Some creators really want to give NFTs a chance but are hindered by their lack of technical knowledge. Alexandra Hooven shares how their company Rally addresses this problem by building a community of creators who can showcase their passions through NFT. Joining Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger, Rally’s Director of Strategic Partnerships explains how they help independent artists launch their own token economy strategies. Alexandra discusses how this out-of-the-box setup allows these individuals to highlight their talents further. For today’s hot topics, the group discussion centers on an experimental project creating NFTs for the entire mankind, PplPleasr’s Longform NFT, and a donation to Ukraine in the form of CryptoPunk.
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Alexandra Hooven Of Rally, Where Creators Build Their Own Cryptocurrency, Plus 7.9B NFTs, PplPleasr’s Longform NFT, CryptoPunk Ukraine Donation, And More…
Our guest is Alex Hooven, a seasoned entertainment executive, Web3 innovator, and Director of Strategic Partnerships at Rally, a platform for creators and their communities to build their own independent digital economies. She works closely with creators, artists, athletes and their management teams to design, launch and implement token economy strategies powered by social tokens and NFTs.
Alex served as Head of Content and Creator Partnerships at United Talent Agency for more than five years, where she built a team to lead all client work related to the original content and creator-driven partnerships. She was a founding member of the Digital Assets Practice, where she advised clients on their NFT and larger blockchain strategy. In her spare time, Alex is active in several crypto projects, including Friends With Benefits, where she serves as a Governance and Operations Lead for LA. She is based in Los Angeles. Alex, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to chat with you guys.
It is great having you, Alex. I heard she is a huge Lakers fan. We chatted about it before the episode started. Nonetheless, we are not here to talk about that. We are here to talk about Rally, Alex, and everything that’s happening in your world. Let’s start with the story of how you and Rally came together. What was that journey like? How did it come to be?
Prior to Rally, I cut my teeth at United Talent Agency, which is where I spent the majority of my twenties for about six-plus years, working in our Corporate Consulting division, where I was advising our brand and corporate clients on their overall entertainment strategy. At the Talent Agency, we had a unique purview into the entertainment and media landscape, by nature of where we sit. The access to information and relationships is pretty unparalleled. It can be quite advantageous to a brand that is looking to leverage talent or properties as a platform to amplify its larger marketing strategies.
To be honest, this is a safe space on the record, but I never cared all that much about brand marketing strategies. I was always a little bit grossed out, seeing all these major brands exploiting talents to sell a product. With that aside, I have always been a big consumer of the arts ever since I can remember. Films, music, fine arts were always a passion of mine growing up. It gave me that energy and inspiration every day.
From an ethos perspective, being able to find alternative revenue streams through these big corporations, whether it be Google, Lyft, L’Oreal or whatever, I could justify that feeling of uncomfortability with my brand clients. I knew that the money that I was able to deliver to them was hugely beneficial to these artists in terms of affording them the potential to go out and maybe do a project that they were not able to do otherwise.
Eventually, I got a little bit burnt out by constantly having to deliver on brand guidelines, metrics and KPIs that, from my perspective with this kind of work, was completely distracting from the art itself, which is the end goal. That is why we are all here, why you are hiring us, and why you are hiring this talent. What clicked for me was the recognition that crypto was going to change the game for artists. They will no longer need to rely on these middlemen corporations anymore for that paycheck. That was super attractive to me.
I quite found my way to Rally through our CEO, Bremner Morris. He was formally the Head of Go-To Market Strategy at Patreon, which was a client of mine at UTA a few years back. We were helping them with positioning themselves in front of the talent. His original team dispersed and went their own separate ways, but he came back while I was still at UTA.
He was advising the Rally project. He was like, “Alex, I’m working on this project at the intersection of the creator economy and crypto. We would love to work with UTA again in a similar capacity to what we did at Patreon.” I was loosely familiar with social tokens because of the work I was doing in our defacto Digital Assets division at UTA. That is now led by Lesley Silverman, who’s a total boss. You guys should get her on a future episode, but also because of my involvement with Friends with Benefits, which was a token community formed by a guy named Trevor McFedries back in September 2020 in Discord. That was my first foray into social tokens.
