Edge Of Austin 2022, DCentral & Consensus: Kevin Smith, Michael Wagner (Star Atlas), And Justin Wu (DCentral)

||Web3 Community: It's interesting and amazing to see the evolution of NFTs and the mainstream's entry point into that.|Web3 Community: Years from now, people will look back at Killroy and be like, “That’s so silly,” but it's the necessary step for everyone else to come into the space.|Web3 Community: Community building is important because even though many people could just press play, there's a cross-section of people who are like, “I'm on your website. I'm coming to your live event. I'm going to your store.”||||||
July 16, 2022
Podcast
NFT Kevin Smith and Justin Wu | Web3 Community

 

Joining us today to talk about what’s happening in the NFT world is Michael Wagner, the Co-Founder & CEO of Star Atlas, Kevin Smith, the creator of the NFT film, Killroy Was Here, and Justin Wu, the Founder of Dcentral Conference. Don’t miss this exciting episode to find out more about the evolution and innovation in the NFT space such as the NFT gaming and film sector as well as the Web3 community.

Listen to the podcast here



 

Edge Of Austin 2022, DCentral & Consensus: Kevin Smith, Michael Wagner (Star Atlas), And Justin Wu (DCentral)

We’re hanging out in Austin with Michael Wagner, CEO of Star Atlas, taking it all in. It’s day one. We have got 17,000 people walking around. How would you describe the vibe here?

The energy is buzzing and what is encouraging to me is thinking through the macro environment in crypto. Arguably a pretty severe fair that we have been in now, seeing the activity, the people, interest, and innovation, this industry is here to stay. I have been in this space for a long time. People often ask me, “Is crypto real? Is blockchain going to work?” It’s always a strong affirmative for me. Events like this demonstrate and reinforce that in my mind, so people are here. They are building and loving it. Price volatility and what’s happening out there in the markets is only a small component of the evolution and innovation that is this technology.

Let’s zoom in a little bit on the NFT gaming sector, specifically what you guys are doing and Star Atlas to support adoption. The building is great but you got to have gamers that are excited about the industry. There’s been a lot of mainstream press about the tension between traditional gamers and NFT gamers. I’m curious what your perspective is on the ground and what you guys are doing to make it easier for more gamers to enter the space and enjoy games.

We acknowledged that there’s a lot of skepticism in the traditional gamer community right now about all things NFTs, blockchain games, and cryptocurrency as well. I’m a long-time gamer and I understand the value proposition. With that being said, it’s clearly going to take some time to be able to communicate and, more importantly, demonstrate what the potential of this sector is or this evolution of gaming is.

The first step of that is talking less, doing more, building the products that people want to engage with, and building the highest quality. The AAA-level gaming experience and the entertainment experience that they have come to know and love. That’s the first thing we are doing. The second aspect of this is how do we reduce the friction and the onboarding process? Getting exposed and involved in crypto is a pretty steep learning curve and there are security risks for the users.

They need to understand how to set up a crypto wallet, secure their seed phrase, and protect their cryptocurrency from scams and misuse. For us, we have a multi-pronged that will enable a more seamless onboarding process for them. We announced two major relationships. One of those with MoonPay. It is a credit and debit card purchasing solution that allows users to very rapidly onboard into the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Not having to go through the whole exchange process, wiring funds, moving those to a decentralized exchange, purchasing crypto, and purchasing NFTs, all of those steps. MoonPay is a one-stop-shop that allows people to purchase NFTs and crypto directly in our game client or browser experience. For us, it’s also being very supportive of the community that has been so passionate about what it is that we are doing.

We have a big guild ecosystem within Star Atlas. In our terminology, we call them Decentralized Autonomous Corporations. This is pulling some influence from Eve Online, which is similar from a game mechanic standpoint. For anyone that’s familiar, within Eve, all of the gilts were called corporations. We took our web3 spin on that with DAX.

