Original: Taekcast: Ep. 228 - Diving Deep Into The World Of NFTs w/ @Carlini8N
Davis Mattek is joined by one of the world's largest NFT traders and original Cryptokitties trader, Carlini8, to discuss the history of NFTs, how the market has shifted, the cultural awakening to NFTs, and his own personal NFT brand, Purrnelopes Country Club.
Transcript
This transcript is computer generated and has not been proofread.
Speakers: Carlini8 (79%), Davis (9%)
Nothing on the show is meant as financial advice and please do your own research.
Davis Mattek 0:12
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the tea chat. My name is Davis Mattek. You can follow me on Twitter at DavisMattek. This is what I consider to be a very special episode of the show I am joined by at Carlini eight who is a new a new friend to me. I met him through Peter oversights, Discord deposit kingdom, of course you guys should all sign up there and followship chasing and do all that good stuff. But Carlini is essentially one of the world's largest OGS of NFTs you know, all dating all the way back to crypto kitties. Owning hundreds of crypto punks, has the second biggest account on NBA Top Shot distributes his own NFT and it is a properly owned business. As we will discuss in this show. It was a wonderfully interesting conversation. Carlini is one of the more intelligent people who has ever been on the show and has had lots of success in the crypto and NFT space and I think you guys will really enjoy what he has to say if you enjoyed the show. You can get bonus episodes on patreon.com/taekcast or you can just support the show by leaving a rating or review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. Now let's go ahead and get into the episode. Alright everyone very excited to welcome into the show a NFT OG about as OG as it gets. Mr. Carlini you might know him better as Purrlini if you are in the deposit Kingdom inside of Peter overs that's the discord but Mr. Carlini was nice enough to join me and really just tried to educate me on the NFT space because I am I am a boomer I am about as close to not making it as someone can possibly be so thank you very much for joining the show.
Carlini8 2:01
Thanks for having me on.
Davis Mattek 2:04
Yeah, so before we you know get into the weeds Why don't you just give people a little bit of background on your experience with with crypto and with NFTs in general.
Carlini8 2:14
So crypto it was I can't remember exactly when but I did mine mine some bitcoin all I know from I've had I've had for years in NFT so my my memory is completely shot at this point. Sure. But all I know is it was in my old house and that was between five and seven years ago. So it was it's in that time and I lost the wallet it was on an old PC that's gone and it was very it was not much so you know when it hit 50k everyone's like Oh Go Go find this wallet I'm sure I was using my gaming PC to mine while I slept. That was that was about the level I was at that time ago 2016 I bought some ETH and I was since since then I've I've been all about ETH over anything else is always utility for me over over the Bitcoin sort of store value gold revolution, sort of levels and then got into NFTs 2017 December with crypto Kitties and have never really left since 16,000 transactions on my main wallet probably over 500 wallets just for various different things two companies and yeah, NFTS NFTS probably for the foreseeable future.
Unknown Speaker 3:50
Well, we are definitely going to get into all of that because I have lots of questions about maintaining 500 wallets and and the companies and everything but I would be remiss if at the beginning of the show because I know I have my my fellow Boomer coin friends who listen to the show as well. I am I am a boomer coiner at least in the sense of I mean I of course I hold both. And I've been buying Ethereum and holding Ethereum for a long time. But most people's initial foray though this is different now with NFT's I actually think for the first time in the existence of crypto people's first foray is coming via Ethereum as opposed to Bitcoin. What specifically you know, do you do you remember the moment of being like, oh yeah, this is way better or this is what sells me on Ethereum I'm much more than you know, the very limited practical applications of Bitcoin.
Carlini8 4:44
I guess was fully sold with my first NFT with crypto kitties I was so I must have a year and a half or so of buying ETH over Bitcoin. So I had I mined Bitcoin I held Bitcoin and ice Still had Bitcoin when I first bought ETH but there was just, it was around chip coin mania, I guess was around that time and it's just just so much more to do like, you buy bitcoin but it's hard to earn more Bitcoin unless you're a trader. Yeah. Whereas ETH you can go off you can you can do your homework at whatever time is going on and try it. You can obviously lose ETH as well you can then try and make more there's just more to talk about it's just generally more exciting so you know Bitcoin you know, I have some it's the it's the investment that I can't really talk too much about because I'm just too busy. I remember hyping up well not hyping up but like being excited about omg
Davis Mattek 5:52
the Oh yeah, Amis go tokens
Carlini8 5:55
super, super computer of the future and I can't even remember what else there was.
Unknown Speaker 6:03
There was there was a lot that 2017 That 2017 Mania period, I actually kind of think of that as like my favorite time in crypto because you know, I obviously I had less money overall then and you know, less financial obligation. So like every day the price swinging or the price going up felt absolutely monumental. And it's it's a little bit less so now, but also around that same time. I remember the crypto kitties thing and I remember people talking about breeding them and like, Oh, someone spent $1.1 million on a crypto kitty but for whatever reason, even on you know, crypto shows like crypto podcasts that I listened to back then and everything they didn't get into the specifics of how non fungible tokens work nearly as much like It's like people were much less interested in the mechanics and the Ethereum part of it and they were kind of just treating it you know, like Neo pets or something. So what was your crypto kitties experience like?
Carlini8 7:04
Well, my my main wallet was the when you look back at the stats it was the second biggest breeder of cats in December 2017 And I have multiple wallets so as potentially I know who the who the number one wallet breeder was I don't know if he used multiple wallets back then but was potentially the main breeder of 2017 I guess. Because the UI was so bad just everything was so bad that you couldn't filter when it all first started that I was setting up all these cat breeding farms on different wallets and that's where my different wallets started. You gas was so low most of the time that you could just filter your NFTs by just sending them to a different wallet because it was so cheap. Crypto kitties did get a lot of bad press for quotes killing Ethereum which they they took gas to a level that people just accept as normal now, but back then crazy like I gas touched gas touched 100 That that killed a farrier. Whereas now Oh, it's only 100 Nothing's going on. I guess. It drops hit free 1000s now 4000 I think I've seen on a few and no one's saying anything's killing Ethereum and it's just how how far, far we've come with it all I guess. But I was just breeding. I was buying crypto kitties breeding them and selling them and just just looking at the ETH pile up it was purely it was like an addicting game as making money. But also enjoying it because there was so much so much in mystery back then. Like right now. Right?
