Speaker 1: Uh that was the introduction. It's like, did we break him? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it cut out. It cut out in the middle of
Speaker 1: your like intro, like, oh man, you know what speaking
Speaker 1: of caning, very funny story. We have a vet shortage
Speaker 1: in Oregon, so I had to book my kittens getting
Speaker 1: you know, their genital sliced off, like six weeks in advance. Um.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, because it took so long, Uh, my lady
Speaker 1: cat went into heat and was desperately trying to get
Speaker 1: her brother to fuck her for days and it was
Speaker 1: a real problem. We had to keep him apart, and
Speaker 1: she was just like presenting to every living creature, including
Speaker 1: dogs that came near here. Just I have never seen
Speaker 1: an animal want to fox so bad, and I it
Speaker 1: was just incredible before you met me. I mean you
Speaker 1: just literally gave Sophia lay up like I knew that
Speaker 1: was coming, yea tossing a softball Sophie that I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm the Nolan Ryan of this. That was way too easy.
Speaker 1: Come on, I'm sorry. A good times, really good times.
Speaker 1: Now back to not good times. A k this fucking
Speaker 1: n f T talk Just like we quickly can we
Speaker 1: quickly acknowledge that Robert blushed. I believe that during that joke.
Speaker 1: Love to see this boy blush. All right, keep going,
Speaker 1: keep going, uh, speaking of such your imaginary money go on. Well.
Speaker 1: But also there's a very fun story today that Charlie
Speaker 1: Kirk just warned that Democrats want people to live in
Speaker 1: sexual anarchy. Oh yeah, my god, it's true. It is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it depends because that's really just like one
Speaker 1: subset of polyamory. It's not even a particularly common one.
Speaker 1: Very very few people I know practice relationship anarchy. But
Speaker 1: I don't think that's what Charlie Kirk is talking about.
Speaker 1: And you know what else is terrible to be around, Sophia.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say crypto enthusiastic, but yes, n
Speaker 1: f T s they're deeply unpleasant. Um So, as we
Speaker 1: kind of ended the episode on the fucking world of
Speaker 1: bitcoin in an ether, like all of cryptochy, it's just
Speaker 1: like it's just a galaxy of scams, and the latest
Speaker 1: and silliest of these scams are in f T s.
Speaker 1: So the term n f T stands for non fungible token.
Speaker 1: Think about it. If you grab a piece of a
Speaker 1: fungus and you toss it somewhere, it'll grow into a
Speaker 1: full version of that fungus. That's how funguses work. Most
Speaker 1: currency kind of making me hungry for a mushroom pizza.
Speaker 1: I could go for some mushrooms. Most money kind of
Speaker 1: works that way too, Like obviously you can't like throw
Speaker 1: it and it grows into more money, but you can
Speaker 1: split up money, like you can split a dollar up
Speaker 1: into coin into fractions of a dollar and that's all
Speaker 1: still currency, right, Um, n f t s don't work
Speaker 1: that way. It cannot be funged, it can't be split up.
Speaker 1: You're buying like a token that cannot be uh divided, right,
Speaker 1: like you can spend fractions of a bitcoin you like,
Speaker 1: an n f T is is not It's not fungible, right,
Speaker 1: That's that's that's all that means. So if you're a
Speaker 1: casual observer of n FT culture, you probably think that
Speaker 1: owning an n f T is dumb because you're just
Speaker 1: buying ownership of a jpeg online which anyone can write,
Speaker 1: click and save as unless it's pretty fucking silly. But Sophia,
Speaker 1: what if I were to tell you it's dumber than that?
Speaker 1: Oh m, dumber than that, because here's the thing, there
Speaker 1: would be some value in having legal ownership of an
Speaker 1: online drawing right because potentially you could merchandise that drawing right.
Speaker 1: You could sell t shirts that include that drawing, Like
Speaker 1: there would actually be significant value of Like somebody makes
Speaker 1: a meme and it's like, well, I'm selling the rights
Speaker 1: to this meme. You could you could monetize that. There
Speaker 1: would be real value in being able to actually own
Speaker 1: a meme potentially. Okay, so you're talking to somebody that
Speaker 1: used to be an art consultant and my job was
Speaker 1: working as kind of the middle person between um the
Speaker 1: hospitality industry, meaning hotels and artists. So I would be
Speaker 1: the person that they would hire to decide on what
Speaker 1: hotel art would go in a hotel. A news flash,
Speaker 1: I do not want it to be fucking shells, but
Speaker 1: they are cheap as fuck. So but yeah, the thing
Speaker 1: that's really interesting about how much money you can make
Speaker 1: as an artist that kind of shows you how capitalism
Speaker 1: works and is kind of just fascinating and does I
Speaker 1: think kind of relate to n f T s UM
Speaker 1: is so the most amount of money that people would
Speaker 1: make is through doing something simple like black and white architecture,
Speaker 1: and it would be because every hotel ever wants that
Speaker 1: as their thing. So it'd be like a Chicago hotel
Speaker 1: being like, oh, we'd love some really cool shots of
Speaker 1: black and white architecture, and so we would have folders
Speaker 1: and folders of this stuff. And so when somebody like
Speaker 1: that hotel would be like, Okay, we want this photo
Speaker 1: printed and in every single guest room. Right, So that's
Speaker 1: an order for two hundred and twenty, say just an example,
Speaker 1: and that's like kind of a low number, twenty rooms, right,
Speaker 1: And you would the artists would negotiate how much money
Speaker 1: they would want per print. So say you would negotiate
Speaker 1: six dollars, so multiply that by two hundred and twenty.
Speaker 1: That's money you just made from taking one photo, whereas
Speaker 1: selling the equivalent amount of money of just one original
Speaker 1: piece would be a lot harder in certain way. But
Speaker 1: this is also kind of like winning the lottery, so
Speaker 1: in that way that's even more hard. So it just
Speaker 1: the the value we ascribe to art is so arbitrary,
Speaker 1: and to see a whole system built on this, that's
Speaker 1: just like yeah, and it's not even here's the funny thing,
Speaker 1: and I'm really glad that you brought that up, because
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about the actual art industry in a
Speaker 1: little bit as well. You're not even buying like a
Speaker 1: licensed drawing. You are no where with an issue. Well
Speaker 1: it's but it's dumber than that because you're not even
Speaker 1: buying You're not buying the image. Like when you buy
Speaker 1: in n f T, you are in no way purchasing
Speaker 1: even access to just that image. You are buying basically
Speaker 1: space on the blockchain. You are buying a token, and
Speaker 1: that token is just blank space. Um, and there's something
Speaker 1: on the space when you buy it, but doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: stay there because those images are hosted somewhere right in
Speaker 1: the oken just has a link to them. If that
Speaker 1: image hosting thing goes on, all you have is a
Speaker 1: blank spot on the blockchain exactly. Yeah, And that's why
Speaker 1: when people have been trying to pitch to me, like
Speaker 1: this is really good for artists and whatever, and I'm
Speaker 1: like maybe in the short term, but overall for artists
Speaker 1: and collectors, if your goal is to make things that
Speaker 1: last and to have people that are genuine fans and
Speaker 1: for that to be something that's part of the art process,
Speaker 1: like by people's art, by people's actual fucking art, We'll
Speaker 1: talk to about the extent to which artists are actually
Speaker 1: benefiting here. But I just really want to make people
Speaker 1: sure that people know, like it's not actually like you're
Speaker 1: owning a jpeg. You don't own the jpeg. You own
Speaker 1: like a space on the blockchain where the jpeg currently is,
Speaker 1: but anything could be there pretty much. Um. This has
Speaker 1: made very clear in the terms of sale for Christie's,
Speaker 1: which is a massive auction website. Right, it was a
Speaker 1: big deal when christie started auctioning n f t s
Speaker 1: because like Christie's is like a real auction thing, Like
Speaker 1: they they auction off serious shit. They have a thirty
Speaker 1: three page conditions document for their n f T auctions
Speaker 1: which states, you acknowledge that ownership of an n f
Speaker 1: T carries no rights express or implied other than property
Speaker 1: rights for the lot, specifically digital artwork tokenized by the
Speaker 1: n f T. You acknowledge and represent that there is
Speaker 1: substantial uncertainty as to the characterization of n f t
Speaker 1: s and other digital assets under applicable law, So like,
Speaker 1: we don't even entirely know what you own when you
Speaker 1: win this auction. It's like when you're trying to sign
Speaker 1: that fucking travel insurance or some ship and then once
Speaker 1: you read the fine print, you're like, I'm buying nothing now. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I think there are some n f T s that
Speaker 1: like specifically, the contract of the sale means you do
Speaker 1: own that image and you could license it or whatnot.
