Episode 19: Digital Collectibles and Investing in Virtual Real Estate (NFTs) with Matty Soudagar

Ben: [00:00:00] Welcome to the alt asset allocation podcast, exploring alternative investment opportunities available to the everyday investor. Here’s your host Ben Lakoff.

Hello and welcome to the alt asset allocation podcast. Today’s interview is with Matty from DCL blogger.com. Matty is absolutely obsessed with non fungible tokens or NFTs and has been investing in this emerging asset class long before it was hot.

In this episode, we dive deep into NFTs, especially into crypto art, digital collectibles and virtual real estate. We also discuss common misconceptions that investors in the space make and how to avoid them as well as the bull and bear cases for the subsectors within this space, there are tremendous disconnects in this very inefficient nascent market and lots to profit from if you know where to look. So Matty has been considered an expert in this growing space and has learned a lot on how to get started and succeed as an investor in this space. Hopefully in this episode, you can benefit from his hours of work and learn to get involved in this exciting growing market.

Before you listen, please don’t forget to like, or subscribe to the podcast or even better to leave a review. This really helps more people find the podcast and helps this thing keep going. It really, really helps.

Are you buying or selling NFTs, please? Let me know. I would love to hear this. Send me a message. Without further ado, Matty, from DCL blogger.com on NFTs.

Enjoy. Matty welcome to the all to asset allocation podcast. Excited to have you.

Matty: [00:01:34] Thanks, happy to be here.

Ben: [00:01:35] Awesome. About two months ago, I had Devin Finzer on the podcast, CEO of OpenSea, talking about all things and FTS, and I actually haven’t published that, but in this time frame, this two month timeframe, NFTs went from something that was, you know, Oh, that used to be CryptoKitties.

It’s not interesting anymore to suddenly center stage within. The small community or at least so, you on Twitter, you say you’re a virtual land slash NFT investor, NFT obsessed. The decentral land. You’re the NFT guy on Twitter. You’ve been following this space. Before it got super hot. we’ll dive into all those things, but I wanted to just start off a little bit about you, your background and how you got into crypto and then NFTs.

Matty: [00:02:24] So my background is more in marketing. I came into the whole digital marketing space, like. Oh, God, I don’t know. Now, 2012, 2013, I was kind of obsessed with like marketing, growing brands, blogging, social media, paid marketing and all that. Like how to grow a business to business development from a digital standpoint.

And then crypto came on, onto the scene in 2017. And I don’t think anyone could not pay it attention. Right. You start to see Bitcoin go up in the thousands and you’re like, crap, I need to do something. So I jumped in and bought some old coins and then wrote up the wave, wrote down the wave and then Jan 2018, I was like, okay, well, my portfolio is coming, crashing down.

I need to diversify into something. I wasn’t much of a investor back then. So just kind of going through what people tell you to do, which is diversify. If things kind of go bad. So I found them decentral and cause I liked the, I liked the logo and it’s a weird story because. I just went to the second page of coin market cap, looking for a small cap coin.

I liked the logo. I liked the sound of, it seemed like a game. So I clicked it, joined the discord and suddenly I was just like, Holy crap is hundreds of people here buying and selling these digital land pieces back then had no idea what NFTs were had heard of CryptoKitties, but I didn’t actually. Invest in it or look deeper into it.

And then that’s where it all began kind of realizing that people are selling these digital land pieces for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. And it was mind blowing to me and.

Ben: [00:03:48] Awesome.  they were selling these land pieces for hundreds, if not thousands, but now, I mean, the transaction prices on these things are hundreds of thousands of dollars per art piece or land.

It’s gone up by a massive order of magnitude. Just one note on your diversification. It’s not real good diversification. If you have diversify out of crypto into another niche within crypto,we’ll save that discussion for another day. Right before we get too deep into the weeds. I think just back up a bit and explain what are NFTs, what are some types of them that exist out there?

