Hey, y'all, a few quick announcements. Before we begin first. This episode is longer than a typical Friday show, that that's because this is the first ever podcast interview with Punk 6529. And once he got talking and he's an excellent talker. I just wanted to let him run. So even though it's longer than a normal Friday interview. It is well worth your time. Second. I have a number of book events coming up soon. So if you want to see me or get your book signed, please, mark your calendars for
Or these events. And I will put all the details in the show notes, and very soon. We will also be putting a section for upcoming travel and events on my website, Laura Shen.com., Okay. So here is the rundown. Friday, March 26th from 4, to 5 p.m., I will be doing a book signing and reading on the Harvard campus at HBS Aldrich 11. I will be interviewed about my book by NF castles, Michelle Choi, and we'll also do a signing and QA the next day Saturday, March 27th.
Will be moderating a panel at the Harvard blockchain conference from 3 to 3:45 p.m. With NFC artist people pleaser and of castles will lock of its and Michelle Choi, and Nifty Gateway. C00, Patrick McLaren on Tuesday, April 5th from 6. To 8 p.m. I will be doing a reading and signing hosted by the city of Miami. Miami Beach and future. Perfect Ventures at Sky yard in Miami Beach, July 8th, Jobim Putra. CEO of future / aventures will be
Viewing me and we will also do a signing. You need to RSVP by April 1st information in the show notes. This is right around the time of Bitcoin, Miami. So get there a little bit early and you can come to this reading on Saturday. April 9th at 11 a.m., I will be on a panel at the End appleís Book. Festival on Tuesday, April, 12 at a time TBD. I will be at startup grind Global event in Redwood City, California, and this particular conference is focused all on web three, and finally I will
To be at the PBS, Seattle Crosscut Festival, which takes place from May fourth to seventh. And I will also be at the Oslo Freedom Forum, which takes place from May 23rd to May 25th details on these events TBD. Okay, now on to the show, hi, everyone, welcome to Unchained. Your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host Laura Shin author of The crypto pians. I started covering
do six years ago. And as a senior editor Forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the March 18, 20 22 episode of Unchained. If you're frustrated that your bank account is in crypto friendly. It's time to make a change on Juno, is a powerful new checking account that lets you buy spend and earn in crypto. It's free to open an account and even comes with a metal card. Download the on Juno app today with
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Leave 40 USD see that's try D Phi, dot CC / UNC. Today's guest is punk. 6529. Welcome 6529.
Thank you. Very happy to be here.
Last Friday, you collabs the creator of the board a pure Club announced that it had acquired the crypto punks and me B collections from their creator larvae Labs. Why don't you describe? What else it was that they announced?
With the acquisition and how you think this will change things for crypto punks and meet B owners.
Great, and I'm happy to do that and I think before we discuss that specifically, I think it's probably useful to take a step back to what the punks represented in the space. What? Maybe you go out represented in the space because I think beyond the technical aspects of the transaction. I think there were quite a few. Let's call them narrative aspects or psychological aspects that are embedded in.
And the various reactions that people had to this. So if that's okay, maybe we do some context setting. So the punks are not the first and FTS, but let's say they're the first end of teas that reached popular knowledge, popular social construction. They have been in the last year at all points in time the most valuable collection, by most metrics of the market capitalization of all the
Ex cumulatively, and they had this, let's say, counter cultural narrative, right? There is a lot of OG, Punk holders and particularly the early Punk holders are people who saw value in N FTS and Saul value specifically in the punks early or at least saw narrative saw art. Saw that, this was something worth.
Aiming, initially, they were free or collect this led to both a certain Community, feel among the punk holders and a certain aesthetic. And in they are in fact punks when they're low res Punk's with their, they are punks. So they have a countercultural vibin. What they're representing visually and this abstract aesthetic. This 24 by 24, pixelated.
And aesthetic has dramatically influence the space as has the structure of the collection, right? Whether on purpose or by accident, the crypto Punk's have set the base model for what a pfp profile picture collection looks like that. It's around 10,000 pieces.
