Episodios
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This is a very special episode of the NFT Stories Podcast for two reasons:
One, this is the first time we’re dropping an episode with NFT creators while there is a drop currently going. That is, if you’re listening on June 21st. And if not, reminder, episodes are every Tuesday.
And two, this is the first time we’re dropping an episode with an NFT project that I actually worked on.
In my previous life, I was a comedian who also happened to get a film degree. This turned out to be my biggest blessing and curse.
It was a blessing because I graduated right at the start of the digital revolution. I didn’t need to travel to film festivals to get 50 people to view my short film. YouTube would host for free and get me hundreds of views. Okay, maybe 50 is about right, but still, no travel.
And it was a curse because I quickly learned my ability to shoot and edit digital video, mostly on MiniDV tapes at the time, meant I would be spending a lot more time behind the camera than in front.
Hence my career in digital media instead of hanging out in Will Ferrell’s entourage.
I stayed tied into the comedy community throughout the years and, along with my friend Jordan Pomaville and Sam Kimbrell, we started thinking about how web3 may be able to re-create the feeling of a comedy club online.
The result: minting every word as a one-of-one NFT, giving each one a funny definition and pronunciation, then using the words in comedic fill-in-the-blank game shows on Twitch to bring the community together, with plenty of funny and weird airdrops along the way.
So let’s dive into the story behind this project Own Every Word, or, if you want to check it out for yourself, go to owneveryword.com.
FOR MORE INFO:
Phil Ranta's Twitter: https://twitter.com/philranta
Podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/NFTStoriesPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuexPh0bx-6jXQMRv3iq1g
Copyright 2022 - We Are Verified, LLC
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This episode is going to be a bit different. I had the honor of speaking to Mack Flavelle, co-founder of the first explosively popular NFT project CryptoKitties, worked on Top Shot, and worked on Stoner Cats. Unlike our regular episodes that are edited, sans a few pops and clicks, you’re going to hear our full chat from Mack’s side how the modern day NFT industry was born, through his work today with Bighead Club.
Warning: Mack is an exceptionally charming speaker but he does casually swear and, for the first time on this podcast, you’ll hear me swear as well. If that offends you, please skip to the next episode.
So here he is, in his own words ‘The Kitties part of CryptoKitties’ Mack Flavelle.
FOR MORE INFO:
Phil Ranta's Twitter: https://twitter.com/philranta
Podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/NFTStoriesPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuexPh0bx-6jXQMRv3iq1g
Copyright 2022 - We Are Verified, LLC
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¿Faltan episodios?
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There were loads of easy ways to make money during the dotcom bubble in the 90’s.
Folks were buying up domains with common words, slapping together a few pages on a deck about how they’re going to take ‘x’ industry and move it to the internet, and venture capitalists were screaming, “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!”
Financial magazines and newspapers at the time were absolutely effusive about the potential, further inflating already incredible valuations. I can tell you from experience, nothing turns a venture capitalist from a skeptic into an expert like reading one Wall Street Journal article about it.
And what happened? Starting in 1999, many of these companies starting missing their growth projections, some that IPOed had their stock prices plummet, founders with poor business acumen were revealed, and the glory days of ‘free money’ started coming to an end.
But what came out of that boom? Those with strong businesses were able to weather the storm. Amazon went from book seller to juggernaut in the ecommerce business. As did eBay. And Shutterfly. And Priceline. So many names we still rely on today.
And how did this happen?
Simply: they were built to be sustainable businesses.
There are a lot of similarities to web3. Now that we’re seeing our first post-Crypto Winter NFT apocalypse, many projects have had to re-think their roadmap. Money isn’t as free anymore. And speculators are feeling less spendy.
The term ‘rug pull’, meaning an NFT project abandoning their roadmap after their mint, is now being attributed to plenty of projects that likely launched with good intentions.
So how do you as a collector, company, or creator do your best not to fall apart when the crypto market tanks?
MetaAngels NFT has done just that. I got a chance to chat with Alexandra Cavoulacos, CEO and co-founder of MetaAngels. Now this isn’t the kind of project you’re seeing all over the press, but they’ve melded the model of an incubator and a web3 community, backed by business professionals with a background running successful businesses. And Alex had incredible advice to share on how projects that are looking beyond the ‘cash grab’ can approach the market.
As always, this is not financial advice, buy any NFT at your own peril, and don’t gamble with money you aren’t ready to set on fire. Even if it’s digital money.
So let’s go to web3 business school with Alex.
FOR MORE INFO:
Phil Ranta's Twitter: https://twitter.com/philranta
Podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/NFTStoriesPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuexPh0bx-6jXQMRv3iq1g
Copyright 2022 - We Are Verified, LLC
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NFTs are built on blockchains and blockchains use coins to facilitate transactions. And right now, the coin market is way, way down.
