WEBVTT - A Requiem for NFTs 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:11.520 Also media, Welcome back to it could happen here, a 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:16.400 podcast about things falling apart, And speaking of falling apart, 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:19.960 when we're when we're talking about the crumbles, the slow 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:25.320 and sometimes rapid erosion of institutions in this country, nothing 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:27.680 is quite as relevant as the tech industry. 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:31.800 I'm Robert Evans. Obviously on the line with me is 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:35.239 Garrison Davis. And we also have someone new with us 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:38.879 today who's going to be talking talking tech, and particularly 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:42.559 talking about the n f T crash and some of 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:44.960 what that has to tell us about both how the 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:48.360 tech industry functions now and about how kind of our 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:52.680 economies of hype contribute to a state of what what 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:55.320 what what? Ed Zitron, who is our guest here, tends 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:58.000 to call the rot economy. Ed, welcome to the show. 0:00:58.560 --> 0:00:59.640 Hi, thank you for having me. 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:02.960 Yeah, I'll just hand it over to you at this point. 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:06.200 So you may remember two years ago where kind of 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:11.560 ghoulish half wit libertarians emphatically told you that NFT's non 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:15.440 functibal tokens would change everything that people wanted to own 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:19.040 a unique digital object, and indeed that the said uniqueness 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:22.160 of said objects, say a picture of an ape or 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:26.800 an animated gift of a sports moment would be worth millions. 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:30.440 The hypeia was insane. Justin Bieber paid one point three 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:33.560 million dollars for a board ape, which is one of 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:38.600 ten thousand procedurally generated pictures of a monkey, and celebrities 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.520 like Milakounis and Lindsay Lohan would fund and create their 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:45.520 own NFT projects. In fact, multiple celebrities raised millions of 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:51.680 dollars for these kind of noxious little creations. Their logic 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:54.920 entirely hinged upon the idea that something being a one 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:57.920 of a kind somehow made it valuable, and that a 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:00.840 digital token connected to a picture of video is the 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:03.480 same as say a rare baseball card or a comic book, 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:06.800 or the sense that owning part of a digital entity 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:09.679 like a game was somehow valuable. I personally do not 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:12.720 think owning a sword from World of Warcraft a unique 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:16.080 one means anything. I do not think that's meaningful in 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:19.240 any way. But listen, got a bit of advice for 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:22.280 anyone listening. When any one tells you to ignore your 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:24.280 eyes in your ears, it's the Duller voice in your 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:29.320 head that says, huh, that sounds really goddamn stupid or to, 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:31.720 of course, put a bunch of money into an unproven asset. 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:34.000 You should always try and work out how they're going 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:38.880 to get paid in the end. But nevertheless, it's important 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:44.320 to know the fundamentals of this crap, this noxious industry. Now, 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:48.959 of course we're talking about cryptocurrencies. So these are tokens 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:53.239 on a decentralized blockchain. In this case, a non fungible 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:56.480 token or so it's an NFTY is a unique digital 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:59.680 identifier on a blockchain like Ethereum or Polygon, one that 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:02.919 kind of be copied, substituted, or divided like a regular token. 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:07.480 Ownership in this case, who owns the NFT is based 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:11.160 on whoever owns the wallet. That said that the NFT 0:03:11.280 --> 0:03:14.000 in question is actually stored, and meaning that if someone 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:16.200 tricks you into sending your board ape to somebody else, 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:21.360 they technically own it. These NFTs of images, say the 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:25.280 board Ape, yacht club, Pudgy Penguins, what have you, are 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:29.200 connected to images. So by which I mean you are 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:33.320 quite literally buying a jpeg, you are buying a tokenized jpeg. 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:37.560 These images are kept on something called the Interplanetary File 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:41.720 System IPFS, and you have an IPFS address that attached 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:44.000 to each token. What's important to know about this is 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:48.920 this is another decentralized project where there's no real proof 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:52.280 that your IPFS address isn't going to disappear in ten years. 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:54.800 So you could end up buying one of these tokens 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:59.200 and be left with bugger or like I said, you're 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:03.000 effectively by buying a very expensive JPEG that may or 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:06.560 may not be an image of something in ten, fifteen, 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:07.960 twenty years, or even five years. 