Gala Games is the largest decentralized network of gamers in the world. Among a lot of other things, it seeks to level up the Web3 gaming experience into something that even Web2 gamers would want to participate in. Key to this is the concept of play-and-earn. Joining our hosts in this episode, Jason Brink aka BitBender of Gala Games makes this important distinction between the play-and-earn and the play-to-earn models. He also takes us on a tour to see what the guys at Gala Games are up to in this bear market. Plus the crew share their opinions on what’s going on with Yuga Labs and the Sec, Binance’s move towards NFT ticketing, and more. All these in this episode of Edge of NFT!
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Jason Brink Of Gala Games — The Largest Decentralized Network Of Gamers In The World, Plus: Yuga Labs and the SEC, Binance NFT Ticketing, And More…
This is Jason “BitBender” Brink. I'm the President of Blockchain at Gala Games. We are an ecosystem that empowers players, listeners, and watchers all over the world. You are reading the Edge of NFT where we empower you with the best intel on the edge of tech. Keep reading. I'll see you later. Peace.
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NFT-curious readers, stay tuned for this episode and learn why an NFT by any other name may be the preference of the masses, our guest's clever way to find customers in a second-grade class, also our candid thoughts on what's hot in the news with Yuga Labs, Binance, and a lot more. Don't forget that we put together a gathering called NFT LA that brought out thousands of the world's most innovative doers in the NFT space and beyond. Head to NFTLA.live to get tickets to our bigger, bolder, and better, but also as intimate and impactful event happening in Los Angeles from March 20th through the 23rd, 2023. We will see you there.
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This episode features Jason “BitBender” Brink. He is an entrepreneur, blockchain theorist, and avid gamer. He is the President of Blockchain for Gala Games, the world's leading gaming platform with blockchain integration. Jason's involvement in the cryptocurrency market space started in 2014. He focused on the use of blockchain for the decentralization of various ecosystems. In 2014, he won the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Development Network Prize for the creation of the AidDollar, a novel blockchain-based solution to solve the problems endemic to foreign aid.
Jason is a strong believer in the ability of blockchain to create transformative change both in business and society. As the President of Blockchain at Gala Games, he devotes considerable resources to the creation of stable play-to-earn ecosystems as a means to generate new opportunities for gamers around the world. It appears he's coming to us from outer space, which is pretty damn cool. How is it going, Jason?
I'm glad you like it. This background here is from Last Expedition, which is one of the titles that we've got on the burner. It's going to be pretty cool.
That's some good-quality art for sure.
It's extremely high-quality. The entire game is built in UE5. It's gorgeous and riotously fun to play.
That's very exciting. Jason, I was reflecting. We had you on the show.
It has been a long year.
Are you on the dog year philosophy or cat year? Is it 7 years or 9 years? Has it been twelve years?
I didn't have white in my beard at the beginning of it. Let's put it that way. It has been a rough year. I have been traveling almost nonstop. I've probably done pretty close to at least 600,000 to 700,000 miles, which is a nightmare. It's so much travel. It has been quite the year and then all of the stuff in the market and, in general, meltdowns that the whole space has been having.
I would agree, but there have been some cool innovations that have speared in. You've kept a strong and positive beat on Twitter that has been helpful in terms of carrying that torch and some personal anecdotes in there mixed in with more traditional posts. I appreciate where that's coming from. I'm curious, how does that reflect your feelings on the overall gaming industry as a whole? What's your postmortem on 2022 for the gaming industry? How about that?
There's a lot of progress that has been made. There's a lot still that needs to be done. Let me back this up a little bit. In a bull market, any rubbish can survive. There were all sorts of terrible projects that were launched during the last bull market. This bear is shaking them out. That's important because one of the biggest challenges that we have in the space, especially in gaming when you look at it from the perspective of Web3 gaming, is pushing through the traditional Web2 narrative that blockchain, NFTs, and all of these things are bad.
It was an interesting rundown by Kotaku, which always hates NFTs, blockchain, and all of these things. It was talking about how NFTs are this terrible or awful thing, "They're still here. Damn it," but for me, it has been an amazing and ridiculous year. It's killing bad projects. It's going to leave room in the long run for good projects to grow, flourish, and thrive.
There was a survey we put out on Twitter about the word NFT and its impact on adoption. About 3 out of 4 people thought that word isn't doing us any favors, but the underlying technology there, the innovation that's happened, and the cultural evolution that occurred in 2022 are unmatched.
