Episode 71: BoredElonMusk on Blockchain Gaming

[00:00:00] Ben: Welcome to the alt asset allocationpodcast, exploring alternative investment opportunities available to theeveryday investor. Here's your host Ben Lakoff.

Hello and welcome to the Alt asset allocation podcast. Today'sinterview is with bored elon Musk. What started as a parody account nearlyeight years ago, board is a massive presence on Twitter and a very largepresence in the crypto space.

Now with over 1.8 million followers on Twitter. Yeah. Live onTwitter spaces. It was mad if you haven't joined one yet, please join it. Youcan follow me at Ben lake off on Twitter or at invest in alts. That's the oldasset allocation Twitter. And they are really fun because we have a Q and asection that I cut out.

But borderline is in the process of transitioning to fullentrepreneur and operator from his roots in gaming. He's going all in onblockchain gaming in this episode. What is blockchain gaming, where it is rightnow, why it's important and where it could be going from his bird's eye view inthe space. We talk about his upcoming company board boxes, which I'm actuallyreally excited about launching it. Yeah. Before you listen, please don't forgetto like, or subscribe to the podcast or even better leave a review. If you'rewatching it on YouTube, please give it a like, or subscribe to the channel,share it with a friend, all of these things, help spread the word and keep thisthing going. And I really, really appreciate it.

Alright, here we go. Enjoy this episode with borderline Muskboard. Welcome to the altar asset allocation podcast. Excited to have you on.Thank you, Ben looking forward to our chat. I listened to your AMA this morningand I'm super excited about board boxes and we'll definitely get into thatlater.

Really great stuff. And I'm super. But typically I can startoff with that background typically. Perhaps not that relevant since you're anon eight years now, but you know, for my audience that doesn't know yet whoyou are, let's talk about a little bit about your process from starting as aparody account and transitioning into what your identity online has grown tobecome to.

[00:02:24] BoredElonMusk: Yeah, I sort of have twoprimary identities, I guess you could say. And I've shared a little bit aboutthe, the real world version. So I'm, I'm happy to kind of provide a bit ofcontext to both, but boardy Lawton has existed for about eight years now. Istarted the account in August of 2013, the same day that Elon Musk, the realElon Musk put out a white paper for the Hyperloop high speed train.

Design that essentially, he said he didn't have time to build,but he wanted to kind of open source that, that idea. So other people couldclick create it. And and that was sort of the framework that inspired this ideaof, you know, what does, what does Ilan think about in his downtime when he'sbored?

When he's taking a walk, when he's sitting on the the porcelainthrone, if you will. And so, as somebody who's always been interested increative writing and comedy it was a really great set of lines to color withwithin, and luckily for me he, he remained in the spotlight. So I think Iinadvertently chose, you know, a real person to parody who was probably theperfect individual because fast forward, eight years later, and he is, youknow, arguably the most important person on.

And most well-known person on Twitter. So that was a bit ofluck that I didn't anticipate, but for the first five to six years of theaccount, it was very much kind of a one dimensional parody. I didn't respond topeople didn't do any voice stuff. Didn't really, really reveal anyone you know,reveal any information behind you know, the real.

And and that worked well. It got really, you know, picked upand shared around Silicon valley. Lots of people in tech appreciated it. And alot of the content was just kind of like silly inventions that were trying tosolve everyday problems that, that people could connect to. And that's reallykind of what gave me the following.

It was just kind of that consistent type of content that, that,that resonated and, you know, that tends to work pretty well for what you wouldcall a meme account or a parody. But as time went on, I decided to branch out alittle bit and pull some of the real world self into the equation. And interneeLA borderline into something beyond, you know, just kind of a, a one-linegenerator.

And so you know, that's where I did starting started doingthings like podcasts and responding to people and actually like partneringwith, with different organizations and investing in startups. It's kinda likeit's kind of like the cryptocurrency where you have to decide, do you want totrade security?

For for like, you know, speed and, and opportunity. And so as Ikind of reduced security a little bit with, with borderline by revealing moreof the, the real. That that increased my ability to transact with, with peopleand organizations. And so what you have today is kind of a hybrid of, of whatborderline started off with, which is still, you know, some funny thoughts andreactions and inventions, but also a little bit of you know, a focus on thingsthat I'm interested in, in the, in the real world, which is blockchain andtechnology.

And in particular, Gaming and that, and that kind of brings usto today where you know, this, this, this parody account has gone from what,what started off as kind of a side hustle, fun, creative exercise to a prettyserious, you know, media business slash you know, investment vehicle slashstartup.

[00:05:36] Ben: Yeah, that's amazing. I was just clickingthrough to your profile 1.7 million followers that, that is a media at thispoint. I also can't believe that the Hyperloop thing was eight years ago. MyGod time really flies. That's incredible. How long before they converge? Iwould imagine with investing KYC and personal data and like kind of revealing abit about.

Do you, do you have a goal before? Like, you know, the kind ofword is output for these two identities converge a bit.

[00:06:09] BoredElonMusk: I certainly am not going toproactively try to reveal who I am. I always liked the idea of you know, rich,not famous, not rich and famous. I don't see a lot of upside to me personally,or, you know, my family and friends.

I think ultimately there is probably a limit to how long I cankeep the Mr. The primary reason, honestly, that I just like for the, you know,for the identity to remain, remain sort of synonymous, is that I just thinkit's fun. It's it's part of the brand people can kind of project their ownimage or their own assumptions onto board and, and try to guess who it is.

I often use the analogy of Banksy. Not necessarily wanting toknow who that is, because it'll probably be a disappointment. It'll just be sortof an, an average person. Who's like, you know, not that extraordinary. And sothere's something special to just kind of keep, keep the mystery alive. So youknow, I've tried my best to, to keep it a secret.