It was also generally a pleasure to work with Bremner. He is an amazing guy. It was an obvious, “Yes, let’s work together on this.” Two to three months after working with them on the UTA side of the hat, I realized I was spending all my time consuming more information about the digital asset landscape. I found myself on a day-to-day basis only interested in working with Rally and wanting to neglect my other clients. One day, I called up Bremner and said, “What would it look like if I joined you full time?” Here we are. I started full-time on the Rally side in the first week of July 2021, after six years at UTA.
There is so much I can relate to. I was deep in the world of management consulting for about a decade. Jeff was poking at me, “Check out this entrepreneurial wild side over there. You can be more creative and make a bigger impact.” Finally, he had lured me and the rest is history.
Bremner is such a pleasure to work with. He’s a great leader and steerer of the ship. It was a no-brainer. In terms of what Rally had built, plus a great team and leadership, it was like, “Let’s go.”
That echoes quite a few stories we have heard in the crypto and NFT space. People get sucked into it in a good way because it is engaging. It appeals to what feels natural and where they are their best self. It’s great to hear that again. We have been talking about Rally for months. We were going to have you on the show months ago. It is like bringing everything together. How does Rally allow you guys to build a branded cryptocurrency for independent artists without any technical knowledge? How does that work? How does that come together?
This is something that I heard from our Founder, Kevin Chou, while I was at UTA. He was on a call with me. To quote him very succinctly, he said, “Rally allows you to create an out-of-the-box economy through the primitives that we have set up and designed.” The creator onboarding process is very similar to creating a social profile like you would on Twitter, Instagram or wherever. In terms of the tech lift needed, there is not much there.
It’s as simple as going to Rally.io and submitting an application. If you are approved, you create an account, fill in those details of who you are, what the mission is, what the goals or ethos are for using the new token economy, and passing a KYC check. You are then off to the races in terms of fundamentally getting it set up. With that said, there is a lot of work to make a token economy a huge success. It is not as easy as clicking a button and letting everybody come through.
There needs to be a solid strategy in place. That is what myself and my team work on. We’re making sure all these creators are set up in terms of the tooling and different things and resources that Rally can come to the table. We are making sure you are set up for success. From a literal perspective, it is so easy to get started on Rally.
Community Of Creators: Rally allows you to create an out-of-the-box economy through the primitives they’ve set up and designed. It’s similar to creating a social profile.
Most of the work that was previously required and what you would probably see on Ethereum mainnet social token platforms like Coinbase or Roll, you are designing typically the tokenomics, or you are building your own liquidity, which is very challenging to minting the tokens. All of that work is already handled by Rally. You need to be the one that has the community of people, bring it to the platform, and offer token holder benefits that your community is going to want to see from you. It is as easy as that.
I remember when you guys were at the beginning of your public launch with CoinList checking out. It was like, “This is a no-brainer. This is a major step in the direction that this industry needs for mainstream adoption.” On that note, let’s go a little bit deeper in terms of what distinguishes you from other platforms. Some folks might be familiar with Bitcloud and some of the other ones out there. Let’s also dive deeper into the NFT side of the house.
There are a lot of things that distinguish Rally from other platforms. One being that we are on a side chain. That has afforded us the ability to build in all the frictionless primitives that make it easy for not an average person that does not necessarily have a crypto native audience along with them into their first experience into crypto.
At its core, what is interesting about Rally is that it is a social token platform plus NFTs. There are the nonfungible assets like the digital goods and services that you are going to be providing to your fans, plus the actual fungible currency that they can purchase those assets with. We believe that those two paired together is what makes a successful token economy. That is what we are focused on.
The most committed and vibrant NFT-based communities will seek additional structures that cannot solely operate on a barter system alone. They are looking for fungibility and liquidity. Fans can enter a token-based community without having to purchase expensive NFTs but rather earn their way in through participation.