That there are dominant, hierarchy traits. So, in the case of Punk's, human zombies, Apes, aliens, and that there is a generative aspect and how those their various traits are randomly given to in each individual Punk. And many of the traits in Punk's you see reflected in many other pupae of P collections, right? So whether it's a direct homage or it
Turns out that those are traits that people find appealing, for example, hoodies turned out to be a quite appealing trait in punks, even though they're not a particularly rare tree, and so many collections proceeded to then have hoodies as a trade, because they've seen the market reaction on which traits people like to use to represent themselves in a profile picture identity. So the punks were, let's say nine months ago. The
Deeply unchallenged leaders of the profile picture category, right? And some of the largest nft sales that had ever happened War Elite Punk's, the alien punks that war between 10 and 20 million dollars and the view being that there's only nine of them. And so those nine might become almost unimaginably valuable over time because of the historical.
Provenance of the collection. That's let's say where we were in May in May is also on the board apes quashed and the board Apes. I think it's fair to say they or three things that distinguish them from a lot of what was happening during that period. That was a period where a lot of collections were trying to Mint at relatively high prices or to create escalating prices during them into. So bonding curves where
The price of each success of Mentor group of mints goes up and it ended up, it has turned out as the field has concluded. This is a bad idea. It actually it's bad for the collection to have people on day one. Having some people having paid one price and some other people having paid 20 times the price actually leads to unhealthy Dynamics in the collection. So, the one thing that did which other collections also did they had a low mintage price 0.08., So that's a good one.
Bucket to is, they have a also, a distinct aesthetic. It's an aesthetic. That is more depending on how people discuss it. Right? Some people might say it's more fun. Some people might say it's more mass Market. If you follow the discussion among various Punk holders online, some might say, it's Keach. And some might say, it's cringe.
Right. It's this very, it's if the punks are more abstract. Right? The board apes are much less abstract, but it wasn't aesthetic. That resonated people like them. Right. Different people on the whole than the people who like punks, but people did, like them. I was looking at a chart earlier today. There is a nine point, one percent overlap between Punk holders and boredom holders.
So, nine percent overlap across the collections. And one of the things I was thinking about today was, if you turn it into absolute numbers, it is remarkable how small they are. There are another way to put that statistic is. There's 910 people in the world who own at least one pumpkin. At least one board ape, which in a world of 8 billion. People is not a lot. I famously own some ponds. I also own some board Apes. I'm one of those.
910, but really that's not a lot of people. So the aesthetic was distinctive. I believe and I've always thought it would have it would resonate which it has. And then the third thing that they did that I think was an important part of their success, both directly and indirectly is they were a collection that conceded, the IP rights in the
Apes to the Token holder and this question of Rights and I won't get totally distracted into this right now. We can maybe Circle back to. It is one of the more important collection that this topics in and of teas because their most almost all cultural objects. Certainly all art operates under a standard model where the artist retains the copyright.
So and there's a lot of confusion including about not by not in a 50 people. In this regard, where if you buy, it is easier to think about it. If you buy an Andy Warhol, soup can
And the, the Andy Warhol has not transferred to you, the copyright for the Andy Warhol. Soup can Andy Warhol, and then the Andy Warhol estate has retained that confer. If you buy a Harry Potter book, you do not own the Harry Potter franchise. And so 99.95 know how many nines percent of all cultural objects ever created are in this model as are today. Most of tease, you know, most almost basically, all generative art, all 1 of 1
Distilling that traditional Model A little bit of Photography has experimented with other models and where the real experimentation has happened. And really since last May has been in profile picture Collections and part of that is because the value of a profile picture collection should is reflexively generated between the creators in the community. Write a profile picture collection in abstract.
Is hard to imagine how it generates value? Right? The the reason it generates values groups, people use it. I famously use a punk profile picture and For Better, or For Worse. Whether I'm viewed as being helpful or not helpful to the space. It's somehow reflects on the punk Community For Better, or For Worse, but this is true in general for p FPS. Right? So which Community adopts.
Vfp, how they use it, do they coalesce into some type of group with an identity is what actually drives value in a PSP collection. The art might have some role in triggering that, but it's not the main outcome. I believe, right? Like the, if the crypto punks was a collection launched tomorrow, for the first time, the crypto Punk's would have not become what they are, right? The crypto pain.
Oops were important. Yes those, an interesting aesthetic but it was an interesting Sonic and a moment in time. Right? And that moment in time was in 2017 at coalesce to certain Community around them. This concept that the token holder can own the rights for that nft. And then also commercialize them.
Was a big idea and it is a big idea.
Not so far. It's less about I think the how it's been used in practice and more about the narrative. So in practice were still very early for people to have built large commercial Enterprises using their pfp, right? You see different alcohol. Them experimental initiatives. So someone has launched a derivative collection using their board ape as the starting point for that collection someone place.
