JH: Amazing, we are live. Matty it’s such an honour, to get to talk and kind of explore the NFT space. Very much looking forward to. Maybe for my German audience, I am not sure how many know you. It’s always funny, I am from Austria, and so many people always say, oh Australia, that’s so nice. And so when I talk to an Australian, it always makes me smile a bit. Share me briefly, for my German speaking audience, who you are, where you from, and then I would love to dig right into the topic of NFTs.
M: Awesome. My name is Matty. I run a Twitter account and a YouTube channel called DCL Blogger, and I’ve basically been talking about NFTs for the last three years.
JH: Three years?
M: Yeah man, three years. 2017 I got into crypto and then in January 2018 I found NFTs, and I was like, wow, what’s this virtual land, virtual game item. It was this completely new world to me. And that’s how I got involved, I kind of started investing in crypto and rode the wave up and down and then I found virtual land. And back then I didn’t know that that was an NFT. I was just like, okay, there is this virtual land you can now invest in, that is also part of blockchain. I didn’t know exactly how, because I was new to crypto anyway. And as the industry grew, it became virtual land, virtual game items, and art has now taken kind of everything. But before, if you strip that back down, what it used to be, where it comes from, it’s like a piece of technology that you can integrate and build so much on.
JH: When I posted on Twitter, hey connect me with some NFT experts, I am not kidding, so much of my audience said, hey you need to talk to Matty. And I was like, wow. Never talked before, so I reached out and you were super fast in saying, sure, happy to do this for my audience. So that’s really awesome.
M: I am honoured. Awesome.
JH: A question that pops up. Do you have any background in like collecting, or where does this interest come from?
M: No, I have a background in investing. I like to invest and grow my wealth, which I guess everyone in crypto likes to do, right? So we like to put our money somewhere and see that it appreciate in value and so when this virtual land thing came. It wasn’t really collecting, I mean I’ve had Pokémon cards and stuff before, so I’ve been attached to things before. But you know, I am not a collector. I am more an investor.
JH: That’s an interesting fun fact, I didn’t know that. A friend of mine, one of the largest German Youtubers, he told me that Pokémon is the largest franchise in the world value wise. I didn’t know that.
M: Probably.
JH: Humongous. Cool, let’s dive in. I assume most of my audience know what NFTs are, but maybe let’s spend one minute or something on describing an NFT and maybe comparing that to bitcoin.
M: Yeah, sure. I think that bitcoin and crypto are a good comparison, because they’re fungible tokens. So we all know that cryptocurrency are tokens that live on the blockchain. Whether it’s a Etherum or a bitcoin, technically they’re all tokens and us humans we give them value and we trade them for x amount of money. So fungible tokens are coins like Etherum, bitcoin. Basically every cryptocurrency is fungible in nature. It’s a dollar. Fungible means, I can give you a Bitcoin and you can give me a bitcoin back. And it doesn’t matter if you mined that bitcoin three years ago, if I mined that bitcoin one second ago. It has still the same value, that’s called fungibility. So non-fungible token, is a token, where each token is unique. So you can make that token point to a game asset, a piece of art, that token can be, when you go to a virtual land, like decentraland, in your digital wallet, where you can knock on the door and the door will only open if you have that token, so it can be a ticket. And NFT really is a token, where as game developers, as platform creators, artist and project founders can bring value to. If you bring your NFTs in there. They can be pets, they can be swords. And now we kind of seen art, and I know that everyone is thinking NFTs are art, NFTs are art, but it’s actually a token. And arts blowing up, because suddenly when you attach a digital image, or a piece of artwork that a digital artist has done. And you attach it to the NFT, then suddenly, that digital art piece or the ownership of it, becomes tradeable. So the artist says, hey, I am only releasing one edition, one token that represents this art piece and suddenly, if this artist becomes famous, you have a one on one single edition piece. Which is pretty big in the real world, and now in the digital world. I mean there is an assumption that it was going to work, but obviously it’s working very well. 200-300 million dollars have been transacted in this art alone. So non-fungible tokens can take many forms and I think we are still at the cusp of like one percent of what we discovered so far.
JH: The interesting thing, now that you remind me. In 2017 I did an interview, it was relatively late in the year, like right when the ICOs bubbled and Forbes asked me, what do I think is the most important invention for 2017. And everyone was expecting that I was gonna say ICOs. And I said cryptoKitties, because it’s collectable. And to be honest, I mean this from the bottom of my heart. And I still, right now, believe NFTs are super revolutionary. I did a meet-up tour, about two years ago, 2019, and I discussed how NFTs are gonna change the world. And now here I am and I see this, right. And I am gonna link up that Twitter thread that you have, it’s fantastic, it’s outstanding. I used it for my research. I sit here and I am like, that is something, but how do I value this stuff , so that’s what I would love to dig into. What makes these things valuable, because an artist can just pump out billions of those pictures, right? That’s where I am struggling to be honest.