Matty: [00:04:28] So NFD is from a tech standpoint. I can’t really get too deep into it because my tech dev knowledge is isn’t the best, but I know like NFTs are tokens that live on the blockchain that represent a unique asset and these unique assets are desired. One, because there may be a collectible, like something like a crypto kitty, or a special card or a special sword or an art piece, or they have utility, for example, an NFT, which is a card in a game, but it’s a special, strong card.

So you buy it because it’s a strong cut or it could be a access token to a virtual world. Maybe you’re buying a VIP ticket that in decentral and you can use to get up and you click at the door and the door, the door will pick up. Whether you have the NFP in your wallet or not, and then it’ll let you through.

So NFTs are kind of a way for us to do many, many things, but on the basic level, they unlike ERC 20 tokens where one Bitcoin, sorry, one Ethereum, one XRP equals another XRP or not money theorem. Equals another Ethereum, the fungibility is that this is non fungible, meaning that each asset within the project is completely different.

Each crypto kitty is different. Each digital land in decentralized is different, different coordinates. They, each token represents something different in this digital space. So that’s kind of like the broad overview.

Ben: [00:05:43] Yeah, I think that’s a good one. with NFTs, I get in game items. I get domain names. Tickets, definitely collectibles maybe. But, the one I wanted to start with is art. the idea is that you have this truly provably, scarce, unique art piece, crypto art, it’s growing massively right now. I mean, you see these crypto artists selling something for 50 eats, you know, quite. A lot of money.

these crypto art collectors, and it’s this, this, this wild new world. But I mean, the argument is always like, I can just take a screenshot of this crypto art and then I have it and then I can send it to all my friends. just walk me through like the mindset of like, what is crypto art? Why is it unique?

Why does this not make sense to take a screenshot?

Matty: [00:06:35] art, the art world is very, very different and it kind of intersects with the collectability mindset of people. So like I explained before, you know, you. You collect NFTs or you buy NFTs for the utility or the collectibility value of it. Now with your example, actually we’ll quickly explain what NFT art is.

So it’s basically a way for artists to make some sort of a digital form of their art, whether it be 3d or it could even just be an image, but it’s a way of them to represent a, to kind of, attach a receipt. To it, a receipt of authentication of ownership of scarcity of Maddie owns this piece that came from this special artist, that, that token is special because it came from the artist and it lives in my wallet.

So people can track it on the blockchain that I’m married on the original piece. Of course, in terms of, in terms of collectability, it has value in terms of utility. Of course, anyone can screenshot it and put it on the wall. send it to your friends, PNG that do whatever you’d like to do. There’s people that collect Coke cans.

Charles on cards. people that collect back scratches, like all kinds of silly things, right? And the reason why they collect it is unique to them. So what gives these value is that set of collectors that want to collect the original piece represented by this token. so of course, you know, you could buy a Nick that’s completely original, a special collector’s edition, and that’s also thousands of dollars.

Or you could just buy. a fake night of, you know, some place that looks exactly the same for $20 and maybe buy a hundred of them for the same price as you would a unique one. So the demographic appeal is completely different. The ones that give it value, and the reason why these selling it for X amount of dollars, you know, hundreds of Ethereum or whatever is because the collected niche values them, not the utility niche, which is the majority demographics.

Ben: [00:08:21] Okay, that makes sense. And I think, you know, one of the qualities is the ownership record because it’s public transparent and permanent. You can always see that, Oh, Matty owned this artwork and then he transferred it. So sold it to this other person and you can kind of see this chain of ownership. which I think is, is really cool and it’s perfect for it. Right?

Matty: [00:08:43] Exactly. The blockchain is perfect for it, but at the end of the day, people don’t go to blockchain. Like they don’t open up ether scan and check out, okay. Where does Maddie who owns this? And where did it transact? They go to the art platforms, like super rare or wearable.

And they see who, you know, they, they know a verified artists. profile and they can see the collectors that own the genuine piece. So my name Maddie is, or DCL blogger is in the record for bidding on certain pieces that’s recorded on the blockchain obviously, but displayed on super rare, super is going to probably be a pretty popular platform to collect art and.