We are rolling out a big campaign where those guilds will be able to present to a global audience through our medium. It’s the innovation that they are bringing, the things that they are doing, how they are recruiting players, and the technology that they are building surrounding Star Atlas ecosystem itself. Part of that is partnering with iBUYPOWER to provide a Star Atlas branded gaming computer that will be given away to one of the community participants. Anybody that’s out there in the audience, listening into these presentations and hearing what Star Atlas is all about because we, as the developers, are only one component of it.

We need to build something that’s foundational and can grow, but we see enormous potential in this concept of composability and extensibility. This essentially implies that other teams can build upon our foundation and innovate and become entrepreneurs around our ecosystem through technology development.

I can’t help but admire your Star Atlas shirt and there are a lot of logos going on there. I am a big EFC fan, and I think about all the brand partnerships that have gone into creating a broader experience from EFC restaurants to emerge and things like that. It sounds like we are going in that direction without going too far into the future. Do you guys think about partnerships with mainstream brands that also appeal to gamers?

Certainly, we are, and iBUYPOWER is the first announcement of many that are in the pipeline. I’ll be discreet on what those future announcements look like, but it’s interesting and amazing to see this evolution of NFTs and the mainstream is the entry point into that. There are a lot of celebrities out there right now that are getting involved in this that have a CryptoPunk or Bored Ape as their profile picture on Twitter. All of these celebrities are also creating their own product lines around the technology too. For what it’s worth, having celebrities represent the industry is a great way to attract that mainstream audience because their followers love what they do. We are seeing a ton of this, and the innovation is amazing.

Thank you, guys, for being part of an NFT LA. It’s got a cool exhibit and a dome. Steve Aoki is performing next door is a lot of fun. One of my favorite moments from an NFT LA, as I was running around crazy, was I popped into a sports scene talk, and I saw Julian Edelman, my favorite wide receiver hanging out in the back row watching the talk. I was like, “What can I do for you? Do you like to go meet anyone?” “No, I’m good. I’m here to learn.” That says it all about where we are in this space, and I’m excited to keep tabs on what you guys are up to. Thanks for spending a few minutes hanging out.

Thanks, Josh.

It’s great to have you guys here.

It’s excellent to be here.

It’s been a long time in the making.

We just came off stage and a guy was talking about it at one point that he’s been in space for many years. You are an old man here.

I am an old man.

He’s Methuselah when it comes to this field. He’s got the wisdom. He’s been around for a while and shit.

What we’d like to do is talk about the things that are pushing on the open space and the things literally at the edge of the space.

It’s where KillRoy is right there.

It is. We had the pleasure of hearing you talk over at VeeCon. There are so many impressive things in that talk. Probably the most is that you are standing there by yourself on stage and holding it down.

That’s always the way I would prefer it at the end of the day. I could always get everything across by myself. Sometimes they put you with a moderator. We had moderators and those boys were wonderful. Generally speaking, I was doing it for decades. It’s like, “Give me a mic. I will get up there and I will cover it. How long do you need? Two hours. I got you.” Fill that with content. Being at the edge is something that I have always been interesting to me. It’s a big part of my brand.

Selling technology as an option to one person is not inclusive. That is not in the Web3 spirit. Click To Tweet

The thing that I have always done in my career is trying to go where nobody else is. Not because I’m visionary. It’s because I don’t want to fucking compete. I’m not good enough to compete. Why do I want to be in an established place when I could go be the big fish in a small pond? I have conducted my entire career. I made an independent film. I didn’t try to go work in the studio system and stuff like that. Try to find your way in and stuff.

Sometimes that way, generally for me, it’s always been on the fringes. It’s always not in the mainstream. Shortly after I got involved in the thing, it became mainstream, and not because I did it. I get there a few minutes before everyone else finds out about it like podcasting, indie film, and blogging. I have been around so long and I did it all.

Now, the idea of taking a feature film into the NFT space. I asked David Shapiro, I was like, “Is anybody done that?” We had this conversation years ago. He was like, “No.” I was like, “Could we?” He used to produce movies so he had some say in the matter. I was like, “What if instead of taking it out traditionally, we did this thing. I don’t know enough about the space. Would that be revolutionary?”