Especially around the circles that we roll with. There are a lot of very self-reflective people. There's always that moment when people are decrying some specific thing about what's going on with NFTs or the term. You take a minute and go, "Let me check in on what's going on here." I think of the movements that we're involved in around ownership, creator economy, and decentralization in terms of the Web2 evolution or even the internet revolution. Something is going to arise out of all of this, which we're going to look back on. Whatever the name is going to be, it's going to be something special regardless.
We do need to work on that name as an industry. This is something we have always been terrible about. The blockchain space predominantly has two types of people. They have people who are cutting-edge or people who love new tech. They're early adopters. They're willing to take risks and things like that. These types of people can accept a name that is not ideal.
We're okay calling things NFTs or cryptocurrency. We're okay talking about different cryptographic disciplines, ZK-rollups, SNARKs, and all of these different things. For people like this, calling something a different name doesn't matter but for the rest of the world, those names mean a lot and matter a lot. That's one of the things that we as an industry have to fix. We have to come together on that.
It was Shakespeare that said a ZK-rollup by any other name is still a ZK-rollup.
I read that on Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure that's how that works.
I wrote that on Wikipedia. I'm a musician, which you may not know. I played music, went to music school, and played jazz. My participation in this whole revolution of blockchain has been this show. I haven't been able to integrate my musical life into it per se.
We will have to fix that.
I'll put out 1 or 2 tracks on NFT or something. I've got some ideas. Gala Music is a thing here that I want you to get into. I want to talk about it. If I want to get involved in Gala Music, what are my opportunities as a fan, a creator, and those other players in the industry like the producers and that kind of thing?
It's the structure. The first thing that I would say is if you want to dig in deep into Gala Music, the person that you need to talk to is Bux. Gala Music is her baby. I can give you some rough ideas of the shape of the ecosystem, but it's not my thing. I'm more on the game and ecosystem side of stuff. I'm wearing my Snoop shirt. One of the things that Snoop likes to talk about is when he first signed his first record deal when he was much younger. He got screwed by the record agency because they had all of the power in that relationship. They were able to do that. It took him many years to have creative control over what he was doing and even longer before he owned the stuff that he had done in the past.
That's a problem. What we want to do is open things up for more musicians to be able to own their product, release their product across our ecosystem integrated with our network of decentralized nodes and players, and make it so that fans have something special that they can access but at the same time, the artists themselves are in a position where they're much better served by the industry as a whole. That's what we're aiming to do. We would love to bring you in there somehow.
Speaking of Wikipedia, that was one of my claim-to-fame music projects. I wrote a song a day based on the Wikipedia article of the day. It's very nerdy.
That is horribly nerdy.
That's about as nerdy as it gets but maybe that's the place.
Where are these? I need to see these.
They're on an Apple website. You can't even access the MP3 files anymore. I'm going to get it up and about there.
Reverse interview question, what was the weirdest song that you had to write about?
There were so many because these articles are so random like Gremlins 2, the movie, the Wonderbra, antioxidants, and lead (II) nitrate. It's a classic. It defined a generation.
We're talking about music, but there's also the Gala Film side of things. A film is such a massive medium and an influence globally. What's going on that side of the house? We heard there are some revolutionary things happening.
There's a ton that's going on in the music and film side of things. They will have been burnt, but there's a sale on RZR. RZR is this amazing film piece that we're working on in conjunction with a few other people in the industry. That is going to be very cool. When you look get games as a business, it's larger than film and music combined but the reason for that is film and music are set up in a way that is inherently inefficient. One of the things that we're working on doing is correcting some of those inefficiencies to unlock some of that value. That's something that we're excited about.
It sounds like it. There are all these different moving pieces. It's rare to find a company that is focused and recognizes the DNA of all these different spaces and how they're intertwined.
They are all intertwined.
We talked when we last connected about how important the talent pool was that you have there and the deep experience across these industries. Kudos for pulling that together and seeing those connections.
Thank you. We have been building this entire bear. We have been building. We're starting to release things. Things are starting to come out. We're in a good spot.
David Bianchi is a good friend of ours. He spoke at NFT LA and performed there. Eathan met him too at a fun Hollywood Hills party. That's the LA style. He was telling us, "Something is brewing. I want to tell you." He couldn't tell us until the deal was done. He called us up. We heard the news directly when RZR was getting off the ground. We had been falling closely since then.
It looks cool. Did you get in on the drop?