M: So obviously different NFTs have different values, so if we just isolate the art market and we just talk about that. Because digital land and all that sort of stuff, there is different waste of value that. Now the art market is very interesting, you know, for the first year and a half, from 2018 to 2020, I ignored it. I was like, this is crazy, why are people selling billions of images? Don’t they know, that there is gonna be like a thousands of artist rushing you into leading that place. Isn’t that how it’s going to work.
JH: Even AI generating art.
M: Exactly, so why is this even investable? That was my questions. But you know, since 2018, every month or two month, there was a record broken. And I was like, this is crazy. And mid july last year, there was like a 100.000 dollar drop, when an artist came and he sold pieces and the whole sum was a 100.000 dollars. And I remember, him selling a piece for 55.000 dollars. And I was like, that’s crazy. Okay, there is something going on here. I have to look at this stuff. So, you know, what I’ve discovered so far, and you kind of get this if you are a traditional art collector, is that you’re really investing in the artist. So if you have an art piece or an NFT, in this case it’s an NFT or a digital art piece, from an artist who goes on to do big things. This artist goes on to do the first auctioning Christies, which is what Beeple is doing. That’s why his pieces becoming so valuable. He’s going to do that and he’s going to be interviews in CNBC, who knows, he’ll be doing a collaboration with the prime minister or something. As he progresses in his carrier, what makes the avenues to invest in artist career, is through the NFTs. So NFTs have become like a collectable kind of seed investive tool where you can, as the artist continues to grow, as more collectors want the artists work. Yes, the artist can mint thousands of NFTs if they want to. But that’s why I find it investable. Now collecting is a different thing. If you like the artist, you can buy, but if you want to invest, you have to kind of balance that and know that the artist knows how to promote themselves, market themselves, they know how to progress their career. They have plans to stay here for a long time. They are not releasing too many mints on the same time. Like, oh hey here are 10.000 of my new art, every month or every day. You know, Beeple, he drops a hundred pieces of art, then he disappears and does really cool stuff. And the he comes and he drops a little bit of art and then he runs off and does kind of really big things. It’s kind of like how projects or cryptocurrency projects have their release of certain cryptocurrency, back into circulation. You don’t want them to release too much too quickly, but you want them to develop their project to a level where it’s so much value that as they drop, there is so much demand that it doesn’t matter.
JH: Do artists have a release scheduled? Do they talk about this? Because let’s think about famous offline-artists. For them, naturally time was the limiting resource. And now, in digital, they can just drop thousands a second. Again, I don’t even know where to start with my questions.
M: I know what you mean. How is it investable, when there is no cap on the supply. And it’s true. But art has been like that in the real world. You can invest in pieces, that are hand-painted or you can also buy prints. Artist do a set over 1.000 prints, which they just print and sign, and that also becomes a collectable. At the end of the day, it’s up to the artist. You as the collector and the artist are now team members. You are team members. Other collectors from the artist, you are all a team now, and you want to help promote the artist. You want to get the artist in your network, you want to help them get a deal with like some gallery or something like that. And that artist knows, some good artists and I remember, when Beeple did his first sale, of a 100 NFTs. It was crazy, right. So when Beeple in December last year, he did his drop and it sold 3.5 million dollars worth, within a 24 hours period. And it blew the record out of the water. I think before that, the max that was ever sold was 200.000 dollars, and that’s where all this attention came from. I remember him, after that sale, his next tweet was, that he treats his collectors like investors. That’s the relationship, he feels. He has to bring value to what we have bought. So when those artist are of that mentality, you know that they understand supply and demand. They know not do overly dilute. And the support from the collectors, they have to continue to bringing value to us, so Beeple goes on and does big things and we get rewarded and he gets rewarded. And that’s kind of the way it works.
JH: Would you say that he is the number one NFT artist right now?
M: He wasn’t the earliest, but because of his impact in taking it mainstream, I think his art is probably the most expensive and biggest. But you know Beeple has 13 years of doing art ever day. So Beeple has done 3D art every single day on his instagram for 13 years. Straight. Every day. And people have followed that and he is the one who set the trend of the everyday-movement and a lot of artist look up to him. So he didn’t come from nowhere, he came from doing all of this. And everyone knowing who he was. And the drop being successful because of that.
JH: Who made that Donald Trump art? Is that from him as well?
M: Yeah, so that one was really cool. Because that NFT, before the election, was actually Joe Biden and Donald Trump fighting each other. And so the NFT was going to change to either Donald Trump stumping through fire or Donald Trump getting beaten up. If he won or if he lost. So because he lost … .
JH: That’s why he is lying there.
M: Yes. So it’s kinda like, there is history and there is a story to these NFTs. And after one or two, three years, as collectors and investors we are predicting that this is the start of a new digital era.
JH: Okay, you are changing my mind here a bit. I was way more sceptical before this call and now you are actually changing my mind a bit. It’s actually really more as an investor, specifically in art NFTs, that you actually really have to see yourself like having this business relationship with the artist. And you need to be able to trust this artist that he or she doesn’t go and suddenly inflate all the paintings.
M: Exactly. And I think good artists, they understand that as well. So they know not to mint, hundreds and dilute their collectors. Why would they do that? There is no benefit for them. And they devalue their art by doing so. They keep value to their art by keeping it scarce and limited. And making sure that demand is there before dropping too much.