Speaker 1: Like you the artist, obviously you have the ability as
Speaker 1: the artist to sell not just the n f T,
Speaker 1: but to actually sell someone rights to an image you
Speaker 1: draw like that. That is a thing that can happen.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it does happen, but that's not generally what
Speaker 1: is happening when people buy an n f T. The
Speaker 1: real genius behind n f T s is a grift,
Speaker 1: is that they take a legitimate problem, which is that
Speaker 1: artists have a real hard time making a good living
Speaker 1: off of work, especially like work that is shared by
Speaker 1: new a minute, you're telling me being an artist, is
Speaker 1: it profitable? What a minute? Robberts about these jokes about
Speaker 1: about being Russian and dig jokes and pussy jokes. They
Speaker 1: don't sell, Robert, Well, actually they sell very well. What
Speaker 1: do you mean. I've been doing this for over ten years, Robert,
Speaker 1: what are you saying right now? It's kind of like
Speaker 1: this isn't where I should have spend my time. I
Speaker 1: mean it's worked out since podcasts became a thing. The
Speaker 1: n f T s of comedy for some moment, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have the n f t s of comedy. Nice
Speaker 1: fucking titties. That's how we started this episode now, so
Speaker 1: fucking like again, there's a real problem here, which is that,
Speaker 1: like so, artists regularly will create drawings that are shared
Speaker 1: like sometimes even hundreds of millions of times, and they
Speaker 1: won't make any money off of that and will be
Speaker 1: like starving to death while also having created one of
Speaker 1: the most like widely shared pieces of art and human history.
Speaker 1: I agree that's an issue, right. I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of artists getting paid. I'm not someone who believes there's
Speaker 1: any artistic value in starving um. But so the promise
Speaker 1: of n f T S is like, this is a
Speaker 1: way those artists who create viral art can sell a
Speaker 1: digital original UM, and that will allow them to finally
Speaker 1: get paid for their work, uh and to make it better.
Speaker 1: The way ether, which is the basis of n f
Speaker 1: t S works, means that smart contracts guarantee that the
Speaker 1: artists can get a cut of any future sales the
Speaker 1: owner of their n f T makes after buying it,
Speaker 1: And this is one of the kind of neat things
Speaker 1: about it. If the whole thing wasn't a griff, this
Speaker 1: would be a neat idea that, like, okay, you sell
Speaker 1: the rights to this drawing and anyone else who sells.
Speaker 1: If the person who buys it sells it again, you
Speaker 1: get a cut of that sale too, which is neat um.
Speaker 1: The problems are everything that comes next. So the first
Speaker 1: big success among a n f T s, which is
Speaker 1: before the term itself was really known by anybody, were
Speaker 1: cryptocats in two thousand seventeen, As a tech Crunch report
Speaker 1: from the time noted, crypto Kitties is essentially like an
Speaker 1: online version of Pokemon cards, but based on the Ethereum blockchain.
Speaker 1: And like, I guess it's like aristocats. Yeah, okay, okaind
Speaker 1: of And like most viral sensations that catch on in
Speaker 1: the tech world, it's blowing up fast. Built by Vancouver
Speaker 1: and San Francisco based design studio axioms In, the game
Speaker 1: is the latest fat in the world of cryptocurrency. People
Speaker 1: are spending a crazy amount of real money on the game.
Speaker 1: So far, about one point three million dollars has been
Speaker 1: transacted with multiple kittens selling for fifty ether around twenty
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars and the Genesis kitten being sold for
Speaker 1: a record two hundred forty six ether around a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirteen thousand dollars. This third party site tracks the
Speaker 1: largest purchases made to date on the game, and like
Speaker 1: any good viral sensation, prices are rising in flu stuating fast.
Speaker 1: Right now, it will cost you about point zero three
Speaker 1: either or twelve dollars to buy the least expensive kitten
Speaker 1: in the game, And calling these game is kind of
Speaker 1: stretching it, but crypto kitties would prove to be an
Speaker 1: intensely depressing proof of concept. People refined and reworked the
Speaker 1: idea until in the concept of n f T S
Speaker 1: hit big. This was after depending on who you ask,
Speaker 1: two or three bubble and burst cycles from Bitcoin two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen was when most people really became aware of
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency and the fact that you could make a lot
Speaker 1: of money off of it. And if you remember, during
Speaker 1: that big Bitcoin boom, basically for a while, every Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley company had to tell the world they had a
Speaker 1: blockchain related project in the pipeline, and this was all bullshit.
Speaker 1: The blockchain actually has and has had so far remarkably
Speaker 1: very little promise for the tech industry. It is virtually
Speaker 1: useless for most large companies and for a variety of
Speaker 1: the problems that it claims to be able to solve,
Speaker 1: and in fact, like one of the things about it
Speaker 1: that's funny is that, like for all the people using
Speaker 1: blockchain is like a buzzword term to excite people, there's
Speaker 1: actually a widely used technology that's basically a blockchain that
Speaker 1: that nobody called that that is has been huge for forever. Um.
Speaker 1: It's called get um. Like get hub is the place
Speaker 1: online where you find it, like it's it's it's basically
Speaker 1: a repository of code. It's for people making code to
Speaker 1: like keep a record of changes to code that they're
Speaker 1: making and whatnot, so everyone who's doing code and can
Speaker 1: see what other people are doing. Um. The way it
Speaker 1: works is very much like a blockchain. UM. So it again,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things like there's all these like
Speaker 1: crypto evangelists talking about how revolutionary the blockchain is. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: the things that are actually potentially valuable about blockchain technology,
Speaker 1: we've already been doing for a long time like get
Speaker 1: hub go or get goes back like almost twenty years.
Speaker 1: I think, um, there's there's really nothing cool or new here.
Speaker 1: But for a while, every big Silicon Valley company had
Speaker 1: to announce that they were looking into doing a blockchain.
Speaker 1: You know, we're we were we're looking into the blockchain
Speaker 1: for whatever. I remember when people are talking about like
Speaker 1: this is going to change voting, it's going to make
Speaker 1: it impossible to do a fraudulent vote, um, which is
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's all, it's all. It's just people
Speaker 1: like you know, it's what happens whenever something goes viral,
Speaker 1: like suddenly it's the same thing. Was like a meme,
Speaker 1: where like suddenly you've got like the McDonald's Twitter account
Speaker 1: sharing a meme that's popular. That's what happened with a
Speaker 1: blockchain in two thousand seventeen. Minus the chicken nuggies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, chicken nuggets are certainly more valuable than uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, any given in f t UM. So
Speaker 1: after something like one point five billion dollars in investments
Speaker 1: into blockchain technology um started by this big bit point
Speaker 1: coin boom in two thousand seventeen, almost no profit has
Speaker 1: actually been realized it's just pretty much been piste away,
Speaker 1: um because for the most part they were just like
Speaker 1: announcing anyway. It's all very frustrating. So in one after
Speaker 1: this crypto optimism kind of fades. There's still a lot
Speaker 1: of money in cryptocurrency. People are still like Bitcoin had
Speaker 1: a boo pretty recently after the one in two seventeen,
Speaker 1: so it's still a way you can make money. But
Speaker 1: like all of these these people talking about like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, the blockchain's got a revolutionize this industry of that, like,
Speaker 1: none of it really happens. Um And so in two
Speaker 1: thousand twenty one, people who want to make a shipload
Speaker 1: off of money off of cryptocurrency needs something new. And
Speaker 1: that's when n f t s finally blow up on
Speaker 1: like a national scale. Um so uh. Just as a
Speaker 1: theory of advocates had claimed that smart contracts would magically
Speaker 1: fix the inequities of the recording industry, in FT advocates
Speaker 1: began to claim that their magical crypto nonsense was the
Speaker 1: solution to the problems artists faced and getting paid. The
Speaker 1: irony was that as soon as n f t s
Speaker 1: went viral as a concept and money started pouring in
Speaker 1: scammers began stealing the work of artists to sell unauthorized
Speaker 1: and f T s. There's a good article about this
Speaker 1: in The Verge from March of this year. It tells
Speaker 1: the story of Derek Laufman, who work woke up earlier
Speaker 1: that month to emails from fans of his art being like, hey,
Speaker 1: when did you start selling an f T s. He
Speaker 1: was confused because he had not, in fact started selling
Speaker 1: an f T and he said as much. Eventually he
Speaker 1: realized that someone impersonating him had created a profile and
Speaker 1: gotten it verified on Rearable, a site where people buy
Speaker 1: n f T s. Today, Wearable requires people in order
Speaker 1: to like verify your identity to listen an f T
Speaker 1: you have to provide links to two active social media
Speaker 1: profiles and a behind the scenes picture of your art.