They're a pain in a microbrew. Someone pays they're a pain. It coffee brand. Someone DJ is and puts the ape in the background. Someone licensed several of their Apes to be some type of virtual band. None of these are large commercial Enterprises IAM, but the narrative, I think does flow into the value of the board Apes. The thought that maybe I can do it or maybe someone else in the future can do it.
If the ideas that someday the board, Apes become an important, Global brand that effectively you somehow own. Part of the franchise is an important part of the board, Apes narrative and the success of the board, Apes. Reset in many ways. What is now the market Standard for pfp collections? I have a fairly aggressive view of this I believe.
Now the only two viable choices for a pfp collection. Are either commercial rights like the board Apes model or the whole collection goes into the public domain and it's a very interesting discussion, which of those two models are going to win, but it's hard for me to imagine that a new pfp collection, launches in 2022, says the community that's going to use. It is going to have no rights to the value that they co-create with the artist.
First, I don't think that's a competitive proposition in 2022. So what happened over the course of the year the board games broke away from the thousands of pfp collections were launched in 2021, right? There's there's huge survivorship bias in pfp collections, right? So everyone says, oh my gosh. I wish I had border bar Dave and there's no one in and of teas that wishes that they've done by like 20 more tapes, right? But there are many collections that look like they might be somewhat similar.
And didn't go anywhere and so some combination of how the collection was structured. But also the team execution led to the board Apes. Accelerating away from a lot of other Collections and late. Last year. There was this competition, I put this in air quotes between the board Apes on the ponds, which was really primarily on the board ape side, right? That the board age side. So no, maybe we'll catch.
The punks and, you know, a lot of board games holders were people who were priced out of punks in May or June or July and then to know here's our own community.
And it's interesting. I mean, all the PSP collections are still tiny. If we are going to have mass adoption of pfp s of n, FTS collections of 10,000, 20,000 30,000 in the world of billions of Internet users are tightening. Right? So you end up with this strange effect. That I don't think anyone has solved yet of things that are good for the collectible value of the pfds are bad for building a community because very quickly
They run into prices that are unreasonable for normal. People to say aye. I want a profile picture on join our community and the ticket industry hundred thousand dollars writers. Wanted to start. That's a that's a pretty big ticket item. And then what happened towards the end of last year, the floor price flipped and I don't overstate the importance of exactly. Don't think it's particularly important, but it was viewed as psychologically important for some and for our listeners who are not necessarily in of
The floor plan is just means what's the price of the least expensive available piece in the collection available for purchase, right? So the least expensive or tape at some point was more expensive than the least expensive Punk.
The analysis I've seen and done is the overall value of all Punk's together is still probably a smidgen higher than all the board H together because the highest-end punk pieces, have traded a significantly higher values in the highest, an ornate pieces, but they're broadly, the same now, right? I think it's, it's fair to think of them as broadly. The same market cap and collections, which
You know, if you roll back, the clock to me and asked people if this might happen by the end of the year, the average very sophisticated and of tea person would have given you a hundred to one odds against this, right? The punks from a value perspective or viewed as being untouchable. Now, one more turn and then why I think we'll get to the psychology. So a little bit of the depends on how you want to look at it, right?
And this is coming from someone who has significantly more exposure to punks and board eggs, right? So it's not I'm not harassing. The pain communion substantial, expose the punk Community, but there was a little bit of the theory or coping on Mike. Well, the punks are historical. There are more. They're Immortal. They have Providence in 20 years. We'll see who's still standing the board. Apes, might be a fashion business.
They're cool now, but three years from now, something else is going to be cool. And this is going to keep happening like today, Everyone likes to wear Supreme. The next day. Everyone likes to wear bathing ape, these things will come and go. But the punks position at the Apex of P. FPS, is something that over the long run will never change. I think that was, I believe the view in fact until quite recently, so,
And there was substantial pressure on larva labs to change their policy on rights because you had this weird situation ten days ago where the countercultural collection, the historical provenance collection. The rebels of crypto collection, had the most restrictive rights policy of any major pfp project.
And there was this significant mismatch between those two, that the values, I think represented, by people who wanted to own a punk, tend to do the crypto values and crypto always tends towards decentralization. But if you read the terms of service agreement, terms of use agreement of the me B, which is where larva Labs, truly laid out there a proper legal agreement.