Davis Mattek 8:56
Right now there'll
Carlini8 8:58
be like five tools instantly up, like oh, this is these are the rarest ones breed these. This will come out. But there was enough that you had to do like, backed up Google Spreadsheets of ones and zeros and it was all hacked together. It was it was effectively the first I'm sure something called pop up like someone will say our theory was the first NFT game. Crypto kitties was the first NFT game that anyone really played and it was pretty much the the first. It was the first NFT mania. I guess crypto punks had a few 100 People crypto kitties was in the 1000s and was the first to hit 10 for 100,000 wallets interacting with it. So it was a huge jump in the NFT space. Everyone was trying to figure out what was going on people going crazy but 250 Ethereum sales people just thinking, is this real is this money laundering was a lot of a lot of the arguments that you have now just absolutely no stats to back it up. Like there's no history of NFTs. And it was, I'd say if you're just talking about the 2017 Mania, that was hodl time, wasn't it? It was a hodl on tear your shit coins. Let's go to the moon and people buying the expensive crypto kitties had that mentality. And that kind of wrecked them. If you bought cats bred them, if you played the game, you made money. If you came in with a crypto mentality of the time, you did not. You got pretty heavily. It was it was a big bottleneck as the only way for there to be more cats was for people to breed cats. So dapper slash axioms and who then became dapper, had no control. No in Top Shot, they could print more packs when their site was working. In crypto kitties, they released one cat every 15 minutes for a year. Imagine one pack drip for 15 For every frame, and it's for a year. But you could smash the packs together to make another pack. And people would be buying the packs to make more packs. But the cats and that was that was kind of the start of it all for me. And and I'd say I'd say NFTS without. It sounds like a bold claim. But the most important NFT project ever is crypto kitties. And I would have open sea as more important, but I'm not sure if you count them. Because they're not an NFT just to sales place. But to get to your broker. Yeah, yeah. So I'd have them as without them. I don't think we get to where we are today with, you know, 200 million being a normal day. But crypto kitties, I have second as the most important. And that was where it all started for me.
Unknown Speaker 12:14
So I suppose that sort of an interesting question people might have is, you know, crypto punks are revered as the you know, the gold standard of non fungible tokens, right? Floor punks are like, insane. It's like 100 I don't even know it's like something like $120,000. Now for a floor punk. Can we have $5 million punks, and at least part of that thesis is, I guess the idea that they are the first NFT project. So what what? Why do you think that punks are revered as that special kind of what's your thesis statement on why punks are revered is that special? But crypto kitties are not mostly just because it was like a failed like people have such bad taste in their mouth from you know, as crypto crashed in 2017 and 2018. So did the crypto kitties.
Carlini8 13:04
The will be an element of that. Because crypto kitties was a huge funnel effectively, everyone trying to pile in and it bubbled up and you could see it coming beforehand you can even all of the logs are still there you can go back and look at discord messages of people saying look this is this is gonna pop this is gonna go. And unlike people now who say Oh, NFTs are in a bubble. It was just simple game mechanics, you could see it happening. And it was all in one ecosystem. So that would have hurt some people that would have been the first viral NFT or keep some away but still the space was small. crypto pinks says older. So so it's easier for it to work. I mean, it's come out. We had a few years of saying it was the first and then some others popped up and you debate are they actually NFTs and you can you can go pretty deep into what is an NFT what is the first NFT. And if you get too deep you end up with like Roman coins that aren't made properly. So they're all slightly different but they're still tokens and it gets to deep crypto punks, a simple like if you want to know what's good, there's pretty much you know, I could tell you three or four things with crypto kitties. It's so complicated you really have to get in deep and also limited so cryptocurrency has capped to 10 1000s. A couple have been burned. So you're looking at 9996 or five I think it's because kitties is now at 2 million. So it kind of comes into the Pokemon cards sort of phase where there are lots and lots of Pokemon cards, but PSA A Charizard cards first edition 10 They are expensive. Beckett 10s free of them mega expensive energy cards from the new sets really cheap but people who are buying Pokemon cards are generally in they've, they've learned it as kids or whatever it went huge. So they understand what's good and what's supposed to be cheap whereas with crypto kitties we're in a we're in an NFT mentality of floor what's the floor what's the floor crypto kitties are always going to be much like Top Shot you always need entry level to get people in. So when people have to think a bit more to try and figure out oh, what are the what are the good stuff? What I've got a million dollars what do I spend it on? Punks? Easy? cryptokitties much harder. And I guess because crypto kitties tried to do something as ultimately, I guess their target was a billion people on the blockchain ultimately they failed when use that funds to build flow and then top shot so they might still claim to have succeeded but not with crypto kitties. Punks can't fail punks are done. What you get is what you get. You get history with punks. Crypto kiddies should have history. They're the first ERC seven to one they invented the standard got improved slightly afterwards, which is why opensea is so tricky to use with cryptokitties. But because of their history, they should be higher. It's it's fairly easy to figure out what's at least base level good. The founders, they were selling for 250 Ethereum 2017 December. And as of two hours ago, you could get one for 60. So they've depreciated. And one of the first 100 ERC seven two ones, which we still use four years later, a cheaper than a floor punk is cheaper than a rock that was made after crypto kitties probably almost certainly inspired by crypto kitties. Yet the rock is more expensive, because there aren't 2 million small rocks that you then have to think of the big rocks are better. So it's just more complicated. And I guess it's also not as cool looking at you're not going to have one of these cats. Yes, that's true profile picture against a punk.
Unknown Speaker 17:44
Yeah. And so I think something that would be fairly confusing to someone who is, you know, trying to figure out the NFT game like, Oh, should I should I should I buy one of these? Which ones should I buy? The like what you were talking about the rarity? So I mean, this is literally something that I learned this week, like obviously I had heard like, oh, you know, that looks rare. Or you know, I'd heard about traits on Twitter or on podcasts, whatever, like, Oh, that's a really rare trait. You know, the goons with the lava for those are those are the rare ones, or the alien punks. Those are the rare ones. But inside of all of these other algorithmically generated NFT projects, you know, there are different variations of rarity. And they're actually like websites with like rarity tools that will tell you how rare it is. But what if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly with crypto kitties specifically, it was impossible to do that back in 2017. So people really just didn't know what to buy?