I'm not gonna try to dox myself. I hope other people don't anda big part of that honestly, is just, you know, acting in a trustworthy,transparent way. You know, being ethical, being a nice person. And I, and Ithink that I've got at least two years left in me keeping the secret alive.

[00:07:21] Ben: That's awesome.

Well, I mean, you know, it building off of gaming, it's kind ofnormal to have these like pseudo anonymous characters, different identity perdifferent ecosystems, but I'd be curious. And before we go into gaming, Ipromise I will get into that. What is the hardest part of living this dualidentity, kind of having different identity in the meat space versus online?

[00:07:48] BoredElonMusk: It's you know, I think thatthere are two hard things.

One is that to conduct business as board there's a little bitof trust and risk, right? So when I'm working with someone. You know, usuallythat involves like a nondisclosure agreement and the hope that, you know, thatis adhered to, and nobody messes up by accident. And, and that's always a riskand the more, the more investments I make and the more partnerships I do youknow, the greater the risk is.

So that's, that's definitely a challenge. And the other part isa little bit less, I guess, important. And more of just kind of a weird nuance,which is there's this really big. In my life that is significant. And I thinkobjectively a cool story to tell, but there are very few people in the realworld, in my, in my actual like neat space life that I can even begin toexplain all of this too.

Right? Like people in our space, the man is normal, but goingto a family party or. Getting going to a, an event where I'm meeting new peoplefor the first time. Like this is not something that I can really talk about.And so it feels like I have to kind of hide a part of myself because I don'twant to share it with people.

I don't know. And it also seems really weird to the averageperson. So, you know, you know, tiny violin, obviously for me, that's notreally a problem, but it's just, yeah, it's a weird, it's a weird nuance to. Itis a problem. And it's something, I mean,

[00:09:17] Ben: I always just kind of assumed it was ego.It's like for me, what would make it difficult?

I want to tell people about the cool things I'm working on andyou're not able to, but I didn't to think about that as like dinner. Like, whatdo you do? And you're like, like some, some obscure, probably a template, aresponse for these people.

[00:09:37] BoredElonMusk: I mean, I just had this happento me last night. It was a dinner with, with you know, some friends that I hadrecently met and you know, years ago I could say, oh, well, I'm an executive atthis company.

And I work in this industry. But now that I'm sort of doingthis full-time. This conversation is very difficult, but like that, thatquestion of what do you do is is very hard to answer right now. Oh yeah.

[00:09:58] Ben: Well you know, could be, could, could beworse, I suppose.

[00:10:02] BoredElonMusk: Tiny, violent. Yes. There wego.

[00:10:06] Ben: You've been in crypto, I've heard fromother podcasts since 20, 20 13, which is very, very early. So let's talk a bitabout what initially attracted you to the space. And I know you kind of leftfor a little bit, but then what aspect of crypto kind of rejuvenated you andgot you back into what you're focused on today?

[00:10:26] BoredElonMusk: Yeah, I mean the 2013 days werevery much just me being a curious individual and. Trying to solve for aproblem, which was, I was frustrated with the current sort of financialinfrastructure and being able to send money to different people around theworld and not have all these fees. And so you know, the idea of like electronicmoney was, was super cool.

And I remember getting like some of my first Bitcoin on, onmountain. And pretty clunky experience, but you know, it was fun to just playaround with it and figure out how it works. And like many people, you know,even though I was buying Bitcoin at like $8, I of course didn't hold it throughtoday. I sold it around a hundred thinking how smart.

At that time and, you know, I guess you could argue a 10 X isnot, not, not a bad thing, but I would, I would probably be just, you know,hanging out with Michael Saylor right now if I had held on, so all that stuffback then. But yeah, that, that got me curious and sort of, you know, took medown the path of learning about different.

They were also trying to solve for the problem of kind of, youknow, cross border payments and low fees. But yeah, then, then took a, took abit of a hiatus, I think, like many people because there was a bit of a, kindof a stagnant period in the world of crypto where development was continuing,but just adoption wasn't wasn't super high.

And then really got, you know, kind of re interested in it ina, in a deeper. Late 20, 19, early 2020. And I think as the pandemic rolled onand you know, much like many other people around the world, I was pretty boredat home and had nothing to do. And and then I think as as NFTs really kind ofbecame more mainstream, I guess, relative to overall internet culture.

That, that was what really sucked me in because to me it feltlike a pro. Or a genre of products that I could really kind of align myselfwith because, you know, borderline is this digital identity that doesn'tnecessarily operate in the real world, much like NFTs are this digital asset orproperty or item that also doesn't necessarily connect to the real world.

And so that, that took me down a rabbit hole. And I, you know,I went through the, the various paths that I think many others did, which wasart and collectibles and where I finally landed where. Most of my attention isgaming just because you know, as I've kind of shared publicly before, likethat's, that's the, that's the industry that I came from and I see so muchpotential.

And so since, since the 20, 20 and 2021 days it's become anenormous part of, you know, my areas of interest. That's the time I talk aboutit a lot on my feed to the annoyance of some people who miss my old content.And and it's, it's pretty much where I'm focusing my investing in my. Yeah.Awesome.

I mean, so like, well, firstly, the exponential

[00:13:13] Ben: age people, poo-pooing a

[00:13:14] BoredElonMusk: 10 X returns. I, I love thisspace so much. It's just hilarious. But yeah, so like you know, 3 billiongamers overall, you're obviously super cite about this niche. Let's let's zoomout a bit and kind of set the stage for why. Do you call it

[00:13:31] Ben: web three or blockchain gaming or kind ofsynonymous at this

[00:13:34] BoredElonMusk: point,

[00:13:36] Ben: whatever the web through your blockchaingaming is the most interesting thing at the moment.