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:10.760 So like I used to buy a whole bunch of 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:14.880 digital games for my Nintendo Wii system, right, and these 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:19.080 were not physical games, And now I cannot re download 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:21.599 any of these things even though I bought them, because 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:24.640 the digital system is just Nintendo is no longer supporting 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:27.240 it isause it's kind of like a similar mechanism here 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:31.200 in terms of there's like all this necessary internet infrastructure 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:35.600 to like host these digital assets, but we don't actually 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:38.240 control it infrastructure, right, So it's different than holding like, 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:41.599 you know, a disc or in the case of an NFT, 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:44.320 like an actual physical picture of a monkey. 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:47.800 What's really funny is the example you just gave is 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:50.320 one of the few examples of where NFTs could actually 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:50.840 be useful. 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:51.960 Huh. 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:55.120 Digital games right now are in this position where, like 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:56.880 you said, and you find this a lot with streaming 0:04:56.880 --> 0:04:59.520 products as well, where you can buy something, you buy 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:02.760 a video game, you buy a movie, and you own 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:06.200 it on Apple TV. Apple has complete power to pull 0:05:06.240 --> 0:05:09.000 that down. If indeed there was a non fungible token 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:12.040 that contained the video in question, that might be quite useful. 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:16.760 That might be really useful. In fact, unlike NFTs in general, 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:19.160 which are not useful at all. You are just buying 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:25.520 a jpeg the leads to an image and owning this jpeg. 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:29.400 This NFT might get you inside a discord, perhaps a 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:33.360 special discord of like minded people who have spent a 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:34.880 lot of money on something very silly. 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:37.160 Sounds like a party. 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:40.880 It's so good and it's it was really something. These 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:45.200 things have been around since at least twenty fourteen. I 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:47.839 think crypto Kitties was one of the original ones. You 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:52.080 could breed horrible looking cats. These horrible cats have sex 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:54.880 and create new horrible looking cats. Well you didn't get 0:05:54.880 --> 0:06:00.440 to see the sex. Don't worry, Okay, it's the only 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:01.279 reason I invested. 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:05.159 Well, I let me google crypto kitty rule thirty four. 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:05.520 I'm sure. 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:09.000 I'm sure that there is a crypto kitty hen type, but. 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:12.320 Now make sure to put Reddit in the in the 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:15.080 search RaSE there. You gotta you're gonna get better results 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:15.559 that way. 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:18.320 Will I get in trouble for sending these results in 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:21.160 the group chat? Will people get mad? 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:22.760 I feel nothing anymore? 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:26.280 Yeah, honestly, there's not as much as I thought there 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:27.960 would be. I'm kind of disappointed. 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:33.160 Well there's a vampire. Yeah. So the thing about this 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:37.320 is the gold rush, this huge multi billion dollar NFT 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:40.599 industry that kind of popped and dropped in the last 0:06:40.680 --> 0:06:43.919 couple of years, was something created by a kind of 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:47.159 perfect storm of post lockdown financial hystory. You saw it 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:50.440 with like AMC and game stop stocks, you saw it 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:54.320 with crypto in general, and it was the sense that 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.680 you were getting in early on something and it kind 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:01.239 of resembled in a funky way being babies baseball cards, 0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:04.960 but also with the kind of stench of the fine 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:09.760 art industry. But I also think that during the pandemic, 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:12.160 and I'll get to a little more of this later, 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:16.080 people really got this defined sense of how unfair everything is, 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:19.000 how you can't just go to college anymore, you can't 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:21.680 just work really hard and get a mortgage, you have 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.560 to effectively find a way to cheat, and this seemed 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.840 like a cheat they had got in on early. The 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:30.640 problem is they didn't and I'll kind of get into 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:33.320 that later. But another part of it, the part that 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:37.680 really stank to me, was that they were selling this ugly, 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:42.200 obviously rotten dream that you were owning part of a 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:46.760 future media property being at the Yeah, like you were 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:50.400 going to be part of Disney or Marvel the board apes. 