It was very corporate and I read that in May and I said, wow, that could have just been any type of big company terms of service agreement. There's very little puncture countercultural about this. So there was a lot of pressure from some famous Punk's holder like for 156 who hasn't had a very famous hung cape and spoke to larvae labs and don't look would really
Like you to consider changing their rights policy, and he claims, they then blocked them on or unfollowed him on Twitter. And so, then he sold his ape. There was this in the background of
This mismatch, I think between narrative and and I don't think it's larvae Labs fault, right? Like what happened is?
The market changed, the environment changed. We learned something in 2021, right? This item crossed anyone's mind necessarily in 2020, but in 2021, we learned about rights. We learned about public domain and pfp Collections. And so. So this was the, this is where we were.
One right before the transactions
Nest. So before you go on, I just want to make one clarification, which is that, I think the punks actually didn't have any policy and so people were also criticizing larvae labs for not being transparent. And when they finally released a policy for me, B people kind of felt that, oh, that probably is the same approach. They would take to crypto Punk's but as far as I understand, I don't think they ever even released a rights policy for crypto punks. So that was kind of another issue was there was like a lack of transparency and clarity.
Ready about it.
Correct. So, the best view of the punks Community was that at some point in the Punk's Discord was, there had been a posting by the larvae laps teams that you could monetize up to 100,000, which is something similar that that appeared in the me B contract. So the movements contract, says, they meet its terms of use gave a limited commercial license, but one that I think
think in practice was useless. It was a commercial license that tapped out at 100,000 a year. Now. This is not to say that most projects will be Beyond 100,000 a year, but it's the type of thing. Nobody starts a business thinking, you're going to tap out of 100,000 a year, right? Like by definition, if that's what you think is going to happen. You're not going to do it and it specifically excluded digital objects.
Which for a world and Community, whose whole basis of being is the Jean. And it was basically sure if you want to make a baseball hat for you and 10 friends, do that. But honest, I don't think anyone cares about, right? Like I don't think anyone, I don't think the board apes are excited because we're going to make t-shirts. I don't think the punks were excited order to make t-shirts. I don't think that the big opportunities in the future metaverse of ten years from now, aren't we going to have T-shirts with our PFE odds and ends? Totally?
Relevant and realistically doesn't matter what they say. No one's going to come in force you because you made a t-shirt with your point guard, who cares? Like even if they didn't say that no one's going to care. So the announcement I believe was very Bittersweet for a lot of punk holders and it was bittersweet as follows. They got one thing that they liked along with one thing that they didn't like
In the thing that they liked was that contemporaneously with the announcement, lat Yoga Lab said the punch will go under the same license as the board Apes. Which means commercial rights have moved to the punks. Hold. This is something that a lot of people had asked for overtime. This is a good thing. This is a substantive Improvement in the rights of the punk holders and a substantive Improvement in the decentralization of the fox.
The part that they didn't like there's probably no more annoying person to have. Had to do that for the punks. Then you will have right. You'll have as well as their direct competitor in a way, sort of not really primarily the board Apes were competing with the punks, right? The punks were in this model of like, look, that's fine. It's cool. They should have their fun, but the puncture the punks, right?
No punks Standalone. The punks aren't commercial guys, trying to commercialize these things and suddenly it turns out that larvae lab sold the rights to in fact that very specific commercial entity and this has caused a lot of discomfort. If you see there's there's both men a split between is probably too strong even I think there's also just mixed feelings among individuals.
Right in that. Some people say, well I expected more from Laurel apps, right? Why did they have to do this or why couldn't they have just done this? Why do they have to combine that with a sale? Some other people say, well, the narrative has changed.
It's one thing to be the countercultural crypto Rebels and it's another thing to be the fourth collection in a conglomerate backed by Venture capitalists that are going to be clearly commercial. It's a different narrative. Some people say, oh, well, what happens next? If you go sold to Facebook now are called our countercultural punks.
Are going to somehow be related to Facebook. That feels strange, right? Feels off some people who worry that. Maybe you go will do something cringe-worthy with the punks. Like the punk holders on the whole aren't particularly excited for someone to make them a Punk's game, or a Punk's metaverse, or any of those things, right? They tend to be fairly deep.
Krypto natives. A lot of them I think are fairly wealthy. A lot of them aren't going to be grinding out in a game to pick up a, you know, some special thing in the game. All right, they and so now there's, like, you risk factors to the punks that they might turn cheesy, right? Like that. So this is the negative side of the story. I'll give you the positive side. I I appreciate and understand the negative side.