[00:13:41] BoredElonMusk: And why, why does this have somuch potential? Yeah, I personally, I've been referring to it as blockchaingaming. I feel like it's a, a very kind of broad description for it. I, I seethe potential of gaming in general, right? I think in the last 10 years, especially.The industry of gaming has in many ways, eclipsed, other, other types ofentertainment, including television.

And one could argue all of Hollywood. The pandemic, especiallywith was quite a boon for for video games, you know, as, as people were kind ofstuck at home, There were certain titles that just had enormous popularity. Iremember animal crossing was one of those that like it, that ended up, youknow, selling three or four X, I think what people were predicting, justbecause it was like the perfect game to play when everything outside was wasscary.

And so when you look at sort of the trajectory of gamingoverall you see how much value is being generated by players through theirinvestment of time and creativity and, and money as well. And a lot of thatvalue is not necessarily, or hasn't necessarily been going back to the players.It's.

To the game publishers. And you know, of course like people whoare creating the games deserve to you know, be making money off of them and ittakes, it takes money to produce a game and to continue to update it and makesure that it's operating correctly. But there's also a lot of money that is inthe sort of ecosystem of video games.

Which I'll just kind of broadly describe as like, you know,user acquisition and marketing. That is, that is, has been used to, you know,grow player basis. And that money I think, is really untapped and can be goingback to players in a way that it hasn't before. And the way that can happen isthrough, you know, players actually owning parts of the games that they areplaying, whether they're their assets or actually like, you know, tokens in agame.

There are a lot of opportunities for people to basically. Getsome of the value back that they're putting into games and, and that at a broadlevel is why I'm so bullish on this idea of blockchain gaming. I think it's infavor of, of gamers and of players and the biggest problem is not, you know,technology or, or, you know, the ability for game designers and publishers to,to get on board.

I think it's just a matter of education. You know, the, thepatients we have to exercise to, to make sure that people who are lesscomfortable with, with crypto are able to, you know, onboard and get morefamiliar with the space so that they don't see it as, you know a scam. And sothey don't, they aren't skeptical of, of the space, but rather embrace it andsee it for the value.

It can, it can bring. Yeah. And that's the one that's great,but that touches on kind of the negative potential negative connotation that

[00:16:23] Ben: a lot, some people have about blockchaingaming in general,

[00:16:27] BoredElonMusk: what would come narrative aboutblockchain gaming in general? Do you hear often that, that

[00:16:32] Ben: you disagree with or

[00:16:34] BoredElonMusk: think is wrong?

There, there are several areas of a FID against blockchaingaming and. I discount most of them, but the one that I think has the mostvalidity and, and the one that I really like to acknowledge the most is thatplayers are sometimes concerned that games that over-index on sort of theeconomics and you know, potential profits that a player can make is going toruin the game, meaning that you know, there are a lot of players who are therefor the pure entertainment.

They want to have fun. They want to connect with friends. Theywant to, you know, complete challenges and that if there are ways for people tocome in and potentially exploit the system and then take certain actions thatwill generate lots of profits for them, those people who are doing that aregoing to ruin the game and the fund for everybody else.

And so I think that's a hundred percent valid and I understandthat criticism. And so my take is that, you know, the best game designers aregoing to really have to find a way to balance. And create games that canoperate where both parties are happy. So essentially what I mean by that is areally good watching game needs to be fun.

If you are not putting any money into it, so, you know, free tofree to play, you never spend a dime that's, that's fine. It also needs to befun for the people who do want to own assets and do want to put money into thesystem. And the key thing is that before. Parties have to remain happy and notbe able to inflict a negative experience on the other.

So what are the analogies I was thinking about today was isprofessional sports. And so, you know, somebody might watch soccer on TV andyou know, enjoy that experience, cheer for their team. Maybe go to a game. Noneof that requires any money. That's, that's just, that's, that's an experiencethat they can enjoy for free.

On the other hand, you have people who do bet on games, or theydo fantasy sports and there's money involved in that. And the key thing is thatnone of those people who are playing any of these sort of monetary games aroundthe sport are going to damage the experience for those who are playing for.

And so that's kind of what needs to happen for blockchaingaming. And I think the problem right now is there's too much overlap of playerswho are there to play for free. And for those who are there to basically dowork and make money. And so it's on the game publishers, honestly, to, to fixthat problem and prove to players that they can do both and serve all partiesat the same time without destroying the.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it's

[00:19:02] Ben: timing is a big thing. Like, I, I thinkpeople always misconstrue what blockchain gaming looks like today and what itcould look like in five years. So

[00:19:10] BoredElonMusk: like, that's a huge thing,right. Because

[00:19:13] Ben: I I'd be curious from your perspective,blockchain gaming right

[00:19:16] BoredElonMusk: now, is anybody

[00:19:18] Ben: doing it particularly well?

What are they doing and what are they kind

[00:19:23] BoredElonMusk: of missing? Yeah, I mean, I'llmention two games in particular and I'll note that I'm a investor and oradviser in them, but one is many Royal nations, which is a first personshooter. You know, might, might feel close to like a Fortnite style game. It'sa browser-based game, which has really makes it accessible.

And that one lets you just kind of jump in and play. You don'thave to spend any money. You don't have to buy anything. It's a really greatonboarding experience because it gets you hooked on the game first and thensort of, you know, brings on chain activities later. And the other is boxytactics, which is a tactical turn-based strategy game, similar to like advancedwars or Mario vs.

Rabbits. If anyone that's familiar with those titles. Andagain, it's, it's a game that can be played for free. It doesn't require you tospend any money or buy any apps. But it gives you the option to do so if youwant to. And so I think they're, they're, they're both taking a similar approachin the sense of like, you know, bring people into a game, onboard them into thecrypto experience later.