Community leaders want to be able to reward their community members for the support that they are doing. Whether that is taking action like something as simple as retweeting a tweet, going to Spotify and pre-save this single. You can earn tokens through that. It is not necessarily about finding purchase and transaction mechanisms, but a way to reward the fans for the work that they have been doing in terms of their support of you along the way. What is exciting about social tokens is that it gives your fans the ability to capture the value of the support that they are giving you. That is the amazing thing.
Fans can participate in the upside of their token base communities by holding an asset that has shared value across the entire community, rather than a singular asset that has a nonfungible value. That is why communities are going to migrate and assemble around tokens that are native to the community, rather than relying on a ubiquitous token like Ethereum, Solana, MATIC or Polygon as the medium of exchange.
Because Rally is on a side chain, we do not have any gas fees. It is eco-friendly. Every transaction that is happening on the side chain is probably the same amount of energy consumption as clicking send on a tweet. We are not minting or transacting on the Ethereum mainnet, which allows us to do that. That is because we follow a different protocol called proof of authority, which is slightly different from proof of work or proof of stake.
It is a protocol that in some sense may relinquish a little bit of that true decentralization. We are open to doing that so that we can create this insular environment for people, especially creators that do have a reputation on the line and are not necessarily hesitant to bring fans into the crypto landscape, which is often known as polarizing. It can be quite volatile.
They know that they can do it safely because they are not going to encounter gas fees every time they try to make a transaction. There is a fiat on-ramp in terms of being able to use your credit card to purchase the crypto, not having to move money around from crypto wallets to Coinbase and whatever. That is important to a lot of these bigger artists. They have a reputation on the line. They want to make sure their fans feel safe and are excited about it. Building on the side chain is what allowed us to create that.
That is the key difference between venting a social token on Ethereum, Polygon or Solana. We have designed this out of the box economy that allows you to coordinate your fans around a digital asset. We have them capture the value of the support and work that they are putting into it without having them go through hoops and come up against roadblocks that we, as people that are probably a little bit more web free native, are used to experiencing.
I appreciate the elegance of interweaving the token side and the NFT side the way you have because they both have their pros and cons and different uses within the Web3 environment. You guys have thought about all those different dimensions and explorations.
You are creating an easy button for creators to connect with their fans and followers in a direct way and create value in both directions. It’s so hard to accomplish that. Many companies struggle with that. It is amazing what you guys are doing there. You are putting it into practice. There are creators out there launching these tokens and doing this. They are doing it now. There are a few that I had noted here, Duncan Robinson, Roberto Carlos, Brandon Powell. Could you tell us a little bit about these launches and anything that stands out to you about each of them?
It has been a big month for athletes on Rally. We have launched many and we have many more coming down the pike. I’m most excited about Duncan Robinson. He is such an awesome guy. He has thought about what his community means to him in a thoughtful way. He is known for being a point guard on the Miami Heat. He is awesome and fun to watch.
He also has a podcast called The Long Shot, which has a robust community and listenership. He wanted to use the token to hone in on that community and be able to give value back to the fans that have been supporting him in that endeavor. He launched the token which, in the short-term, has unlocked a private Discord channel and then access to merchandise. He will also be dropping bonus episodes that are just for the token holders and access to NFT drops, which will serve as tickets to live events and podcast episodes.
He is making sure he is using those channels in that community to weigh in on upcoming guests and having his community act as creative directors of his podcast. That has been cool. I have enjoyed working with his team on that. I love the way he is thinking about it as a community first and not this financial instrument that he is dropping into his fans. It is a social tool that he is using to connect with them and be able to give back to those fans that have been helping him make that podcast a success.
Roberto Carlos also launched. He is doing exclusive merch giveaways and NFT drops. It’s the same with Brandon. He will be releasing a lot of behind-the-scenes Super Bowl footage. He is planning to use the token as this gated ticketed access to football bootcamps that he is going to be putting on. There are lots of stuff that they are doing that is cool. It has been interesting to see all these athletes coming to the table in thoughtful ways. They are taking a smart approach in terms of thinking about how they can turn their fans into an actual community or tribe that represents something bigger. That has been cool to see that with these guys.