All right, I'll give you the positive side though. The positive side is, these are natural things that may happen when an indie band goes starts mainstreaming. And if it wasn't going to happen here it was going to happen at some other point, right? You can't symbol taneous. Lee expect that Punk's mainstream and punks also are super countercultural forever, right? Those two are. Those two are contradictory and
Suzanne. I'm more positive about this than I think, some of my fellow potholders is I think this is funny to say.
I had baked in worsen to my assumptions. Once I read the me butts terms of use.
It was clear what larvae last position was, right? It was clear that this wasn't going to be some aggressive experiment on rights or what have you and so there could have been worse. The punks IP could have been sold to Disney. All right, and then Disney could send a bunch of trademark lawyers to send us all season desist. Every time someone does make a derivative work with a punk or makes a t-shirt only have you, and this would have been a complete disaster, right? So,
The fact that it was sold to people who were the ones who move the discussion forward on this centralization, on rights, right? And I don't have her like a strictly the first project because I think they're not but they're the first. Just like the crypto Punk's were the first to really make a pfp collection work to really make an mft collection work. I'd in a way that and, you know, how, someone in my feeds going to say. Oh, what about the Pepe is wrote a few, but the crypto punks.
Practically succeeded. The board. Apes practically succeeded in moving the field forward in terms of Rights usage. And so what it'd probably be even better for the punks narrative. If as people were suggesting, you know, larvae Labs, put the IP in a foundation and gave the rights away, and then took the keys to the foundation and lock them away forever and threw them to the bottom of the ocean. And then the narrative could never change her. I think that's would have actually been
The preferred option for most Punk holders. The larvae Labs doesn't do anything. Ever again. You leave the historical Providence clean. There's no chance for something cringe-worthy to happen and we go from there. However, however, as I explained to my friends, but that's not our decision to make it's theirs. They always had the rights, they made it clear. They had the rights, they could have made whatever decision they want. Then by definition they did right in.
So, given that they've made conditional on larvae Labs, making a decision like that. I believe it is a better decision than if it had gone to a traditional media lifestyle Entertainment Company, because something substantive has changed the substantive part that has changed, is the license. Now is dramatically better. And so, for the first time, in Punk's history.
And this is going to be all controversial yelled at later and Discord, the punks are actually in control of their own destiny because the punks can do whatever they want. Now either individually or in groups. So there is a little bit of I think still and is left over from the larvae lapses. Where, you know, a lot of the punks, this quote was like, I wish larvae Labs would do extra Dua or not do extra not doing today. You go might do something or not do something, but you're not bound by it.
Anymore, no one is going to, let's say, you go makes a Punk's game. I don't think they will bless thee. You don't have to play the punks in. Let's say the Punk's want to do something else. Well, one Punk or two Punk's, are 500 punks can get together and do whatever they want, set up whatever narrative they want, engage in whatever activities they want. It's in the community sense. Now, this is a may be more complicated narrative, right? Maybe that's a more complicated narrative than the punks are the holy of holies, and they're going to be
Stone forever and blah, blah blah, blah blah, but to me, I never quite 100% bought that narrative given that even the punks themselves aren't five years old. I think one of the things that does happen in this space is we're watching social construction happen in real time, right? It's an amazing time to be in ft's because many things. It's a combination, not just of a new crypto art movement, which it is, but also a new
technology for transporting intangibles, which is an unbelievably big topic because societal intangibles are a multi-deck a trillion dollar asset class. And so we now have rails to move around intangibles and because of A and B, you can now make new forms of social organization.
Things we have not seen before and there's a Nuance here that I think is underappreciated most forms of how a nifty's are used are not Securities, which means you don't end up with the same centralizing influence that tends to happen or forces that tend to happen on tokens are securities, right. And that you're very worried that their security is not that leads to centralization and the lawyers and having to make sure you don't get in trouble with
As you see, it will be very difficult for me to imagine that. I don't know. The SEC has to give xcopy permission to release a piece of art, right? I'm pretty sure that's a violation of the First Amendment, right? It's prior restraint of speech, blah, blah blah. All right, so the fact in a way because they are one derivative away their the tokens there, but it's representing.
Very clearly forms speech. You have the opportunity to experiment. More broadly, with social
organization. Yeah. Well, I just actually I just want you to hold that thought because we are going to have a quick word from our sponsors and then we will continue the conversation. It's time to bring Wall Street to Main Street. Coin change is democratizing access to wealth management with low risk, High return, passive income through.