I think in terms of, you know, things that could be done betterthe reality is that right now the vast majority of traditional gamers are notfamiliar with things like, you know, having a web wallet or how to buy crypto.And so. These games much like many others. They do a good job of getting youhooked on the game.

When you are ready to kind of take the next step to owning. Thethe experience there and the education that needs to happen there sort ofhappens outside of the game. The game itself doesn't necessarily help you withthat process. And I understand that because it's hard for them to sort ofexplain to people step by step, how to use the technology so that they can playtheir game.

So they're, they're sort of relying on outside forces to teachpeople how to jump to the next level of ownership. I kind of liken it to backin the day, like for anybody who was playing online games and like the earlytwo thousands. Like, if you want to play Counter-Strike or some kind of othermultiplayer game against your friends, you had to learn how to, you know, get amodem, you know, installed in your, in your desktop computer.

You had to learn how to like, you know, create a server youknow, how to get online, how to connect to IP addresses. Like these were allthings that the games didn't do a great job of teaching you. And you insteadhad to rely on those friends who were already familiar with it. So we're kindof in a similar place.

Now people are having to learn how to use all these othertechnologies to play these games. And it's just going to take time and morepeople are jumping on board to handhold the, the new commerce or less familiar.Yeah,

[00:21:54] Ben: that makes a lot of sense. And that'sactually super helpful to look back at those times and realize, you know, thesethings that are easy to do today.

Weren't easy to do then. And

[00:22:03] BoredElonMusk: there's this learning processto go down. I mean, what sort of.

[00:22:07] Ben: Talking about timelines. I mean, I knowyou've

[00:22:10] BoredElonMusk: talked about investing in gamestudios and gaming right now,

[00:22:15] Ben: but like what sort of timeline beforethese things are kind of mass adoption? And I understand there's a bunch ofdependencies, like obfuscating away the blockchain and making it more userfriendly, but what, what kind of back of the envelope are you looking forlooking at before?

Like. In a more widespread adoption of blockchain

[00:22:36] BoredElonMusk: based games. Yeah. I mean the,the total worldwide player base of, of 3 billion is not something that I thinkblockchain games have to strive for. I think that the total addressable marketfor blockchain. Probably can be in the hundreds of millions and that's going tobe completely fine.

In terms of having enough sort of value or money that can payfor, you know, for game development and publishers, because the reality is thevast majority of that 3 billion that is often cited in terms of worldwideplayers. A lot of that are people who don't really spend any money on videogames.

They're just kind of downloading like free to play apps. Andyeah, some of them are, you know, spending quite a bit of money on the in-apppurchases, but mostly. The last that I heard was that the average game playerspends like $250 per year on gaming. And so because you know, the, the bulk ofpeople involved in blockchain gaming are spending considerably more per year.

The, the, the size of that, of that population can be muchsmaller. So mainstream for blockchain gaming is going to be different thanmainstream for, for traditional games that require. Players to kind of, youknow, make sure that that 10 and 20% who's actually spending lots of moneyhelps fuel the development of games.

So very long answer to your question. I think based on what I'mseeing based on sort of the pitch decks and what I know is in developmenttoday, I think mid to late 20, 23, We're going to start to see blockchain gamegaming player bases get into sort of the, you know, 20 to 50 million mark.

And then in terms of reaching a hundred, a hundred million, youknow, that's, that's probably going to be closer to 20, 24 end of that year.That probably sounds aggressive to a lot of people. Based on what I'm seeingand just kind of the rapid adoption that I've seen over the last six months. Ithink it's very doable, especially when you consider massive markets like SouthKorea and, and Europe and and south America joining in on on this you know, inaddition to north America.

So I definitely think it's. Yeah, that's that

[00:24:46] Ben: is an aggressive timeline, but a globalpermissionless world working on developing these things can, can move theneedle quite quickly.

I've heard you talked about visiting or going to GDC andtalking to developers. Traditional big game studios that they're super bullishon web on blockchain gaming.

Is this more of a,

[00:25:10] BoredElonMusk: A tick

[00:25:10] Ben: the box, make sure that we have ablockchain web three strategy to make our superiors happy

[00:25:16] BoredElonMusk: or, you know, what, whataspects really get them

[00:25:19] Ben: most excited, kind of from, from theinner

[00:25:22] BoredElonMusk: circle. Yeah. I mean, one of mysort of personal assignments for the game developers conference was to talk topeople who are not engrossed in the in the blockchain gaming space to get apulse on how they're feeling.

And so, you know, not necessarily like a total representativesample size, but I probably talked to 50 people who are, you know, who were inthe traditional gaming space. And I wouldn't say they were, they were outrightbullish about blockchain gaming, but what they were into was. You know, if youhumanly against it, it was very much a combination of neutral to open andcurious.

And that is a very different narrative that I think is paintedby traditional gamer media and other people in some parts of the core gamercommunity who make it seem like the vast majority of game developers are justopenly hostile against blockchain. It was pretty refreshing. And in fact, I, Ilearned that GDC originally had planned on not having any blockchain gamingrelated content in terms of panels.

And that about 60 days before the conference began, they weregetting so much interest that they ended up adding like 20 different speakersto talk about this topic. Cause there were so many people who wanted to hearabout it. That I think to me at least showed that there is a lot of foolishnessthrough, through either neutrality or curiosity from the game developmentcommunity.

And the bigger issue I think is that many of them are just alittle bit hesitant to talk about it publicly, because they've seen what hashappened with some of the larger game studios who have, you know, hinted atlooking at at digital assets and NFT. Some of the really strong, like negativereactions they've gotten.