Carlini8 18:49
Well, you'd make your own narrative. Right? Because right now we just know, right, they're going to drop then there'll be on rarity tools. And the most expensive ones will be number one, it's it's it's a model that's just played out 16 times a day, for the last three months with every drop. There's there's three or four different tools. For instance, Purrlini are on evaluate market as well as rarity tools. So they, they do it slightly differently. And what I think people don't know is these rarities are subjective. Someone has decided what they deemed to be rarer. And in some of these, it really, you can really tell that they're they're thrown off the pricing because of this one person who has picked how it's going to do it. And then everyone just follows that and it becomes consensus. Because everyone's like, Okay, this is what we do now. Whereas with the first projects with crypto kitties you you would decide, right, I think this is going to do well in three years. And then you tell people and they agree and buy in or they disagree. So like there were just so many different things you could buy. Like imagine if punks didn't only have attributes. But you also had special punks that were saying crypto kitties, this fancies, they look completely different to the normal crypto kitties. And generally, they would be released on Valentine's Day and it will be Cupid or it'll be women's Women's International Day. And it would be some, some famous woman who done something and that would be the cat or Science Day and you'd have a science cat. And there's just so many different fancies, and then there's exclusives and then there's gens. And then there's Gen zeroes. And then there's highest gens. And I had picked, I made an account called low number fancy. And it was. So these fancies are all released as different cats and they're numbered, often one to 250, or 500, back in back in the day. So they're they're limited in themselves. And my goal was always to get the lowest number, it was a bit like you're playing golf. If I bought number one, I'd count that as a hole in one. And I give myself one point. If I got number two, it would be two points. And the lowest number you had was the best. And I had people make these sites that would rank your would rank your fancy collection based on your golf score. And that then set off a whole wave of buying as people competed to have the best score. And when you look back at some of the sales, these will probably never happen again because no one will care. But I wasted so much money on completing this set that I cared about. Because that was my narrative over someone else who was buying founders or so the first 100 All these other different things people were just right. This is what someone I know but palindromes, by all crypto kitties have a number and they were just buying cheap palindromes because they thought someone would care. And now even they don't care. Literally no one in the world cares about them. But that's just the market we were in in 2017 When no one knew what was gonna happen with NFTs and now NFTs a safer bet as they've ever been. There's a there's a set standard people know what to go for you go low number of traits, high number of traits, best rarity, sometimes even worse, Rarity, and then coolest looking. And that's something that crypto kitties never really could do. You don't. But very few people that have been entrenched in crypto kitties. I'm not sure I've ever seen a crypto kitties avatar rocked for more than a month or so.
Unknown Speaker 23:04
Yeah, I don't I don't think that I have either. Okay, so 2017 Bitcoin crest very high for the very first time. Ethereum goes high for the very first time, you know, people who are you know, internet nerds were getting rich. We had all of the crazy Ico stuff. What What was the NFT ecosystem like in you know, crypto winter basically in after after things started crashing and 2018 and 2019? Like, how small did that community go? Were there any projects like what what was trading? What was any of that stuff? Like, you know, basically, when literally no one in the larger world was paying attention.
Carlini8 23:46
It was it was quite a bit like now but on a much smaller scale. So right now we have think today, there's 20 new projects coming out. Back then 2018 You'd get maybe one a week. And the issue was these weren't copy and paste. It's like these were mostly something different. And it was actually quite interesting looking at a new project and going Okay, so what's their what's their angle here? And because of how small the community was, you really did have to try and make it different because at one point it felt like the only buyers was one discord was on Discord called crypto NFT gaming or something along those lines, which I think is still open now. And if it was if a project was liked by those people, it did well. Bear in mind at the start of crypto winter, this was pre open sea pretty much so you had different mechanics because you you wouldn't be buying an NFT and selling it. You would be back then a huge thing was dividends. So, right now as like hash masks, we saw it with them, they had a FOMO ramp. And as, as people as more people bought in the price got more and more expensive. Now, if you imagine that happening, but as the price got more expensive, all of that went to the buyers before. So if you bought whatever it was number one, and someone bought number two, the devs would get exactly the same amount per buy. But then the price increase would go to person one. And as the third one is bought the price increase, we'll go to number two, and one. So you're not trying to sell your NFTs, you're trying to get enough people to buy in after you that you get your money back. And that was that was maybe two months of that. What I remember is a project called crypto celebrities that went pretty big. It was effectively, you know, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Satoshi it was just a mug shot of them. And you would buy it, and then it would automatically relist at a certain percentage higher think it was 10%. And you're then holding the bag until someone buys that from you. And then it automatically goes higher. And it was actually quite hard to sell lower. So you were it was it was a hot potato time where a lot of a lot of things came out like that. Where if if it was not bought back, you were you were screwed. I remember I had Alison Brie from well, I know her from community. Yeah, community. Yeah, I think fingerboard Annie for reef, and then she automatically was listed at five or something. And I this was quite a bit of quite a bit of my role at that time. I didn't I didn't start with much in cryptokitties. And I spent a lot of my money buying these number one and fancy cats that I shilled myself into. And then I'm just sitting there thinking, what if the music dies now it's not like I can relist lower. You just literally no one buys it and it's done. I have I must have from back in the day, I must have a I think I own the White House. I don't think anyone's told the president but I paid 7 ETH for that. No one's bought it from me.
Davis Mattek 27:39
And the floor was literally zero. They kept like you like it was either it would sell at the extended price, right? The higher price or literally it was completely illiquid, like, you just you could not sell it for half of what you bought it for?