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Back to my conversation with 6529. So, go ahead. You were talking about how you felt that, you know, these are not Securities,
right? And you see that allows for a lot of experimentation. And so what you have is three things wrapped up together, a new art movement, a technology that allows us to own transport.
Those intangibles on a on digital rails and the ability to think about what forms of social organization, you can do in this space. And so given this, we have early hypotheses of what is going to work. We have early hypothesis of what social construction will last over. The long term, right? Was, this is all Bitcoin was also social construction right Bitcoin.
I Am 2013 era Bitcoin. The idea that Bitcoin should have value is a reflexive idea. It's a self-generating idiots, a social construction form of idea and Bitcoin has been incredible at forming the social construction, whether it's digital gold or never sell your Bitcoins or put them in Cold Storage, etc. Etc, etc. These
Social construction or intersubjective, myths, or memes or whatever you want to call them. They're all the same thing. Right? That's it. And its social construction is forming of meaning forming of cultural. Meaning, Bitcoin was extraordinarily successful. Now this is happening in NF teas. And so the first the social construction that owning a crypto Punk is valuable mean something and that valuable can be expressed in the value of the token itself, is a new idea. It's an
That is year old year and a half old, right?
I did want to ask you a question about this because crypto Punk's don't have royalties built in the way that the board Apes do. And I wondered if you felt because, you know, you were talking about how the community kind of maybe wasn't so excited about the fact that it was you go Labs that bought that acquired the punks Ami boats, but they're sort of like already this difference.
In the collections. And so, I just wonder if that will sort of naturally create a difference in how you collabs Stewart's the punks
for. Well. I think the biggest difference there is reflected in that you go Labs is much more valuable than larvae laps, right? You go Labs is more valuable for a couple of reasons. But the first reason is it has an ongoing hundred percent gross. Margin Revenue stream from royalties, right? And the board.
Trade pretty actively, as do the mutants on a little bit, the puppies, but this creates an ongoing Revenue stream that larval apps does not have. And you see this reflected. I mean, I don't have direct view on these numbers, but it's clear that if you think through it, the Google apps has a multi billion dollar valuation of those are the numbers thrown around in the Press over February.
And raise some money and had some money imbalance, even had enough money between those two things to buy, both the larvae Labs, help punks, plus the punks and me B IP, which means this ended up being valued at a fraction of. So, even though the collections are the same value, right? The buying all the puck and FTS and buying all the board ape and of T's will cost about the same. The company Yuga is much more valuable than the company.
Larvae, and that's two things. One is the royalty stream which is an ongoing value that moons from holders to the company, right? Because it is in effect. Yuga is your five friends and 5% an order of Kansas than 5%? The royalties. I think there's a 5% kosher holder and all the in all the board, Apes forever, right? And also, of course, that the yoga team is much more commercial, much more active, much more.
Likely to convince a set of VCS that they're going to generate a variety of new and exciting business opportunities. And therefore their company should be much more highly valued. Whereas the larvae Labs team. Very expressly does not want to do this, right? They're Geniuses. All right, their contribution to a nifty's. Is irreplaceable. I mean the punks
The autographs which was the first on Shane generative art. Let me B will see over time how important they end up being but they're interesting and they were fairly Cutting Edge as well. And what the team said very clearly is they do not find their best personal satisfaction and running a big Commercial Business. They don't want to scale up a team and be business people, but they consider themselves.
And artists and programmers and they have historically been on the absolute cutting-edge. I mean, nft is have basically three main categories P FPS generative art on chain generative art. And one of one, our twin chiming the rest of the world. We just call this art, the first successful collection in two of those three categories was the same two guys.
Which has an incredible Legacy. I mean, even if they retire tomorrow, never did anything else? It's an incredible Legacy. And to me. I think the provenance of Punk's Will Survive the sale of the IP.
I think it doesn't really change. It was several years ago, that it happened. Then the punks happened. They were clearly the, oh, geez, of the space. You'll get seems to understand this, right? It was out there announcement was very respectful. I think the correctly said we're not going to do very much for now. We just want to listen to the community right? Like I I do think the right way, that they should be hand. The function. We handle now is fairly light.
Touch for the time being let people settle in process, it and see what happens now in the community. And if what people want to do with their bunks in theory, more people can do more things with the puck sell that in practice. A lot of punks holders are pretty crypto rich and don't plan to do anything with her punks. I think some people will turn over.