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.520 When you bought a board ape, you allegedly got the 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:59.440 rights to distribute it and build a show or merchandise. 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:02.600 And in fact, Seth Green bought an ape that he 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:05.320 tried to build a TV show around Classic twenty twenty 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:07.760 two idea building a TV show around NFT. 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:10.920 Oh you guys, did you guys see the show by 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:12.000 the way. 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:13.640 We waked in the first few episodes. 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:15.800 No, no, no, that was a different NFT show. 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:17.840 Yeah, that was a different board ape show. 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:19.920 I can clarify here. There was a there was a 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:23.680 show called The Red Ape Family that was about an 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:27.920 adjacent property that Red Apes, but other NFTs. But then 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:31.760 Seth Green was also trying to make a show that 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:34.360 was like almost like a who framed Roger Rabbit where 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:37.920 it's a mix of like cartoons and like real background sets. 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:41.240 But it's just like about Seth Green, who is a 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.800 monkey as a bartender, like it looked like dog shit. 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:49.280 What's kind funny is someone scammed him out of that 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:53.120 ape so he had to pause. He had to pause 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:57.679 production on his show This is the future of entertainment, folks, 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:01.960 because he didn't have the intellect property rights anymore. And 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:04.120 then he ended up having to pay one hundred grand 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:07.080 to get it back and the show never I cannot 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:12.200 find the show anywhere. But this is the thing putting 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.920 that aside. People genuinely thought they were buying like amazing 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:18.560 Fantasy fifteen, first appearance of Spider Man stuff like that. 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.280 They thought that they were buying something that would give 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:25.360 them access but also some degree of ownership over a 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:29.520 future IP And frankly, I can understand how they were 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:33.240 scammed because you had people like Alexis o'hanian, the founder 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:37.600 of Reddit, who threw his VC firm seven seven six 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:41.400 sunk fifty four million dollars into an NFT project called Doodles, 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:45.840 claiming in January of this year, twenty twenty three that 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:49.280 Diogles this year. This year. H In fact, now, to 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.200 be clear, the funding was last year twenty twenty two. Okay, okay, 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:55.720 but he claimed this year. And to be clear, Doodles 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:58.040 is a collection of an NFTs and an associated cart 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:01.600 in that kind of looks like Adventure Time but significantly worse. Yeah, 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:05.840 that makes sense. Alexis said that Doodles wanted to build 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.360 the next generation of Disney and a whole world of 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:10.760 IP that is giving people a state and a sense 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:16.240 of ownership. Sure so, sure, buddy, yeah, exactly, Thank you, Alexis. 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:20.280 I one hunt. How does being rich feel? So to 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:23.199 be clear, what Doodles was is still it was a 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:29.040 collection of ten thousand NFTs of Doodles procedurally generated, like 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:31.520 most of these, and it's worth taking a step back here. 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:34.960 Why are so many of these projects ten thousand images? 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:40.080 It's because there's absolutely no creativity, not even a little. 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:42.240 They just is it's. 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:45.520 Like a is there like a false scarcity aspect which 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.440 is trying to like inflate value? Is that like another 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:50.480 reason for why they would have like these limited A matches, 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:53.400 because I know the original board ape ones were like 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:56.960 around around ten thousand as well at least initially. 0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:01.760 Yes, there's always like a couple thousds ten thousand, but 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:04.160 when you take a step back and really think about it, 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:07.800 that's actually a huge amount. It isn't the scarce good 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:11.800 It isn't It may be to the people who are 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:17.360 pumping and dumping them, but ten thousand isn't creativity. There's what, like, 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:21.319 it's maybe thirty different spider men, so that's not ten 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.240 thousand of them, and none of these have a name, 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:27.480 none of these have a character. I will get to 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:30.400 the two characters and Doodles, because there are just two. 