So I think people are actively building this stuff and learningabout it. They're just kind of holding off on, touting it until they can showthat they've created something that, you know, that will be friendly to gamers.And we'll be in there. That makes sense. Is it,

[00:27:15] Ben: it sounds almost, I mean, neutral,curious, open but

[00:27:19] BoredElonMusk: it sounds a bit of a likegradually then

[00:27:21] Ben: suddenly it'll just take one of thesebigger game studios to do it and do it well, and then it will be, you know,everybody is in.

Is that kinda what you're

[00:27:29] BoredElonMusk: thinking? Yeah, exactly. Imean, I think it's pretty much the same exact thing that happened with withFortnite, right? This idea of launching a free to play game and then chargingmoney for completely. Skins that, you know, don't impact the game in any way.People weren't doing like games were doing that to some degree before, but younever really had like a AAA game, pull it off the way Fortnite did.

And then once they proved that model, it became pretty commonamongst the other publishers. And so I think we're, we're, we're still waitingfor a title like that to really prove the model out for blockchain gaming andI, and I think that'll happen next year. Yeah, that's awesome.

[00:28:08] Ben: I mean, Yeah. Th th

[00:28:11] BoredElonMusk: there's these new styles ofplay or game mechanics

[00:28:13] Ben: that, that blockchain enables.

And it's not just, you know, this map T that you can move fromone game to another, which probably won't happen, but, you know, still istouted by many.

[00:28:25] BoredElonMusk: All right. Let's, let's

[00:28:26] Ben: transition a bit into some of your moregaming focused projects. So let's start with Metta, Mars and blind boxes, whatthey are, why they're important problem they're solving.

And you can probably start with minimize.

[00:28:41] BoredElonMusk: Yeah. Metta. Mars has been abit of a side project for me. I found a great scrappy group of, of gamedevelopers. Kim together to build a, what I would consider like a casual ormid-core style game. And the premise is we're building. What's called I lossarcade.

So the general idea is we are asking people to deposit cryptofunds into a treasury that treasury will accumulate in. And then that interestwill be distributed back out to the best performing players of a variety ofgames. So for anyone who's kind of familiar with this idea of no loss lotterythat was essentially the same idea where a bunch of people pulled together.

That makes a really big pool of interest that is generated. Andthen that interest is distributed to a few lucky raffle winners. And that waskind of a fun way to like save money with a group of people. But the key, thekey to that, you know, compared to say a traditional lottery is that you couldalways go and pull your funds out of the equation.

And that's why it's called no loss. You can always walk awaywith the same amount money that you put in. So that, that is a very much like araffle or sort of a luck based. So. And what we wanted to do with Metta Mars iscreate a skill based system. And so it's the same concept except, you know, thepeople who are basically top scores on the leaderboard are the ones who aregoing to get the benefits of the prize pool generated by interest.

And so that's kind of being built as we speak definitelyconsider it more of a side project, but it's one of, you know, a few gameprojects that I've been a part of. And for me, and we'll talk a little bitabout this, you know, with, with board box, but. I, I it's important for me tobe able to show people and especially game studios that, you know, I'm, Iunderstand how hard it is for them to do what they do.

You know, without going into too much detail, like I, I createdand published two board games. Like I understand. How difficult it is to comeup with game mechanics and get your game to be visible. And you know put allthat work into sort of like the branding of your game. It's, it's really,really tough.

And so Metta, Mars is kind of you know, a really importantproof point for me to show that not only am I someone who's saying that I cancurate, you know, the best games on the market, but also that, you know, I'mbuilding them myself because I want to be a contributor to the ecosystem thatI'm.

Absolutely. And

[00:31:01] Ben: being operator versus investor, you seehow long and hard the development cycle of these things can pee and at leastcan empathize with the, the, the operators and let your curating and investing

[00:31:14] BoredElonMusk: in. Let's let's chat aboutboard boxes and I'll, I'll link the AMA

[00:31:19] Ben: from today from today's space in the shownotes, because I think it was fantastic, but let's start with just the TLDR,what it is and why you

[00:31:29] BoredElonMusk: get so excited about it.

Yeah. So in a nutshell board box is, is myself and my teamcurating what we believe are the best blockchain games. Anyone is filling,you're familiar with sort of the idea of a a sample sample box, like Birchboxor loot crate will be familiar with this idea of kind of getting a surprise boxwith, you know, with samples of different things that is basically meant tointroduce them to things they might not have heard of.

And so we're replicating that idea in a digital format. And theconcept is that we're going to be dropping board boxes that. Different gameitems from, from various games. And the whole point is to help with discoveryand basically save people time. So it, it was kind of meant to be a solution toa problem I had, which is like, I love playing video.

I don't like spending lots of time looking for the next bestone or having to go into discords and kind of do all these different actionsor, you know, grind it out and do all this research about like what games Ishould be considering. I'd love for someone to basically just do that for meand tell me what games are awesome and what I should.

And since that didn't exist, I decided to build that companymyself. And so we're going to be doing that. I'm going to be using my you know,a fairly deep experience from the video games industry to you know, haveconversations with game studios, do some vetting and basically. The best games,you know, to the forefront.

And so the, the company has kind of two things, one it's, it'sthe coalition of these, these game items and the boxes that we'll be selling.And the second part in the more important part that I think is more accessibleto everyone. Is the content that we're going to create around our drops. So everyboard box will be sold as a surprise.

People won't know what's inside until we have basically whatwe're calling a reveal day. And on the reveal day, we're going to very muchkind of model it after like what you would see at an E three or a Comic-Con wherewe show trailers of all the games that are inside the box and reveal italtogether.

Instead of sort of an individual unboxing experience, which iswhat most people in the NFC space are used to. And then we'll follow that withinterviews with the game developers hearing from them, and then probably dolike a really big Twitter space when we bring everybody together. And the wholething is really going to just be game focused.

