain projects? Are there other Web2 projects?
It's the combo of everything because the view that I and everyone working on Reignmakers have is that it intersects a bunch of areas of people's interests, including NFTs but also other categories like physical sports cards. Collaborations that are meaningful to our audience from any of those spaces are something that we're interested in. In Web3, we've worked with Veefriends and Steve Aoki. We've done stuff with Deadfellaz where they've zombified a bunch of football players. It's the same utility as any other card but it's the zombie version of Kyler Murray and Chase Claypool. We could turn all the injured people into zombies but I don’t know if they would sign off on that.
Sorry, Los Angeles but the LA Chargers have a devastated team of injuries so they'd probably be the horde if I'm going to lay the blame on anybody.
If it's collectible, interesting and there's a good community behind something we're in. We want to partner with quality organizations, teams or communities that we believe are in it for the duration that has a serious operation and they're building. I don't mean that it's a meme to be we're building but what I mean is a company that exists and is trying to make progress build and years from now. Something I always look for is a real organization behind something.
We got to get experimental and a little bit weird with it but you're right, there needs to be some foundation of understanding we have a trajectory, we know where we're heading and we're rallying the right people on this path. You named some great names. I got to work with Aoki on some projects and Aoki is everywhere. Gary Vee, same thing.
I love what Gary says too about it being very much a show me, don't tell me the world. It's not about going and convincing people what NFT projects can do. It's about showing them and them experiencing the value. You don't have to sit there and explain how the internet works. Mom, dad and everybody else is going to get on board because it's awesome. Doing cool shit is the mantra.
I’ve always been afraid to give tips or anything. It's one of these spaces where the rules of the road are still being figured out a little bit.
We're experimenting. The rules of the road are still being written. That's the problem.
DraftKings is a very regulated company. Even personally, I have gambling licenses in twenty states. I send my high school diploma to whatever, you name it, Tennessee or something. I send everything, bank statements, credit cards, this, that, whatever for suitability gambling licenses, company, every aspect of what we do. A big part of our culture is to innovate. However, understand that you exist in a world that is regulated. Consumer protection is at the forefront. Things have to be done the right way. If people put money in and get money out, that needs to be quick, seamless, automatic and something that you can trust.
If you win a bet, you get paid immediately. All this stuff is part of the culture of a regulated business DraftKings. It's been fun working on something extremely new and developing blockchain tech and Web3 within the walls of a company that is extremely thoughtful and careful about everything we do. In a lot of ways, that's the future because while there's always a Wild West for everything, the real big products are businesses that are going to be the ones that build legitimate organizations and do things the right way, I believe. Even though maybe that carefulness results in a little bit more time, a little bit less speed at times to evolve and change things, it's worth it when you're looking at things from a 5, 10-year view or longer.
Moving cautiously is not a bad thing. It's a different world for somebody who has nothing to lose versus somebody who has a $100 million-plus business that they've got to sustain. Making that wrong move can be cataclysmic and results in things layoffs and other things. I get it. Taking measured moves into the space is important. Taking the time to understand the tech and evangelize appropriately internally is important.
Also, if you're going to sit there and come up with awesome ways to use this stuff and then roll out something more meaningfully versus rushing it out and then panicking when you've written yourself into a corner, the best option is taking a wait and see for a lot of people. Knowing what you know, being able to step into things confidently and say, “We know this is going to work so that's what we're going to do.”
What we're seeing is a lot of companies trying to remove those friction points. People not wanting to move from crypto to USD to platform to custody. Having platforms like yours that are incredibly familiar to a lot of people and there's a huge Venn diagram of guys that love fantasy football and girls that love fantasy football and traders. You're in the right place and you're making the right moves from what I can see.
It's always interesting in a world that's increasingly short-term thinking or immediate gratification in almost any way you could think of to build towards a longer-term vision. It is stuff that we’re doing. At the end of the day, the winners or the people that build interesting stuff in Web3 that becomes sustainable and around for years and years are not on such a tight timetable. They'll probably be a project that launches in 2024, which is one of the best projects.