When we are trying to explain NFTs to folks that are not familiar with it, I always try to go to somebody’s passion. What is it that you are passionate about, who, the brand, the thing? Tell me about that first and let’s start there. If you start there, drawing the line between where they are now in real life or Web1 and Web2 world, and what Web3 offers is so much easier.
It is hard if I’m describing something I’m passionate about but they are not. If somebody is super into motorcycles or something, I can dial them in on what the value of having an NFT of this particular Harley Davidson motorcycle is, all the ins and outs, the upgrades on it, the access to the designer of it, and all these cool things. They are in love with it that they get it right away. If you are trying to describe it from a different perspective, it usually never sticks. I could see that for all these guys. There is a passionate following across all these figures.
The way I think about it is you can have millions of fans. That does not necessarily equate to a community that is driven by the same values. For a lot of these athletes, they are not expecting nor should they expect that they are going to get even 50% of that fan base to convert into this economy. That is okay because all you need is to be able to convert a small percentage of people that are like-minded, are going to show up, be a part of this community, and want to contribute in order to make it a success.
There has to be a unifying thing that everyone is there for. It is not necessarily for Duncan or the Miami Heat. It is because of this podcast that everybody feels super invested in and excited about. It’s that creative side of Duncan that this community is rallying around. That is what is interesting. You touched on that.
We had Steve Aoki on. When it comes down to music or any art where there is a fan base, nothing matters without the community. They consume it, support it and be supported by it. I love the fact that these tokens and these communities, be it NFTs or social tokens, both allow a real framework around that and a real way to reward the key players in the system, which we have not had before.
On that note, early on when we had the show and I would do research in NFTs, I kept coming across this band called Portugal. The Man. It was not a band that was on my radar for whatever reason. As I began to research them, it was incredible to see that they were appropriate for the social token. I would go to Rally.
I do not know where they are at now, but they would be the top token. The story behind them is that they are not necessarily crypto or NFT-native as a band, but they had the fans that were and helped them on board. They brought them to the table. It all came together as a community effort. There is this free-safe campaign that involved Portugal. The Man. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s going on with them?
That goes back to my point of using the social token as not just something for your fans to buy into, but a capture of value for the support that these fans are providing these musicians. Portugal. The Man was thoughtful about that and started their upcoming single. They wanted to reward fans that were taking this action to promote the single, be on standby, and have it pre-saved through their Spotify account. What happened is the pre-save was done through Warner. When fans authenticated their Spotify account, an email was triggered to that address that allowed those people to either create a Willy Wallet if they did not have it already or just click a link to claim tokens.
Every single person that pre-saved that Spotify link was airdropped a certain amount of tokens, which was cool because it was giving back to the fans that were already supporters and holders of PTM. They got a little bonus, but there was also a nice way to introduce people that were not familiar with what Portugal. The Man was doing in the crypto space in a very Web2 way that was easy for them to understand. It is significant because it shows this multi-directional nature that creators and fans are headed towards.
It is along the lines of what Gary Vee did with his book drop. It is bringing people into the space who are either already in crypto or maybe on the edge of it. It is interesting to do these seemingly analog Web2 based actions that will bring you into Web3. It’s a great concept.
There are a lot of holders of PTM, and they are big fans. The point for Portugal. The Man was that they did not want to alienate the fans that were also taking action, just not necessarily through their currency. This gave them the opportunity to capture those people that are still wearing the band t-shirt. Maybe they could not afford to buy in or did not know about it. It was a way to get them brought into the community and reward them for something that they were doing in a Web2 space.
You guys have accomplished a lot since you have joined the company. I’m curious where you feel Rally is at in its growth journey? What is next?