It's going to be talking about game mechanics and charactersand stories. And we're not going to really talk about the financials and theeconomics, because YouTube is full of that. You know, when you look up likeinformation about any blockchain game, most of the content is about. Thesegames being treated as like an investment vehicle.

And we're not going to focus on that. We're going to just focuson the stuff that people who love games. You know, interested in, which islike, what, what is the game? Why is it cool, tell me why the developers builtit, what inspired them. And and hopefully, you know, we'll, we'll fill a voidin the market, which is like creating that content that everybody is lookingfor.

Yeah. I think curation,

[00:34:17] Ben: especially in these noisy markets inwhich we operate will continue to be more and more important. So a good curatoris. It is a great product that I would think many would find a lot of value.And I share what so the actual

[00:34:31] BoredElonMusk: box and some, my, my

[00:34:34] Ben: listener base typically is more investorfocused, but this box that you get is filled with what?

In

[00:34:42] BoredElonMusk: game skins w what, what are thecontents of the book? Yeah. So, so each box is going to have five differentgame items. That's the number we're going with right now? It, each box willcost one Eve. So, you know, we are coming in at a premium level. Part of thatis to kind of filter out the, the flippers, right?

We, we want people who are really interested in owning their,their game assets and actually, you know, using them, playing them playing withthem. And we're working directly with the game studio. To you know, max outwhat those, what those assets are. So this isn't like, you know, us arbitragingand like, Buying up a bunch of game assets and then putting them in a box.

We're working very closely with each game studio that'sfeatured in the box. And many times the the items that are in the board boxesare going to be totally custom and wouldn't have existed if we hadn't done thepartnership with, with them. In terms of the types of game assets, it'sdefinitely going to model what, what people would expect to see in traditionalvideo games.

So it could be characters, skins, weapons you know, vehiclesland. The only thing we're sort of. Wanting to put in any boxes are tokens.That feels like something that is just not really a game item. That's more oflike an investment vehicle. So we're not going to really touch that. But yeah,everything else is kind of on the table.

And then the box itself, of course, is also an asset, which wewant people to keep. So once people claim the items for their board box it willupdate the metadata we'll we'll update. And essentially it'll show that it'sbeen opened, but everyone can keep their board box that's been opened. Thatwill then basically convert it into more of a, of a mid pass.

And so that'll be useful for you know, future opportunitieslike you know, jumping out a line to buy future board boxes, getting freeairdrops from our existing studio partners events, both virtual and physicaland much, much more. So we're, we're pretty happy about this because you know,a lot, there are a lot of mid pass style products right now in the marketwhere, you know, you buy something and there's kind of a promise of futureassets.

Access and discounts and all that stuff. But the cool thingwith board boxes, like you immediately are getting stuff that you can use ingames. And the goal is that we will have assets that are playable immediately.And for anything that isn't ready today the goal is we're only including gamesthat are basically gonna launch within the next six months or so, or at leastin 2020.

Okay. So

[00:36:59] Ben: that, that gets you over that timelinething, because the, the number of like games that you get super excited aboutthat are launching next month probably significantly less than in a year when,when a lot more of these big game studios are coming and actually producingthings that have blockchain aspects.

So when, when curating, I mean, you're a target targetinggamers for discovery.

[00:37:23] BoredElonMusk: Is it, are there certain themesor niches or like each

[00:37:27] Ben: box can kind of have a hodgepodge ofdifferent types of games that you find interesting that like, walk me through abit of the curation and obviously, you know what you can disclose

[00:37:39] BoredElonMusk: around these things.

Yeah. Yeah. And all, all of the sort of mystery is it's reallyjust, I don't have to protect the surprise because there's a lot of value inthat. In revealing. You know the fun stuff altogether, but yeah. In terms ofthe box, we try to make sure that there's variety of genre of games. Thereality is that not everybody likes every genre of games.

So we're anticipating, you know, you, you get your set of fiveitems. You might like two or three of the games that you test out the othertwo. Maybe you're not, you're saying. Open see is a great return policy. Ifyou, if there are a couple items you don't like, but yeah, the idea is that wedon't want to have repeat game genres in the box.

So there's not going to be like for, you know, first personshooters or anything like that. So that's a part of it. We, we factor in timeof release, of course, as mentioned before, in terms of like wanting people. Beable to play sooner than later. So they're not sitting on game assets for toolong. And then also chains are a consideration.

So for the Genesis box, we're, we're launching with games thatare going to exist or do exist on the Ethereum network and polygon. It's areally easy start cause essentially it's the same wallet for people. Makes itreally easy if you're like a bed, a massive. But ultimately we want to be chainagnostic.

So our, our goal is to bring people to the best games gameassets, whatever chain they're on. So the plan is to expand to a Solana and IMXour and and avalanche as well. Those are kind of like the fit, the five bignetworks that we're seeing, lots of games being produced on. No, no guaranteeson the order and sort of timing of those other networks, but that's the.

And we're going to try to keep it really easy for each box. Sowe don't have necessarily more than two or three different chains per box. Justbecause we want to keep the claiming process pretty. You can't talk about anonboarding education

[00:39:23] Ben: disaster. I mean, well, this, this multichain world that we go in, right, this will be the future that you'll havethese different assets

[00:39:31] BoredElonMusk: across different ones, but it'snot quite there yet.

And actually I wanted

[00:39:35] Ben: to ask, so you mentioned a lot ofinterest on Solana, immutable and avalanche, but when talking to these big gamestudios about blockchain gaming,

[00:39:44] BoredElonMusk: are they, are they talking to.Different pros

[00:39:47] Ben: and cons of different blockchains. Arethey drawn to certain blockchains more than other?