The rule of thumb I got from entrepreneurs raising money for a startup was, “You have more time and less money than you think.” That was the feedback that I always got. You're always like, “I need to go. Now's the moment. We should be faster, quicker, get to market, do this, do that.” You probably have more time than you think.
People think they're late all the time. People were getting into crypto, looking back at 2012 and going, “I was late.” The 2012 guys were looking back at the 2008 guys going, “I was late.” It proceeds like that over and over again and there's a lot of people looking and they're like, “I missed it.” No, you didn't miss it. You're early and the reason you're early is that there is still this ebb and flow. We don't understand who is going to essentially lead over the next decade or two.
There's opportunity there so I see a lot of opportunity for people that want to take that measured approach, hunker down and figure out what their move's going to be so that when the next run-up or whatever happens, they're not caught off guard. They've already thought about this. We appreciate you as a community. I'm not going to speak for everybody but I appreciate brands like yours stepping into the space in doing something early. I will say that you're early and that's incredible. I appreciate you.
Thank you so much. There are a lot of justifiable negative thoughts about certain brands. During the peak build market where there was FOMO and infinite amounts of attention being sprayed towards NFT, it was the dictionary word of the year 2021. I forget which one. It was such a thing in culture and then you started seeing these brands with real short-term attention grab, motivations, trying to siphon off some of that engagement. I remember there was a hilarious Pepsi talking to Budweiser or something. It was this huge meme in NFT culture. Maybe they went rogue. You never know who's behind it. A social media intern went rogue.
Nonetheless, people cringed and it was rightful but at the same time, some brands are building things that have the right intentions which build technology on this disruptive platform. Blockchain, coming up with interesting use cases for NFT that haven't been fully explored and being able to do that with the resources of a bigger company. In the case of certain companies, even if you're regulated, there are consumer protections that are being enforced and guaranteed. All that stuff is important to the future. For the most part, I get a lot of brands maybe tried to exploit the engagement aspect but I wouldn't discount ones that are building products.
Some of us prefer instant gratification. I'm curious if you've any predictions on where crypto is going to impact gambling, in particular, sports betting.
Sports betting and gambling is a very old industry. The joke is gambling is the second oldest industry in the world. People have always figured out a way to gamble and the bookies down the street or something, even before there was regulated sports betting in the US, which is one of DraftKings’ core businesses. Sports betting in the US, iGaming, fantasy for real money. Before regulated operators, there were always these other options.
It's no different. Those alternatives always exist. However, if you want to play with a company that is regulated, it has oversight at all times. If you put money on, try to make money off or make a bet, things are going be above board 100% of the time. You're probably playing with a regulated operator and that's a reality, though. I'm sure there'll always be a variety of alternatives and some of them may be Web3 or blockchain type of operations.
You even see some of them in a big way. Drake and Stake would be an example. Stuff pop up that it's going to be there. DraftKings, what we value is consumer protection and doing everything to the degree that's possible. Do everything the right way, even if that means you can't be in every market. You can't do what you want. The greater good is being able to guarantee to get consumer experience and trust protection.
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
The old tortoise and hare analogy, maybe.
It’s corny but there is some merit to that.
We can move quickly on certain things. There are certain things that you guys are doing immediately and there are certain things that are going to take some concept. Sometimes it's okay to let people run in front of you. There are plenty of innovators in the space that can tell you too early can be a death sentence for projects.
There are a lot of projects that came out in 2017. A cycle got wiped out with the first extinction event and they'll happen again and again. The reality is those that have good fundamentals are sitting there, are delivering the true value up front and are able to sit and wait to see what the best tools are and then deploy those tools. It's all about being willing to take a risk and employ those when it makes sense. It's like when Alexa came out and a voice came out. It's how willing you are to the platform on there.