Speaker 1: I don't think that second requirement existed in March, but
Speaker 1: even now you don't actually have to give up any
Speaker 1: documents to verify your identity. So it's very easy to
Speaker 1: fake being an artist in order to sell an n
Speaker 1: f T of their art. As Laufman told The Verge,
Speaker 1: I dealt with having my art stolen for years, and
Speaker 1: I'm sort of numb to that. But when somebody is
Speaker 1: claiming to be you that kind of you know, that
Speaker 1: pisces me off, and it's really frustrating because you have
Speaker 1: again this real problem of like for years artists are
Speaker 1: sealing people like Elon Musk stealing a meme they make
Speaker 1: and like not crediting them or even like cutting the
Speaker 1: credit out, and like that's frustrating. But n f t
Speaker 1: s have just in a lot of ways made it worse.
Speaker 1: Like not that there aren't artists who make money. There
Speaker 1: are a decent number of artists who have made some
Speaker 1: money off of this, but there's an equal number of
Speaker 1: people who are having their ships stolen by other people
Speaker 1: who are making money, which is really frustrating. I mean,
Speaker 1: this reminds me of um all of the art that
Speaker 1: got stolen for Lula ro Leggings and just crudely being
Speaker 1: like it's different and then not being different, pop like
Speaker 1: that's my ship. Yeah, And they're being no no recourse whatsoever,
Speaker 1: either in yours in this situation or in the Lulu
Speaker 1: ro one. And that's what's fucking happening here. And again
Speaker 1: it is they're like they can get the art the
Speaker 1: n f t s delisted, but if they've already sold.
Speaker 1: One of the things about crypto is you can't reverse
Speaker 1: a transaction. It's indelible, it's done. There's no getting the
Speaker 1: money back like which is great. Um from the Urge quote.
Speaker 1: Artists like Laufmann have had their work minted as n
Speaker 1: f T s and listed for sale without their permission,
Speaker 1: and as in that case, platforms that host stolen art
Speaker 1: only seem to moderate if the artist finds out and
Speaker 1: posts about it on social media. Tales from the Loop
Speaker 1: author Simon Stalinhag found his art on Marble Cards, another
Speaker 1: n f T site, and Giffey has warned that people
Speaker 1: are turning user created gifts from its site into n
Speaker 1: f T s because the n f T system doesn't
Speaker 1: require people to actually own the copyright to something to
Speaker 1: mint it. It's a market ripe for fraud, you might say,
Speaker 1: that's the whole point. The Verges investigation found that fraud
Speaker 1: was common in n f T markets, verging on constant
Speaker 1: due to the fact that none of the major n
Speaker 1: f T exchanges required people proved that they owned the
Speaker 1: works they were profiting from. Once again, the promise of
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency to write a longstanding injustice has proved to be
Speaker 1: just another way of screwing over the same group of
Speaker 1: people in pretty much the same way. It's almost like
Speaker 1: trying to make being a pirate your identity will make
Speaker 1: it so that everybody else is also. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: no honor among thieves, that's all yeah, And it's it's
Speaker 1: even worse than like hanging out with actual criminals, because
Speaker 1: there is a degree of honors the wrong word, but
Speaker 1: like honesty among people who are actually involved in in
Speaker 1: high level crimes, because like you, you can get murdered
Speaker 1: for fucking with somebody. So a lot of people are
Speaker 1: actually very honest about their dealings in illegal trades because like,
Speaker 1: I don't want that fucking trouble, you know, Like I'm
Speaker 1: dealing with somebody who's scary, I'm not going to suck
Speaker 1: them over. It's always refreshing when anyone is honest, whether
Speaker 1: it's because they're afraid that they'll die or just because
Speaker 1: they're like, look, it pains me to lie. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: within f t s it's all online. You're anonymous. There's
Speaker 1: no reason to like not scam people out of their
Speaker 1: bullshit money and then turn it into real money and
Speaker 1: then laugh all the way to the bank. So when
Speaker 1: you talk about n f T success stories, the number
Speaker 1: one thing that people are going to bring up is
Speaker 1: what happened with People this year? Um. People is a
Speaker 1: semi famous artist who does like a lot of like
Speaker 1: electronic kind of art. Like a lot of artists I
Speaker 1: know think is stuff is great. Um. He famously had
Speaker 1: a collection of his art which was several thousand pieces.
Speaker 1: It was called every Day and it was like five
Speaker 1: thousand pieces that had been daily art releases of his
Speaker 1: for years. Sells an n f T for sixty nine
Speaker 1: million dollars via Christie's auction. Most people probably heard something
Speaker 1: about this. It was a pretty big news story. You
Speaker 1: probably didn't hear the revelations about who actually bought the
Speaker 1: damn thing. And first off, I should note that well
Speaker 1: people have. Yeah, I'm about to tell you one of
Speaker 1: the things that frustrated about this is that, like People
Speaker 1: has made a lot of cool art, the thing that
Speaker 1: makes sells for sixty nine million is not cool. It's
Speaker 1: like a bunch of daily like he was just trying
Speaker 1: to make sure he always made a piece of art
Speaker 1: every day and most of them are like not good.
Speaker 1: Like that's nothing against him as an artist. It's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was that he was just like it was like
Speaker 1: a daily project, Like he wasn't like throwing his heart
Speaker 1: and soul in him. Was like scribbles basically electronic equivalent
Speaker 1: of scribbles. Yeah. And also it's like morning pages or
Speaker 1: some ship. It's not supposed to be good. You're just
Speaker 1: doing it every day to keep warm. You know, it's
Speaker 1: ridiculous that it would sell for sixty nine million dollars. Also,
Speaker 1: some of them were pretty racist. Wait, yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: racist stuff in there. I think. I mean it was
Speaker 1: years and years ago. I'm not going to like condemn
Speaker 1: as a human being because like ten or fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: he like drew was something that's kind of racist. Um,
Speaker 1: but maybe you shouldn't have lumped all of this art
Speaker 1: together and sold it. I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: the person. Um, it's just it's it's ridiculous that like
Speaker 1: a bunch of crappy daily sketches, some of which looked
Speaker 1: like they were drawn by an edgy seventeen year old
Speaker 1: kid h sold for sixty nine million dollars at at
Speaker 1: a Christie's auction. Um, that's just ridiculous. But you know
Speaker 1: what's not ridiculous, Sophia, is it these goods and services, Robert,
Speaker 1: These goods and serve is number one, All of them
Speaker 1: cheaper than sixty nine million dollars, although I recommend spending
Speaker 1: sixty million dollars on them, you know, and they even
Speaker 1: sit on your face if you do. Wow. See listeners go,
Speaker 1: We're back a good times, bad times, actually horrible times,
Speaker 1: terrible times. So let's talk about who won that auction
Speaker 1: for People's everyday art um. The winner was somebody, obviously
Speaker 1: with a shipload of shipload of cryptocurrency, and this person
Speaker 1: purchased under a pseudonym Medical Van. But of course none
Speaker 1: of this stuff is as anonymous as the advocates of
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency want to pretend. Uh, And a crypto industry journalist
Speaker 1: and a no coiner named Amy Castor tracked down Medicovin's identity.
Speaker 1: The person behind that pseudonym was Vignesh Sandarason, a crypto
Speaker 1: entrepreneur within it with an established and fairly shady background.