We shared it with all of our fans on the show and on Twitter. We were involved. Part of what you are doing that is unique starts with gaming and goes beyond music and film. It is these nodes, which provide a framework for powering up your ecosystem. I would love to talk a little bit about why these nodes are so important to the infrastructure function functionality of what you're building.
The first thing that you have to keep in mind is that we want in the long run to have an ecosystem that is truly decentralized. As you build towards that, the concept of decentralization means that you have to have other people involved. You need a bunch of different players. This is where the nodes come in. In all of these ecosystems, nodes do specific things. The Founder's Nodes, which are the original ones in the game ecosystem have a slightly different role but what the film and music nodes do is host content, specifically for that ecosystem. Eventually, you will be able to pair your nodes with NFTs and be able to have your content be served as part of the growing ecosystem.
The nomenclature here is cool. We talked a little bit earlier about the way these things work. I'm familiar with nodes in terms of Ethereum, mining, and things like that.
It's a slightly different thing.
It's an echo of that idea. One thing powers the other. You've got a very unique lens here into this play-to-earn ecosystem. There are different ways people like to call it. What's your take on the new opportunities gamers are looking forward to here in 2023 and beyond in this ecosystem?
The first thing is that I want to think of this, not as a play-to-earn but a play-and-earn. That's a very important distinction. A play-to-earn means that the reason that you're playing is to earn something, which means that you're not playing because it's a fun game. That's a problem for us. We believe that gaming should come first.
Give us a little bit more on this topic of play-to-earn versus play-and-earn. I certainly got some comments on that.
One of the criticisms that we oftentimes get from Web2 gamers is they look at blockchain gaming, and they're like, "These are crappy games. The only reason I would play this game is if somebody paid me." That's a problem. That criticism is, unfortunately, oftentimes extremely valid. What we strive to do at Gala is make quality products to create something that is a good game and make it something that you would play regardless as a Web2 game. With Superior, we're experimenting with a dual-launch strategy where we launch it on our platform as well as on Steam as two separate SKUs specifically to show what a quality game can be produced in a Web3 space. You can access it via Web2 as well to get people into it.
In the circle where I run in, there's this deep human almost intuition around a possibility, a need, or a desire. The things that you naturally do have value. That's why we love these stories of the filmmaker that spent all his days working in a video store watching videos and geeking out. One day, he gets to make films and be a success at it, or the MrBeast YouTube star whose mom is upset that he failed out a community college but somehow his passion works out. I agree with that. It's not play-to-earn. It's play-and-earn. We have a deep desire to have that recognized. I appreciate that framing.
When you look at it from that context, what gamers are going to be seeing more here in the future is a much greater focus on participating in the creation of bigger and better ecosystems that are more tailored to normal gamers and less tailored to the almost FinTech side of blockchain.
It is its own niche, which is cool that there's a niche for gamers who want the rate of return on their investment to be tied to some troll. It's cool but I get what you're saying. It's something that should be more accessible.
Not to poo-poo on the DeFi movement but I was in a conversation with someone about the hollowness of that segment of the business or of the industry in 2021. When you don't add a layer of culture and utility to DeFi, it's just bigger returns after bigger returns. Inherently, it's a bubble.
It is specifically designed that way, which is horrid because it is all of the things that regulators are afraid of. It's something that's designed so that number always goes up until it doesn't. It's no wonder that they clamor to want to fix it when you look at it from that perspective.
When we look ahead here, we covered a lot of ground. You have a lot going on but there's a lot more here in the pipeline. When we look ahead here to 2023, what else can you share with us that we haven't covered yet? There's a lot of stuff under wraps but give us some of the goods.
There's a lot under wraps but the games that are starting to be released are freaking awesome like Spider Tanks and Superior. Last Expedition is one of the ones that I'm looking forward to a lot. There's Mirandus. The progress that has been made on these things is phenomenal in the time that has been allotted to them. It's interesting. In 2021, we were having Galaverse. Galaverse was the big event that we were having in Las Vegas. We announced a bunch of different games and things like that.
Three months after we announced those games, the community was like, "You announced those games. They're not out yet. It has been a whole three months. Why haven't you released the games yet?" A typical game development project is a 2 to 3-year timeline. We have made such incredible progress over 2021. I cannot wait for people to be able to see what we have pulled off in 2022. It's cool stuff.
That's the distinguishing element. When you look at blockchain gaming and what Gala is doing versus so many other people, it's what we talked about and what you are following through. That's delivering high-quality games or games that are of the quality that would attract Web2 gamers. It's so important. It's critical for this next phase of what's happening in blockchain gaming. That's cool to hear. I'm excited about it.