JH: So where can I buy peoples art?
M: There are so many platforms. Because it is an NFT technically you can buy it from multiple platforms. Makersplace, niftygateway, there is a lot of really good data, you can go to cryptoartpulse.com, which shows you a feed of every single sale that’s made. From which artist, which collector, how much prize, the profit that was made. It’s a feed, continuously every day you check it and every day, every morning, every one hour, I check it to see which artists are selling, which artists are appreciating in value. And there is a lot of collectability but there is a lot of data, that drives my decisions as well. So it’s not just me saying, that picture looks good.
JH: Who else do you see? So what are the artists that are moving up right now?
M: You got a notepad there?
JH: Yeah. I’ll have someone listening to the video afterwards, making all the notes. That’s why I don’t have to make them.
M: I hesitate to say that, because I am selective of who I like. But if you go to cryptoartpulse.com you’ll see there is hundreds of artists that are selling pieces for thousands and 10.000. Some of them are pixel artists, some of them are 3D artists, some of them are flat-image artists. The ones, I collect, is Beeple. Because, this is my theory, and my assumption, and what drives my decision, because I think that this is the first time in history of the universe, that digital art has become transferable. Like the ownernship of digital art has become transferable. So this is a new era of this phase, then a few hundred years from now, the ones that startet this whole things. When the history books are written, and the documentaries are made, there are gonna be a few selected artists, that where important in this era, in this renaissance. So for me it’s like, okay, I want to get a piece of this antic-historical pieces, which in 10 to 15 years, they will be desirable, because they’ll be so significant of this time.
JH: But at the end, all you own, is a hash, associated to your private key.
M: So is it with bitcoin.
JH: True, but the reason I am saying this, I mean you’re right. I don’t collect art. I have many other wealthy friends, who love collecting art. Whenever I am in their houses, I am like, why are you paying a million dollars for this painting? You can just get a copy. And they’ll be like, yeah, but Julian, it’s the energy, it’s the esoteric, it’s the quantum states that still resonates in the room, and the energy that you feel, that a print cannot resemble. Whatever, if you believe in this, but I get it. I understand where they are coming from. The copy is not the same as the original. I am struggling on the NFT side there. On bitcoin, I get it, there are only 21 million, and on the NFT side you’re saying there is only a thousand Beeples. In theory, he could make them fungible, he just makes them non-fungible and you own one of those, that’s kind of the pitch, right?
M: Kind of. I came in with the same mindset of yours. Purely investor, supply, demand. Because we have a cryptocurrency background, we like supply caps. We want to know the circling supply.
JH: Or predictability.
M: You want to go in something, that you know there is an end to end, demand will rise and it will go up. I understand that. But collecting brings out a different emotion. This is something I only learned when I bought it. Some of the pieces that I own, it sounds crazy, but I wouldn’t sell them for a million dollar because they mean so much to me. And because I feel that, I am like, others most feel the same. They must want these art pieces so badly, that they will pay big money for it. And you know this better than anyone. People in crypto have become so filthy rich, there are people with half a billion dollars, that’s just on their laptops. And these guys have never been able to spend their crypto on anything, apart from other crypto currencies. And now there are digital assets, and NFTs as a whole, and if we are just talking art, there is art, that you can learn about, investing, park some of your wealth in, exit to in a peak of a bull-run. That’s why it’s kind of exhilarating, because people are coming with like 30-50 million dollars, and they be like, let me just draw a million or 2 million in this stuff. And that’s why you’ve seen this boom. You know, if this was born, on a non-crypto-native space, I don’t think it would have seen this kind of exhilaration. But because it is, it’s doing that.
JH: Okay, I want to throw in a question right away. I get a bit of the feeling, and maybe others as well, that this might be ICO-ish 2017-ish, maybe not end of 2017, kind of bubble scenario, but like the beginning a bit. Especially a lot of emotions involved, like not much reasons, many emotions, a lot of hope. How do you see that?
M: I think, I would agree with you, if this was a new industry. But it’s three years old and art has been breaking records as NFTs for two years straight. It’s just that mainstream didn’t know about it. I can’t say that I am an art collecting origin, I am not. I’ve been following this space for six month. But prior to that, I’ve been watching that and I’ve known that since mid 2018, if you look at the graph you can see steady growth all over two years, in art. And it’s breaking records, the new people say, isn’t this a bubble. This is crazy. Why would people spend this much money. Now it seems like a lot, if you compare it to US dollars, because spending power of Etherum, people with Etherum in crypto has 5x. People have 5x their wealth in terms of US dollar over the last six month. So if they put down 200-300 Etherum, which they used to do before anyway, it’s not 120.000 dollars, it’s like 600-700 thousand dollars. And that’s why all this news stations are coming running, and be like, all these millions of dollars are being spent. But for us, we bought Etherum at maybe 50 dollars.
JH: Yeah or 8 dollars. How do I stay up to date. Especially with the art game. Where would you guide me? What are the links I should post in there?