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:43.800 The more that you talk about this and just kind 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:47.120 of based on my paying attention to it, I kind 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:48.480 of feel like part of what we're seeing is like 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:52.280 the intersection of two cultural myths, right. One of them 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:55.400 is like the myth about how I mean it's not 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.719 entirely myth, largely accurate about what happened with Apple when 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:01.080 it went public, right, and all of these hundreds of 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:04.320 like nerds who had just been like working class kids 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:06.880 who become worth hundreds of millions of dollars overnight, right, 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:09.559 which has become part of kind of like our our 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:13.080 cultural memory of like how tech is supposed to work 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:17.440 ever since. And then the other is like Star Wars, right, 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:22.079 and the way in which George Lucas revolutionized capitalizing on 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:25.560 every silly idea you've ever had, Like a lot of NFT. 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:27.680 A lot of the NFT hype is based on the 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:30.480 belief that like you could be, you could you could 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:32.880 buy into the next like Glurf, stream Bow or whatever 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:36.920 fucking weird George Lucas character, and it could get a movie, 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:39.839 you know, because yeah, it's all infinitely capitalizable. 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.760 Yeah, the kind of Buckshittos of the world. Yeah, yeah, 0:12:44.000 --> 0:12:46.200 I mean you're actually right as well, because I don't 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:48.640 know if you remember when episode one Star Wars Episode 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:51.840 one came out, they deliberately made the box to look 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:53.920 like the old Return and the Jedi figures, which were 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.120 now worth thousands. 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:57.160 A lot of money, a lot of money. 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:00.760 But there is that full scarcity aspect, and it is 0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:04.800 like that, except even worse because there's less value to it. 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:09.440 Because when you buy a doodle, as you will, putting 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:12.520 thousands of dollars into something called a doodle, one might 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:16.520 wonder what exactly is the value of this, because doodles 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:20.680 do not actually convey any intellectual property. Board apes kind 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:24.960 of do the legalities muddy. You can merchandise your doodle 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:28.560 for up to one hundred thousand dollars of physical goods, 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:31.520 so T shirts. You know why you would buy a 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:33.840 doodle T shirt? I'm not really sure, but you could 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:41.040 sell it. Just the theoreticals here are amazing. But Doodles, really, 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:43.720 at it's call, was sold on the idea that it 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.440 allowed you to steer the company to vote on the 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:50.439 future of Doodles, which is kind of similar to Board 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:52.800 Ape Yacht Club. You could get ape coin if you 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:55.880 had NFTs of the Apes or the Immute Apes, and 0:13:55.920 --> 0:14:00.960 you could then vote in these votes about the future 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:04.240 of the Board eight Yacht Club, but not Yuga Labs, 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:06.360 who owns the Board eight Yacht Club. So really you 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:11.040 were just controlling a vague sense of nothing. In the 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:15.079 case of Doodles, you could vote on what they may 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:17.640 do in the future. It was never really obvious. 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:21.440 Was doodles A doos is a dow okay, okay. 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:24.480 And the funny thing to remember about almost all of 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:26.840 these as well, is not in the case of Doodles, 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:28.680 but in the case of like the bord Epe Yacht 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:32.240 Club and the Ape Chain, I hate this crap, and 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:37.360 Joyson Horowitz owns fourteen percent of all ape coin of 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:42.360 their initial drop. They own multiple cryptoproducts, large chunks of 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:44.760 these total tokens, and so they can control these votes 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.080 if they need to. But what's also important to know 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:50.480 is none of this stuff involves the actual goddamn company. 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:56.360 Nobody owns a thing. These decentralized autonomous organizations doos are 0:14:56.560 --> 0:14:59.800 always framed as this kind of democratic process, carefully leaving 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:02.320 out the fact that a democratic system with transactable votes 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:06.200 is by definition of goddamn kleptocracy. But on top of that, 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:09.880 you don't own anything. You don't have anything with these companies. 