Speaker 1: Among the many ventures he founded was something called coins
Speaker 1: dash E. If you've been paying attention so far, this
Speaker 1: story will sound familiar from Amy a Castor quote. Several
Speaker 1: coins dash e users have taken to social media to
Speaker 1: complain about losing money on coins dash e, calling it
Speaker 1: a scam and warning others to watch out. The posts
Speaker 1: on our doge coin are the most alarming coins. Dash
Speaker 1: E clients report having their doge coin disappear. Why are
Speaker 1: guys in Why described watching one point three million doge
Speaker 1: evaporate and the frustration of being unable to reach tech
Speaker 1: support to get to the bottom of the matter. Exclusive
Speaker 1: two wrote, I've had just about enough of coins e
Speaker 1: millions of coins missing, no reply from support. Ever, the
Speaker 1: reason is because it's a one man operation. The problem
Speaker 1: is this joker is stealing and trading everyone's coins when
Speaker 1: and how he feels to make himself rich. He knows
Speaker 1: that doge is worth a lot of bitcoin and large volumes.
Speaker 1: Now it when someone calls someone else a joker, and
Speaker 1: as you're talking about your coin made up over a
Speaker 1: fake dog me and he's giving dog coin a bad name,
Speaker 1: it's never going to get to the mood that way.
Speaker 1: The Confederacy, It's like all the people who were angry
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk didn't shout out doge coin when he
Speaker 1: was on SNL because they thought it was going to
Speaker 1: make them all Rich. It's like Elon Musk doesn't give
Speaker 1: a shit about you, or you're fucking doge coin about it.
Speaker 1: Every time he posted about it, he was making fun
Speaker 1: of you. So, um yeah. Now Sandarasan told Castor that
Speaker 1: he hadn't. When she brings it, she like, so Castor,
Speaker 1: being a good journalist like, goes to sandaras In and
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, did you make up this thing called
Speaker 1: coins Dashy in order to rip a bunch of people off?
Speaker 1: And he was like, no, of course not. That wasn't
Speaker 1: me at all. I did make coins Dashy, but I
Speaker 1: sold it to a company called Casta Crypto way before
Speaker 1: the problem started. I had nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: company and all that bad shit happened. So Barlow looked
Speaker 1: into this, and she was the owner of Well, as
Speaker 1: far as Barlow has been able to find, there's no
Speaker 1: evidence the company ever existed. There's no press release that
Speaker 1: coins Dashy was ever sold. There's no information to back
Speaker 1: this up whatsoever. He promised to show her the proof
Speaker 1: on a video call and then never got back to her.
Speaker 1: Um so totally not sketchy guy. Her further digging made
Speaker 1: it clear that and one of the things that is
Speaker 1: cool about this, both in reading about learning about David
Speaker 1: Gerhard and Amy Castor is realizing that, like, oh, there
Speaker 1: are actually like good journalists who know about who understand crypto,
Speaker 1: like right, I clearly I don't. I'm repeating other things
Speaker 1: people have said about it that seemed credible that I
Speaker 1: read because I'm not an expert on crypto. It's nice
Speaker 1: to know there are people who care about it enough
Speaker 1: to understand it deeply and are also actual journalists about it.
Speaker 1: Because as silly as this is, I'm really glad and
Speaker 1: Amy Castor is they're like actually try like trying to
Speaker 1: document the griftiness of this whole thing. I think that's valuable. Um,
Speaker 1: and I do really recommend Attack of the fifty Foot
Speaker 1: Blockchain is a book if you actually want to like
Speaker 1: understand all this stuff more and what a giant scam
Speaker 1: it is, because I'm definitely getting it. Yeah, It's it's
Speaker 1: very readable. It's very like as as dry as a
Speaker 1: lot of crypto stuff is. David does a very good
Speaker 1: job of like making you understand what's happening and how
Speaker 1: ridiculous it is without it being boring. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: slightly better than my husband explaining it to me, and
Speaker 1: that's good. Yeah, it's definitely that's what's actually on the
Speaker 1: cover of the book. Slightly better than having your husband
Speaker 1: explained crypto to you because he spent your life savings
Speaker 1: on a j pick. Honestly, I think that's a really
Speaker 1: ringing indorsement. Yeah, it's the best thing women women all
Speaker 1: over and not just women. There's billions of people all
Speaker 1: over the world right now being uh, a man splained
Speaker 1: crypto while they're trying to do some other ship you know, sleep, eat, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's very funny, um, and this book will protect you
Speaker 1: from that, because then you'll be like, actually, yeah, actually
Speaker 1: thing yeah um. So Amy Barlow's further digging made it
Speaker 1: clear that rather than the sale of People's every Days
Speaker 1: being a fairly normal case of an art lover of
Speaker 1: buying a valuable work of art, the whole thing was
Speaker 1: way more of a convoluted business relationship between people and
Speaker 1: Sundarson Castor did the digging here, but the clearest and
Speaker 1: most succinct summary I found of what actually happened comes
Speaker 1: from a write up by Input magazine. Because Castor goes
Speaker 1: into a lot of detail here, and I just want
Speaker 1: to give you the summary of what happened from input.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna quote from there now where things get
Speaker 1: interesting with the people purchases that Sundarson is selling fractional
Speaker 1: ownership of the work through a new entity called Meta Purse,
Speaker 1: a crypto based investment firm that has rolled up several
Speaker 1: people pieces into a bundle. Anyone can purchase a small
Speaker 1: state but I'll call my girls pussy a what's up selfie?
Speaker 1: Her in Visilne hurts too much, she can she's laughing
Speaker 1: on the inside. Anyone can purchase a small ownership stake
Speaker 1: in the art collection by purchasing the company's B twenty token.
Speaker 1: The hope would be that the works become more valuable
Speaker 1: over time. Individuals are essentially buying into an index fund
Speaker 1: of sorts. But when Sandarson created B twenty, he gave
Speaker 1: himself of the outstanding tokens and People himself received two percent.
Speaker 1: That would suggest that People and Sandarason were in cahoots
Speaker 1: to add the five thousand Days piece to the Metapurse collection,
Speaker 1: as doing so would drive up the price of the
Speaker 1: fledging B twenty token and make them both money. So
Speaker 1: People is like involved in a real business relationship with
Speaker 1: the guy who quote unquote bought this artwork, and the
Speaker 1: fact that it's sold for such a ridiculous price was
Speaker 1: valuable because it raised the price of this is a
Speaker 1: sin actually a coin that they're offering that represents a
Speaker 1: fractional steak in the ownership of this collection of people art.
Speaker 1: It's some a scam kinda. It seems like, I want
Speaker 1: to make it clear, I'm not alleging that people or
Speaker 1: Medicovin have done anything illegal. I just think it's I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of a scam. It seems like it's
Speaker 1: kind of a scam to me. Look, I am a comedian,
Speaker 1: and that means a certified idiot. Also seems like a
Speaker 1: huge scam. Yeah, Hey, and people made a bunch of money.
Speaker 1: I don't Again, I don't have any reason to believe
Speaker 1: they're a bad person or whatever other than the environmental
Speaker 1: cost of n f t s. But yeah, it's hard
Speaker 1: to take anything or anyone named people seriously. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, if I as an artist, someone
Speaker 1: was like, hey, you want to make sixty million dollars
Speaker 1: by giving me a bunch of sketches, you did, Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, Like, yes, I'm not going to pretend I'm
Speaker 1: that good a person. I would a feverishly be drawing
Speaker 1: you sketch up the night before. That are just bullshit,
Speaker 1: just so somebody would feel like they were getting their
Speaker 1: money wor like I think most people, even knowing the
Speaker 1: environmental costs, to be like, well, yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: enough money that no one in my family would ever
Speaker 1: have a problem again that related to finances. Of course,
Speaker 1: then maybe I could right some wrongs with my six
Speaker 1: million dollars. Or I think the vast majority of people
Speaker 1: would find a way to justify it to themselves. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure I include myself in that right when nobody's
Speaker 1: nobody's I'm not. Again, I don't while I'm saying I
Speaker 1: think this is kind of a scam people's involved in.
Speaker 1: I don't think it makes them like worse than most
Speaker 1: other people, because I think most people would find a
Speaker 1: way to judge you mean, most worse than most other
Speaker 1: people's people's Yeah, it's no worse than most people's um
Speaker 1: And to be fair, whatever people's doing here, because I
Speaker 1: don't think we know fully like what's going on here,
Speaker 1: it is way less of a direct scam than like,
Speaker 1: you know, all the people just robbing folks like dump.