Can you talk to us a little bit about your game development process? Is there anything unique about it that you consider to be your competitive advantage? Is there any particular insight that you have about how you collaborate with the community on these games? There are a lot of games being built. Some are good and some are not so good.
The way that I look at this is we have two different ways that we build games. The first is we have a first-party internal studio where we're building games for ourselves. The second is we have a third party or somebody else on the outside building for us. Either of these models works. What we're finding is that when you have a game and you're building that game internally, you have much greater control over it.
That can have a huge positive impact on the overall outcome. You could say that our secret sauce is the team that we have that works with these various games. We have a team of economists that will go in and help put together a viable economy. We have a bunch of different things like that. It makes a pretty big difference to be able to have an actual team that you can dedicate to something like this.
It's helpful to understand. There's one last question that we would like to ask folks like you. You're taking a broad view of the space. You're active on Twitter. You're seeing what else is out there. Are there other projects that have come along in 2022 or that are starting to come along that inspire you?
There's not a lot in the Web3 gaming space that I find inspiring that we're not already doing.
That's a good thing.
That sounds awful.
I love it. That's the boldness of your vision there. What about beyond the gaming space?
In the space in general, this would be a little bit of a shout-out as well, I suppose. There's a gentleman that I know. His name is Vinay Gupta. He runs a product project called Mattereum, which is not the same as the Materium in Mirandus, which is the world's most irritating coincidence. Vinay is @leashless on Twitter. What they're doing is working on doing NFTs for everyday real goods like houses, real estate, and things like that.
I'm looking at the website. This is cool. We're talking about passports too.
He's one of the smartest guys I know. Here's a massive shout-out to him.
Let's get him on the show. What he's doing is cool.
I'm more than happy to connect you. He's one of those guys. We have a running conversation about life, the universe, and everything. He's a very cool guy.
I love his bio, "Former Ethereum launch coordinator." That's all you need to say.
Beyond that, there's the amount of stuff that he has done. His main job before he got into the blockchain space was national-scale disaster preparedness and creating all sorts of mobile housing for refugees. He made those little dome things that you see at Burning Man. They make these weird domes out of three sheets of plywood. They're called hexayurts. That's him. He invented those. That dude has done all sorts of stuff. He's an interesting guy.
We love to get folks on the readers' radar and our radar too. It's always fun to hear about somebody interesting that isn't always getting the attention or at least not in our circles. We're going to move on to Edge Quick Hitters. He's ready to go. He's doing like, "Shoot him up." He's ready for it. For the readers that aren't familiar, this is a way to get to know Jason a little bit better. There are ten quick questions. We're looking for short, single-word, or a few-word responses but we can feel free to expand if we get the urge. He is more than ready. Let's dive into the first one. What is the first thing you ever purchased in your life that you remember?
The first thing I remember purchasing was a little plastic dinosaur. I was probably three. I saved my pennies.
This is a straight-up purchase. This isn't like you won some games at Chuck E. Cheese and redeemed your tickets.
This was a purchase. This is the part where I had to self-audit. I started working very young. My family had a business. I started working for pocket money when I was five. It was probably borderline child labor.
It's past the statute of limitations though.
It's good. It was aircraft hardware. I would help count and package parts and things like that. I would get little bits of money here and there. When I was young, my dad would give me a nickel if I would sweep the shop floor and that sort of thing.
You have to pay kids when they don't understand money. That's the best time. When you get change back, it's like, "I got more back than I gave them. This is amazing. It's magic."
I remember buying this little plastic dinosaur that I bought. This was back when you could buy things for a quarter because I have white beard hair now. It was a while ago.
There's a spectrum of knowledge about dinosaurs. There's a curve. It starts with five-year-olds. 5, 6, and 7-year-olds are probably the most knowledgeable about dinosaurs. It fades off a little bit into adulthood until you become an actual paleontologist. I pulled this over. Don't tell my son I got this cool dinosaur discovery puzzle. I'm excited about that. It's a Christmas present. Don't tell anybody.
That's a dad's present.
He's five. It works. What is the first thing you ever remember selling in your life?
When I was in second grade, I discovered that if you put white glue on top of the paper and then stuck it to the inside of your pencil case, it would laminate it because the glue would dry clear, hard, and shiny. I created a white glue laminating service for the rest of the kids in the class.
They paid you money.
They paid me money and a quarter or something like that, "Bring me your shitty bookmark. I'll make it pretty and stuff."