Rally is at a super exciting stage now. We have finally figured out where we fit in terms of the creator economy meets crypto landscape. We are in an exciting growth stage. Our collective economy holdings across all of the tokens on the platform is nearly $100 million or $95 million. Of the roughly 300 creators, over 50% or more than half have a collective economy holding of over $100,000, which is super cool, and 23 which is nearly 10% have over $1 million.
The growth has been super inspiring. It only feels like it is getting bigger and more exciting. More mainstream creators are coming to the platform, which will increase those numbers by tenfold X. In terms of what is next, we are hyper-focused on launching and growing a more successful token-based community. We are also working on some multi-chain capabilities, which will be an absolute game-changer for us in the space. Look out for that.
Can you elaborate on where things are going from an interoperability and cross-chain perspective?
I can’t get specific there, but I will say SuperLayer Labs is part of the Rally association, which is what Kevin Chou, our Founder, has led and focused on full-time is working with Solana. If that is any indication, the Rally association does have a strong relationship with Solana.
Are there other collaborations that we should keep an eye out for, partnerships or anything fun coming up other than we already talked about?
Community Of Creators: Community leaders want to reward their members for the support they are doing. They could earn tokens just by retweeting a tweet or pre-saving a single in Spotify.
We are going to be launching some incredible creators soon. One is an exciting Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist I’m personally excited about. In terms of partnerships, we launched a partnership with Friends with Benefits, which is the other project I work on. It started off with a hackathon, which was exciting.
The focus was on creator economy tools. The top 3 and 2 of them were built for the Rally platform, which is amazing and exciting. There will be more extensions coming out of that partnership from a content perspective, editorial, and some strategic work as well. There’s a good relationship between Rally and Friends with Benefits. There’s a lot more to come there. Keep a close eye out on Rally.io. We have many exciting creators in the pipeline. Every day is exciting to build closer towards those launch fruitions.
It must be fun to pull those two projects together that you have worked on independently. Besides what we already discussed, what other NFT projects inspire you?
I’m not sure if you guys are familiar with Scab Shop that was launched, which is Scott Campbell’s NFT tattoo platform that he has created with other big tattoo artists like Dr. Woo. They released about 5,000 shop passes, which are utility NFTs. It serves as single tattoo appointments with the artists, whether that is with Scott, Dr. Woo, or other ones. it unlocks access to a community of other enthusiasts where you can bid on artwork and get access to pop-up events.
They are doing a big launch event at South by Southwest, where Scott will be tattooing, which is amazing. If you are going to be down there, you should check that out. It is an interesting way to extend the reach of some of these artists’ work outside of one of one piece that is quite on somebody’s skin. The ability to be able to trade those on the secondary market is interesting and an incredible revenue stream for these artists. I’m excited to see how that changes the game for these non-traditional artists that work in different mediums.
Tattoo artistry has always been that conversation that the artist would have. I put my art on someone’s body and they walk around with them, which has its own benefits but has its own limitations. We were on a meeting with this artist residency that we’ve done, the Djerassi artist residency, which is a cool residency in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
We are working on onboarding into bringing their artists that come through there into crypto and NFT. It was an interesting conversation to say it is woodwork or do something with NFTs. The root answer for someone who is not familiar is, “Let’s focus on people who make digital art.” What is cool about what we learn every day on this show is you can do stuff with tattoos, woodworking, and ephemeral art. All things like this, all of a sudden, have all these new parameters that you can introduce if you bring NFTs into the equation. I love that project too. That sounds cool.
The world is changing fast, and Rally is a big part of it. Thanks for giving us the dits there, Alex. I appreciate it. We want to shift gears a little bit and head into segment two if you are down for it. We call it Edge Quick Hitters. It is ten questions. We are looking for short, single-word or few-word responses, but we can dive in a little deeper here or there if we get the urge. Question number one, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
This is indicative of me working in crypto. The first thing that I ever purchased was the first Beanie Baby, Libearty. It is a white Beanie Baby with an American flag. I remember I bought it. It was the coolest thing in the world to me at the time.