This could actually be viewed as a good thing. One of the biggest complaints about Ethereum, one of the most popular blockchains for NFTs that hosts megabrands Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, used to cost between $50 and $150 in ‘gas fees’, which means a payment you need to make just to cover the costs of a transaction. Now, you can regularly make an Ethereum transaction for less than $10.
For people who want a lower barrier to entry to the market, this is great. Everything is on sale.
But what about the voices BEHIND these coins. Afterall, there are a lot of people making a lot of money from these chains. As we mentioned in the last episode, the co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, announced that he’s no longer a billionaire due to this downturn. I’m not shedding a tear for someone losing a comma, but those representing smaller chains may be struggling a bit harder.
Does this mean the party is over for the little guys? Is this a market correction that will push out the upstarts and ensure dominance to those with the funding to weather the storm? Or is this time for the builders to come out of the woodwork so they can hit the next period of explosive growth.
I wanted to get the story first-hand from someone who lives in the more ‘start up’ sector of the blockchain world. Hayden, not his real name since he is not doxxed, is one of the leading voices in HOGE coin, which has built a strong community around not just coin sales, but retro gaming using NFTs, esports, and web3 information sharing. He’s one of my go-tos for the ‘word on the street’ in this space.
Warning: Hayden is really, really heads down so he gets a bit jargony. There’s no shame in pausing the podcast to Google a term. A few important ones: defi means ‘decentralized finance’ which is a blanket term for using blockchain-based coins like money. Farming and staking are ways to invest these coins for a return, think of gaining interest from a savings account.
Now let’s get building with the HOGE master.
FOR MORE INFO:
Phil Ranta's Twitter: https://twitter.com/philranta
Podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/NFTStoriesPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuexPh0bx-6jXQMRv3iq1g
Copyright 2022 - We Are Verified, LLC
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A lot of people just lost a lot of money in the cryptocurrency and NFT market.
It’s pretty bleak in a lot of sectors right now. Inflation is out of control globally. Gas prices are at an all time high, though in America it’s not nearly as high as many places overseas that depended on Russian oil, and food prices have spiked. For those playing the stock market, tech stocks have crumbled. Coinbase in particular is down $51 billion in valuation.
And for those who were hedging their investments with cryptocurrency, they felt the pain too. Bitcoin is down 53%. Ethereum’s co-founds says he’s no longer a billionaire after the crash. And for those poor, poor souls that invested in the now-ironically named stablecoins from Terra including the popular Luna, that went to zero.
Ouch.
But what about NFTs? Let’s just say many are on sale. And that’s not a good thing for collectors. Let me explain.
Let’s say you have a Bored Ape that’s worth 100 Ether. If Ether is at $4,800, its peak, that means your ape is worth $480,000. But at the time of this writing Ether is at around $2,000, meaning your ape is worth $200,000. Add that to the falling price of ApeCoin and you’re seeing a lot of boredom turn to depression.
But as Jonathan Sacks once said ‘When others are selling, buy. When others are buying, sell.”
I don’t want to offer any financial advice as I’m not much of a gambler, but I wanted to wrap my head around what this bear market, often dubbed a crypto winter, means for the crypto and NFT markets.
So I turned to my friend Seth Shapiro, a two-time Emmy winner, a former governor at the Television academy, and one of the first guys that got me into both crypto and NFTs well before they were household topics. He’s spent the past few years advising companies in these spaces and works as a trader, so he’s looked at all angles of this topic.
FOR MORE INFO:
Phil Ranta's Twitter: https://twitter.com/philranta
Podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/NFTStoriesPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuexPh0bx-6jXQMRv3iq1g
Copyright 2022 - We Are Verified, LLC
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The year was 1990 and I, 8 year old Phil Ranta, was going through my regular Friday night routine at Blockbuster of renting a Nintendo game that I could play non-stop until school on Monday, or at least as much as possible before my brother booted me off of the system so he could play Tecmo Super Bowl.
Now when you’re 8, decision-making tactics are a bit different. I knew I liked Mega Man. I knew Mega Man games had a frame around the box with a red Capcom logo at the top. So when I saw a box with the same logo, I assumed it had to be decent. That game: Yo! Noid, the game based on Domino Pizza’s mascot.
It was….fine. I probably went out and played with the neighbor kids. Sadly.
But Domino’s knew what they were doing. Kids were playing Nintendo all day every day. Kids eat a lot of pizza. Get them to play a branded game and maybe they’ll spend more time telling their parents to order Domino’s despite the Ninja Turtles Pizza Hut relationship.