All I did with that was I was the kid that had the glue drying on my hand. You start to peel it off and pretend to the teacher that your skin was peeling off.
That is one of the most creative answers to that question in all 200-plus episodes of this show.
Can you make me one?
If I could find that pencil case again, I would. It's a quarter over this.
Jason, what is the most recent thing you purchased?
I went and bought my wife some cough drops. I have a sick wife and kid. That was the recent purchase. It's ginger honey and manuka honey.
There's a lot going around with our team as well in Art Basel but hopefully, they will feel better for the holidays coming up. What is the most recent thing you sold?
Sold is not exactly what happened, but I sold a silver coin to my grandmother so she could give it to my daughter. She insisted on paying for it. I don't know if that counts. In Canada, they have these silver dollar things that are of a certain year. They have baby feet on them. My daughter was born. There's that little 2021 baby foot coin.
That's very cool. I have a lot of principal transactions like that with my mom where we're going to get a gift for someone. She's like, "I'm buying this."
I am paying for this.
In the end, it comes back out of my wallet but it's all good.
It doesn't matter. It makes her feel good. As long as they're happy, that's the important part.
Don't forget that you did sell me and Jeff some pencil case lamination thing. I'm not even sure what I purchased.
That's true. You're going to have to mail me a postcard or a bookmark. I'll take care of it for you.
The next question is this. What is your most prized possession?
I'm a big fan of stoic philosophers.
Is that an oxymoron? Can you be a big fan of stoicism? I like putting those together, "I'm wild about stoicism."
Stoic philosophy is something that has helped me a lot in terms of getting through things. There's Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and all of those philosophers. One of my most prized possessions is I have a tiny gold coin that has Marcus Aurelius on it. It was a Roman coin. I have it in a little tiny pendant in a safe somewhere back in Thailand. I don't have it with me here, unfortunately. It's an actual Roman coin. I have Roman coins all over the place. They're very cheap and fun to collect. I recommend that as an interesting hobby if you like old dirty things.
You know Gabe Weis's Stoics collection, the NFT drop. Here's a shout-out to Gabe. He's a big fan of stoicism as well.
I haven't seen that. I'll have to go check it out.
It's a very popular drop. It sold out. He came on the show and talked about it a little while ago. Philosophy inspired him around the chaos of the space that we love.
Next question, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service, or experience that is currently for sale, what would it be?
I have no idea. I'm not a wanting-things person. I don't structure myself around stuff I want. That is very tough.
Do you have your eye on any vacations or anything like that?
I don't get to take vacations. I haven't taken a day off in two and a half years. I seriously need to. I'm crispy. It's anything that I could buy. I would like some land. I would like a giant piece of a forest somewhere. I could put a little house there, be a weird old man with a white beard in the forest, and make sure there are no cell phone towers nearby and no internet. I need a place to unplug for at least six hours or maybe even a whole day.
That's a long time.
It gives everyone a sense of your world.
I did 50,000 miles in September 2022. It was a nightmare. It is nonstop always on. I'm exhausted.
I thought I had a busy September 2022. I went to Singapore, Korea, Napa, and then Utah but it doesn't sound like it compared to you.
September was Vancouver, Tokyo, Bangkok, Manila, Bangkok, Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo, Vancouver, London, Paris, Madrid, Seoul, Busan, Seoul, Bangkok, Tokyo, and Vancouver.
Even saying it sounds like a difficult task.
It's painful.
I hope you got some IVs and some good massages along the way.
None. It's terrible.
Besides a proclivity to pack light, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
It's my insatiable sense of curiosity. I am fascinated by everything. It pisses my wife off to no end because she will say some random thing or show me some interesting article or something like that, and my response is usually either fascinating or interesting. She's like, "Why is that interesting? Why is everything interesting to you?" The simple reason is everything is interesting to me. It doesn't matter what it is. I find it interesting. Knowledge is cool. If there's anything I could pass on to my daughter, I hope that she feels the same way about stuff.
Are you one of those people that can't invite all your friends to the same party? They won't get each other because you're into so many different things.
I don't have many friends. I grew up with this guy. His name is Curtis. He's big into Second Life. That's it. It's all he does or plays. It's that and art. I've got other friends who are into crazy stuff. I've got a handful of friends who are big into magic. There's a whole bunch of blockchain people I know.
It would be fun. If you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would it be?