Carlini8 27:53
Well, I think technically, it's been listed for eight Aetherium for three years now. Maybe four. So I think I'm out of luck. And I'm fairly sure the website is dead. And it would take a lot of contract digging to even find it let alone buy it. So yeah, it's it's zero. I'm sure there's a way to now that I could list it for say an ETH. And probably just say hey guys, look how old this is. And you know, we've how crazy things are. Someone might buy it. But back back then. Yeah, the only way is you hold on to this forever, or someone buys it from you at the higher price. So I'm pretty sure so I actually went on to the crypto celebrities a few few weeks ago, pretty sure Elon Musk is still up there about 140 Ethereum he was he was the most pumped so just to still sitting there never to be bought. So I think
Unknown Speaker 28:54
that's fair. I mean that's fairly interesting. And I guess like that mechanic inside of a marketplace would work very well for the people who are investing in it until it wouldn't right because I mean everyone everyone's happy until the music stops whether that be you know some sort of financial panic in general people becoming less interested in NFTS or in Ethereum as a whole I suppose. So when did when did no opensea come into the picture like When did like When did sales start to pick up when did it become I mean not mainstream? Like I actually don't even think NFTs are mainstream yet relative to what I expect them to be eventually but when did when did the tide start to turn?
Carlini8 29:41
Well open sea came from crypto kitties, so I believe the team met crypto Kitties and their love of NFTs was spot there. And I think by read recently nostru a guy who was in cryptokitties really deeply was their first user in maybe I'm just trying to scroll down his Twitter or something. January the something he was there first, signup 2018.
Davis Mattek 30:22
So 2018 would have been when open sea even originated as a place where you could, you know, buy sell trade do do things like that. So I guess the, again from someone who, you know, basically showed up when top Shots showed up in January would be like, this is a whole ecosystem and an environment that existed that was parallel to what was going on in crypto. And I've been, you know, interested in crypto the entire time, you know, Ben have have had my my dollar cost averaging buys go through, though, you know, I mean, obviously, this is not an original plan at all, but you know, of course COVID-19, and the pandemic had a huge part with people just, you know, being even more digitally native, even more online becoming more comfortable with the idea of digital ownership, right? When you when you work online, or you go to school online, and you basically never have to leave the house, it's just something changes with your brain where the online ownership just becomes much easier to conceptualize.
Carlini8 31:26
Yeah, I think a lot of people, it did push people to realize that. And what's what's funny is when you go around the space and those who have been in a long time, they're often people who had played Runescape, or World of Warcraft or something like that just for for years of their childhood. And for them, it just clicked early that in a way they were always kind of buying and selling NFTs even back as a kid, it's just now they own them. And now it's that's the point. So it's almost like you're playing the market back then now. And it's I've just looked, it's a temp for January OpenCL, their first registered user and at that point, it was It wasn't like here we are, hello everyone grand reveal, it took a long time for for open sea to be fully adopted, it took a long time for the NFTs that were created to even be able to all be listed on open sea so quite often, you'd have some launched and they'd forked and old contract instead of a new contract and you couldn't sell on open sea even when it was the time and back then pretty much the whole community lived on Discord and I think that could have been one of our problems because after seeing the power of Twitter this last year had we all been openly on Twitter instead of discord for the whole time. We could have got people over a bit quicker because they didn't have to join a discord to see what was going on. They could have sometimes had it shoved in their face by the algorithm. So there were there were even a few different so I was mainly and I guess the collectible area of NFTs and I didn't really 2018 is when crypto art sort of started popping up and I heard about it here and there. But that was very much its own ecosystem for quite a long time with its own people active in its then you had the collectibles and back then even things like games so actually would count as a collectible back then as well just because the tech didn't really exist for games, the games. I mean, there's still not AAA now but they were they were really bad but then the amount of the amount of Dead game projects that we've got. I remember ether craft which was Minecraft on Ethereum eth dungeon my crypto heroes one one went huge. My crypto hero I think was the one that seemed to have loads of volume and I know anyone that had any just just so many so many dead projects eth dot town was was supposed to be a gambling site where you own the casino and then they have rug board. Crypto war was another one which was kind of risk and that worked for a bit which was interesting and till it didn't work. And that was pretty much how it went. They always used to work in till they didn't and you then got rugged.
Davis Mattek 34:49
Yeah, which was you know, it was it's still kind of the wild wild west now but it was very much the wild wild west then. So let's let's fast forward a little bit. Let's get to On January 2021, punk start to really move and become kind of a cultural thing. Were you involved with the Top Shot stuff at all? Like did you did you? I mean, I assume probably yes. Like what was your Top Shot experience? Like?
Carlini8 35:17
Good. Good mental sure experience was good. I was I joined the touch shot discord in 2019. My first ever message in the discord is. Can't remember her name John Ralphie. Oh, sister in parks and rec going money, please. It took a while to pay off. Top Shot was up and down pre? January 2021. There were times where you think right, this is going to be the biggest thing ever. Bear in mind, I have zero basketball knowledge. I learned who Steph Curry was from crypto kitties when he was going to be a cat. And then it turned out dapper had dealt with a marketing agency and not him. And they pulled that. So if you search like curry crypto kitty, you can see they were free that they were going to release. And they did actually start the auction but no one ever own them. So that's my basketball bow knowledge. Kobe LeBron, and then curry. And I sent a mess. I originally declined the beta for Top Shot because I said look, these are the three I know. And I only know one of them because of you. And then they were like no just come out just be like from the NFT side. You don't have to know about basketball and I was okay. And I actually sold all my punks to buy holo packs. And want to trade X. And that did go well even even now with the punk price and just how I how I sold them the Lebron Kobe dunk. I had 10 of those. The from the top, the one Jack has number 23 had 10 of those and I sold all of them before it went parabolic. I sold the last one like two weeks before. So that was fun. And I current I think I believe I currently have the second highest valued Top Shot accounts via manipulation.
Davis Mattek 37:31
So what do you mean? What do you mean by manipulation?
Carlini8 37:34
So because of that, because of all those from the top buyers, I think about 100 legendary from the top packs, which keep in mind at the time, they were one Ethereum. And I paid for everything in Ethereum. So I shoved 100 ETH into these back when ETH was $240. And I had a lot of Derrick Rose from the top. But when the when the marketplace came out, no one, no one really wanted those. And I had so much so many dapper bucks that I couldn't get out. But I was just I was just buying them as they came. And now I have 34 And I asked everyone who owns the rest to delist this. So mine is listed at $1 million. And it's the cheapest one. So my account gets $34 million from my 34 Derrick.
Davis Mattek 38:25
Oh, that's so funny. That's so good.
Carlini8 38:28
So so my accounts worth 34 point 8,000,034 of it comes from Derrick Rose, but I'm the second second highest account above MBL. That's the important part.