He was like, “Absolutely. That’s what everyone is wanting.” It’s a lot of single images and stuff. There is a lot of creative work, but a whole feature that would be a step forward. Like I said on stage, it’s primitive. Years from now, people will look back at KillRoy and be like, “It’s so silly,” but it’s the necessary step in order for everyone else to come into the space. If we do it and it works, every studio is going to open up their library and be like, “It’s DVD all over again, because now we could sell you yet another copy of Terminator and you are going to own this one for real.”

That’s what’s coming. That’s what the future looks like. To be here now early before everyone else gets there, and I know they are coming, as I said on stage on VeeCon. When we started talking about launching KillRoy as an option, I started hearing from people that I don’t hear from anymore, who were like, “This is very smart. We are watching.”

Not that they are interested in my career at all, but they are like, “If you can make fucking two nickels off of this, then we are going to make way more than you.” They are waiting to see a guinea pig go first and then gag it to be the guinea pig with KillRoy. Thankfully, he had the vision to see that. My vision was like, “This is a sell to one person, and let them figure it out,” which is a variation of what I do in independent film.

You make it and then you hope somebody buys it. Guy’s idea was like, “No, don’t do that. We make a community. That community then supports the movie and then creates the sequel together.” It’s not so much for making a product and we are going to sell it. How many widgets did we sell? It’s about building family and community with a bunch of people that are like, “I understand what you are doing, and I can bring something too.”

One of my favorite fucking stories in the world is Stone Soup. It was the story I heard as a kid. It does apply to our business. It’s a starving town and nobody can eat and shit. There’s not enough food go around, and then this guy comes into town and he’s like, “I got a magic stone. I can make stone soup to save the town. I got big pot.”

He’s going, “You, what do you got?” He’s like, “I got a carrot.” He’s like, “You bring that. What have you got?” Everybody had a thing. He’s like, “Everybody, bring it and put it into the pot. Now the stone that’ll make it.” Fucking drop it in there and everybody is like, “We are fed.” It was all there. It took one person to be like, “You come in here.” Guess what a director does essentially. It’s like, “Come over here. You stand here, do this and say this.” The idea of coming in and coalescing a community around a stone. The stone is KillRoy. That community coalesces around fucking KillRoy, and we continue to build that community. It’s no different than what I have been doing for years with my own fan base.

Thanks to Clerks’ Mallrats, there were people like, “I’m interested in you and what you do.” I started getting out on the internet in 1995 and the website where I could talk to people. There were two filmmakers on the web at that point, me and Peter Jackson, and he got very successful. He eventually got off the internet and started making fucking Academy Award movies and shit. I stayed on the internet.

NFT Kevin Smith and Justin Wu | Web3 Community

Web3 Community: It’s interesting and amazing to see the evolution of NFTs and the mainstream’s entry point into that.

 

We were the only two, and I couldn’t believe there were more because it’s like you are talking to the people that buy tickets. Prior to that, you read reviews and you see the box office. That’s how you knew how you did. Suddenly we were in this world where I could talk to the person who bought a fucking ticket to go see this dopey thing and they are like, “Why?” You could create a relationship with that person beyond a simple like trading of a commodity like you bought a thing. It’s like, “Goodbye. We are done.” That relationship keeps going. Why? It’s because I’m going to do another thing one day. I don’t want that person to come back and shit. Returning customers.

I’m curious with KillRoy. Do you see your historical community or fan base joining the party or a lot more new fans? What are the demographics look like if you could predict what’s going to happen here?

What I have seen so far is a few cats who follow me traditionally are jumping into the space. I saw a guy who was very surprised at my Twitter feed, who bought on the early drop. He’s like, “I have to figure out how to do it,” but he’s going, “I got it.” That blew my mind because I didn’t think that cat was going to be one of those cats.