I'm

[00:39:52] BoredElonMusk: such an eatable. I'm just kindof stuck in my echo chamber of like Yves and other L ones. So you know, askingfor a friend here for sure. Yeah. I, I'm also an equal, I mean, I kind of feellike games on the Ethereum network are almost like games that require you tohave like an overclocked like $7,000.

There's definitely a market for, for, for those players. Butthe vast majority of people want games to be running on, you know, an everydaytype of laptop or on your mobile phone or on a console that's already sort oflike, you know commonly available. And so from my perspective definitely seeingpolygon and Solana stand out because of their, their speed and low cost oftransaction.

I'm definitely also seeing, you know, again, back to immutableand an avalanche, a lot of interest there. I think that it's a really bigdecision that the game publishers are making, because, you know, if you thinkabout the, the, the lifecycle of game development and it taking two, three plusyears to make a game, you're kind of committing to something early, and thisspace changes so quickly it can be sort of a daunting commitment to make thatearly, to make so early.

It's almost. You know, you have a game design idea and, and youhave to sort of pick like what platforms you're going to build for immediatelybefore you kind of go down the road of like building the, the overallinfrastructure of the game. So it's like saying, okay, we're going to build forPlayStation and Nintendo switch.

But we haven't really even started coding yet. And so you haveto kind of commit to that for the next. So it's, it's a little bit of a tough,a tough issue, but you know, back to your original question, I think that,yeah, these like L two solutions that are fast and, and cheap are working quitewell.

And many people argue they're less secure, but I think that'sokay because game assets typically are not as high value as. Digital assetswhere like security as, as, as important. And so people are willing to kind ofgive up a little bit of security to get

[00:41:48] Ben: that speed. Yeah, that makes sense. So, I

[00:41:51] BoredElonMusk: mean, do you see board boxes asa way to get

[00:41:55] Ben: more gamers into blockchain or more NMTnerds into gaming or

[00:42:01] BoredElonMusk: kind of, how do you, how do you

[00:42:02] Ben: see that as in terms of.

[00:42:05] BoredElonMusk: Yeah, I think that at least fornow our hypothesis is as the perfect candidate for our product is somebody whois. Fairly knowledgeable about crypto you know, has, has like a web wallet or aCoinbase account. Maybe does a little bit of defy and then also really likestraditional video games. We're not necessarily going after people who areplaying the current roster of blockchain games.

We think that's a different person and I think our, our premiumpricing problem. You know cements that, that, that hypothesis. But yeah, it's,it's, if somebody who you know, is comfortable spending thousands of dollarsper year on gaming I'm one of those people. And that's why we're starting small,right?

With a thousand, a thousand boxes per drop. I, I kind of likehave joked about this, this model we're doing. Being very similar to Tesla,like when Tesla came out, they started at the top end with luxury, right.Selling a hundred thousand dollars plus cars to a few people. And then as theygot bigger and as the market became more accepting of electric vehicles, theywere able to increase the volume and lower the price.

And I think we'll be able to do the exact same thing. It's justthat the market right now won't support that. And so yeah, that's, you know,we're, we're keeping that in mind in terms of who we go for, but again, like,we don't necessarily want people to feel excluded or priced out. So even, evenif you know, the price of the Genesis board boxes are not necessarilyaccessible to everyone, we want the content and the events to.

You know, free for everybody and accessible because we want tojust, you know, use that for education and entertainment. Regardless of, youknow, whether you own a board box or not

[00:43:41] Ben: super awesome. Where can listeners findout a little bit more about board boxes, then I have a few more questions. Thenthe audience in this Twitter spaces raise your hand and I'll start bringing youup in the next 10 minutes, five, 10 minutes or so, but where can listeners findout more about board boxes and I guess.

[00:43:59] BoredElonMusk: Yeah, we, we just updated boardbox.io which is our website. We'll continue to provide updates there, butthere's an FAQ and more information. My big recommendation is, or people tofollow the telegram link. If you're a telegram and user that that's going tobasically serve as our source of truth and where we'll be sharing news first.

We're not planning on using a discord anytime soon because wefeel. Our mission is to save people time and give them more time to play. Andtelegram is a very, you know, easy and clean way to kind of just get updatesand then go about your business. So those are kind of the two areas and ofcourse, board box on Twitter, it's a board box underscore some some individualowns board box and won't give it up.

But board max underscore on Twitter is our handle. And then,yeah, and honestly just tweet at me. Send questions, criticize whatever. I'm,I'm pretty approachable and spend a lot of time responding to people. So alwayshappy to have those chats live. I can't

[00:44:55] Ben: imagine your DMS that's a disaster, but Iwill say that the graphic looks absolutely amazing.

So whoever designed that on the new website launch, it looksreally, really good. So super

[00:45:05] BoredElonMusk: excited. Yeah, can't wait.

[00:45:08] Ben: Okay. Few questions then we'll open up tothe audience, but You know, the web three crypto space is huge. Obviously yourvery involved and interested in blockchain

[00:45:19] BoredElonMusk: gaming. If

[00:45:21] Ben: you weren't so focused on blockchaingaming, what's the second, most interesting area in web three right now to you.

And why

[00:45:30] BoredElonMusk: more? Sorry, more from like

[00:45:32] Ben: an investment perspective, risk returnpotential for the investors in the audience.

[00:45:39] BoredElonMusk: Okay. Got it. I feel like theanswer I'm going to give you is very blurry, but it's, it's basically defy inbanking. I think that people have just had it with traditional banking, theoverdrafts fees, the transaction fees, the lack of interest, the difficulty inlending.