I could remove doubt. This is #RealTalk. One of the problems that I have personally is I am perpetually filled with deep doubt, "There's something I could have done better. I should have done better." It's the flip side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. A lot of times, you have people who don't know that they don't know something. Their ignorance gives them a feeling of competence. The more stuff you know, the more you realize you don't know. The better you are at shit, the more incompetent and awful you feel. If there was a way that I could remove that feeling, I would gladly do so.
I'll take that one too. I feel like there are so many things that I want to do in the world and I would love to see Edge do in the world. It's easy to look back and say, "I could have done this on top of doing that," but then you realize there's sacrifice there. At the end of the day, there is no perfect solution to any problem.
Robert Pirsig talks a lot about this in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. If you haven't read that book, read that book. It will change your life. He talks a lot about how there's a little bit of a problem with the scientific method in that as much as you research and learn, the only thing you will ever get is more questions. You never run out of questions. It is a manifold expansion of questions and ignorance the more you go. The more you know, the less you know. It's interesting.
In that story, there's the story of a wife annoyed with her husband geeking out on some specific details or something like that.
It's a fascinating story. He talks a lot about his wife in the context of his motorcycle repairs. He would work on his motorcycle in a specific way to think about it. Other members of his family wouldn't see things the same way. He also went insane in the book. That may be the part that you're talking about too.
These next two questions do not require too much deep thinking. This will be easy. There's no doubt required. What did you do before joining us on the show?
I went to the store to pick up cough drops for my wife.
That's well done and well played.
I dropped off cardboard at the recycling center too.
You earned some points at the wife and the planet. Good job. What are you going to do next after joining us on the show?
I would probably go downstairs and cook dinner for the family before too terribly long.
He's a giver.
You have to lean in and take care of the wife. My wife is pregnant. We have a seventeen-month-old daughter. I have a lot to make up for here.
Here's a quick bonus question. What games are you most excited about in 2023?
I'm super excited about Last Expedition. People are going to love that. I haven't been keeping up with the Web2 gaming side of things as much but I believe there's a new Homeworld coming out here pretty soon too. I played the hell out of Homeworld. That is one that I find very interesting and would love to play.
That concludes our Edge Quick Hitters. You survived. Well played on your answers, sir. Next up, we're going to hit some Hot Topics and see if we can fit anything in here. There are some good ones. The first one is, "SEC investigates Yugo Lab's offering of unregistered securities. SEC has opened an investigation. Binance announced an update on the security notice with a focus on security. It has completed its global listing process for the BNB token." What are your thoughts on this? I feel like Bored Apes, all this stuff, and a lot of it is in good fun. I don't know how much it crosses the line. Do you have any thoughts on this, Jason?
As I understand the announcement of that investigation came from Yuga Labs themselves, not from the SEC, which I find interesting. That was, generally speaking, an interesting fact. As far as I know, they never offered anything. It's not even Yuga Labs that did it as much as a player-controlled DAO or a user-controlled DAO. I don't know where that's going to go. I'm not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV but I honestly never saw them make any promises, promise any returns, or tell anyone to buy their tokens or anything. It was very much, "Here you've got an Ape. Claim this thing."
Once you get involved in NFTs, you have to start to learn about the Howey test, the securities, and all that stuff. All of the elements have to be satisfying. One of them is that there has to be this concept that somebody else is going to do work on your behalf. I don't know if anything here smells of that. One interesting aspect of the NFT community is there's almost this community spirit. Everybody is going to work together to make something happen and bring value to the ecosystem and stuff like that. Do you have any thoughts, Jeff and Josh?
It's still early days on that stuff. They're trying to figure it out as the space is growing and evolving. Regulators regulate. That's what they do. They look for things to regulate.
I don't recall where I heard this. This is not my original thought. I'm not trying to claim it but one of the things that I heard at one point in time was that understand that regulators are doing what they think is the right thing in most cases. There may be some people who have bad intentions out there but most of them are legitimately trying to do something that is helpful and protects people.
As long as you understand that's the direction that they're coming from, you can reach out and meet them halfway. They're not bad people. Probably in most cases, they don't even understand the technology. People have gotten hurt horribly in this space. They're trying to prevent that. While I personally find it onerous, I don't fault their intentions in most cases.
It's also a process. The development of laws and regulations takes a long time. They do that for a reason to establish all the different ins and outs and the checks and balances to do the research and understand. We are still early in blockchain overall, in general, and all these different spaces that we have been moving the needle in over the last few years. It's going to take time but clarity and open conversations are nice. That perspective is a helpful one, having dealt with regulators in other industries over several years. It takes time to have an open dialogue. It helps.