For some people, you capture their imagination where they are like, “What is this? Is it new?” Suddenly, a portion of them come over for you, but I would say largely, “It’s the community itself.” That’s what it looks like. It’s people already in the space who believe in the idea. They are like, “If this works for this cat, then the sky is the limit.” I have seen a lot more support from within the Web3, crypto, and NFT community, only because people outside of it don’t even know how to get a digital wallet going, but that becomes part of the education process.

Once the NFT drops, then it’s going to be a lot easier to educate the people who don’t know shit. They don’t have a fucking crypto portfolio. They don’t know anything. They are like, “The Coinbase, what’s that?” I would imagine that’s something that Guy secretly would be interested in fucking new eyeballs and stuff like this.

You have this idea and you are like, “I want to do this thing.” The actual act of changing that idea to reality is something special. How did you all connect to make this thing happen?

I was connected to Kevin. Kevin is a co-producer through some other person from Curio, another NFT company. They were working with David on several products and things. Ben from Curio said, “You should meet David.” We got together and excited. David is an amazing person. He has a lot of ideas. Kevin is throwing the credit my way, but it was more of a joint effort sitting with David, Kevin, and Jordan. Altogether, we would say, “It’s a great idea. It’s an amazing concept. We think that our technology can do more than what others can do.” The concept of selling it as an option to one person that’s not inclusive or not in the Web3 spirit, so we came up with this new great idea.

There’s a bit of sexy involved as well because they were coming off of their Quentin NFT project.

We were there when that project got announced. That was pretty exciting in NFT New York.

Some of the fallout and questions around intellectual property interest me.

A community takes time to follow up and nurture. You can't be in the business and not care about the community. Click To Tweet

It is creating a conversation. We all want to be entertained and some shit to occupy our day. Saying like, “Quentin Tarantino is going to sell one of his scripts as NFT.” That story is enough, but then all the stories that came on top of it, where people are like, “I don’t know if he’s allowed to do that because we own that property.” This one is like, “No. You own the movie. I own the script.” That’s an important conversation to have that came out of NFTs. Those guys who work with Quentin made them sexy enough for me to be like, “I’m sorry. They were involved with the Quentin NFT.” I’m listening to this conversation.

We were set on doing a thing one way like, “We are going to auction it.” That’s what we talked about and did a lot of press on it. The fact that they were coming up with an alternative idea wouldn’t have penetrated if they hadn’t also worked with Quentin. That’s what got my attention where I’m like, “I know Quentin. He’s not the guy that’s like anything for a buck.” He makes enough money doing what he does. He ain’t like me spinning plates everywhere and shit like that. He concentrates on filming. He got involved in this, got engaged in a relationship with these cats, and did what he did with the NFT. That to me was like, “They must be special.”

They are. We have seen a lot of the stuff they have done and the capabilities there especially getting involved at this stage, the ground floor with everything that you are doing. I’m sure you are setting the stage for all kinds of fun stuff. It can be released later in addition to the initial release and all the notes that you’ve taken down on KillRoy and all that stuff.

If I was doing a DVD, you get one bite of the apple. Put it all on that DVD, and if you found other stuff later on, then you got to release a whole ass different DVD. The beauty of this is we can augment for Time and Memorial.

How do you feel about the responsibilities that come with actively managing a community? It’s more active day-to-day, whereas fans here can press play, see your content, and track you. We have talked a lot with folks about how Web3 and your stakeholder groups converged together. These are not fans. These are investors. What’s been your thinking on that shift?

I got 20 to 25 years of experience in terms of community building. Even though a lot of people could press play, then there’s a whole cross-section of people who were like, “I’m on your website, and I’m asking you a question. I’m coming to your live event. I’m buying a ticket. I’m going to your store and doing a thing.”

For the better part of my career, the only reason my career has lasted this long is because I fostered your community from 1995 onward that I can count on. I’m not one of these people that’s like, “I hope the audience shows up for this movie I’m making.” If I keep the budget right, I know this many people will show up for Time and Memorial until they start dropping fucking debt, which is happening now because we are all in our 50s and shit. I have already built community after community. That aspect of this, that’s what was one of the selling points I got said. It’s like, “The spirit of Web3 is community.” I had so much experience doing that on the internet already for several years. It’s a no-brainer and easy.