We are not able to use our money the way we want to. The factthat banks are closed at certain times, you can not go and withdraw your ownmoney is insane to me, you know in, in 2022. And so I think that just, you knowdecentralized finance is presenting itself. The future of banking and thefuture of, you know, all things that that banks essentially do.

And yes, it has lots of risks and oversight needs and you know,onboarding issues. But fundamentally the, the good actors in the space arereally trying to solve for the initial. Levels of of consumer unfriendlinessthat exists in the banking industry. So as an investor, I think as a, as anoverall genre, I think that's, that's a huge area of investment.

The challenge is that it's also pretty easy to spin up bankingsolutions and defy. So there's a lot of risk and you don't necessarily knowwhich projects are going to. Exist a year from now and which ones are going tocollapse. So, yeah, it's a highly volatile space. I offered no specificinvestment advice to anyone other than defy is an interesting space that youshould learn about.

Whereas in terms of where you should put your money, I'll leavethat to Ben and people who are smarter than

[00:47:15] Ben: me. Well, and I'll, I'll practice thatwith nothing in this podcast is financial advice, you know, all the disclaimersthat are supposed to be said, but

[00:47:24] BoredElonMusk: I do know that there are quitea few alternative investors that listen to

[00:47:27] Ben: this.

[00:47:28] BoredElonMusk: What else in this space

[00:47:30] Ben: gets you like? I mean, talking to some ofthese guys that that

[00:47:34] BoredElonMusk: are kind of novices to webthree I'm, I'm a bit of a

[00:47:38] Ben: crypto permeable as they are. So some ofmy friends were.

[00:47:43] BoredElonMusk: It's outliers or

[00:47:45] Ben: things that could like sink this shipthat were you know,

[00:47:48] BoredElonMusk: not really thinking about, Imean, the other, the other area of interest, it's a different kind of aninvestment, I guess you could say an altar alternative investment is isidentity.

So there's there's of course monetary investments, but youridentity. Is also an asset, right? Like my, my pseudonym of borderline Musk isa valuable asset. Like if I wanted to sell it I suppose I could, I would, Iwouldn't want to, but the problem or the challenge that the people are tryingto solve for is that the identity is hard to you know, sort of actually havelike true ownership of and it's also hard to.

To like fork it or transfer it. So I'll kind of elaborate onwhat I'm saying. Like my identity primarily right now exists on Twitter.Twitter is a privately held company now that is, you know, soon to be owned bya friend. And you know, ultimately if if for whatever reason I am no longerdeemed inappropriate user of that.

I could lose my account. I think that's highly unlikely. I'm apretty good actor. You know, not, not violating any policies, so I'm not superworried about it, but the fact remains is that I am renting my identity, myprimary source of distribution that I have, and the reach that I have is being rentedfrom Twitter.

And so I would like to see. You know, the crypto space kind ofsolve for that. And for me to be able to own that identity the same way, Imight be able to own a game asset or a token or any other sort of digital item.And then two is like the transferability. If people opt into following me orbeing part of my community and then I want to sort of fork that or shift it toanother planet.

I don't necessarily want to have to restart from scratch fromzero to have to do that. It would be great to bring people with me, the closestsort of, you know, version of this is like email. If you have an email list,you can take all those addresses and move it over to a new dis distributionplace and, you know, start a new newsletter and bring everybody with you.

That doesn't really work in pretty much every other context interms of like social media. So I would also like to see that. So as aninvestment, again, it's not a monetary investment, but I think that you should,or people should treat their, their online presence as an asset that needs tobe protected.

And that should be you know, looked at as something that needsto kind of continue to evolve and be nourished. And you should be able to addfeatures to it that maybe we don't have today.

[00:50:19] Ben: Very good plants. I'm I mean, mepersonally, I'm super bullish on web three or decentralized identity, and Iknow it's very early stages for, for this, but

[00:50:27] BoredElonMusk: it

[00:50:28] Ben: will be solved eventually and it will besolved well in an eloquent manner, but,

[00:50:32] BoredElonMusk: Yeah, definitely,

[00:50:33] Ben: definitely early stages.

So, so great advice there, or this has been fantastic. Wherecan my listeners, when this is produced as a podcast, find out more about youor where would you like to.

[00:50:47] BoredElonMusk: Yeah, good. Old at 40 Elon Muskon Twitter is the place to go. I've I've secretly been trying to acquire the adboard handle on Twitter, just at board.

It is currently a dormant or suspended account and. I'm hopingthat maybe some friends at Twitter can help me with that. But for now BordiElon Musk is the, is the handle. And by all means again, encourage people to,to reach out with questions and always, always good for a spirited debate onTwitter.

Awesome.

[00:51:16] Ben: And I'll I'll link that LinkedIn AMAlinked board boxes, all the good goodies in the show notes. When this goes liveboard, really appreciate you coming on today. It's been awesome. Lots, lots ofgood alpha dropped here, and I'm really excited to see all that you're doing inthis.

[00:51:32] BoredElonMusk: Yeah. Thanks, Ben.

Thanks for the great questions and conversation there. You haveit.

[00:51:36] Ben: Thank you for

[00:51:37] BoredElonMusk: listening. Really appreciateyour support. Show notes, transcript links,

[00:51:41] Ben: and more can be found

[00:51:43] BoredElonMusk: on our [email protected] you'd be so kind, please share

[00:51:48] Ben: this with anyone you think might beinterested or get some value from this conversation.

If you have any questions or comments, please reach out. I'malways happy to hear. Lastly, if you're on YouTube, please like the video orsubscribe to the channel. If you're listening to the audio version of this,please subscribe to the podcast and, or leave a review. This really helps morepeople find the podcast.

And I really appreciate it. Thanks

[00:52:13] BoredElonMusk: again, and hope you have afantastic day.

[00:52:15] Ben: Happy investing.

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