M: I think there are some platforms that are quite popular. Niftygateway, is where a lot of popular artist come and they drop art. There is super-rare, where artists can go and mint only single edition pieces there.
JH: That’s Elliot trades on Twitter, right?
M: No, I think he does something else. That is super-farm.
JH: Ah, super-farm.
M: Yeah, but super-rare is an art minting platform. Then there is Makersplace, and all these platforms where you can buy. But what’s most important is obviously the data. So you can go to the website cryptoartpulse.com and then you can search the artists name. So if you go to niftygateway or super-rare, and you find an artist, you can search the artists name in cryptoartpulse.com and you can see a feed of all the sales. And you can scroll down to the button and you can be like, in 2019 this person sold for 1.000 dollars. Now they are selling for 50-60 thousand dollars. You can see x amount of sales happening every month. So there is consistent volume coming in. And you can kind of do your research in that sense. But I think the most important thing is to be part of the community. Because as you start collecting and you announce, you’ll notice this, on your Twitter, if you announce that you own a Beeple piece. You’ll getting a thousand artists starting following you. You’ll get collectors starting messaging you, dude, you own a Beeple, right? The internet culture, the idea of flaunting, whether you want to flaunt or not, just say that you have it, is like you’re part of that group. An art collector. So it’s just like, I started as an investor, and now I am just like, wow there is a community here. We collect and everyone picks up, they’re like, oh Matty is buying this, Matty is buying that. And then they’re pitching me their artwork. And it’s like this crazy new world for me, but it’s fun. Internet culture is becoming a very strong community. And the reason why bitcoin and crypto have value is, because of internet culture. People understand, internet has value.
JH: Other than your Twitter or your YouTube, do you have like a telegram group or discord where you guys discuss this stuff? Or is it mostly your Twitter?
M: It’s mostly my Twitter. On Twitter I do threads, I do breakdown analysis points. On YouTube I cover my buys and I basically keep people posted on what I am doing and my mindset. So I think that’s a good way to keep in touch.
JH: Okay, what’s the secondary market like, for example for Beeple?
M: So for Beeple, the secondary market is probably the hottest, out of everyone. The thing with Beeple is, the first drop that he did, he sold two single edition pieces and one set of a hundred. The set of a hundred he sold for a dollar each. So you can imagine, within a split second the were all gone. The two single editions went for 66.000 dollars each. That single edition was the one, that sold for 6.6 million dollars, about two weeks ago. All those one dollar pieces, minimum right now, is about 300.000 dollars.
JH: Holy shit. But they are fungible among each other? Or are the 100 all non-fungible?
M: No, they’re non-fungible, because in the art world, the mint numbers matter. If you have mint number one, that’s a lot more valuable than mint number seven or ten.
JH: Really?
M: Yeah, people pay a lot of money for mint number one, mint number 100. And you know, if you got to NBA top shot, the players jersey number, people pay a lot of money for that. Because it’s a collective thing. Remember that it’s a collective thing. The desire to own something unique is so strong.
JH: That’s so far apart from me. I really need to understand that world better.
M: You can only understand it, and trust me Julian, I understand you. Because you’re like me, you’re analytical, you’re crypto, you come from this background.
JH: Yeah, very left brain-sided.
M: Me too, very left brain-sided. Trust me. But the moment you buy something and then you sell something and then you see something you like. I remember the first art piece I bought. I was like, you know what Matty, you gotta like push this left brain aside. Let’s just try. What’s some harm in just putting 10.000 dollar in and see what happens. So I remember showing my wife a piece that I really liked and I was like, you know babe, the artist is from Melbourne, looks really cool, look at this 3D stuff. And she was like, oh yeah, that’s nice. And I slept and I didn’t buy it, and I woke up and she asked me, did you buy that piece? It was really cool, I think you should buy it. And I was like, oh that is crazy coming from you, you know. My wife telling me to spend 5.000 dollars on this digital piece. And she was like, can you buy it? That’s a really good piece. And I was like, wow, that’s crazy. People value this. My wife is not into crypto at all. Anyway, I bought that and the artist, he lives in Melbourne, which is near to where I live, and he goes to the meet-ups and it’s cool. He does storybooks for kids and all this sort of stuff. And art collecting, it’s crazy. I tell my friends, they are all buying stuff. I used to play Dota. So Dota 2 is a warcraft game or used to be, there is e-sports teams. So in e-sports a really big one, called OG, they came in and did a drop. They dropped what’s called their rings.
JH: Just to make sure that I also understand it. A drop just means it’s basically the initial offering. That’s creating the NFT.
M: A drop, what they do is, they say, and there are different things, but for example they say for five minutes you can buy as many of these art pieces as you want. That’s their drop. People go in there and buy like 800 or something and after five minutes no one can buy anything. And that becomes the supply of that specific art piece set. And then there is an auction and all that sort of stuff, but it’s a 24 hour period where the artist comes and he just drops amount of art and then he leaves. And Investors buy what they want and then he moves on. So OG came and they sold these packs or something that you could have bought for like 75-80 dollars each, and they randomly generated different coloured rings. So there was like 50 supply of gold rings, and 200 supply of green rings, etc. So after that happened, they became scarce and they’ve gone from 75 dollars to like 500 dollars. And when I showed my friends, they were like, oh Matty, I want that OG ring. I watched Dota, I play the game, I watch OG e-sports. So they come and buy those, because they can connect with it. So there is different things that as collectors we want. Did you watch Pokémon back in the day?