When Twitter started, I was insanely ready because I’d spent fifteen years prior to that on my message board writing longer responses. Somebody is like, “You only do 140 characters.” I’m like, “I can do that in my sleep.” I was ready for it. This is a skillset I didn’t know I had, and they built a thing that required that skillset. I’m like, “The same thing here.”

The community-building aspect is something that is already in me because I haven’t had the luxury of being a George Lucas or JJ Abrams where you do one thing and the whole world’s like, “You are canonized forever and stuff.” I got to prove every time out that I’m worth their time or effort, particularly as I aged. In the beginning, it was easy to catch people because you are new, fresh, and edgy. The longer you stick around, the harder it is to find something new to impress people who’ve been watching you for decades at this point. Building community allows me to not have to work insanely mainstream where I got to get everybody, or else my job don’t work. I have to get this, and this space is this right now.

You look at Bored Apes. They have turned 10,000 collectors into a multi-billion-dollar adventure.

NFT Kevin Smith and Justin Wu | Web3 Community

Web3 Community: Years from now, people will look back at Killroy and be like, “That’s so silly,” but it’s the necessary step for everyone else to come into the space.

 

They are having fun doing it. Not the people who made the shit because I’m sure they are having fun with the money, but the people who are collecting it. They are having a blast.

It was an Ape Fest New York for four days.

Looking at my own small microcosm version of that, when we started the ViewAskew website, it built its own little self-sustaining community where I could have events. As long as I’m only doing 1,000 people, we are going to be great. We will get 1,000 people that are going to come from all over the place. Community is such a big fucking part of it. That’s part of the appeal of this whole world.

To me, it’s not like in my other worlds, I can make a thing, put it out there, and that’s that. I spent a lot of time tending to it because, for me, the story don’t fucking begin and end when the movie credits happen. The story begins when I’m like, “We are going to make a thing.” It’s not the whole world, but a bunch of people that do pay attention. It’s like, “What is that thing?” You are starting to talk about then like the year before the movie exists. When the movie is over if you are good at your job, it’s not like credits, and then the conversation is over. You want to extend the life of that. You want to keep it go.

I’ve always been annoyed by a little amount of time between the sequel and a good thing. I think with that time, sometimes the energy of that project to roads, the character shifted, and people moved on. In real life, everything is evolutionary.

There’s a balance there. You are uniquely positioned. A lot of people like Gary Vee, for example, are similar in a lot of ways with how you engage in your community. How far ahead of the curve you were. There are not a lot of people like you that were that engaged with their community that genuinely take that time to follow up and nurture.

Now, you can’t be in my business and not give a shit about that. I remember early on in my career, people make fun of me for like, “You spend a lot of time on the internet. You might as well live in your parents’ basement.” I’m like, “I made Clerks. We know I don’t live in my parents’ basement, number one. Number two, I’m a smart businessman. I want to continue doing the business the way I want to do the business.”

If I’m not making moral shit, which makes a lot of people happy and that’s an easy sell, I’m making very selective shit. I’m not saying that it’s not for everybody because it’s smart. It ain’t for everybody because everybody’s like, “I like my shit normally better than your shit.” I’m working with this many people as opposed to this many people, and it’s always easier to work and satisfy this many people.

This many people, there’ll be varying opinions about whether or not I have satisfied them artistically. This many people, if I’m playing right to the right audience, I can make them happy every time. I learned it for years, but in 2019, we took a Jay and Silent Bob reboot out on the road. We did 65 city tour, and we sold out every damn show.

Every night, I watched the movie with 1,000, who made me feel like we were in a church where I was both the priest and Jesus himself. You were the celebrant and you were being celebrated. I wouldn’t get that if we released the movie on 2,000 screens. I’d hear reports and I get box office figures, but I was there in the room for it, and that comes from the community. Those fans are so fucking dialed in. They know every aspect of every flick I have ever made and whatnot. Being there with them to watch the movie live became the model for the rest of my life. I won’t go back the other way.