Unknown Speaker 38:40
That you're right, that is the important part. So and we're you know, we're gonna get we're gonna talk about the purrs and some other stuff here in a second. Maybe Maybe we'll get some maybe we'll get some free alpha, maybe we won't. And if not, that's also fine. But I just add I'm just curious your thoughts on how Top Shot plays into all of this because it's sort of like the open sea marketplace exists. And you know, the the minting of the new projects and punks and hash masks and all of these other things. They all those are actual NFT projects right there algorithmically generated. They're they're kind of attached to quote unquote companies, but not really, they're kind of their own independent entities, especially after they have been minted. So Top Shot does not function that way. Right. Top Shot is extremely centralized, the company and the marketing team and everything. Those people are going to have a direct impact on price. They can make decisions as it pertains to collect your score, etc, etc. that really influenced the market. So what are your thoughts on how Topshot relates to the NFT marketplace?
Carlini8 39:50
Well, for starters, it isn't an NFT. Like I see I see a lot of people tweet like they don't they're not NFTs because of dapper blardy blar at no point in non fungible token does it say has to be on a Ethereum and more, right isn't centralized. So it is an NFT to start off, dapper always said from the start that they'll release her, they'll let you have a noncustodial wallet. And I think that will be opt in. Which, when when you see what some people were doing, when they first came over to ETH, after being on top shot, you can see why that's going to be the user flow, because people were just effectively wasting money. Because they didn't know what was going on. So the education is a good idea. I think it's well, we'll see with flow, because a lot of flow unlocks in a month and two weeks, I think, okay, and we'll see what happens to the price and what that does to the whole ecosystem. Because when people are properly trading flow, I'm not sure if that will clog it up. Like with ETH you can you can very much you can see when the price is moving gas goes up quite a lot. Which is the ecosystem getting clogged with, with transactions of people trying to trade it. So I don't know if we're going to see that with flow or if it truly is a quicker alternative. And that's, I guess what I'm most interested to see because when when I look at NFTs I don't really on flow I don't really know too much about what should be good because of my basketball knowledge. You know, we've been so poor with with the new the women's side of things coming in, I have no clue how big that market is over there. So what interests me most is the stuff i know i i would like to know more about the basketball for well, my Derrick Rose bags, but at this point, what's interesting me most what I'm looking forward to seeing how flow coats when two thirds of the token are unlocked in a month in a few weeks. Because if if you're not seeing delays, that's incredibly bullish. I would expect delays so it wouldn't be bearish if there are any but if there aren't any that's that's a good sign that flows can be able to handle another Top Shot so you know there's there's American football potentially coming they've just they just got La Liga for real football that you play with feet and a ball ice hockey I think I've seen on
Davis Mattek 42:52
what's your what's your your proper football team, who do you Who Who is your team,
Carlini8 42:57
Newcastle United's
Davis Mattek 42:58
oh man really? Are you? Are you from Are you from the North?
Carlini8 43:03
I'm not it's I just have supported them since I was about four or five and unfortunately, it's been very bad times.
Davis Mattek 43:12
Well, they would have been good when you were a kid right?
Carlini8 43:15
That's probably why Yeah, Alan Shearer was great.
Davis Mattek 43:18
I was gonna say Allen shear
Carlini8 43:20
that was that was pretty much the man but unfortunately yeah, there's it's it's not been a good time to be a nickel supporter for the past 20 years of my life.
Davis Mattek 43:31
No, no, it hasn't for for our American listeners that would that would be like rooting for oh, there's gotta be there's like like rooting for the Pittsburgh Pirates or something like that. Just no good you hate you hate I assume you are very much out on the the ownership of the team what Mike Ashley's his name?
Carlini8 43:50
Yeah. Mike Ashley out we want. We want someone who doesn't treat it.
Unknown Speaker 43:54
Yeah. Yeah, I love I love English football. Like I yeah, that's it's probably honestly it's probably my favorite sport. To watch these days. I mean, American football is good for the gambling, good for the fantasy but proper proper football is the best. So let's let's talk about and this is what people want. So I'm sorry if it took us so long to get here. But let's talk about NFTs as they exist right now. And actually, you know what I want to talk about purrs you are you are one of the founders of Purrnelope's Country Club, which is an NFT project and I am I am a new holder of two purrs, so why don't you Why don't you break down what it is and what it's all about?
Carlini8 44:41
Well, let's face value, it's it's your regular every day profile picture projects. So some people have asked, Did the did the current mania cause that to happen? And the answer is yes. I wanted to build. So I've got here from NFTs. And at this point, I'm basically retired because of NFTs. And retiring. For me, fire is not, you know, doing nothing. It's doing what you want, what you love whenever you want. And for me, that is purrs. So I've founded it, I've got some friends on board, who do various, various different things. We've got customer service, we've got sort of the finance stuff behind the scenes, we got website guy, we got dev guy. And the whole goal is to give back. So it's you look at apes, you look at gutter cats, you look at all these profile pictures that are now currently up there in price. And what they have is a community that have effectively been made rich from these projects, and that it's as bad as it is that breeds loyalty. People are loyal to those who make you money. And that's kind of just you know, that's just life, that's luxury. treat people well, they treat you well back. So we're very upfront about everything we do. We're not we will not one of those projects who sold out when Okay. 800 ETH split that 200 ETH to four people job done, I guess we'll work on this a bit. We took that ETH and have been very open about what we've done with it, some has gone on salaries, we haven't just split up the fee that's been turned into the good old British Pound. And that will be monthly, sent out for wages a very, very normal wage, not a not an NFT sort of hype wave wage. And that is how we get paid. That is the only way we get paid. We're not siphoning off ether or anything like that. We've, we put a quarter of our take into a community wallet where everyone can vote on how they wish that 200 ETH to be spent. And we've had a community vote and it's currently actually ongoing. You could go to snapshot.org now and vote on vote with your two purrs with a nice, your two peers that have a cost basis of zero if you can vote on yes or no,
Davis Mattek 47:39
I'm gonna go vote right now.