JH: No.
M: I am telling you, my generation was crazy about Pokémon. If Pokémon ever did a drop, everyone would throw investing out of the window and just put a lot of money in there.
JH: That’s what a lot of people are saying, right? That’s when it gets totally insane.
M: Pokémon is the perfect example of just like an obsessive collector demographic. Where it’s just so much nostalgia, where’s just so much culture around it. That it drives people insane, as the amount of money they pump into it, right. So that’s like a very extreme collector demographic. So even if you get half of that into the art demographic, I think it’s got longivity. Because if it becomes something that people want to collect, and we are at the cusp of a bullrun and people are gonna ten x their wealth again, then you can imagine like, maybe they’ll put it into art.
JH: What’s the secondary market where I buy a Beeple?
M: So you can go to niftygateway.com. Beeple has dropped art in two places. Niftygateway and Makersplace. Makersplace was the recent one, Niftygateway is where he started. So you can go to Niftygateway, you click on marketplace tab, and you’ll see Beeple, you click on Beeple and you can list it from the cheapest. I think the cheapest one currently is 160.000 dollar, minimum. What Beeple did was very significant. When he dropped art, he dropped also a physical piece. So if you bought the NFT, you would have got a digital piece but he also sent each person, you had the ability to claim a physical box set, with a digital screen and a gold coin and all this cool stuff that came with it. So he bridged the gap of our minds saying, hey you know what, we get the physical as well. And that’s why his drop did so crazy. It onboarded all this people that were like, I don’t want this, because it is just an NFT. And now you can see people dropping physicals and NFTs.
JH: Has anyone tokenised an NFT already? I would have just assumed, like with 160.000. Tokenise it into a 100.000 new Tokens, each Token worth 1.60 dollars.
M: The second time Beeple dropped art, he dropped 21 single edition pieces. So each one was unique. There is an investor, maybe it’s an angel investor, Metapurse or Metakoven.He bought all 20 of them out of the 21 for about 100.000 dollars each. So he spent 2.3 million, then what he did was, he locked it up and released a Token called B20. So B20 is actually an ERC-20 Token and I think when he sold, it was 50 cents, now it’s about 10 dollars. Because as Beeple continues his career, everyone is just rushing to buy B20. So there all these cool experiments. You can get your NFT and lock it in as collateral in like nftfy. Because it’s an NFT Token you can plug it into all these DeFi Protocols, and build this into games, and maybe if you own a Beeple art piece in the game, you got like a Beeple Sword. You know, the NFT technology part hasn’t been that investigated in depth yet.
JH: Are there ETFs, DAOs, like ways how you can diversify, like for the average, dumb NFT collector like myself?
M: Kind of, there is WhaleShark, he is a very famous investor, in our community and what he did was, he spent 3-5 million of his own money, collecting art, collecting NFT cards and all the really rare stuff. And he issued the Whale-Token. If you buy the Whale-Token, technically you’re getting exposure to all of these assets. You know, Sandboxland. All this really cool stuff. And so, Whale-Token, I think, has gone from 1 Dollar to recently I think it’s like 30 Dollar. It’s crazy. So that’s a really good way to get exposure to everything if you want to. The cool thing is, that the NFT technology is there for anyone to do anything with. niftex.com is a place, where I can take my NFT and fractionalise it. I can do like a mini pre-sale and say, hey I want to keep 40% but 60% I want to turn into ERC-20 Tokens. The NFT gets locked in a wallet, that you need a multisig to get out. And it gets issued Tokens that people can buy on an exchange. So Niftex is an exchange like that, where you can fractionalise NFTs. Where all this infrastructure is being build to give them sustainable value.
JH: Cool, yeah, I’ll just ask Fabrizio or Silvia, to put the links down below. I want to work through them myself, because I need to get in that. Maybe I’ll buy a Beeple piece just to have one. Just to be save.
M: Right now, there is a Christies Auction going on for Beeple. This is the first time, a pure NFT has been sold at Christies. And Christies is an auction house that sold like Banksys and things before, right. So the current bid is 3.5 million dollars on this NFT with seven days left. If this bid goes for 15, 20, maybe 30 million dollars, who knows, the hypothesis is that there is going to be so much traditional art respect to the NFT world that they’ll be like, okay, let’s diversify into NFTs. And that’s one of the reasons why everyones trying to grab a Beeple piece and everyone is grabbing these other OG artists, because they are very prominent in this time. But if traditional collectors suddenly start collecting digital artists who are they gonna come for?