We talked about terms and definitions earlier. It's why it's interesting to the folks who find it interesting as you find a lot of things interesting, Jason. We're dealing in new territory here, "Is that a security? Is this in security?" It's exciting to witness the birth of new ways that we need to define things and categorize things. It's interesting.
The way that I look at it is like this. If you go back in time and find when the first joint stock company certificates were issued, we're talking about the British East India Company joint and that type of thing where you would buy an interest in a ship. It's some of the things that you saw there in terms of governments trying to go, "What is this crazy new thing? You're letting the poor buy a little bit of a ship? That can't be okay."
Allowing that process of understanding what's happening and then going through the process of understanding, defining, and then eventually regulating is something we have seen many times now. I remember when email first became a thing. Watching senators debate whether or not you should charge postage for emails that should go to the postal service was fascinating. They would be like, "If we're going to send an email, how is the post office going to get paid? We should make them put a stamp on it." It was fascinating.
You can go back and look at some of the early discussions around this because it was at the very beginning causing a significant problem for the postal service. Suddenly, nobody was sending letters. When was the last time you got a letter? That's a good top question for you in one of your little quick questions. Who was the last letter you received from? My bet is it's a holiday or birthday card from your grandmother.
It's Christmas cards.
Add, "Other than a holiday or birthday card."
Everything else is either bullshit or came from Amazon.
I got a subpoena for something. Fortunately, I was on the victim's side of it.
I don't even think that counts. This is fascinating territory. I'm sure we could go on and on about it. I even had one more thing to say but I'm going to resist. We should move on to the next Hot Topic. The next Hot Topic is about the Binance CEO discussing the future of NFT ticketing. CZ says, "The crypto exchange is piloting NFT ticketing for sports events. The NFT concept events are able to sell tickets with a lot more ease and convenience." We have been talking about this from the very start as one of those no-brainer concepts for NFTs. Surprisingly enough, not somebody has emerged relatively quickly though. People are working on the details, making it functional, and getting people used to it. Have you ever bought any NFT tickets, Jason, to an event or things like this?
I bought NFT tickets to Galaverse. Does that count? It's our event. NFT ticketing is fantastic. CZ and Binance are in a good position to help promote that because of the cache and weight that they have outside of the blockchain industry. Even if you're not in the blockchain space, you've probably heard of Binance. That's an important component here. This is fantastic.
I tend to agree with you. Some of the comments on Twitter reflect some of my thoughts. One person said, "It's one of the most blatant and obvious use cases. It makes sense." I agree but some of the folks are like, "Why not get a protocol or partner with one of the NFT ticketing solutions?" We have looked at a lot of them for NFT LA. There's a lot out there already. It does make an interesting perspective on what is Binance's role in the ecosystem.
Are they fundamental pipes? Are they infrastructure? Are they a service provider too? CZ is a pure entrepreneur. He is open-minded to new ways of generating revenue and being involved. They have a position of market dominance. Getting involved in ticketing does make sense for them. At the same time, my hope is that the innovation area continues to occur through a lot of different avenues that we're seeing and excited about from YellowHeart, Relic Tickets, and some of the other players out there.
In what YellowHeart is doing like talking to Josh Katz and all the different ins and outs that these guys have to work through in an industry that's massive and has been around a long time, there are so many considerations. When do you release the money to the organizers of events? How do you handle chargebacks when you have tickets that are happening in many cases very anonymously? It is great if you want to easily exchange tickets and not have to worry about a bunch of middlemen but there are these other considerations that they haven't fully fleshed out because it's a hard thing.
From Binance's perspective, they're primarily looking at it. We talk to a lot of different exchanges about a lot of different things. One of the main things that they're looking for always is user acquisition, "How do we bring more users in? More importantly, how do we bring more users in that don't know about crypto? How can we become the home of these new users?" This is why he would probably opt to have it built internally rather than do some partnership. You build it internally. They're your customers.
Somebody goes to buy a ticket on Binance Ticket or whatever it is. They have a Binance account. Getting an account is not cheap. In getting somebody to create an account, you have to put significant UA spend into that. This is a great way to do that because getting an account is a side effect of people doing the thing that they're going to do anyway, which is to buy a ticket.