And now we have the metaverse, where the promise is the dynamism and real-time interaction of social media with the stickiness of gaming. So much like Domino’s in 1990, the brands want to stay in front of this trend.
We’ve seen Taco Bell drop an NFT collection, we’ve seen Nike sell virtual shoes, and Samsung building stores in Decentraland. I wanted to figure out how you even start to talk to a brand about this. Is it all about the press? Do they goal against it like other digital marketing? And who actually builds this stuff?
Our guest Christopher Neff, that’s who. As the VP of Creative Technology and Innovation at the community, he guided Samsung 837X, a Decentraland experience with games, NFTs, and a lot of buzz. Avoid the Noid, but don’t miss this conversation.
FOR MORE INFO:
Host Twitter: https://twitter.com/philranta
Show Twitter: https://twitter.com/NFTStoriesPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuexPh0bx-6jXQMRv3iq1g
Copyright 2022 - We Are Verified, LLC
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If we’ve learned nothing else from the past week in the NFT market: it’s all a gamble. Monetary value can come and go in the blink of an ape’s eye. For those who are holders for the long term or in it for the utility or community, they may not have noticed, but for those who were hoping to build generational wealth…they’re having a very, very bad time.
So what better time to talk about how NFTs are used in gambling.
But I’m not talking about NFT value speculation or ‘am I going to mint a common PFP or a legendary’. I mean Vegas-style, double down, let it ride kind of gambling.
If you’ve ever been to Las Vegas, you’ve surely seen every casino have their own loyalty card. The longer you gamble, the more likely you are to get a free breakfast or a comped room. And it’s a great deal for the casino. If you drop $1,500 playing blackjack, they should probably buy you some pancakes.
So why not reward in NFTs? Create a hierarchy for loyal customers that can ‘rank up’ based on spend so they can get the best perks? And is this going to be the norm or is this too confusing for the market?
David Son and MC Tang from Luckmon are trying to hit the jackpot in this market. They’re already raised $600k to rule gambling in the web3 space. They’re exceptionally thoughtful in the space, and for those of you who have lost big over the past few weeks, maybe you should look them up and bet the rest on black. You can learn more here: https://www.luckmon.com/
FOR MORE INFO:
Host Twitter: https://twitter.com/philranta
Show Twitter: https://twitter.com/NFTStoriesPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuexPh0bx-6jXQMRv3iq1g
Copyright 2022 - We Are Verified, LLC
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Celebrities are all over the blockchain space. From Logan Paul combining Pokemon box breaks and NFTs to Matt Damon implying you’re a coward if you don’t buy on a Crypto.com, it feels like a matter of time before they all have their play. But to complicate matters, the hardcore NFT community is pretty hard on traditional celebrities.
Some of that is deserved. Adult film star Lana Rhoades sold $1.5 million in NFTs before announcing she’s shutting down the program shortly thereafter. Diehard NFT and crypto enthusiasts can’t get away with that if they ever want to work in the space again. But as this subculture graduates to ‘culture’, celebrities will naturally catch up. But is that right around the corner or far out on the horizon?
I talked to Ishmilly who brought Floyd Mayweather into the NFT space after becoming enamored with the space after seeing the success of Top Shot, then becoming an early owner of a Bored Ape. In the past year, Ishmilly has become a leading creative director in the NFT space for celebrities, brands, and his own projects. We talk about everything from music blockchain projects to working with The Wolf of Wall Street to owning an impressive collection of 1,500 NFTs. It’s a rare window into the front lines of what the A-list is thinking about this space.
FOR MORE INFO:
Host Twitter: https://twitter.com/philranta
Show Twitter: https://twitter.com/NFTStoriesPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuexPh0bx-6jXQMRv3iq1g
Copyright 2022 - We Are Verified, LLC
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Not surprisingly, NFTs being birthed from internet insiders, marijuana is all over these marketplaces. But this isn't just a bunch of basement-dwelling stoners. The cannabis industry is experiencing an absolute boom with legalization and a lot of incredible projects are using NFT technology to help build community and utility within this already tight-knit community.
But is it just hype? Are artists riding on the cool factor of weed so they can sell more pictures of stoned animal PFPs then disappear as soon as they sell out? Some, sure. But I doubt Mila Kunis is going to do that with her hit project Stoner Cats, particularly after selling $8 million on their first mint. There's something here, and I wanted to talk to one of the entrepreneurs who are hoping to make some green while advancing the cannabis industry.