JH: It’s like myself, I’ve got no clue. So I am like, which one do I pick, I pick the biggest one. Beeple, of course. That’s where I would start. What was the story with the Banksy thing? I posted on Twitter, I don’t understand this one bit, where these people burn this Banksy painting and then issue an NFT for it? Like, to me that was like, what the hell?
M: I only remember looking at it very briefly and I just kept scrolling, because I don’t think it was Banksy himself obviously.
JH: No, some investors who bought it and then burned it, I think.
M: I think it was actually from super-farm. I don’t know, I don’t want to misquote Elliot. But I think what they were trying to show, display, is that the physical piece doesn’t exist anymore. And we are gonna issue an NFT and the NFT represents what was burned. So just to give you the idea, that you’re not buying a duplicate, now the original has now become the NFT. So I think that was what they were trying to do. The art world is all about the experiments. It’s crazy, the experiments and the publicity around these experiments gives value to the art, and that’s why all these people are doing all these fun cool stuff. I actually did this tweet once, that said, this tweet could be an NFT. And people started to offer money, to make that tweet into an NFT. And I was like, okay, in 24 hours, I am gonna stop the bidding and wherever it gets it gets. So the bidding went up to 400 dollars and someone got that tweet and that tweet is now an NFT. And I was like, look I don’t know if this tweet is gonna hold value, so I am just gonna make a really crappy art piece for you. My first ever art piece, I am not a drawer. I don’t draw but you have my NFT now. So it’s all about these little fun experiments, that is kind of fun to be part of.
JH: Wow, okay. What about all the other areas? Is art today the main topic you focus on? I come from professional sports, so for me, collecting cards is something, sport cards, is at least something I could somehow relate to. But even there I am struggling. But what about all the other things? Collectables, like the cards, Skins for computer games, the utility things. Give me a bit of an overview there.
M: I think the reason why the art world is really blowing up now is because it’s a very easy platform to create. All you have to do is create the base structure of the platform, start uploading images and you have a platform and the industry can go on its way. Games take two to three years to develop, they take fine-tuning, they take gameplay, people have to figure out how to optimise for gameplay and all that stuff, stabilise the system. And so games haven’t really start to take of yet, but I think that next year and maybe at the late this year it’s gonna be a big rush of really good quality triple A games, that are integrating NFT technology, where you can buy the early skins the early swords. And you can trade this on a marketplace. There is this really cool game called Axie Infinity, which is like a Pokémon/Tamagochi style game, and the early axis, that’s what they call them, that you could have bought three years ago. You had a chance of buying one and it had the chance of becoming a mystic Axie, some of its parts are mystic parts. And back then you could have bought them at 0.6 Etherum but over the three years they have gone up to 90 Etherum, minimum, for a single one. And an Axie with three parts mystic sold for like 150.000 dollars last year. Games are a different type of investing. For me, as the daily active user increases, thousands and hundreds of thousands players of the game, why would their demand not increase for the very early items and the rare items. So that’s a different way of investing. I am actually from a virtual land, that’s how I got in.
JH: Decentraland.
M: Yeah, Decentraland. I got in January 2018 and I joined the discord.
JH: What’s the difference on Decentraland between Land and Mana? I forgot what’s the difference.
M: Mana is the cryptocurrency. ERC20Token tradable on exchanges. Land is an NFT Token which if you own that land, then you have the build rights for that particular coordinates. So that land can be very central, that land can be next to Atari(37:02),that land can be all over the place. And based on where it is, it has different value. Because people want to be next to Atari. People want to be close to the center.
JH: Who is Atari?
M: Atari is one of the biggest game console.
JH: Ah, I thought it’s like a person or a crypto thing.
M: So Atari have deployed in decentraland. They’ve got this really cool competition where game developers can make a game in decentraland to be played in the Atari building which will run under their license for three years.
JH: So people want to have land close to there. And for what reason?
M: Well, they can build stuff. So they can build conference centres and charge people 100 Mana each to enter, they can build like games.
JH: Yeah, but who enters it?
M: It’s kind of like second life. There is a really popular project called decentral games, where build casinos. So decentraland is an interesting one, because the concept of it, is to decentralise the platform. So it’s not just one server that hosts all of decentraland. That are multiple servers that hosts decentraland. It can’t be shut off. And then there is a DAO (38:15), people vote on the direction that the world takes, if they want to add more land or if they want to add more mana, and that sort of stuff. So it’s kind of decentralised in that aspect and that’s why there is a casino, that’s there and they’ve released a DG Token. And you can go and mine DG Token by playing the games. I think DG Token is like 40-50 million dollar Market cap. It’s an example how people are using their land. But you can build conference centres, people are actually building galleries, in fact galleries have become on of the biggest use-cases for virtual land. Not just decentraland but also in cryptovoxels. There’s people with like 5-10 million dollar art portfolio. So why wouldn’t they build a gallery, a virtual one, where they can bring in everyone. They can start a Twitter account, just like real galleries.
JH: Of course, totally. Isn’t there an Austrian project, that’s also involved in this?