Speaker 1: I guess so it seems like it's kind of a
Speaker 1: pump and dump. But whatever. And to talk about the
Speaker 1: really stipend is what they call Robert's girls. Christ I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry, Sophia, it's a little far. You send me
Speaker 1: five knives and they go right to my head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just want more knives, and you know the way
Speaker 1: to do that is by making weird sex jokes that
Speaker 1: are gonna get me. Have people send me very uncomfortable messages. Look,
Speaker 1: everybody who listens to you and Sophie is trying to fun.
Speaker 1: I hope you know that. Oh that's not that's not good.
Speaker 1: You have to think about it every night now before
Speaker 1: you go to sleep. Yeah, it looks even more pain
Speaker 1: than she is by her and visaligned. For the record,
Speaker 1: I don't fuck. No, no, no sex, no sex for me,
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, you just do mouth stuff. I heard that.
Speaker 1: I just do math stuff. That's right, mouth stuff, you dummy.
Speaker 1: Yeah I mean that too. It's kind of the same thing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you whisper formulas into your girl's mouth. I just read
Speaker 1: out the address to different bitcoins that I own whisper
Speaker 1: ethereum on her Clintie your number one move in the bedroom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what the ladies like is having whispering ethereum into
Speaker 1: their genitals. That's how you that's how you win them.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're looking for for advice on on
Speaker 1: on slaying, slaying whatever genitals you want to slay, just
Speaker 1: start whispering either good stuff. You gotta do a little
Speaker 1: bit of a lip wobble and the um on the
Speaker 1: clytie just so you know what. Nobody is getting fucked
Speaker 1: as a result of my very favorite n f T
Speaker 1: scam Evolved apes. This is what made me decide to
Speaker 1: write this episode because it's just the funniest thing in
Speaker 1: the entire goddamn world. So one thing that a lot
Speaker 1: of critics will note is that an awful lot again
Speaker 1: not all. There's some actually really good artists who have
Speaker 1: made n f T s and some people who were
Speaker 1: struggling for years and maybe like whatever, if you're if
Speaker 1: you've struggled for thirty years and are finally making a
Speaker 1: good living making real art because n f T has
Speaker 1: have enabled that, that's great. That's not most of what
Speaker 1: the most of the n f T is being sold
Speaker 1: look like fucking shit. Um and most of the ones
Speaker 1: being sold for a lot of money look like fucking shit,
Speaker 1: and that makes it a victimless crime. I guess. Well
Speaker 1: is if you think something is good, am I wrong?
Speaker 1: Put a pin in that. So the Evolved apes were
Speaker 1: part of a series of different like I think they're scams,
Speaker 1: but we'll call them n f T schemes, Evolved apes,
Speaker 1: political punks, lazy lions. They're basically garbage pale kids, but digital,
Speaker 1: and they arrange in cost from a few bucks to
Speaker 1: more than a hundred thousand dollars. And again they all
Speaker 1: look like shit. So I'm going to show you these
Speaker 1: in a second. But Evolved apes were described by their
Speaker 1: founder on n f T marketplace Open Sea as a
Speaker 1: collection of ten thousand unique n f T s trapped
Speaker 1: inside a lawless land fighting for survival. This was a
Speaker 1: way of plugging a claimed fighting game where players would
Speaker 1: be able to use the unique n f T s
Speaker 1: they purchased to battle each other. Here's what they look like.
Speaker 1: Oh I like them? What is There's something wrong? Is there?
Speaker 1: You like these little these terrible ape drawings? I really
Speaker 1: like them. Well that's fascinating, as somebody fucking had to
Speaker 1: they're all the same drawing. It's the same basic ape
Speaker 1: drawing that like they stick different hair on and put
Speaker 1: like glasses, or one of them is eating a burger
Speaker 1: and blowing a bubble gum bubble, so you're wrong. And
Speaker 1: one of them is wearing a necklace and one of
Speaker 1: them has a glove on. Truly, can I say something
Speaker 1: what I think? It appeals to me because I can't
Speaker 1: tell people apart when they have changed one thing about themselves,
Speaker 1: like a hat, or like you've got prosopagnosia or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, face blindness. So to me, all those apes
Speaker 1: are radically different. I guess maybe you're the market for
Speaker 1: evolved apes. Um. So the entry fee to get like
Speaker 1: a chance to buy these is two hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: nine dollars or like point zero eight, ether that much.
Speaker 1: The average price for the n f T s themselves
Speaker 1: was around a hundred and eight dollars. The highest individual
Speaker 1: ape that I found in terms of sales sold for
Speaker 1: fourteen point three thousand dollars. And it's this fucking guy.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask, what's the best ape? Well,
Speaker 1: apparently this one. I don't know if this was the most,
Speaker 1: but this is the most that I found in a
Speaker 1: short amount of fucking googling. That's sold for four three dollars. No,
Speaker 1: I think no, there should have been more ship going
Speaker 1: on for that. I would agree with you there, Sophia.
Speaker 1: But that's that's not that's not the way the cookie crumbled.
Speaker 1: So again, and and part of the promise here was that,
Speaker 1: like the Evolved Apes were, this was going to be
Speaker 1: a like a video game, like a Mortal Kombat style
Speaker 1: fighting game, and you'd get to use your n f
Speaker 1: T s in the fighting game. Um, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: It would be if it had, if it had happened,
Speaker 1: Um that that might have been kind of me, although
Speaker 1: the actual game itself, UM didn't. Here. I'll play you
Speaker 1: a video, Sophia, I'll play you a video. I would
Speaker 1: love that. Yeah, that was like one of the I
Speaker 1: think ad videos for the Evolved Apes. Hi, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: show you a video, but first there's an ad break
Speaker 1: and come on, come on, rookie. Okay, well let's just
Speaker 1: keep all this. And and that was us throwing two ads.
Speaker 1: Was was Sophie saying that so good, ads, just do it.
Speaker 1: Motherfucker's that sounds so means are your Dick Campussy and
Speaker 1: it's been I'm sorry, So we're we're back. We're back, everybody.
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to play the Evolved Apes trailer for
Speaker 1: the fighting game that they were supposed to make, because
Speaker 1: it looks like trash. And again, I can see the
Speaker 1: I could see if there was like, oh, it's fifty
Speaker 1: bucks and you buy a character and only you get
Speaker 1: that character. It's unique and it levels up through time,
Speaker 1: and like you can play in a fighting game with
Speaker 1: other people for prizes that are worth real money. That's cool,
Speaker 1: and there are some people like who have pushed ideas
Speaker 1: with that, and it's not like groundbreaking in a world sense,
Speaker 1: but it is like, oh, I could see that being
Speaker 1: a fun thing for gaming. Um, this game looked like
Speaker 1: fucking trash and I'm okay. The trailer for you now, Sophia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just looks like shitty Mortal Kombat with monkeys. It does.
Speaker 1: And I have to say they didn't choose the best
Speaker 1: monkeys for their representation, because it should have been like monkeys.
Speaker 1: They're so different looking that you would be like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: I could design a monkey that was really cool different things,
Speaker 1: But also monkeys aren't apes, so someone's gonna be roll
Speaker 1: mad about that when they're listening to the game. The
Speaker 1: point is they did not do a good job with
Speaker 1: character design, and we are very upset about it. And like, again,
Speaker 1: if this weren't all a giant grift, which we're getting to,
Speaker 1: the cool version of this would be like, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: bringing in a bunch of artists and they can just
Speaker 1: like make whatever characters they want and if you think
Speaker 1: it's cool, you can buy it and like, you know
Speaker 1: the things you could have need. That could be a
Speaker 1: really cool way to do a fighting game, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure it could make a lot of money, and I
Speaker 1: suspect someone will figure out how to do that and
Speaker 1: it will finally be something cool that comes out of
Speaker 1: n f T S. But that is not what happened
Speaker 1: with the Evolved Apes, because this was a giant scam
Speaker 1: from the beginning. A week after the project officially launched
Speaker 1: with some four thousand apes sold, project developer Evil Ape,
Speaker 1: the guy who started it, disappeared, taking down the company
Speaker 1: Twitter account, deleting the website, and absconding with two point
Speaker 1: seven million dollars in either. Yeah, there was literally just
Speaker 1: a scamp. That's why its magician and again you should
Speaker 1: have known. Investors should have known by how fucking shitty
Speaker 1: it looked. But it's just like this irrational exuberance of like,
Speaker 1: oh this could be I'm sure they're recognizing like what
Speaker 1: I was just saying, like, oh, there are ways in
Speaker 1: which you could do a neat game this way, and
Speaker 1: they just didn't want to lose out in case this
Speaker 1: was the neat game, and none of them, like I
Speaker 1: thought about like, well does this look any good or
Speaker 1: does it look like total ship? Um? A lot of
Speaker 1: people could be asking themselves that question, does this look
Speaker 1: good or does this look like because of fomo here?