It harkens back to when people are willing to first put a website up in the ‘90s dot-com boom. It's there's a risk-reward algorithm here but when you're talking about something as simple as, “I'm going to deploy this or do that,” you can do so with limited risk and a high upside. You guys are playing in that realm where there's a good amount of upside for what you're doing being first. What are you excited about coming up? I need to get some swag. I need to get my Shiba trophy. Are you a big fan of The League?
One hundred percent. I feel some of the fantasy penalties that you get for being the worst in your league are iconic. It’s such a great culture. I was a distance runner in college and the way I got into fantasy baseball, which was my first fantasy sport, was on these long runs because there was nothing to do, just run. People would be talking about baseball and going through the mix and all the stats.
I absorbed everything and started getting into the culture of fantasy and the obsession with knowing every single fact about everything. It's special. The way that's evolved into severe penalties for losing your league, you have to go out on the street in the corner holding up a sign like, “I'm terrible,” wearing a diaper or something is ridiculous. There's going to be anything quite like that. We can do our best to stay modern. Make sure we're capitalizing on the best technology available to give an amazing experience to people. That's what I think this is all about, this Web3 NFT Reignmakers venture. It's all about being real-time using the best tech to give crazy great experiences to people that reflect whatever the best tech available is.
We need punitive NFT and here's what I suggest. Everybody takes their most embarrassing high school photo and put it into a smart contract. If you're the last in the league, it releases those photos and publishes them on Twitter.
There's always room for a more brutal penalty in fantasy, that's for sure.
We're going to find a way to do this digitally and take the punishments. We've got the rewards. NFTs are a great reward mechanism. Can they be used as a punishment? Probably to dangerous outcomes but we'll see. What's the weirdest thing you've seen on the blockchain?
The best project that's weird is Crypto Dicks, which is my favorite. I don’t know, there are so many great candidates like Larva Lads. I remember cracking up because it was these fat worms that look like CryptoPunks or had the same attributes. I thought it was funny.
The derivatives that came out of the Punks. Larva Lads was one. There was a fast food one. There were so many of them. It's great because you're Crypto Punk. Did you say you have five?
I have five now. I have a zombie.
You're not even rocking it as your PFP. How humble.
I was in the maybe scary middle where the floor owns everything and then there are the total grails that might be worth a ton and then there's the dreaded mid-tier of NFTs. I always found myself like the mid-tier CryptoPunks and this group, it's like a telegram Crypto Punk group. A bunch of us, back in March or April 2011, we’re obsessed with these cool, mid-tier CryptoPunks and it wasn't good. Why would anybody want to own a floor Crypto Punk? They’re terrible. You go up a couple of tiers and get a sick-looking one that's super cool. That was a huge failure. The move was by the floor. Lesson learned but that seems to be a rule of thumb that's held up pretty well across all projects for the most part.
I did the same thing. That's one of the lessons a lot of people coming into the space, especially traders, learn pretty early on, unless you're picking out your life piece, which I'm not a great trader. I like to collect. I do find things that aesthetically speak to me. We've seen more of that. We've seen a lot of the collecting mentality material to people starting to pick out things that speak to them. CryptoPunks is a story of can I afford anything above the mid-tier anyways? Sometimes I want to get into a project. I'm like, “That looks cool,” but the $20,000 difference is not going to cut it for me.
I remember the absolute peak of all of the insanity, this podcast with Gary and we were talking about this. The basic idea was if you have an NFT that's a high-end one and you can sell it and change your life and buy the floor, do it. There is so much of this, “If you sell, you're the worst.” It's a shitty culture and not everybody's like that. I felt it was 1% but there was this 1% of noisy Twitter accounts who would sell shame people or they'd be like, “Diamond hands, this, that.” What? Some people were changing their lives by selling one NFT, which is crazy and then they get back into the project and buy the floor. Yes, do that.
It's this weird PR campaign not to sell.