Question number two, what is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
It is my Charizard Pokémon card to my neighbor.
Do you have a good collection hanging back there somewhere still?
I wish that I did because I had an amazing collection. I do not even know what happened to it. I was on Instagram, and my friend did a story of her finding her Pokemon binder and flipping through it. It took her five minutes to flip through the whole thing. It was the most legendary thing I have ever seen.
Question number three, what is the most recent thing you purchased?
The most recent thing I purchased was a backpack for my dog, so she could go on hikes with me.
I do not think we have come anywhere close to that.
As a guy in LA, seeing what happens around here, that is not surprising at all. For the rest of America, they are like, “What is going on in LA?”
I love to go on these long hikes, and she does not have the endurance to go for the whole thing. Once we hit a couple of miles, I can pop her in and we can keep going.
I thought it was a backpack that you put on the dog.
This is like she is coming for the ride.
Question number four, what is the most recent thing you sold?
It was one of my scammer NFTs. I hate to say it is an NFT, but I think it was.
We know that the answer is not for this one, but number five is, what is your most prized possession?
My most prized possession is this sketch of my great aunt, who is one of my biggest inspirations. She was the former creative director at Life Magazine. She was the one who designed the HBO logos, the call letters. She had the original sketch that she did hanging up in her studio that I now have. To me, that is so cool and serves as a source of inspiration. That is probably it.
Question number six, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical service or an experience that is for sale, what would that be?
There are many things. I’m a maximalist. I have never been to Japan. I love Japanese culture so much. I would love to go on a month-long trip through all of Japan and be able to stay in all these amazing places. I had one trip planned pre-COVID. I had to cancel it and have not rebooked it. I still think about it. That is what it is.
Question number seven, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
Probably loyalty. Everybody in this industry hopefully is in it for WAGMI, “We’re All Gonna Make It.” Loyalty is super important.
Question number eight, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would it be?
I’m a little impatient. Patience is essential, especially in this crazy world that we live in. Sometimes I need to slow down and live in the moment, which I have a hard time with.
Question number nine, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I took my dog for a walk to go get the New York Times paper because they wrote an opinion piece about Friends with Benefits that I was in, but it was not in print. It was supposed to be in print now. It was a failed mission, but we went for a walk to the grocery store.
Question ten, what are you going to do next after the show?
I’m going to make an iced coffee, and then I am going to get back into my work. I have got a lot of emails to catch up on. In terms of fun stuff, I am going to go see a friend that is visiting from New York for a drink after work.
Community Of Creators: The NFT industry is only in its early days. Everyone must get in there, kick up some dust, and see what comes of it.
Do you know where you are going to get a drink? What is a cool place to go?
I do know where I’m going. I don’t how cool it is. She is staying at this hotel called Sunset Tower, which is very bougie, CNBC. It is not my scene, but she is staying there and it is easy. It is going to be martinis at the bar with Jennifer Aniston.
I appreciate you playing with us there. Lots of fun. Thank you so much.
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We got some hot topics to dive in on, Eathan. What do you say?
We do have some hot topics, some interesting ones. The first one is a Dutch artist creates an NFT for every person in the world as an experiment. A social experiment concocted by Dutch artist Dadara and NFT digital rights management platform RAIRtech to provide immutable blockchain identity has resulted in the creation of about 7.9 billion digitally identical NFTs of CryptoGreyman.
The physical NFTs look all the same. Each carries its own serial number, a commentary on the way in which people are viewed in the centralized corporate world, generalized to numbers. In a sea of NFTs, that artificially create scarcity by imposing rare traits and offering limited collections in exclusive communities. The identical CryptoGreyman NFTs are available for purchase for 1 MATIC, which is around $2. Seek to be the opposite. An interesting statement for sure. Can we get everybody in the world to buy one? That would be interesting. What if I buy ten so that I own the NFT for ten people on the planet or something?
I wonder how do they get around that.