If you make a fake of it and sell it on the blockchain, you rip it and, you know, make a hundred copies of it. That’s not going to be sitting on super rare, which all the collectors check out and value. Right? So, I mean, as these websites, mature and these thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people follow super and check it out, that’s the society or the social kind of group.

That will give this value and you can rip it and do whatever you’d like and make a hundred and fifties off it if you want. But this is where I guess the value will increase from that collective base.

Ben: [00:09:50] Okay. And that makes sense. Walk me through  there’s a number of different NFTs. what NFT category gets you most excited and why?

Matty: [00:10:00] I would say a very new industry. So I’m, I’m watching the, I’m more watching the industry mature at the moment. I’m a somewhat conservative investor relative to crypto in the sense that I like to see maturity in the industry before I make my move. Right. So I’ve been collecting art for like less than a month, I think.

But super has been out for like two years. People have been collecting art way before me. but I waited till super air was at the top rankings for a while and stayed there for about six to seven months until I paid attention. Because for me, that showed stability. So for me, I look for projects that are stable.

So for example, decentral, and it’s been in the top three, top five for life. Two to three years consistently now, and also other virtual land projects that seem to get a lot of people buying and virtual land is something very interesting because people don’t buy it to collect. They buy it to utilize that land and build something on that platform, which might potentially have millions of followers or millions of participants running around.

You want to have. Land to showcase your work, maybe build a game, whatever it may be. So I think, for me, I like to invest in the structural part of the industry, which seemed to be platforms like decentral and which will tie all these together. Like wearable is going to have a headquarter dropping on the Binance, has a headquarter that’s dropped on there and they have like another 10 to 15 projects that will be dropping no experiences, games, headquarters in the industry.

And hopefully that. Trajectory will continue for the next two to five years. but you got decentral land and you also got like, reputable is going to be an odd platform. Superhero is going to be an odd platform. So the structural part of it, hopefully they’ll release some sort of an ERC 20 investment part of it.

But I also like things like art, which. if I buy an art piece from a artist who I think will do extremely well in the future, we will in five to 10 to 15 to 20 years take their art. So seriously, there’ll be on multiple galleries. There’ll be at the forefront of the NFT art movement. If I buy their early pieces, then I joined them on that journey.

So that’s the beautiful thing about art is it’s kind of those things where, you know, you just buy the piece and you keep it. You help the artist, if you want. I can put that out on my digital land in descent land. When I run conferences, et cetera, et cetera, build more awareness, but you join them on that journey.

So I like to buy art from people or artists who I think will continue to give, you know, the art industry that everything do it full time, grow their awareness, their brand, et cetera, entice more collectors to collect the pieces and. I’m excited about the art industry, because of that. I think we’re in the space of blockchain and crypto, where people will, are very spend friendly, especially when.

You know, crypto goes nuts and Bitcoins downstate dollars of like 20,000, a hundred thousand dollars. I’m sure there’ll be a lot more. Or I work, where do I throw this money at? Kind of that that’ll be the mindset, right? That’s what happened in 2017. So when that happens, I’d like to own the assets on the blockchain would seem to be the next logical step for these people when there’s more like, easy way to spend money or integrate, you know, Smart contract to value transfer between crypto, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and NFT assets.

When that becomes a thing and people want to diversify their assets to something like art and FDR is staring them in the face. Once they have like, you know, a couple of million dollars of Bitcoin, then I feel like a lot of money will flow into the NFP space. So for me, it’s, it’s kind of grabbing those before that.

Ben: [00:13:21] Interesting.  I hadn’t really thought about it like that. it sounds like this is predicated and quarterly related to the overall crypto market. very much so. Right. the assumption, the bull case for like crypto Arctic is that crypto is going to continue to explode and people want to diversify into some other. Or unique, like a digital collectible sort of thing with their, their winnings basically.

Matty: [00:13:47] Yeah. I mean like super, if you look at it, there’s a really nice graph on open. See that shows the average price paid for any super art piece. And super area is different to the other art platforms, because the pieces that are released on them are only one-on-ones, they’re all just one piece, but you can mint a hundred pieces of the same art on these other platforms.