Speaker 1: Or am I actually buying into something I would want
Speaker 1: to play? Do I want to have almost identical monkeys
Speaker 1: with like shitty bling punch each other in a fighting game?
Speaker 1: How long will that be? Interesting? Is this really worth
Speaker 1: fourteen thousand dollars? This is how everyone got tricked into
Speaker 1: mom jeans. You know, we can all agree they look
Speaker 1: like ship and yet and yet, but at least you
Speaker 1: have the genes when you when you get tricked by
Speaker 1: momposed to do you if you're not getting fucked or
Speaker 1: talk to because in them when you're alone crying at
Speaker 1: your house in your actual sweatpands. Yeah. I mean I
Speaker 1: haven't owned a pair of jeans and years because I
Speaker 1: wear nothing but sweatpants. So I agree. I think normal
Speaker 1: pants are a grift, but at least you have the
Speaker 1: pants physically. They they do exist. Yeah. So when the crip,
Speaker 1: like when this guy disappeared and the evolved apes community
Speaker 1: eventually realized they'd been had, they basically like appointed the
Speaker 1: guy who had spent the most money on them, whose
Speaker 1: online name is Mike Underscore Crypto bowl Um, and made
Speaker 1: him in charge of investigating what had happened. Uh, based
Speaker 1: on the fact that he had spent like ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars on fucking monkey JPEGs UM. So yeah, very sad
Speaker 1: to be that guy, to be the guy who's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you have to be our leader because he lost the
Speaker 1: most money off of the stupid monkey grift. Um. Mike
Speaker 1: wrote up a report and informed the community regretfully that
Speaker 1: they had all been conned that the artist had not
Speaker 1: even been paid. So again, the actual guy who made
Speaker 1: this terrible monkey arc didn't see a dime. Uh, he
Speaker 1: got conned into making the art and then somebody else
Speaker 1: profited off of it and disappeared, which is very funny. Um,
Speaker 1: Mike told Vice that he had some. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: saddest thing is that when he was interviewed by Vice,
Speaker 1: Mike told the reporter that he in a bunch of
Speaker 1: Evolved Apes fans, had promised to quote build a new
Speaker 1: project called fight Back Apes out of the ashes of
Speaker 1: Evolved Apes. Evolved Apes holders would automatically be approved for
Speaker 1: a fight Back Apes token linked with art from the
Speaker 1: old project. And this is what This was his exact quote.
Speaker 1: We will become the fight Back Apes, fighting as a
Speaker 1: community against our nemesis, evil Ape. All Right, that's the
Speaker 1: ever read, the saddest thing I've ever read in Metaphors
Speaker 1: and Analogies packet. There are war crimes less depressive than
Speaker 1: that sentence to Virgin City where no one will ever
Speaker 1: touch you. Yeah, I fucking loser. It's so sad, like,
Speaker 1: he's not your nemesis, You're not fighting back. He stole
Speaker 1: your money and continuing to own pictures of monkeys that
Speaker 1: are held on the blockchain does not fight back in
Speaker 1: any meaningful way. Um, it's very funny. It's so sad,
Speaker 1: And the funniest thing about it is that the fact
Speaker 1: that evolved apes turned out to be nothing, but a
Speaker 1: scam hasn't stopped them from selling on openca, which is
Speaker 1: one of the the n f T marketplaces. In the
Speaker 1: days after the scam was revealed, forty thousand, two thirty
Speaker 1: dollars worth of APE n f T s were sold.
Speaker 1: One of all dapes buyer told Vice that they believed
Speaker 1: people had fallen for the scam in part because they
Speaker 1: were quote blinded by the art and the promises, which
Speaker 1: is almost apes planted by the apes wrapped up like
Speaker 1: a yeah, I don't know, um, and of course the
Speaker 1: grift never INDs another another. But one of these you know,
Speaker 1: basically again like trading card n f T things, where
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of different pictures, uh that you you
Speaker 1: buy access to one picture in the set. The most
Speaker 1: popular of them, or one of those popular of them
Speaker 1: is political punks. Again, this is like an n f
Speaker 1: T card set. I don't know what's punk about them.
Speaker 1: They're just eight bit representations of famous people. They don't
Speaker 1: seem punk at all. Actually, um, the average prices in
Speaker 1: their famous pursuit of money. Yeah, that's what makes something punk.
Speaker 1: And like they don't even look good. Um, Like I said,
Speaker 1: they're just like eight bit portraits, like of of famous
Speaker 1: people that you wouldn't generally recognize as a famous person
Speaker 1: if you didn't like see it, like the most recognizable
Speaker 1: here's the David Bowie one. Um, well you should have
Speaker 1: told me who it was, because I would like to guess. Well,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll recognize it. I'm gonna send you just the
Speaker 1: Twitter link here. Uh that's so bad. Yeah, they're just
Speaker 1: like eight bit little portraits. They're terrible. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they'd be fine if it was just like, oh, I
Speaker 1: want to have a forum avatar. That's an eight bit portrait,
Speaker 1: Like that's first people for the price of like a new,
Speaker 1: brand new, high quality car. Like that's not David Bowie.
Speaker 1: That's a man that has had a severe sword injury.
Speaker 1: Clear what it is. He's been slashed across his face
Speaker 1: Tierrian style, and it is very insensitive of you to
Speaker 1: not recognize that next to him is clearly his go
Speaker 1: wife And there is no reason that you should think
Speaker 1: that she's not gorgeous and hashtag all goats matter and
Speaker 1: you're sad for not recognizing her. Yeah, all goats matter.
Speaker 1: So the average price for one of these fucking shitty
Speaker 1: eight bit Portraits is about eleven dollars. Now that's the
Speaker 1: average price. That's get so much good art for that,
Speaker 1: and honestly, take it from an art consultant, you can
Speaker 1: get some nice limited edition prints for way less than that,
Speaker 1: like several of them. Just wait, Sophia, because one of
Speaker 1: the most expensive of these political punks was the Satoshi
Speaker 1: Nakamoto punk, which is a digital that means number one,
Speaker 1: that would be a digital representation of a person whose
Speaker 1: identity is unknown because Setoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym and
Speaker 1: no one knows who he really is. It's essentially a
Speaker 1: picture of Santa. Yeah, this digital Santa picture sold for
Speaker 1: more than sixty four thousand dollars. Yes, because Anta is
Speaker 1: never gonna bring you enough presents to make up for that.
Speaker 1: You could buy like a fully loaded Toyota Tacoma for
Speaker 1: that much money, like what you could buy a house
Speaker 1: and a lot of Yeah, that's a down payment on
Speaker 1: a house, like yeah, it's very silly. Um I guess
Speaker 1: the Paul Red one is coming soon, so that's going
Speaker 1: to be exciting. I'm sure that'll sell for a lot
Speaker 1: of money. Um My fulle alarm for that and yeah.
Speaker 1: The grift, of course, never ends. Political Punks uh the
Speaker 1: Twitter account um after the Evolved Apes debacle. When like
Speaker 1: it came became clear that that had all been a
Speaker 1: giant scam, the developer of Political Punks posted this on
Speaker 1: Twitter to anyone who was affected in the Evolved Apes
Speaker 1: rug pool. We will be opening up two hundred pre
Speaker 1: sale spots for our upcoming gin two pleab punks meant
Speaker 1: come join our community, vibe and have fun. We welcome
Speaker 1: you with open arms. Had this idea after seeing uh
Speaker 1: at boosts take action all love. We are set to
Speaker 1: make a blockchain game similar but a hundred times better
Speaker 1: than the one promised over it Evolved Apes. Read our
Speaker 1: roadmap for more info. It saddens me deeply to see
Speaker 1: people lose immense amounts of hard earned money to such scumbags.