Conceptually, we can create an NFT for everybody in the world. Are we at 7.9 billion already? I was still speaking in terms of 7 billion, but I guess we are at 8 billion. The statement is around making them all more the same than different. There is a statement in there trying to make the serial number the only difference. I wonder where they are going to go with it. I do not know. You could take it in a bunch of different directions. Any thoughts, Josh?
I’m not sure. It is an experiment. We have to see what happens next.
That is a reminder of how early we are in all this stuff. We got to get in there, kick up some dust, mix things up and see what comes of it. I do not know. Some cool things might come from this. There are some interesting things that underpin the whole idea.
That is interesting conceptually, but there might not be a lot to say about it. I’m going to kick in the next topic. It’s Kickstarter meets Netflix on the blockchain. An NFT artist, which we have had some contact with, Pplpleasr, has a new project called Shibuya. It brings long-form animation to Web3. The pilot episode for Shibuya’s inaugural White Rabbit series drops in 2022. They will crowdfund production of long-form visual content such as short films, movies or television series by selling NFTs called Producer Passes, disrupting the traditional studio-driven methods that now dominate the industry.
This is what I have to say. I love Pplpleasr and I think this is great, but it is an interesting topic of conversation that we may finally be past the point where anybody can say that they’re the first to do these crowdsourced film productions. I have noticed it starts to include a qualifier word like, “We are doing the first crowdsourced film production that happened in February around the 15th to the 16th, 2022.” I love that this space is growing and seeing what the individual people are doing as far as its take on it, but it has been growing for a little bit. There’s some foundation here.
The concept of Shibuya is cool, having been to Japan and loving that environment of creativity and the heart of anime culture. I love that she is constantly pushing the envelope with her projects, where she is going, and how she is being in this space. I hope this comes up in conversation in NFT LA. I know, Alexandra, you are going to be there speaking as well. I’m excited to have you in the mix there. This is a great example of pushing the limits of creativity. I’m sure someone on her press team threw in the word first because it is a cool word to have in a press release and to get into an article, but beyond the aesthetics there, it is a great project.
People have been doing this. I’m dying to go to Shibuya. I do think this is an interesting project. I would be interested to see how she takes it from one actual piece of IP into maybe a full slate that could be coordinated by the DAO.
It has a serious potential opportunity to collaborate with Rally. There is a lot of goodness there in what you guys have built and what you are doing that could help take this thing to the next level. I’m curious to see how this thing evolves.
CryptoPunk NFT is the latest donation of Ukraine’s $33 million campaign. Number 53604 was transferred to Ukraine’s Ethereum wallet. It is adding a potentially lucrative and sought-after cap to a campaign that has already amassed over $33 million in cryptocurrencies. The estimates of the Punk’s value vary.
Tom Robinson of crypto tracing firm, Elliptic notched it around $200,000 when he flagged the donation. DeepNFTValue, a blog that uses machine learning to estimate prices for rare NFTs, placed it at around $233,000. We are having some interesting developments, capabilities, capacities within crypto, and the ability of people to share and support one another across the globe. This is yet another cool demonstration of that.
It also points at the challenge of NFTs, which is the lack of liquidity. It is a great thing to give someone a long-term store value. Certainly, this is a special donation that makes a statement. My concern is, is Ukraine supposed to sell it? Do they have the knowledge on how to sell it and at what value to sell it? Are they supposed to hold it for a rainy day later on when they need the money? It could be auctioned off at a higher than normal market value for folks that want to support that economy. It does beg an interesting question about, what do you do with this CryptoPunk?
I’m also reflecting on, are there NFTs that are appropriate or inappropriate for donating to various charitable campaigns? Would a Bored Ape have the same symbolism as a CryptoPunk, a CryptoKitty, Friends with Benefits or whatever? Does it matter what the NFT is? Is there something about the ethos of the community that has to align with the objectives of the organization? That has been a question that organizations have had since the very beginning of all this as they have navigated this new world. Is it okay for them if they do not understand what they are getting to accept donations and things like that?