It's very easy to track the fairly small Web3 crowd. It already exists. What we care about is taking things mainstream. Click To Tweet

The whole reason Clerks III exists is because of that reboot tour. I was like, “That’s what I want over and over again.” Building a community has been the only thing that has kept me alive. There are other filmmakers who started around the same time I started who nobody talks about anymore and they don’t work anymore because there was no community.

Now, everybody got a social media team like Will Smith does YouTube videos. What does that tell you? Kevin Hart did a YouTube fucking show. These guys have millions of dollars and they get exposure in every place, but what they don’t get in those other places is a community. It’s  because it’s a very different audience that will sit there on YouTube, and they will tell you exactly how you are doing.

It’s an authentic community. People that were there before it was cool, whatever was necessary to be up on YouTube. That’s a meaningful, deep relationship. One of those is the metaverse. We see all of these things come about. It is also to bring a lot of this technology mainstream. Those thousand people that are the die-hard in there with everything you do is much more than that. It’s obviously with your community. Those people have an opportunity then to influence the people within their world and bring them into the space. They are huge Kevin Smith fans.

They have been doing that for years. They sell the game, so to speak. In hockey, there’s an expression called sell the game. If you love the game, you’ll sell the game, which means, “I got no skin NHL or hockey, but I will fucking talk about it forever because you’ll watch it.” I’m saying, “Maybe you already know it. It’s an easy cover for a start but you’ve never watched it, and I’m selling you on it.”

I’m selling with passion. Not because I’m going to make money off of it but because I believe in it, so I sell the game. Same fucking thing here. When people like what you do, you give them a little bit of attention and time. They will go off and market your shit for you way better than you ever could to everyone they fucking meet.

My kid makes fun of me all the time because I wear t-shirts with my face and Jay’s face on them. It’s the t-shirts of all the shit we have ever done. She’s like, “Dad, it’s so gross. How do you wear shirts with your face on them?” I was like, “You can’t expect some motherfucker to pay $20 for showing my face on in if I’m not willing to wear that shirt myself. It starts here.”

We are rocking the Edge of NFT. People were like, “How do you guys always stay on brand?” It’s important.

You build the fucking thing. Think about that. Everyone appreciates somebody who builds a thing unless they build like a hate machine. You build a thing and you are proud of it, and so people vibe on next. That’s yours. A thing that didn’t exist until you guys were like, “We are going to put this thing together. We are going to put these three terms together that are going to define our lives for the next 5 to 10, maybe 20 years, perhaps the rest of your lives. Why wouldn’t you wear hats with the Edge of NFT on it? Why aren’t you completely branded? Where’s the shirt, shorts, and underwear?

We are working on it. Guy, a question for you and Kevin is pushing the envelope here. You guys to push the envelope and look at and reflect on what this has been for Web3 and some of the ups and downs and challenges normally within your own project, but in general in the space. What are you thinking of in terms of innovation and tools? What tweaks are you making as you collaborate with Kevin over the next years?

First of all, a community always cares. In terms of innovation, ups and downs, I’m a veteran in this space so I don’t pay attention to this. If anything does this noise right now, we are having more fun. In this conference, you’ve been around 50 to 100 people from the Core Secret community. These are not employees. They are not getting paid by us. They like what we are doing and they are spreading the word and what can be done. To me, that’s the first and most important thing to do.

NFT Kevin Smith and Justin Wu | Web3 Community

Web3 Community: Community building is important because even though many people could just press play, there’s a cross-section of people who are like, “I’m on your website. I’m coming to your live event. I’m going to your store.”

 

When it comes to innovation, especially with the KillRoy project, Quentin Tarantino is one of the few others. What we have noticed is there’s a gap right now. If we do an NFT drop, that is very focused. It has DeFi components, generative art components, and maybe speculative components. It’s very easy to track the fairly small Web3 crowd that already exists. We care about this take and this mainstream. That’s what you, I, or Kevin care about. It’s how can this be the next thing. For that, I care about what Kevin said before. We need to improve the UI.