Speaker 1: Spread the love so becasually saying like, hey guys, I'll
Speaker 1: let you buy some of my shitty drawings because you
Speaker 1: got scammed out of your old shitty drawings. I totally
Speaker 1: promise we're going to make an even better video game.
Speaker 1: The responses to this post are some of again the
Speaker 1: saddest things I've ever read. One person said, I have
Speaker 1: two Evolved ape, how can I participate heart emoji? Another
Speaker 1: person said I had stupidly got five? How do we
Speaker 1: apply for a spot? And another person said, thanks for
Speaker 1: giving us evolved apes new hope after what happened to
Speaker 1: us much appreciated all of these people. It's remarkable to
Speaker 1: see the same language used by the same people that like, again,
Speaker 1: do these like women's MLM's you know, like Lula Rowe
Speaker 1: and etcetera, that are just like all of boss babes
Speaker 1: just want to see you thrive all love. And it's
Speaker 1: like they think if they use the word love enough,
Speaker 1: like people will just be like, that's sincere. And then
Speaker 1: when you're reading these comments, so it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: people do believe that. That's what's fucking sad. Yeah, and god,
Speaker 1: they're all just so. So there's another one of these
Speaker 1: fucking scams is called Lazy Lions, and it's just again
Speaker 1: it's like the same lion drawing with slight differences, like
Speaker 1: there's a link to it here and there's dollars a
Speaker 1: bunch of them and they like they look like this.
Speaker 1: They just all it's so fucking lazy, Like again with
Speaker 1: the promise finally getting paid, like The art is just
Speaker 1: so consistently shitty with this stuff. Like some of these
Speaker 1: are selling for like thousand ether Yeah, I like that
Speaker 1: has more than this. The the lazy lions, there's not
Speaker 1: even an artist. They're algorithmically generated. Yeah, you can tell
Speaker 1: fucking lions are bullshit. You're not even paying for something
Speaker 1: a guy drew, like it's just a computer generated a
Speaker 1: shitty drawing of a of a lion wearing like a
Speaker 1: fucking catcher's uniform or some bullshit. You're disrespecting yourself for money.
Speaker 1: This is shameful. This is absolutely shameful that the garbage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, the it's they're selling for thousands of dollars apiece.
Speaker 1: I think most of the people that I know, like
Speaker 1: most of my friends, spent less on their used cars
Speaker 1: than like a lot of these are selling for. Um uh.
Speaker 1: It's just incredibly sad to see someone posting about how
Speaker 1: excited they are they bought a shitty d srwing of
Speaker 1: a lion generated by a computer for as much money
Speaker 1: as they could have spent on like a used Prius
Speaker 1: that would have lasted them ten years. Like it's just
Speaker 1: and of course in doing it, they're pissing carbon into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere at a huge rate UM, which is also
Speaker 1: awesome because again, all n f T s that they're
Speaker 1: in the ether blockchain UM at the moment, the total
Speaker 1: amount of power generated in order to you know, run
Speaker 1: the Ethereum blockchain is comparable to the power consumption of
Speaker 1: the nation of Bangladesh. Oh yeah, a little yeah, famously
Speaker 1: small country, Bangladesh, with a population of a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty four million people. Yeah, just tiny, just tiny, little baby,
Speaker 1: little Bangladesh, half the population of the United States. Quench
Speaker 1: a little baby bash. Yeah. Ethereum is has a carbon
Speaker 1: footprint comparable to the nation of New Zealand, which is great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Every single Ethereum transaction is equivalent to the power consumption
Speaker 1: of an average US household over six days. Um. So
Speaker 1: that's that's cool. Hey, it uses slightly less power than Chile,
Speaker 1: So that's good. Yeah, slightly less power than an Asian
Speaker 1: at Chile. You're always saying that, Oh God, so I
Speaker 1: don't know what are you? What are you? What are
Speaker 1: you doing? What are you doing? What are we all doing?
Speaker 1: To me? Personally, I am slowly dying and pretending that
Speaker 1: there's some good that I can do while I'm here
Speaker 1: and trying to do the good. What are you doing? Um,
Speaker 1: I'm that, but not trying to pretend to do good anymore,
Speaker 1: just trying to just trying to make enough money to
Speaker 1: buy a house and then hide from the rest of
Speaker 1: the world forever because I love that for you. What
Speaker 1: what else are you going to do? What? What else
Speaker 1: are you going to do? After realizing this sheer mass
Speaker 1: of human ingenuity and the enormous amount of resources that
Speaker 1: are going into getting some guy rich for selling algorithmically
Speaker 1: generated lion drawings. No, yeah, it's bleak. So I want
Speaker 1: to end by reading something from the book Attack of
Speaker 1: the fifty Foot Blockchain. It's called a Bitcoin fact, you know,
Speaker 1: f a Q, and it's what opens the book. Question
Speaker 1: number one? Should I buy bitcoins? Answer no? Question number two?
Speaker 1: But I keep seeing all this stuff in the news
Speaker 1: about them, and how answer no. Tech journalism is uniformly terrible.
Speaker 1: Always remember this question three. How does it work? It
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense? No, it really doesn't. It's impossible
Speaker 1: to accurately explain bitcoin and anything less than mine numbingly
Speaker 1: boring technical terms, so you should probably just not worry
Speaker 1: about it. Um. I could have written that, and I
Speaker 1: know nothing about bitcoin other than it's a scam, and
Speaker 1: I think that's what we all know now. Great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn enough about bitcoin to
Speaker 1: argue with the people who love bitcoin and explain in
Speaker 1: detail why they're dumb, I do recommend David Gerard's attack
Speaker 1: of the fifty ft blockchain. But if you just want
Speaker 1: to continue to be like, yeah, Bitcoin seems stupid as shit,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get involved, that's also fine. I
Speaker 1: kind of feel like I want to read this book.
Speaker 1: It's good just get into arguments with like men I
Speaker 1: hate at bars and get them to buy me drinks
Speaker 1: because I'm right, I mean fucking bitcoin or whatever exactly.
Speaker 1: But like normally I do way less work for that.
Speaker 1: But like you know, pandemic made me feel lonely. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we're all there. Well, so if you sure, thank you, Robert.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at the
Speaker 1: Sophia so f I y A, and you can listen
Speaker 1: to my two podcasts, one about love and sex around
Speaker 1: the world called Private Parts Unknown, and the other one
Speaker 1: about nine called four twenty Fiance with Miles Gray from
Speaker 1: The Daily Saygeist. Miles Gray from the dayly sitegeist. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's right, all right, Well, that's gonna do it for
Speaker 1: us this week. It's gonna do it for you too.
Speaker 1: So don't listen to any other podcasts until we drop
Speaker 1: another episode. Go home, throw your phone in the river.
Speaker 1: Attack infrastructure to stop other people from listening to podcasts
Speaker 1: until we drop another episode. Whoa we just I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: This is Sophia. We just sailed in from the future,
Speaker 1: which is actually still the past to you listening to this,
Speaker 1: but is the future to us who recorded this episode initially. Sophia,
Speaker 1: how was the time I'm stream treating you? Um a little.
Speaker 1: I'm a little sick from the time travel. Honestly, I'll
Speaker 1: be honest with you. We we got to meet George
Speaker 1: Carlin though. That was neat, that was dope, unexpected, unexpected. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he we told him about a bunch of bad ship
Speaker 1: and he did not seem surprised. Um. No, he was, however,
Speaker 1: surprised that you can still be a rapist and a comedian.