M: Maybe the somnium space? The somnium space, cryptovoxels, the sandbox and decentraland are probably the biggest ones. I know Axie Infinity also are releasing virtual land game play, as well. I would say that land is not a collectable, obviously, it’s more a utility item. You own the land, because it’s in a good spot. And so, for example, there is a land that Metakovenbought and I had that land and I sold it to Metakoven, that’s the guy who bought the Beeple pieces. And Metakoven ended up building a huge museum for Beeple and he had this huge meet-up when he launched B20, he actually had a massive meet-up across the whole meta verse. So cryptovoxels, somnium space, decentraland and the day he dropped the B20, everyone was in these virtual places and he was streaming in what the plans are for B20, and he was doing Q&As and stuff like that. So that land where his museum is, that became quite valuable, so the land right next to it, when an investor came to me, and he was like, I want to buy really nice land, where do you think I should buy, I want to build a nice gallery. I was like, hey why don’t you build next to Metakoven. So he got that land and he really wanted that one. It’s like the real world, when someones builds their base, people want it next to you. It’s a new industry, it’s all forming in front of our eyes. And we are all kind of experimenting and learning.
JH: I am in touch actually with Gary Vaynerchuck and Mark Cuban, what is their angel in all of this from what you can see?
M: Gary is very bullish on the collectable industry. As a whole and in the NFT industry as well. And I spoke to Gary as well and he gets that NFTs are obviously much bigger than collectables.
JH: Yeah, he is always saying how he is collecting all these baseball cards. He talks about that all the time. And his brother AJ is also big in Vayner Sports.
M: And also Mark Cuban he definitely understands that NFTs are more a utility thing like, when he first dropped his things on Rarible, he was like, hey you can buy this on Rarible and you’ll get a 30 second clip from me on my Twitter. And they were going for like 10-20 thousand dollar each. Just for this NFT, that if you bought it, it unlocked an E-Mail address. And with that E-Mail address, you could email him and pitch what you wanted him to say. And it was cool, because everyone ran in and got some stuff, so I think they definitely understand it and they’re very bullish. I think Gary is like almost all-in. He’s talking about all over the place. All his podcast these days are all NFT related. And I think he really sees it. There’s a quote that he says, he said, NFTs are the manifestation of my life. Or something along those lines. Like the whole collectability now in a digital world is like this massive thing.
JH: They surprised me both, because both were never convinced of bitcoin. And suddenly with this non-fungible stuff, they totally get it. It’s so interesting to see, how they changed their minds.
M: I think, especially Gary, he is a community person. He understands the rush and passion of a community. So if a community gives something value, he can see that. He identifies that. And if he sees that, he knows that value given by the internet community is very strong. And also Jamad said that he’s acquiring a big collection of art NFTs.
JH: What about Logan Paul, didn’t he get also into NFT stuff? What does he do there?
M: Logan Paul released 3.000 NFTs or something like that on the bondly Platform. Bondly finance are a platform that are building an NFT Launchpad. They are doing lots of things. But one of their products is an NFT Launchpad for these influencers. So they had Logan Paul, they had three or four lined up of similar caliber and they gonna release NFTs through that platform. So that’s why I kind of invested in Bondly, because I think it’s gonna be pretty big.
JH: A bondly is a ERC20?
M: It’s more of a DeFi kind of Platform. But it’s really cool, because the NFTs that they’re selling. If you buy them and you stake that NFT on their decentralised exchange you’ll get zero fees. So they’re building utility for the NFTs. So if you own them, you can keep packing utility to it and keep bringing value. So that’s a different kind of thing.
JH: Maybe taking it a step up. If I don’t have faith into the actual NFT and I live more by the idea, lets not try to find a gold, lets try to find the shovels and the jeans. So basically taking it a level up. My first thinking would be, I would be investing more into like exchange platforms into the trading platforms. Is my thinking wrong here? Maybe I don’t have the direct exposure, right, maybe I am not gonna have that much upside. But I would probably also have lower risk. Walk me through there a bit.
M: Most of my portfolio, 78 percent of it is in cryptocurrencies or equity into companies, that like you said, are on a structural level. Marketplaces that are gonna be big, NFT marketplaces. Like Rarible, decentraland, Mana Token, because as a virtual land it might be a big places of virtual places, where people may hang out and build conference centres and whatever. Sandbox also has a Sand Token. You got Whale Tokens. So if you want exposure, there are about five to ten that cover that spectrum. You can also invest in Matic (45:07), they have like 50 tabs in the NFT space build on Matic. Flow Blockchain.
JH: Enjin?
M: Enjin as well. WAX is like a collectible launch platform. There is like 10-15, that are mature and have been around for two to three years. I think NFTX is doing like Index funds for NFTs. There is not one that covers everything but there is 10 to 15. Just like you want to invest in DeFi Coins. I have a set of 10 to 15 that I’ve spent my wealth across and I am doing pretty well. Like yesterday they were all mooning.
JH: That’s the space that I have invested in, and I saw it. It’s like insane, like massive gains. In the last couple of days especially. Obviously not as much as if you invest directly into the NFT but then also I don’t have to have as much conviction on the individual piece or something.