The highest level is about community, being active members of the community, giving a shit, giving back, and putting your assets where your mouth is. It is not your money anymore. It has many different ways to share value and to contribute to the things you care about. It happens to be a CryptoPunk in this case. It sounds like it has a ton of other crypto that came their way. It is an interesting signal of the world that we are in now and where things are going.
I do think as they are raising funds for Ukraine, especially what we are seeing with Ukraine, it has been incredible. To me, it seems like the fungible currency is what is going to have the most impact here now and not NFTs. I’m not sure that holding a CryptoPunk in their wallet and hoping that it appreciates however long is going to have the same immediate impact that perhaps selling a CryptoPunk and donating the proceeds would have. It is an interesting move, to your point.
The one on-brand thing across the board here is decentralization and the power that people see in that. Listening to This American Life episode of going over historical things that have gone on in Russia. All media have been manipulated. The centralization of power is in effect. Having the decentralized movement be a part of contributing to this particular issue has that appropriateness. It feels like a step forward that this thing can happen.
Is that a wrap on Hot Topics?
It is on-topic and on-brand too. We might as well let the cat out of the bag with our Living Tree NFT Project that will be released soon here. We have decided for every 25% of the Living Tree collection that is going to be minted, we are going to be donating $10,000 to displaced victims of the Ukraine crisis. We are proud to have made that decision. We look forward to bringing on community members who want to take part in doing that type of good in the world along with us, in addition to planting trees and doing great things for the environment.
It is a good point to move on to fans shoutouts.
What do you get over there?
Let’s talk about Vikii. It is appropriate to give her a shout out here at this point in the history of the Discord in our community. This is within the Discord @Vikii. She has been one of our most enthusiastic participants over the last several months, commenting on the show and eating up everything we have to say.
She has been a big fan and a player in Second Life for many years. She participated in that digital economy and is excited to bring onboard her knowledge of digital economy and Metaverse, but integrated into NFT where that has not been as direct inside the Second Life universe. She is not only been active in the community, but she is jumping onboard to step up and be a bit of a community manager in the project, especially as we launch our Living Tree NFT Project. Shout out to Vikii. Thanks for all your help and support. She hosted her first trivia night, and she did a great job. We appreciate her helping out.
That is a wrap on the episode, but before we let you go, Alex, could you tell our audience where to go to follow you, Rally, and all the fun stuff you are working on?
You can follow Rally on all our social channels, Rally.io, @Rally_io on Twitter, @RallyCreators on Instagram. You can join our Discord, which is the link at the bottom of our website. It is a vibrant community there. There are lots of lively discussions happening. You can follow me if you’d like @AEHooven on Twitter.
We have reached the outer limit. Thanks for exploring with us. We got space for more adventures on this starship. Invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes right now, rate us and say something awesome. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole.
Remember, we always invite you to co-create and build with us at Edge of NFT. We are unlocking a whole new way to connect and collaborate with us through our own NFT drops, Spirit Seeds leading to Living Tree NFTs, which will light the way to our event, NFT LA, a one of a kind immersive and unforgettable experience at LA live in Los Angeles, March 28th through the 31st, 2022. Check it out at NFTLA.live and move quickly on early bird tickets as they are now live and moving quickly. Be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content.
Important Links
- Rally
- United Talent Agency
- Friends With Benefits
- Rally.io
- Bitcloud
- Solana
- Polygon
- The Long Shot
- SuperLayer Labs
- RAIRtech
- Elliptic
- Second Life
- Rally_io – Twitter
- @RallyCreators – Instagram
- Discord – Rally.io
- @AEHooven – Twitter
- EdgeOfNFT.com
- NFTLA.live
- Spotify – Edge of NFT Podcast
- iTunes – Edge of NFT Podcast
- Dutch artist creates an NFT for every person in the world as an experiment – article
- It’s Kickstarter meets Netflix on the blockchain – article
- CryptoPunk NFT is the latest donation of Ukraine’s $33 million campaign – article
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