I think some people will feel like some piece of the magic is gone and it's interesting because it's all psychological even before the sale. The punks were under a much more corporate context than the more tapes the board Apes. Legally speaking were much more web 3 than the punks but seeing any even though now the puncture equally web 3 as the board Apes, the
Did it happen through a business transaction? I think feels cold. Maybe something that like not what people? Yes, I you knew and your back of the mind that might happen someday, but it's different than you and I commend. And in fact, it did happen, but I think the narrative is going to be robust to this, and I think the it up, if you had told me, the punks were sold to some normal Corporation and stay down.
Under the old license. And now, you know, Disney's the new Punk's holder. I'd be pretty bummed because I think it would have been very hard to imagine where that plays out. Now you have a substantive Improvement in the decentralization of the punks and I do believe we are. There's significant failures of imagination among a good chunk of n of T Community. A lot of people as a particularly like in the more successful people, the Richer people.
Wow, I don't want to commercialize my and if T's or then you say, well, I don't want to make a baseball cap with my end of T's and obviously that's just a failure of imagination, right? Where 1/8000 of the way there from getting the whole planet into a Nifty world. And the idea that the most important thing one would do with a piece of interesting art. And culture is make a baseball cap is a bit.
Is our failure of imagination, right? We're going to be in digitally composable spaces and the fact that you can go ahead and try things experiment, do different projects and not have to wait for permission for someone, not have to send the Ledger and email discuss the terms. I believe over the course of time will lead to a much better outcome than any collection that we have to do it. And so I'm pretty bullish overall. Even though I know I think they'll be
Short-term heartburn among some folks in the community.
Yeah, and I also wanted to ask about how you go Labs announced. It would be selling land in a meta verse and the block reported that the company was projecting. It would bring in 455 million dollars in Revenue. Largely off these virtual land sales. What do you think of those
plans?
I can't have a particularly well-formed opinion until I see exactly what it is that they're planning to do what the technology behind this land sale. Looks like what the terms are of this land sale, how it is organized for board, Apes holders versus the public without doing. Any of these things that I can say. Some generalities. I believe it will do pretty well because you know, there's a fairly excited.
Community in and around the board H world. And the idea that all we're going to have our land or I'll have already over sounds exciting to people. Historically yoga has succeeded in all of their launches, right? So the it would be strange to bet against them here.
Second. And this is a very high concept discussion because it doesn't apply just to Yuga it applies to all metaverse land experiments, whether it's decentraland or somnium or they'll be many, many more. I do wonder if the construct of land sales, is exactly right. For these types of projects and I'll give you an example not from yoga because it has
Launcher. But if you go through a lot of these meta versus you'll see or find yourself a times, walking through a bunch of empty fields and looking around to see if there's anyone around and it is quite frankly boring and it is quite frankly, a failure of imagination to go into a computer mediated environment and have empty Fields. They're the reason you might have empty fields and not well, planned cities is because there's physical constraints.
So not right like the someone there's a piece of property and until they develop it input, you know millions of dollars of concrete or whatever. It's empty in the middle of the city. It's parking lot at doesn't exist in a computer-based environment. You could vanish the empty Fields. All right, you could have portals from one place to another. There is, I understand, of course why all metaverse platforms so far doing this. They it is both
An excellent funding mechanism to solve that, right? And so most of these land cells have done while and then there's the view of, if you give some once you commit people to purchase on the land, maybe they'll and expend additional resources, both economic and intangible psychological to develop it out. Right? You know, I'll say oh it's a mental model that is familiar to people. Oh, I have a plot of land. I can build something on the plot of land. I respect that but it is.
Is also bringing a mental model that is based on a unmovable 3D grid of the real world into computers were. That's just not true anymore. And I suspect I suspect and I can't tell you the answer to that, and I haven't seen it. But I suspect. This is one of those of this category, you know, when the first one television first came out, a lot of the early TV shows were radio shows with a camera pointed at the presenters.
Because you were still stuck in the prior mental model land sales without necessarily having the solution with alternate solution to me, feel like that hat. We are in the mental model of the real world where yellow if there's going to be a 3D space and there are other you saw land, you build a house and you go in and out of it and then we've transported into the digital world, and I'm not sure then it's going to be the right fit if you want to.