M: Cryptopcurrencies are an easier mechanism to invest. It has better visibility, it’s all on exchanges. People have ten years of experience in investing cryptocurrencies. So it has better liquidity. So I think it’s just as profitable to invest in cryptocurrencies. NFTs are more for like experimentation of what the platform and this industry can do. So if you sport opportunity early, you can capitalise on that. If you put everything together. Which is what some of these people are doing.
JH: And then the next layer would be, if people don’t only want to do that. They would invest into what? Etherum? Which blockchains are most of those projects on? Because you could say, okay, I am just going to invest into that blockchain. My upside is the smallest in comparison to NFT stake off but my downside is also the lowest. What are the main blockchains where all this stuff is on?
M: Etherum is definitely the biggest by far. Just because it came with a lot of investors that where quite wealthy, that wanted to see success in Etherum. So they wanted to promote the project, so they’re happy to spend money on projects that are building on Etherum. So Etherum is by far the biggest. Then there is flow Blockchain that came out of nowhere and now did really well with NBA top shot. It comes from the same family ofCryptoKitties, dabble labs and it’s got a leverage NBA top shot to bring a lot of new produce on flow. I think flow is gonna be a really big one. And then there is a lot of scaling solutions, like Matic, immutable objects coming near protocol, it’s like five or six really good ones that NFT projects are using to kind of scale themselves. Because obviously transacting on Etherum doesn’t make sense, you’re paying 30-50 dollars to trade a two dollar card. It doesn’t make sense, so they need to implement some sort of scaling solution. So I think there are those, if you want to drive it really back to a safer play.
JH: Matty, what I would love to do, obviously we are gonna drop that on the german channel. I would love to compile a list of questions, that for sure are gonna come up. And I don’t know if you’re open to that, but we would do a round two, where we specifically address the questions that people have. I think that would be super helpful. Other than the Twitter, YouTube channel, anything else where, I am going to link it up below. It’s going to be the first two links, as hopp-off points for you.
M: I would say Twitter. Twitter I am crazy about. Because the whole community lives on Twitter. We are sharing stuff, it’s all going crazy on Twitter. Youtube if you want more in depth content. I do podcasts, I’ve done four so far. And I am gonna have a lot of guests, from founders to artists on YouTube. So I could also say my blog, but I am more active on Twitter and YouTube. So DCLBlogger both on YouTube and Twitter.
JH: It’s @DCLBlogger on Twitter right?
M: Yes.
JH: You’re like, I am not sure.
M: I am thinking about changing my name to NFTBlogger. Because DCLBlogger is when I started with decentral, and I was like, it could be decentraland or decentralised. You know, based on how decentraland goes. But now, the NFT space is so big.
JH: If the handle is available, I would go with NFTBlogger. Just as SEO advice, or Twitter search engine. Okay, we will link your handle anyways. Matty, that was super insightful. I am telling you, I went into this call and I was like 99 percent sure, Matty is not gonna change my mind. Because to me that’s just trash. It’s exciting but that’s trash. But now actually, I sit here and I am like, okay, I get it. I am just not understanding the space well enough. If I would and I would spend more time in there, I would definitely see value in there. I might buy a Beeple piece.
M: Nice, I’ve done my job. Anytime when you want to connect up again, you want me to walk you through the platform. I can screen share and show you the data and why my buy decision make sense to me. And then you can decide of there where you wanna go.
JH: That’s cool. I think the video will be out next week, we need to transcribe, do subtitles. Then we are gonna get the questions and then I would love to kind of walk this through. I think a screen share would be awesome.
M: Awesome let’s do that.
JH: Matty, totally appreciate that. Thank you so much. You’re in Melbourne right?
M: I am in Melbourne.
JH: Awesome city, good for kitesurfing.
M: It’s really nice, the only problem is that the time is really bad. With you it wasn’t too bad. But with most people in the US, it’s bad.
JH: For me it’s just three hours. So that’s okay. Okay, so I totally appreciate that. All the best in the meantime, stay safe, stay healthy. We’ll be in touch.
Links & Resources
DCL Blogger: https://dclblogger.com/
Matty Twitter: https://twitter.com/dclblogger
Decentraland: https://decentraland.org/
Cryptokitties: https://www.cryptokitties.co/
Beeple: https://twitter.com/beeple
Makersplace: https://makersplace.com/
Nifty Gateway: https://niftygateway.com/
Crypto Art Pulse: https://cryptoartpulse.com/
SuperRare: https://superrare.co/
Christie’s Beeple: https://www.christies.com/features/Mo…
NBA Top Shot: https://www.nbatopshot.com/
WhaleShark: https://twitter.com/whaleshark_pro
Niftex: https://landing.niftex.com/index.html
Axie Infinity: https://axieinfinity.com/
Decentral Games: https://decentral.games/
Cryptovoxels: https://www.cryptovoxels.com/
Somnium Space: https://somniumspace.com/
The Sandbox: https://www.sandbox.game/en/
Rarible: https://rarible.com/
Bondly Finance: https://bondly.finance/
Polygon: https://coinmarketcap.com/de/currenci…
Matic: https://matic.network/