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:13.920 You don't get stock, you don't get anything. You just 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:17.400 have one of ten thousand images that may in ten 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:23.720 years not actually go anywhere. It's farcical. The only thing 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:27.480 dumber than that, however, is the fact that Doodles is 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:30.240 no longer an NFT project and will no longer cater 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:34.560 the speculators. According to a statement a much by the 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:37.960 co founder Jordan Poopy Castro Poopy is oh. 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:40.640 Wow, see this is where I'm putting you know what, Garrison, 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:44.320 I'm putting the whole company pension plane behind this guy, 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:46.360 Poopy's got to be the one who mix those cars 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:46.840 from now on. 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:49.400 You got to it's really got to suck as well. 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:52.440 If you were like a speculative investor in Doodles already 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:54.560 and you find out that your whole thing is what 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:59.040 can be worthless because of a guy called Poopy, I 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:05.359 think that that's that's just very special to me. Yea, yeah, continue, 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:08.320 I'll continue. So, just to be clear, less than the 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:13.240 year before this, according to their investor, this company was 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:17.080 positioned to continue to define the NFT industry and onboard 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:20.960 millions to the blockchain and become one of the most inclusive, creative, 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:25.400 joyful media brands in Web three and beyond. This is 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:28.440 the same company that had now officially RUG called their 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:32.400 entire customer base. And by the way, if you'd have 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.640 invested at the time that the fifty four million dollar 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:38.000 funding round so towards the end of twenty twenty two, 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:41.320 you would have lost money. You would not have gained money. 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:43.920 There was no liquidity event that had given would give 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:47.880 you anything. Also important to recognize with so other than 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:54.800 Alexis o'hanian, the other investor in Doodles was FTX Ventures. 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:59.880 So in March of twenty twenty three, you kind of 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:01.880 sat down with your morning coffee and you read the 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:04.399 announcement from Jordan Poopy Castro and found out that your 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:08.520 FTX back town ft project had lost about eighty five 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:10.800 percent of its value and now the company was not 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:12.240 backing you in any fucking way. 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.240 Yeah, but I mean FTX is putting out Super Bowl ads. 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:17.920 They seem stable, they seem like, Alliam, that'd be fine. 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:24.240 What could happen? It'd be fine. But what's great about 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:28.440 this is it is probably one of the largest rug 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:32.200 pools I've ever seen. And nobody is in trouble. Nobody's 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:36.199 mad at Alexishanium Doodles sold people on a dream. A 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:39.520 stupid dream, but a dream, yes, yes, yes, very very 0:17:39.520 --> 0:17:42.520 goddamn stupid one that you'd been investing in, participating in 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:45.800 the future of intellectual property and have some industry over 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:49.080 its future. You would theoretically, though obviously when you read 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:51.160 this now it sounds dumb, and also when you read 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:54.679 it at the time, it's you were meant to be 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:58.199 buying into the next Disney, next Marvel. Yes, what was sold? 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:01.119 That is Another huge aspect is think there's like, I 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:04.320 think a lot of people who are like, you know, 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:06.440 grew up with like pop culture and want to take 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:09.400 part in like the creation of like culture and media. 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:13.880 But you know, Hollywood systems feels so foreign and unattainable. 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:16.399 So this thing comes up and this looks like like 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:19.280 a democratized way that you can like get in on 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:22.480 some like new version of what the entertainment like landscape 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:23.879 will be. And you're like, oh, this is this is 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:26.600 like my chance I can be one of ten thousand 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:30.399 people to like contribute towards this next big, you know, 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:34.359 cultural thing in ten twenty years. I mean, obviously that's 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:38.479 like in retrospect, it's very clearly a scam for some people, 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:42.119 like probably myself and many people listening. Initially this sounded 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:45.800 like a scam, but it certainly was alluring for a 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:49.200 good deal number of people. I mean, I'm this is 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:52.120 kind of reminding me that there was this very similar 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:57.560 kind of dow big big failure around Dune. They were 0:18:57.560 --> 0:18:59.280 wanting to put out. 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:01.439 Oh yeah, they want wanted to buy, they wanted to 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:06.920 buy the deck and the rights to Yodorowski's Dune, Yes yeah. 