If anybody is sell-shaming anybody on this, legit don't worry about that. That's stupid. You bought something. If you can't sell it, it's a scam. Buy and sell things that you want. That's the end of the story. I hate that. That's my number one. If I had to complain about something like NFT Twitter, it's that.
It's maturity. It'll improve. There's psychology here. There's an obvious financial incentive there to make people want to hold. In the same way, you feel about bot farms and other things where they go out. They mint out all the white lists and then dump them. There are going to be bad actors. Social manipulation is a huge part of this, where people are taking different paths to socially manipulate and get everybody into a project that then rugs in all this nefarious stuff that happens.
It's not going to get cleaned up overnight but being aware of it and then outright rejecting it as a part of your community is an important and good statement. We're not here to advocate for people hoarding, especially when it's life-changing wealth that we're talking about. Even if it's not, maybe somebody's down and they got to pay their bills, they got to cash out. If it's between holding onto your JPEG and you freezing, you probably should sell your JPEG.
It's crazy. This is fun. The NFTs, the games, it's for fun. This is a hobby so it's supposed to be fun and if it's not fun because people are giving you a hard time about trading, it's not aligned with the culture, in my opinion.
Imagine spending your day getting stressed out about trading jpegs.
I don't have to imagine.
At least the part about spending my day trading jpegs resonated maybe stress-free but I’ve spent many a day, like 30 hours in 1 day, 40 hours per day. 60-hour days. I'm working 60-hour days on jpegs.
I work 60 hours in 24 hours. The math doesn't work but I did.
There are enough sufficiently cool projects that can stand on their own. People can come and go as they please, in my opinion. That's the outlook when you look at something sustainable for the long-term because there are these mechanics that you'll see. If you lock your NFT forever, you get a yield or something. These things haven't panned out for the most part. There are some cases where short-term, long-term wise, a lot of these mechanics have panned out and if you go through whom all were doing things that and how many worked out, it's very thin.
There’s something on the roadmap but none of it made it.
It's tough. I'm not saying that people shouldn't experiment with cool mechanics but in general, I believe in the idea of coming and going as you, please. You should be in projects that you're genuinely interested in. If you decide something's not for you anymore and you want to exit or sell things, great. It shouldn't be so much friction. A lot of the mechanics around hold things forever, I feel I get it but I don't think it's the future. It's much more short-term to me.
When it's ultimately built on that Ponzi-nomic, we need way more people coming in than leaving every day to get somewhere. Often, it's some big promise. Once we get there, we'll switch to doing something important. To get big, first, we got to do the same old thing.
When do we think Super Bowl tickets are going to be NFTs? That's my question. It makes a lot of sense to me.
I have season tickets for the Celtics and they made the finals in 2021. All the tickets they send to my phone, not NFT or a physical ticket. If I ever want to look back and have nostalgia about how sick it was that the Celtics went on and made the playoffs, made the finals and I was there, we’re in a weird no man’s land. If you go on eBay and search for tickets like Michael Jordan's first game ticket, these things are PSA grade and selling for a bunch of money and it's a thing that people kept collecting. I feel it needs to either be there or NFT but the weird middle of the digital ticket but there's no retention, to me, it’s sad. It's going to be one way or the other.
Follow-up question, who's going to win the Super Bowl?
It seems increasingly wide open but I was thinking that the Bills had it in the bag and they had some weird losses. I still think it's hard to deny the Bills.
I’m a Ravens fan but it feels the Bills need it.
They're pretty good. Nothing fundamental happened. They lost to the Jets. That was strange. That was lost. It was a crazy game.
You're still with us. We know Tennessee is kicking off with Green Bay soon. I got Christian Watson in for the first time so everyone pray for me.
If you want to talk about teams that are doing not much, Green Bay. There you go.
Watson, though. I saw his fantasy point projections.
You know what I'm going to be doing after this. I'm going to be staring at my fantasy league going, “Come on.” I got zero points from Green Bay. Tennessee's up by seven for some weird magic to get my team over the line.