There's an opportunity coming down the pike for another big ticketing player. You have to have the resources, capital, people, and infrastructure to do it but it's coming. All that shit that went down with Taylor Swift and Ticketmaster with the Live Nation merger is a clear monopoly by any definition. There's an opportunity there for somebody ready to get after it. Ticketmaster is going to be looking for a competitor to stand up and be like, "This is not a monopoly." They can make the case as so many big companies do. This is a big play that has a macro impact as well.
I agree, Jeff. To your point, Jason, this is something we have also thought about. When you work with an outside ticketing company, there's someone else that has all the data too. That's the data to customers. That's valuable data. It gets into privacy issues, data sharing issues, and all sorts of stuff. Ticketing companies' policies could change. They could be very tight with the data, and then suddenly tomorrow, not so tight. We have seen it on Twitter. Elon has shone the light on it. They can say one thing but do something different behind the scenes. Anytime you have an opportunity to have a direct relationship with customers, you want to take advantage of that. It's good business.
I don't know whether my Twitter feed was boring, or they shadow-banned me.
It's more about whether your tweets are boring, or they did shadow-ban you.
That was a fun Hot Topic. Thanks for playing the game there. We're almost at the end of this journey here. Before we officially wrap up, we want to give a chance for Jason to give a shout-out to anybody that he thinks might be worth a shout-out. It's somebody our readers might find interesting or someone you want to give some love to.
I would like to give a shout-out to the Gala community in general, GalaGold specifically. You are awesome. They hang out in our Discord a lot at GalaGames.chat. This is where I talk to people in the gold community all day every day. I'm constantly in there. Here's a shout-out to them like Faz, forgedincrypto, Chewbacca, and a bunch of people in there. They're fantastic. I mentioned him a little bit earlier. My buddy Vinay is @leashless on Twitter. I'll connect you. You would enjoy having a conversation with him. He's very erudite. He is one of the most erudite and well-spoken people I have ever met. The story of how we met is hilarious but I won't get into that. It's cool to check him out.
How long is the story? We want to hear the story now.
It was 2017 or 2018. I was at Davos at Crypt HQ during the WEF. I was having a bad day. I was there sitting in one of the rooms. There were these guys up there having a panel on blockchain and how blockchain is going to change the world. It was one of those conversations. It's a highly idealistic conversation that is completely disconnected from reality. They're like, "We're going to replace all voting with blockchain. That way, we can vote on whether or not we want to go to war. It will be great. We can all vote on all the things." That is ridiculous.
I started asking some rather pointed questions. My quote was, "Until we can tokenize tanks and Tokarevs, there is not going to be any blockchain voting anywhere because the powers that be have a vested interest in continuing to be." I was asking some difficult questions. The entire thing ended. Vinay came up and sat down next to me. He goes, "A lot of times, I go to these events. A lot of these people that I meet are idiots. You are not an idiot. I would like to talk to you some more." He used some different words but I'm not going to use those. He used a little bit more colorful. He's a brilliant guy.
You certainly are not an idiot. It's great to talk to you. That's a good note to wrap on. We appreciate you being here. Especially with your family sick and all this stuff, we want to let you go soon here but where can readers go to learn more about you in the projects you're working on?
Check me out, @BitBenderBrink on Twitter and @GoGalaGames. You can see a lot of the stuff that we've got going on. Our Discord is GalaGames.chat. I'm always there. Come in and say hi.
We're going to do a giveaway with you. We will talk more about it on our socials. Did you want to share any details?
I'm going to give out a Spider Tank or a Hero Tank. Spider Tanks is one of the games we released. They don't make them like this anymore. This is a generation-one Hero Tank. It's about as good as it gets.
That sounds good. We will give more details on our socials. We have reached the outer limit at the show. Thanks, everyone, for exploring with us. We've got space for more adventures on this starship, so invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes, rate us, and say something awesome. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Look us up on all major social platforms by typing EdgeOfNFT and start a fun conversation with us online. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content.
Important Links
- Gala Games
- NFTLA.live
- Last Expedition
- Gala Music
- Gala Film
- RZR
- David Bianchi
- Superior
- Spider Tanks
- Mirandus
- Galaverse
- Mattereum
- Materium
- @leashless - Twitter
- Gabe Weis - Previous episode
- Stoics
- Second Life
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Homeworld
- SEC investigates Yugo Lab's offering of unregistered securities
- Binance CEO discussing the future of NFT ticketing
- YellowHeart
- Relic Tickets
- GalaGames.chat - Discord
- @BitBenderBrink - Twitter
- @GoGalaGames - Twitter
- Spotify - Edge of NFT
- iTunes - Edge of NFT
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