Carlini8 47:40
So we're currently voting for the 200 ETH to go into the kitty Bank, which is the main other part of the project. So the kitty bank is effectively a wallet of NFTs that we will continuously add to. And what we say with that is this wallet is going to be fractionalized via fractional art, which is Andy's site, funnily enough after taking the spot from him. And those will be contained, those fractions will go inside your purrs. So if you want to have access to that token, you have to destroy your cat, or one of the airdrops you get from your cat. So we've got eight airdrops planned. Together, we'll cap that will be nine NFTs. And inside those you will have this token. I say inside technically it's not. But I like to think of them as a piggy bank, where you put money in and then when you need it, you smash it and you take the money out the old school style. So you smoke, you burn your cat on our website. When it's live, please no one just go and burn your cat now because that won't work. It's a contract, don't just send it directly to the burn address. And you get this token and return. And that token. I don't know if you've seen any of the fractional auctions, but that will represent a fraction of that community, that kitty bank. So far, the kitty banks had about 250 Ethereum put in with what looks like another 200 to come. And it's valued at about floor prices of 550 ETH at the last check. So we as a team invest that IEF and then you have the ability to smash your cat to get that token. So the purrs are always backed by something this wallet will always back them. And it's a bit like you know we used to have the gold standard and all money was backed by gold. Now your NFTs are backed by what I would consider the gold standard of NFT. So we've got a punk in there. We've got a Vee Friends, we've got avastars, we've got some art. We've got some fuck render crystals. I don't actually have it open at the moment. So I'm just going off the top of my head. And the goal is really just to we own 2% of a zombie punk as well, which we bought in 25 ETH worth and then it's sold and we got 35 back and that will now be reinvested in NFTs. So really, your, your cats can never go to zero unless all of NFTs go to zero. If, if the whole space dies, there's nothing I can do. I'm sorry, I'm just putting out there now I can't, I can't save any of us. But I can stop purrs going to zero if if the other gold standards are there, if punks are doing well, we've got a punk, you will always fractionally own a punk if you have a so that's the goal sort of an opposite cash grab.
Unknown Speaker 51:06
And so and so to eventually to I guess to quote unquote cash in on the purr you will have to burn your per or does it return to the company wallet.
Carlini8 51:23
deflationary cats that can only go down and will only go down because as soon as I know as soon as I released the contract, someone will burn a cat, it will not be worth it. And that's why it's not out there. Now because the cats are worth the floor is roughly naught point three if give or take, we go up and down a bit as the day goes on. We took 800 ETH in our sale. So if we put all 800 ETH back into the kitty bank, that means each cat would be backed by naught point naught eight ETH which was our sale price. But now obviously the floors up so it's not going to make sense to burn for a while. This is a project where the we're building on 1.5% of secondary sales go into the community wallet 1% Go back into the company which as long as we're not paying salary or taxes will then be putting or artists will be going into the kitty bank. So we're going to keep adding to that over time. And eventually the floor might become comparable to a cat price to the kitty bank. And people might be incentivized to burn. It's just now it's not an AI. Because it takes you can't take 800 ETH in a sale and then suddenly make it be what make it worth 2400 in NFTs. But that's at least two months.
Davis Mattek 52:57
yeah, which is fascinating. So so as you're going through this, what I'm thinking is, most NFT projects do not have anything that involved right, like even even NFT projects with a you know, a quote unquote roadmap, a quote unquote, community. Most of them are not close to that well thought out. You know, it's about the art for it's about the community, but like adding utility and backing to these tokens. I mean, what I mean, you just said a 2020 token, you know, 20 tokenized projects come out a day. How many of them would you estimate are? Well, like you've just defined by you Carlini, as well thought out?
Carlini8 53:42
Well, these these projects are harder to put out than people think. They just think oh, just clone fiver artists rack it up. More thought does go into it than that. So I don't really want to you know, shoot on anyone else's.
Davis Mattek 53:59
Yeah, I'm not I'm not trying to shit on anyone else either. I'm, I'm trying to I'm realistically just I would like to know the answer.
Carlini8 54:06
I'd say one at best,
Unknown Speaker 54:09
which is good. I mean, if one if one semi thoughtful NFT project exists per day, that actually makes me more bullish on all of the Ethereum that has been spent on NFTs in general, because that's actually creating something valuable and usable. And that has the like that, that the marketplace as a whole has a much better chance of standing the test of time, then the people who are not going to make it think
Carlini8 54:40
I think anyone that sticks around will do well. Like say the 20 today, if all of them are still working on it in four years. Those are probably successful projects. But my issue is when you look at these When you look at the wallets, which not many people do, but when you look at these wallets, it's, it's when they just send, send all the foul sale done, withdraw it to a wallet, split it to the whole team, pat yourself on the back off you go. Those are the ones, I don't think you're gonna make it because they've left nothing in the business. They can't hire people. That's not a proper business. Purrlini is is a registered UK company. We sure we have to pay tax we, which we have to account for in our sale, and ongoing secondary sales. But we were doing it right to to be here a long time we've taken out the cash needed to pay the salaries for a year. And if we get to 4000 unique holders will do the same for two years. So even if NFTs go to zero, we've got the cash to keep building for two years and that if NFTs do go to zero, that'd be sad. I'll be sad because I've I've not hidden this if anyone makes something cool, I will copy it. Like the Kong's banana token. I'm waiting to see I love the Genesis Kong's get your 10 bananas a day. And you can use those to breed baby kongs. But those are currently propped up by future utility. What can those baby Kong's do? What else can you do with bananas? If they close that loop, if they have a solution, that's cool. I'll copy it. And I'm telling you now calm Dev, so I'll do that. And that's, that's like a hat tip. Right? You've, you've done something great, I think that'll be good here. Obviously, it's not going to be their art or they're not going to steal IP, I'm going to steal the the idea which which you can't stop. And if they want to take the kitty bank. Great. Take it. And then if they want to take the kitty bank can improve on it. Great, I'll take that back. And if NFTs go to zero, there's going to be less joint growth. So it'll be like a battle without a battle. Where like, people will be one upping each other and then copying the one up and then making it better and improving. And it will only make NFT projects better. And those who stick around for that are going to be the ones to stay in is just when there are 20 drops a day. How do you know which ones are going to stick around? The teams are like Fred, Fred, the frog, hedge the Hedgehog, and Danny the dog. And I say that as we were cats as well at the start, and I was top cat and we had notorious cat. And no cat. And that was just because at the time I was selling NFT boxes my other company of the time. And I've been selling it since March. So at that point, I'd actually been selling it longer than I'd been working on it.