Thank you to the NugFTs team for taking time out of their ramp up to launch for this interview. The project is now out in the world, so if you want to partake, you can buy an NFT here: https://opensea.io/collection/nugfts
FOR MORE INFO:
Host Twitter: https://twitter.com/philranta
Show Twitter: https://twitter.com/NFTStoriesPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuexPh0bx-6jXQMRv3iq1g
Copyright 2022 - We Are Verified, LLC
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The metaverse has been all over the tech news sites lately, particularly as of October 28, 2021 when Facebook changed their name to Meta as they doubled-down on a metaverse strategy. Metaverse technologies have also been looped into the conversations with NFTs and cryptocurrency as start ups imagine interoperable goods, or items that can be used on multiple platforms. It’s a series of new worlds with new economies, new rules, and new rulers.
I wanted to crack this space, so I reached out to Nancy Beaton, SVP of Strategy and Blockchain at Together Labs and SVP of Strategy and Marketing at MetaJuice. She does it all in the metaverse space: building a metaverse called IMVU, managing digital currencies like VCOIN, and building NFT and blockchain strategies for digital fashion and other indicators of digital identity. But I’ll let her explain this wild new market in her own words.
Thank you to Nancy Beaton for sharing the Together Labs roadmap of the metaverse and digital identities.
FOR MORE INFO:
Host Twitter: https://twitter.com/philranta
Show Twitter: https://twitter.com/NFTStoriesPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuexPh0bx-6jXQMRv3iq1g
Copyright 2022 - We Are Verified, LLC
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Ubisoft announced a move into NFTs and got dragged so hard on Twitter they had to recant in two short hours. Square Enix announced an exploration into NFTs and started trending immediately, and not in a good way. Major gaming companies learned their lesson: gamers hate NFTs.
But why? Gamers have been buying billions a year in downloadable content. How is this different?
I decided to talk to one of the smartest guys I know in blockchain gaming, Elliot Wainman, CEO of SuperFarm. The company has a token, a NFT marketplace, a gaming SDK, a game developer, and he's YouTube celebrity who goes by the moniker Elliotrades. He’s also a bit of an NFT sensei to me. He started talking to me about NFTs in January 2021 when I still only knew them as ‘blockchain collectibles’. He’s also the first guy who ever told me about farming, DAOs, and lots of other ubiquitous terms. In other words, he knows where things are going. So no better person to hear more about what the industry may be missing when it comes to gamers.
Thank you to Elliot for an amazing interview, and for his patience as this interview was recorded a bit over 2 months ago.
FOR MORE INFO:
Host Twitter: https://twitter.com/philranta
Show Twitter: https://twitter.com/NFTStoriesPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuexPh0bx-6jXQMRv3iq1g
Copyright 2022 - We Are Verified, LLC
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The Bored Ape Yacht Club is the most exclusive community in the NFT world, so who's in it and how did they get there?
We all know the big names: Justin Bieber, LaMelo Ball, Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, Stephen Curry, Mark Cuban, The Weeknd, but when the project first launched plenty of regular folks like you and me bought one for a few hundred bucks. Many of them are still taking the ride.
In this episode of the NFT Stories Podcast, we chat with 10 ape holders who answer the same 4 questions:
• What's your name?
• When did you get your ape and what was the price?
• What went into your decision to get your ape?
• How has owning an ape changed your life?
The answers were as varied as the web3 market itself. Where else can a college kid with a bit of luck join the same yacht club as a billionaire heiress?
Thank you so much to the apes that agreed to an interview on an all-new podcast, and to all of the apes who either tried to make the time or declined kindly. The community really is amazing: 11_eleven, Adam Hollander, CryptoChris, SepSauce, Mychal Simka, Sam Simmons, Tommy Farr, Jared, Will Chang, and BoredNelson.eth.
FOR MORE INFO:
Host Twitter: https://twitter.com/philranta
Show Twitter: https://twitter.com/NFTStoriesPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuexPh0bx-6jXQMRv3iq1g
Copyright 2022 - We Are Verified, LLC
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Hi, I’m Phil Ranta, the host of the ‘NFT Stories Podcast’. I’m a longtime digital executive in the creator economy, 2021 LinkedIn Top Voice for Innovation and Tech, and recovering professional comedian.
What the heck are NFTs? It stands for non-fungible token, but you don’t need to know that. They’re digital collectibles. Think baseball cards but digital and they can unlock other value.
Every week we tell another story from this multi-billion dollar market alongside the artists, collectors, companies, and entrepreneurs that are making it all happen. Our goal is to tell stories in a way anyone can understand so don’t worry, if things start getting technically complex, I’ll cut into the story to explain.
How did NFTs hit the scene? How will this affect the future of video games? And why are monkey drawings selling for millions? We’ll take on these stories and more. The first episode drops on February 8, 2022 with new episodes dropping every N-F-Tuesday.