Think of something more recent early internet, right? We did online magazines online newspapers, right? That's the 90s are all about that and we're online magazines and online newspaper successful. Yes, and you know, does the New York Times that having is the New York Times more successful today, online than it will be for, didn't have online of course, but it turns out the native informational mediums of online. Warrant the New York Times magazine, but
Mine, but Twitter and Facebook. All right, where they changed fundamental parameters of how you convey information, and those became massively larger businesses than the offline business now presented to you in the same format by the new computer, but this is not a comment specifically about yoga, right? It's my view generally about these metaphors land sales at
and now they've been successful, they've been successful. But I suspect, there's a turn of the there's an orthogonal shift in the model somewhere where they'll be really successful.
And what do you also make about the company's announcement? That it would launch a governance token called a coin as well as a
Dau.
So from what I understand reading their website about the coin, it is a combination payment token and governance token, but primarily a payment token, right? And so it's one of those. You don't get any rights from owning it because if you did, it would be a security and then they couldn't issue it, too.
Retail. Participants non-accredited investors. They said that they and any mocha are going to use it in their virtual world. And so my and then there's a treasury that the Dow can vote on to spend for I assume Community Building type activities. All right. So the treasury governance token part is fine in and of itself. I don't think hugely exciting in and of itself that
Part shouldn't drive a ton of value. Their interest in question is going to be the payment token. It.
You know again, it's one of its again social construction because the first question one will ask yourself is wait. So where did these billions of dollars come from at? They don't exist to be more saying? Oh, well, maybe it'll be maybe we'll end up settling out in a billion or 5 billion or 10 billion. Where did they come from? Rather have it makes no sense, but there could be a place to come from as follows.
If you go and you guys Partners create various services online metal versus and quotes or games or what have you and the in-game in metaverse sales require that token that does create a base level of buying pressure for that token, particularly, you know, if they then sold at the next moment. I don't know. But if they held it right, which I imagine they might
You could I think a crew value into that token and use it, but you'd have to, and I, but I think they will make it the coin of the realm in a way for you girl, right. And so to me, my mental framework on this is this is going to be the m, one of you go world. And, you know, is that going to be good? Bad indifferent? Well, it's a great question. I think it is the token. I
Leave even the nfc's and this is what the crypto Punk's worry about. I think the token and then if T is for the board, apes are execution dependent. As is the land as is the quote unquote metaverse as is the game, right? Whereas the punks pre-purchase. We're not, you know, by larvae Labs not doing anything which the very explicitly that they're not going to do anything great. When you're not excused independent, like they also can't do anything bad right again in the end. So you guys are higher beta play, right? If you go
/ executes and becomes a quote-unquote Disney or Marvel, or whatever of the digital era. Well, then the whole you the universe, the upside is vastly higher than 0. Its historic collectible art right there. Will, of course, be over the next few years. Multi-hundred million dollar Brands, formed in nft world, right? And
Did I say million or billion? I meant billion. Multi-hundred, billion dollar Brands formed in a Nifty world. And so yoga is a leading Contender to form one of them, but it's hard, you have to execute and you have to execute on a variety of Dimensions that are complete unknowns right now. What is a successful murderers built on? And if T is what is, you know, people say games again? I don't think the state of the future world is going to
You that everyone pays hundreds of games and hundreds of games universes of their nft collection, because you know who has time for that, right? If you read between the lines and the you announcement there saying, oh no, I'm going to make a game where you can bring your and if T is from other collections into my game. So they said, all right. They're trying to be the meta platform or trying to be the one that okay could be, could be if I succeed will be extremely valuable, but it is execution dependent. And it
It is a significant Step Up in complexity, in terms of the execution, from what they've done nouns like looking at it just coldly as a business running. I'm a diverse, a gaming platform, a token of community, and continuing to help Community moderate the board each Community. It's a big step up in complexity. Now, they've executed very well so far. They have unlimited Capital available to them, but nonetheless,
You
can hard. Well, I guess we will have to see what happens. Obviously at this moment. It's it's all very new. It's just an announcement and I think at the time we're speaking, you know, people are getting kind of hyped up hyped up about this coin. So we will have to see how it all plays out. 6529. I have to thank you so much for this incredible interview. I just really enjoyed, hearing your thoughts on all these things. It was almost like listening to
Like a cultural historian. Sort of at the moment that all of this is happening, and it was just really fascinating discussion. Thanks so much for coming on Unchained. Thank you so much for having
me.