Davis Mattek 58:09
Yeah. David kitchen love the NFT boxes. He was talking about that on this webcast all the time.
Carlini8 58:15
Yeah, I I love it too. It's a great idea. It's just, we had different ideas on which way to go with it. And ultimately, we had to part ways because it was sort of holding everything up. We I wanted to go one way he wanted to go in another way. So So okay, do you want to buy me out? And you can do it all? Yes, it just turns out that again, was a properly registered UK company. And that takes a long time with solicitors and accountants and all of this and actually sold I bought, I was bought out in crypto, which was pretty cool. I highly doubt that's the first time it's happened. But it might be the first NFT company to have that happen. And as soon as I as soon as announced that I was out I could and reveal myself and then be like, Hey guys, look, I'm going to build on this. This is what I've been building for the past few months. I'm not going away. When someone stakes. I'm not going to say I have a reputation but when you stake your reputation on the line I've been Carlini8 in the NFT world for four years. That's a big rug to pull if I'm going to run away from this project, just like it's why I'm so bullish on V friends because Gary Vee has effectively been Gary Vee for 20, 25 years and he's said I am fully behind V friends. So that is someone with a huge track record of right. I'm going to I'm going to do this right saying I'm going to do this right for the next 50 years. We like okay have a If I can back that, the only exception I would have is art. If it's an artist dropping a project, that's a little different, you don't, you don't need a team because the artists can drop more art. And that is the project. I know, technically, all of these profile pictures are art. But if it's an artist with a real life following, there's going to do this, right, they don't need so much of a team to drop their next work, right, because it's almost exactly the same as the first sale, you're just dropping it to anyone who already has your first NFT. Maybe they need one dev to help them drop it. Maybe their fifth piece goes to anyone with 123, and four. But six goes to anyone with any of the five, it's just just the power of NFT is to support your community. And artists can do it a little differently. But when it's a team that says they're going to do X or Y if they stick around, they're the projects they're going to make it is my view.
Davis Mattek 1:01:08
Yeah, I think I think that is relatively good advice. So someone's listening to this, they're pumped, they're sold. They are they're in on the idea they would like to get their feet wet. You know, kind of what would be the first steps you would tell them I assume? Join a discord and learn about the process of minting as opposed to trying to you know, hand pick a winner out off the open sea market.
Carlini8 1:01:36
So this is just NFT's in general not Purrlini is
Unknown Speaker 1:01:43
well or Purrlini and is Yeah, tell tell someone to I mean, we can do both we can do tell someone. Okay, I want to by Purrlini What do I do? Or I'd like to start you know, I have point five ETH And I'd like to start minting and trying to make some some some more eath.
Carlini8 1:01:59
Okay, well for for Purrnelope's Country Club, I should probably use the right name and in case anyone wants to search for it. And I've just ruined advertising. But for Purrnelope's Country Club PCC, I'd say there, if you're just dipping your toes in, there would be two ways in and that would be by the floor. Which means the cheapest cat so you go to Open sea your to your search Purrnelope's Country Club, you can just type in a normally it's the first one. Make sure there's a tick a lot of people seem to have picked Purrnelope Is is their first NFT. And a lot were confused because they picked a scam one. People can name their collections anything and they're instantly up on open sea. So we report them and they get taken down. But if they've just put that collection up, it's possible to search Purrnelope's double space Country Club. And that's them. So make sure that blue tick is there. Click buy now. Because there's always there's always auctions and it's so annoying. There's like they're always the cheapest cats and you can't buy them right there you have to bid, it's just they should be hidden right away. And you see the cheapest one there maybe maybe have a scroll across looking at the floor to see how deep it is. Because if we're coming up to naught point three ETH resistance floor or Purrnelope is. So that means there are about 50 cats all priced exactly the same. So if you just you could just have a scroll and see which one you like the most. You could dig dig deep into traits and rarities and things like that of your first NFT I'd suggest just pick one you like the look of because if you're buying a floor cats is quite easy to get rid of with the liquidity pool, which is number two, which I'll get to in a second. But there's a like I'm just I'm just scrolling the collection at the moment and there's just a quite a, I guess clean would be the way to describe it cat, little smiley face and some shades on which I would probably buy right now if if I was looking to buy a floor cat, it's in that nought point three bulk. And if you like the look of it, it's it's easier to live with if NFTs do go to zero. at least you have that and you like the look of it. And if you're buying floor, that's the easiest to get out. So if everything is tanking, the floor one you can dump into our liquidity pool. So that would be the second way to get in. We have a token called dollar sign purr PURR and one token represents one cat. So there's a there's a site called NFTX.org. And they have these things called vaults. And you send your cat into the vaults and they give you effectively an IOU in return and that is IOU lets you swap for a different cat. So we have 800 cats in this vault, all backed by this token, and anyone with a token can turn up and say, Hey, I got a token, can I have that cat and you pay a slight premium naught point naught five per premium if you want an exact cat, or you just go for a random cage, just one purr and so I'm looking at it currently and the price of one purr now if you were to buy one is naught point two, six, whereas the floor is naught point three or around there. So currently, it's cheaper to buy one purr token and then go and claim a cat than it is to buy the floor cat so that would be the other easy way and so that's purely the floor I'd suggest going into discord first. And that's for any projects always go into the discord. chat to people see if the team are responding to you see if the community are responding to you. Hey guys, sma first NFT. What do you suggest I buy? People will spam you with Oh by this and it will be their cat? Right? Just check the names they're just trying to sell that stuff. But if someone truly tries to dig in and help you learn what's going on, then they're likely a good actor in the space. bad actors don't go to too much effort often because there are so many noobs in this space just just mass blanket them for picking winners in general it's right now it's about socials numbers in discord number of followers for the main guy on Twitter level of hype like lick your finger
Carlini8 1:06:53
put it in the air if it's really windy in the discord from every all the mouths chatting it's likely a good drop to to buy into
Davis Mattek 1:07:02
or buy into
Carlini8 1:07:04
the space is so changeable you can have you have the pudgy penguin type they had a bit of hype they sold out they effectively went to zero they went to naught point naught naught naught one or something people were selling for a week later 60 floor it's it's unpredictable you had oh and one pumped by Logan Paul and, and people of that level up to 6 or 7 ETH the day it was released. And then it dumped a week later to say one ETH it's whatever goes up, there's a different project going down that the money's flowing into somewhere else. Sometimes you just have to watch the big wallets and if someone buys if you see a Gary Vee buyer projects he constantly tweets not to not to buy what he buys because I think he's feeling a bit guilty he buys a project and then it pumps and then it dumps and anyone who followed him gets rekt gets wrecked. But that happens because he buys and then people buy up and then the slower people buy in and they get dumped on by the people who bought just after his it's like Elon Musk pumping doge your kameez effectively. People are trading tweets and dumping on the slower traders I guess.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:36
Yeah, I mean, it is like like I said, it is it is very much like, you know, 2017 Crypto, they just there there are coordinated pumping dumps and there I mean, there is absolutely no resistance against this. It's not like there's anyone you know, there there's no legislative body stopping anyone from pumping and or dumping and you know that that's a whole different conversation that would take you know, the eventual regulations and how to do taxes and tax harvesting. That is a a whole different thing. And then I guess I guess the the last thing that I want to talk about is is you know, what effect do you think gas being this high is having on the NFT market and also just in general the price of Ethereum pumping? How do you see those variables interacting?