The DraftKings fantasy games for Thursday night we've been doing for years and daily fantasy and it's been increasingly huge these one game, Thursday night, Monday night, Sunday night football. With Reignmakers, check it out. You go on and scoop up from the marketplace four people playing in the game and put them in a lineup. Once you’re on the NFT, it's a free game. You have a shot at some prizes. You can hit it from a few angles, a Reignmakers thing.
One of my favorite things to check out is if somebody has a crazy good game or if they had a small role like Christian Watson, if you had a small role historically but then something happens where you become a bigger piece of the offense, you see it immediately. In the market, the player starts trading up. It’s cool. It’s a different way of playing and cool. It’s worth checking out.
He went for 1% on until 72% rostered in 1 week. 0 points to 40 points that fast. It's funny. That's awesome that you have some incentive. If anybody reading that is curious about the platform and what they're doing over at Reignmakers, we have a couple of things pinned from them. You also have a free claimable pack on there. Not a bad way to get your feet wet is freebies.
Overall, it was cheap. You don't have to spend money at all to play. There's a free starting pack and so you open it and it gives you a full roster that you can use in the upcoming week’s fantasy game at the lowest tier. It was built with the idea that not everybody has the same budget or desire to play at a high cost. At the lowest tier, which is core, for $20 and $30, you could build a good lineup.
If you go up to the top tier like Reignmakers, that's when you're talking about very little competition and big prizes. The cards are whatever some dollars may be for good cards. Get into the four-figure range to add good players but the yield is also a lot more if you win. It’s something to click around. Check it out. There are five tiers. Whether your budget's $20, $80, $300 or $1,000, you could take the tier you want to be playing at.
This is what I'll be doing over Thanksgiving instead of trying once again in five years to explain to my parents what I do for a living or what blockchain is. Thank you for giving me a welcome distraction away from explaining to the extended family how NFTs and blockchain work.
I can't wait to give unofficial financial advice to my aunts at Thanksgiving. It's going to be great.
I have to set up barriers for the family. They got us cramming it all in during Christmas time because at any other time of year if they're pinging me, I'm going to ignore them. “What should I buy?” “I don’t know. I'm the wrong person to ask. Ask CNBC.”
I hope everyone learned their lesson from last Thanksgiving and Christmas about giving family financial advice about NFT. That couldn't have gone well. It’s a little better but still beware of the financial advice, always.
There classifies their disclaimer. Thank you, everybody, for coming. Not financial advice.
Before we log off and let everyone go watch Thursday Night Football, I do want to invite you, Matt, to join us at NFT LA. Tell people more about this on stage and everything that happens in between.
I’m very excited about NFT LA. It's been a minute. I was at the Miami NFT event. I got COVID. I was like, “Everyone got COVID at this.” If you were there, you'd bet everyone had COVID after it so that's how it'll always be remembered. I didn't go to any NFT events after Miami and was on full lockdown and then building, doing Reignmakers and working. I'm excited to get back out there on the circuit a little bit, see what's going on, get my head out of the sand a little bit and have the benefit of a bit of a quieter year where the quality will bubble up. The good projects that people have been contemplating.
In a market that says tough as the current market, anybody who's working consistently on a project takes a lot of resilience. I have a lot of admiration for anybody working on something innovative or new in market conditions like this. Everybody wants to write anything. It’s the top amount of admiration. I can't wait to see come NFT LA what people have been cooking up.
It's going to be fun. We already have rumors of people getting things ready and cooking and want to announce it with us. It'll be fun.
Every Thursday, you can find us. We'll be doing these Spaces every Thursday around the same time. We've got a film NFT one coming up, we've done gaming and be doing fashion. We're hitting all the avenues. You're always welcome to come back and join us. We love having your perspective but it's been an absolute pleasure. We're excited to see what DraftKings puts forward.
Thanks for the chat. This was enjoyable. I look forward to the next one.
We do look forward to the next one too. Everyone, thank you for joining.
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