The user experience in crypto is extremely difficult. It’s one of the things that prevent the mainstream from crossing the chasm, which is the point where we are right now. In Secret Network, even though very often an infrastructure company, we have been internally hiring new engineers for our UI, bringing in other teams from outside to make sure that anyone can interact with the NFTs and with the project we are doing with Kevin.

We want to get to a point where people don’t even need to know what a digital wallet is. When you go into a website, it’s all HTTPS. You have no idea that there’s a handshake encryption protocol going out of the room. We go into a website. That’s the level we need to do, and that’s the way to attract a mainstream audience like Kevin’s.

We could spend all day talking about this stuff and you all are in high demand. We do need to wrap this up. Where can folks go to make sure they are on top of all the fun things happening with KillRoy and the Secret?

KillRoyWasHere.io for KillRoy stuff.

The Secret is SCRT.Network. That’s the best place to get all the information. Also, specifically, KillRoy Was There is built on Legend Dao so you should go to LegendDao.io. If you go there, you can join the KillRoy Was There Discord and community, and there are some surprises for the people who do that.

Thanks for sharing all these insights. It’s super helpful.

Thanks for taking the time.

I appreciate you guys, too.

This is fun because I’m here with Justin Wu, Organizer of Dcentral at Consensus. This is a three-conference convergence situation going on. It’s great to see you and relax the day after your conference. That sounds like things are going well.

It’s always good the day after the conference. You can chill and relax a little bit. That’s always fun building the community. As you already know, bringing amazing builders, creators, and smart and big brain people altogether in one place. To me, it’s a lot of fun even though a lot of stuff goes behind the scenes to make it all happen, but we are all here. As you can see clearly, we are still in a bear market. It might be a little bit of a bear market, but we still got a lot of people. There are 50,000 plus people here in Austin.

In spite of the 110-degree weather, there are a lot of smiles and conversations around building. The last media likes to talk about the bear market. In fact, those things are in black and white, but it’s much more shades of gray and nuance. What are some of the exciting conversations that when you weren’t running around doing logistics, you heard at your conference and they get you pumped about the rest of the year?

There are a lot of discussions about stablecoins where the bear market right now or the local bear market maybe. I wouldn’t call it bearish because we have seen these cycles before and we are still higher than we were years ago. ETH is still $1,800 or $1,700 around there. I remember not too long ago, it was $200. I don’t want to jinx it down to a 5X downturn.

Talking around stablecoins, you guys had some cool people leading the NFT charge at your conference.

NFTs a lot of metaverse and games like Splinterlands and Divine Anarchy, people are showing what they are building and getting that out in the market as well. That’s what’s exciting, and seeing some of the other talents that are out there, too.

Let’s give everyone a sneak peek of what you had going on for Miami. What’s cooking? What can we expect there? They are excited about the next adventures and appreciate what you guys do in this space. We are able to support each other with all of the conferences we put on to try to bring the community together.

We are excited for Miami to come back to Art Basel. We are going to be right before Art Basel. November 28th and 29th, 2022. What you can expect this year as we move that to Downtown Miami. We are going to be in the heart of Art Basel. We got a bigger location as well to fill up more capacity. With that, it allows us to create more experiences as we give art galleries and different metaverse experiences. Also, a lot more fun boots and everything. We are excited to level up what we have been doing and bring all the community of builders, creators, and developers all in place converging to Art Basel because of art celebrations in the US or in the world.

You know I will be there. I appreciate everything you do in this space and thanks for spending a few minutes with us.

No problem and shout out to the Edge of NFT and the whole crew there. You guys are crushing it. I’m looking forward to meeting you all guys soon in person or in the metaverse.

We have reached the outer limit at the Edge of NFTs. Thanks for exploring with us. We have got space for more adventures on this starship. Invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey also much better. How? Go to iTunes right now, rate us, and say something cool. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole.

 

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