Carlini8 1:09:24
Well, I guess, hurts innovation. So there are a lot of things people want to do that. They just can't and people say algo Gibberd on Matic polygon now just because it's cheap there. And that just sort of takes away from the NFT. So ETH is the gold standard, you saw God's and Chang come in and they're like, right, we're gonna build this game, and then they're effectively crippled by gas. cryptokitties was crippled by gas You then saw their move to Topshot because of gas, they created flow because there are multiple interviews where they say, yep, we just couldn't do we want to too many transactions on ETH. When more people are doing this, it's gonna be even worse, we made Flow to, to battle that. And this is Top Shot like, imagine buying a $2 moment and paying $100 gas, it just wouldn't work it you just don't have people trying to do that because of gas.
Davis Mattek 1:10:36
Yeah, the Top Shot model just would not work on Ethereum it would be a dead project
Carlini8 1:10:41
No, and things like people are building games on top of it. So axie went to Ronan. Loop loop is building the RuneScape of NF of NFT world which will be very interesting to see how he gets around gas or when a transaction actually happens during the game. So like I was saying, in 2018, there was so many different, there was different stages of NFT innovation. We we had. We had the hot potatoes, we we had the dividends, the we're also battling games, I remember an island game where you'd buy an island and an amount of ETH. And your island would slowly go up from your purchase. And you could attack another island, depending on your island stats and gain that pot of ETH. And gas was one or two or something like that. So gas just wasn't a problem. And you can come up with this cool idea where people are battling each other crypto war, you would buy a country and then on that country, you'd buy factories and level up those factories, and then that factory would produce tanks, and you'd produce more and more tanks. And you'd have dividends of other countries using your factories to make tanks and then you'd battle other countries with these tanks. And they were like mobile games but text so it had sort of mobile games mechanics be you know,
Davis Mattek 1:12:21
right, but it was like an old Yeah 1989 Like text adventure RPG
Carlini8 1:12:26
Moria I think I remember from playing back then that sort of that sort of innovation just can't happen now because you can't do things on if So we've seen that maybe yesterday or the day before with we'll start thinking that's just a currently what is loot. Although, yeah, just sort of d&d inventories. Like how are people going to properly build out a d&d game on this is it going to be mostly it's going to have to mostly be off chain you take in your character you do it all off chain and at the end once you completed your braid or dungeon or whatever they're going to call it It then sends a transaction back to ETH to change your inventory or your character and it will be whatever gas is that will be how much a game cost to play maybe though the game will add a fee so so they profit as well. But that could happen constantly so you're talking about little bit of Alpha Purrlini is is working on a game as well we've actually just sent the the art over someone reached out and said hey, I can make a game I'm not saying it's going to be Runescape of NFT is like loops doing it's going to be stages you go you go between each stage and have battles like like those mobile games where you move across the map from circle to circle with a road between the circles and certain things happen at the circles and gas is a factor there because we want we want there to be I've said there's going to be eight airdrops I want one of those to be access a token that's access to the game. And another that is your cat that you then level up in the game. And you have to you have to check if they have these have the tokens still at certain points. And gas has become an issue that we're looking at Matic for that. And before that fomos too many people in our will say the game is more on par with the bord apes game, just you know, a nice, a nice fun game that you might have fun playing but you're not going to get addicted to and it's not going to be worth the value of the NFT so that NFT all of our 8 airdrops, we'll also have an allocation of the kitty bank. So for this gaming one, I would imagine the kitty bank is the floor for that. Like, the game will be fun, but once you've played it, you've played it and maybe we make enough money to to expand the game and make it bigger and even better. But there's no promise of that if we have some sort of raised like bored apes, you know, get a 90 mil raise, I think we can, we can probably add to that game quite well. But with how we've spent our efe we have to be quite careful with what we do going forward so there's people don't go FOMO buy because because of the game coming but that's that's just that just Linked in quite well with the whole with the whole gas situation that we've actually had to most likely move it to a second a second chain the second layer on ETH just because of gas and gas is hurting change. That's sort of it really.
Davis Mattek 1:16:04
Yeah, yeah, I think that is that is a that is a great way to end the show. That was a very valuable conversation. I really appreciate it. That was lots of good information and lots of questions I've had for a long time so Carlini, thank you very much for joining us. Everyone if you'd like to do do you want people to follow you on Twitter or do you not care?
Carlini8 1:16:30
Good to be good. I hit my hit 1 million impressions for the first time today. So pretty pretty hyped about Twitter right now.
Davis Mattek 1:16:37
There you go. Alright, guys, you can follow Carlini if you want. You want to try and get some some alpha out of him. At Carlini8N on Twitter. He's also in peds discord, the deposit kingdom. You guys should all of course be subscribing to shift chasing and all that stuff. And yeah, that'll wrap it up. We will. We will be back next week.