Speaker 1: He was like, ha, I thought, surely, no, Okay, Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: good times. I We're coming. We're hopping in here. At
Speaker 1: the end of our last episode, because there's some stuff
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't read last time that I wanted
Speaker 1: to make a note of because it's kind of important
Speaker 1: for understanding what's happening with n f T s UM,
Speaker 1: because I would cru yeah, pretty cruize. I want to
Speaker 1: get across, like what's actually lead going on, because we
Speaker 1: talked about like how it's a con and like how
Speaker 1: how bad an investment it is, and how much of
Speaker 1: like the claims being maybe I'm any of the people
Speaker 1: involved air grifters, but I don't think we really got
Speaker 1: at I think I think the episode as it is
Speaker 1: could leave people with the opinion that like, well, maybe
Speaker 1: this is like a Pokemon thing, right, where like it
Speaker 1: seems dumb to a lot of people, but it has
Speaker 1: legs for years and years and years and years because
Speaker 1: there's just some great need to own like little pictures
Speaker 1: of monkeys that you pay absurd amounts of money for UM,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to I think the context that's lacking
Speaker 1: is like money laundering UM, and why like how how
Speaker 1: n f T s relate to money laundering UM? For
Speaker 1: years and for decades really since World War Two, one
Speaker 1: of the best ways to launder money has been to
Speaker 1: invest in art um And there's a good quote from
Speaker 1: Natural Law Review that I'm going to read that kind
Speaker 1: of explains how the art industry works in terms of
Speaker 1: like being a money laundering vehicle. Um art is an
Speaker 1: attractive vehicle to launder money. It can be hidden or
Speaker 1: some ugle. Transactions often are private, and prices can be
Speaker 1: subjective and manipulated, as well as extremely high. Once purchased,
Speaker 1: the art can disappear from view for years, even decades.
Speaker 1: A lot of the art bought at auctions goes to
Speaker 1: Freeport's ultra secure warehouses for the collections of millionaires and billionaires,
Speaker 1: ranging from picassos and gold to vintage ferraris and fine wine.
Speaker 1: The free ports which exist in Switzerland, Luxembourg and Singapore
Speaker 1: offer a variety of tax advantages because the goods stored
Speaker 1: in them are technically in transit. The Economist magazine Switzerland,
Speaker 1: I know, right, come on there. Since fucking World War Two,
Speaker 1: you fucking bastard, they are the top of the global
Speaker 1: grift chain. Absolutely, God damnit, beautiful country. Good on you, Switzerland. Look,
Speaker 1: someone had to be the best at it, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's not the United States. Chocolate's not even that good.
Speaker 1: Sons of No, it's not. It's absolutely not. Although it's
Speaker 1: a it's beautiful country to fly into. Um. So the
Speaker 1: the economist estimates that the freeport at Geneva, by the way,
Speaker 1: speaking of Switzer alone has a hundred billion dollars in
Speaker 1: just us art um and yeah us that's a lot
Speaker 1: of art. Yeah. And the benefit of art is that
Speaker 1: it can be sold privately and anonymously to other buyers.
Speaker 1: It's not like a gun. It's not even like a car,
Speaker 1: like there's not a lot of registration. Most art never
Speaker 1: even leaves the warehouse after the sale is completed, again
Speaker 1: for tax reasons. And it's basically just a vehicle for
Speaker 1: transferring money in a lot of ways and laundering money
Speaker 1: from like you know, one one like center of your business,
Speaker 1: or like one of your accounts through another because there's
Speaker 1: just there. For for a while at least, there was
Speaker 1: not scrutiny on it. And art became really popular for
Speaker 1: laundering money when they started the government, like d as
Speaker 1: a result of the War on drugs, started cracking down
Speaker 1: more on other traditional methods of money laundering. It's all
Speaker 1: like in an extra way, because art only exists if
Speaker 1: you're experiencing it. Yeah, and it's the most a mental
Speaker 1: thing you can do to a piece of our other
Speaker 1: than destroying it, is to just keep it in a
Speaker 1: warehouse so no one ever sees it. It's as if
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist. Yeah, it's fucked up, and they're just
Speaker 1: doing it like this beautiful work that has inspired like
Speaker 1: and it's the fun up thing is that, Like, because
Speaker 1: art inspires emotional experiences, because people react strongly to it,
Speaker 1: it has cash value. And because it has cash value,
Speaker 1: but it's not really a thing that's often been governed
Speaker 1: in the same way as other things, Like you can
Speaker 1: kind of you can manipulate it, like you can agree, hey,
Speaker 1: i'm gonna sell this if you buy it for this much.
Speaker 1: We can both funnel money into that purchase of the yard.
Speaker 1: Nobody's gonna question that some crazy rich person thought that
Speaker 1: this painting was worth a hundred million even though it
Speaker 1: only been worth twenty million before. And then we get
Speaker 1: to launder more money through this transaction to this freeport
Speaker 1: where nothing has taxed because it's technically in transit. It's
Speaker 1: like this whole game. And I should note that like
Speaker 1: that is how it has been for a while. I
Speaker 1: think within the last decade, there have been some significant
Speaker 1: legal steps taken that have made it more difficult to
Speaker 1: launder money this way. I think it still happens at
Speaker 1: a pretty significant scale, but like it got harder, and
Speaker 1: it's it got harder, and like right, as kind of
Speaker 1: like when other money laundering stuff got shut down, art
Speaker 1: became the center of money laundering. As it became harder
Speaker 1: to launder money through art, n f t s hit
Speaker 1: the stage and that's what they're being used for. And
Speaker 1: so a lot of the times when you see like
Speaker 1: these as we were talking about this, like oh this
Speaker 1: this shitty a bit drawing of a dude sold for
Speaker 1: sixty grand, or like this monkeys sold for eighteen million dollars,
Speaker 1: and it's like just one of ten thousand unique, almost
Speaker 1: unique monkey drawings. What the hell is happening? Well, what's
Speaker 1: happening is somebody has a pile of money and multiple wallets.
Speaker 1: Because while the blockchain absolutely like registers every transaction, it
Speaker 1: doesn't you don't necessarily know that those are individual different people.
Speaker 1: It could be one guy trading stuff between wallets, so
Speaker 1: he buys an n f T for a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and you can artificially inflate it doing that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So you buy an n f T for a thousand,
Speaker 1: and then you have another account by it for five thousand,
Speaker 1: and then another account by it for ten thousand, and
Speaker 1: then or you pay people to help you do that.
Speaker 1: But whatever way, you keep jacking up the price until
Speaker 1: some sucker buys it for a million because he's saying, wow,
Speaker 1: it's doubled in price every two days. Now I can
Speaker 1: flip it in forty eight hours, and then like suddenly,
Speaker 1: there's no buyers because one of the stats that came
Speaker 1: out since we did our last episode UM is that
Speaker 1: uh like more than nine of n f T transactions
Speaker 1: are less than ten percent of people who have n
Speaker 1: f T s UM. It is a vanishingly small number
Speaker 1: of people actually doing transactions, and it's mostly at the
Speaker 1: big level money laundering. The vast majority of n f
Speaker 1: T self or under two hundred bucks, like the ones
Speaker 1: that are selling for huge amounts of money, are money laundering.
Speaker 1: And one of the pieces of evidence of this is
Speaker 1: that the biggest n f T sale, which was about
Speaker 1: half a billion dollars recently was it was found later
Speaker 1: the person who bought it transferred the n f T
Speaker 1: back to the original wall, or transfer the money that
Speaker 1: he paid for the n f T back to the
Speaker 1: original wallet. So it was clearly just some guy using
Speaker 1: half a billion dollars in tiptoe to buy his own
Speaker 1: n f T from himself, paying a few thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in gas fees um and doing that so that now
Speaker 1: this is in a n f T that's worth half
Speaker 1: a billion dollars, and that's good for this specific n
Speaker 1: f T, but it also raises the profile of the
Speaker 1: whole industry and makes people more likely it brings in
Speaker 1: more suckers. You know, it's just advertising for the suckers.
Speaker 1: That's what was happening with people's thing. It's it's make
Speaker 1: people think that there's a gold rush, so they rush
Speaker 1: in and spend money on monkey drawings that they're never
Speaker 1: able to liquidate. Anyway, that's the context I thought was needed. Um,
Speaker 1: I think that's really important. And thank you Robert for
Speaker 1: being so thorough. I'm just obsessed with this stuff lately.
Speaker 1: He's a good man and thorough. He is extremely obsessed
Speaker 1: with this stuff lately. That's how he starts all our
Speaker 1: meetings with the fun fact. I can't it's the only
Speaker 1: thing I can It's stupid and terrible, but it's the
Speaker 1: only stupid, terrible thing I can read about that I'm
Speaker 1: not depressed at the end. I just think it's really funny.
Speaker 1: It makes me sad because a lot of the people
Speaker 1: that I'm friends with our pushing this narrative that like,
Speaker 1: if you don't invest in this, you're an idiot, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, you're gonna have other idiots listening to you
Speaker 1: who don't have a safety net of mommy and daddy,
Speaker 1: and then they'll be pretty fucked. So yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: good ship