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:08.520 And and and put out media and put it like 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:11.880 their own like animated series, which is funny because initially 0:19:11.920 --> 0:19:14.320 they just they weren't even gonna bother with like the 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:17.240 intellectual property, which is really funny because you know, a 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:19.679 big part of of this this NFT stuff is like 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:24.600 you own the IP of each NFT character, right, And 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:27.600 as they as this kind of project progressed, they slowly 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:30.240 started to realize that what they've done was probably just 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:35.160 commit massive fraud, and they completely collapsed. Like this dune 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:38.399 like NFT dow project was being was being boosted by 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:41.399 a lot of like very mainstream publications. It was it 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:43.960 was extremely hyped up, which can lead people to like 0:19:44.560 --> 0:19:47.479 assume this is like a legitimate like entertainment project that 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:51.560 you could like participate in by buying this small little piece. 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:54.640 Last year, very very clearly kind of fell apart. Yes, 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:58.119 was kind of pre predestined. 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:02.440 And what's really sad about this is we can laugh 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:04.560 at these people. I'll get to this in a bit, 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:07.040 and we can laugh at these people. We should. It's 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:10.199 very funny, but at the same time, a lot of 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:15.119 people got screwed here because they trusted in people like 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:19.399 Alexis Ohanian, founder of Unscathed. Despite the horrifying things that 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:23.280 Reddit has done. Alex Ohenian insanely rich, married to a 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:27.760 tennis star. God bless him. Hope they're happy. But nevertheless, 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:32.520 Alexis has managed to fairly easily escape all blame for 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:36.480 the fact that he misled everyone with this and other things. 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:41.400 But this in particular because the dream of doodles. God, 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:44.480 that sucks to say out loud, by the way, the 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:47.000 dream of doodles was that you were buying one of 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:49.000 these ten thousand things, and that you'd be part of 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:52.120 a community and you'd be able to steer the doodle's movement. 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:57.040 The doodles community is christ I know. The Doodles revolution 0:20:57.160 --> 0:20:58.680 I think is more more accurate. 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:02.199 And the doodle Easters, now that's not a term. 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:07.159 No, no, no, I like that. I like that doodle 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:07.919 least as doodlers. 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:11.200 They're all the doodoos. Yeah, but you would be investing 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:13.159 in the future VIP, you'd have part of this and 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:15.680 you'd be you know what, put aside the money, put 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:18.680 aside all the cash, because they're not doing speculation anymore. 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:21.639 It's not about that. Let's just focus on the community, 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:27.440 which is dying, which is completely dead. I would argue 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:32.160 so fairly recently, Doodles had to remove the fifty quorum, 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:35.120 which would require fifty percent of NFT holders to interact 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:37.800 with the project to push a vote through. They had 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:40.720 to remove that in say why they had to remove it, 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:45.520 and I guess because nobody gives a shit, because nobody cares, 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:49.159 nobody gives a rap fuck about any of this, and 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:52.800 then voted to appoint a founding Community Council to make 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:56.439 decisions about where the doodle bank, oh my god, Jesus 0:21:56.560 --> 0:22:00.640 Christies would be would be spent in the few So 0:22:00.720 --> 0:22:04.000 the doodle bank was where some of the revenues went 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:07.479 from the secondary sales of these NFTs, because the companies 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:11.879 always take a cart because let's seeking baby anyway. So 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.240 if you were interested in the community aspect of Doodles, 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:16.399 you're kind of shit out luck because they've now entirely 0:22:16.440 --> 0:22:19.920 deleted their Visions and Guidelines document, which is the part 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:22.159 of the website that tells you how any of the 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:27.440 community shit works. And they nothing is happening right now 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:31.119 with them. There's nothing going on. This is the ninth 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:35.120 most popular NFT project, and they have attempted to and 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:40.480 indeed succeeded in removing their association with NFTs. Now one 0:22:40.480 --> 0:22:43.880 would think, okay, maybe they have a discord. Of course 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:47.600 they did find it eighty five thousand members, oh wow, 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:52.959 Except it felt more empty than my discord, which has 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:57.000 six hundred people in it eighty seven hundred and sixty 0:22:57.040 --> 0:23:01.560 members as of when I opened it, and the newest 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:04.920