Super. It doesn’t do that. So when they show a graph and say that the average price of a piece has increased from 0.4, if they’re empty now it’s two Ethereum. It shows you the overall sentiment, and this is going on for two years. So it’s been going up during a crypto. Bear cycle I a bear phase. So for me, whether the crypto blows up or not, that’s kind of a cherry on top, but this industry will continue to grow because there’s already billions of dollars in Bitcoin.

And if there and people, I don’t know, like the current choice for mainstream crypto is private in another cryptocurrency, but as big sales happen in the NFT world and digital land sells for a million dollars are an art piece sells for me dollars. I’m sure a lot of that money will start to flow into this space, whether or not Bitcoin hits that.

There’s larger numbers, but if it does, I think we’re going to go even more craziest. So. Yeah, yeah.

Ben: [00:14:55] For fully expect that to happen. And then the bull case with virtual real estate virtual land, something like decentral land, the end goal is that this is the metaverse like  what’s kind of the unicorn bull case here.

Matty: [00:15:12] I guess that would be the bull case. I think it’ll be a collective of projects that will combine efforts. And the good thing about NFTs is, is their ability to be interoperable with other projects. Right. And that hasn’t been explored much at the moment, probably because most of these NFT projects are still stabilizing their billing, their user base.

They’re still kind of. Spending all their resources, time, money, 99% of it on just building a great platform. Once they can pull that out and kind of like focus on expanding. I’m sure that will, the next logical step will be like, Hey, you know, crypto, crypto voxels, selenium space sandbox. That’s what together let’s give you NFTs some sort of value in our project.

And I think that’s going to create. You know, the, that sort of metaverse vibe, you know, that DCL, I hope will be a big player in that. they have a lot of momentum they’re going to have, like ATM’s that you can just literally lock your funds in and, you know, do, provide liquidity for, in a liquidity pool or union swap, integrating to Unisource.

So they’re very smart contract, structured. Focused. that’s their whole vibe. They’re very tech tech focused over there decentral land. So companies like Binance and make, make a dial when they drop, hopefully that we can do more, you know, specific things, but it’s also that movement in giving it more utility, having fun events there and kind of getting more of a user base to kind of stick to the online platforms.

So as soon as we see that sort of a graph growing organically, I think that’s when you will start to see like, It’s it becomes a no brainer to invest in these projects because it’s going to continue to grow. Yeah.

Ben: [00:16:40] And what major catalysts is or things that, what needs to happen to get more people interested, go into these decentral land events and things like that.

What, what are we missing?

Matty: [00:16:52] So before I think the problem was, and the defy space has changed this a lot. The problem before used to be that not many people knew how to even operate a Metta mask account. I’m at a mosque wallet, right? So in two, we engage in these NFT projects, the one you needed to learn how to download middot mosque and send crypto to it, manage the security of it, knowing how to handle gas fees and for the dominant crypto space.

this didn’t make sense because people just love keeping their money on exchanges, but defy came along and suddenly we have about eight to $10 billion locked in these protocols. And now everyone pretty much knows how to use meta mosque, at least in that world. So when we see a cross. Of defined entities.

We see some pretty big numbers. So I think, that has been a catalyst. And now when I run conferences, 50% of people are guests that wasn’t the case. Before cause I’m parody, even running conferences in the central end. it used to just be like the, you know, the handful of 20 to 30, 50 people may be that are regular members there that regularly come to the events.

But now there’s like 20 to 30 guests. I can just tweet a link to it. People can click it and join a, without a VR. It runs on the browser. So I think the catalyst will be like a game. That, you know, works really well. And maybe some MMO that people want to collect something tied to, you know, yield to farming, gamified the whole, to, to a level gamify, the whole defy space.

You know, people wanted to keep the park, their money there and earn some money, you know, by doing so. So maybe there’ll be a way to park your NFTs somewhere in decentral land, or do some activities there that earn some money that provides a value to the platform as well. So it’s sustainable. And also the user’s doing.

I think, the catalyst will just be like a lot of experimentation, a lot of really big events. And I think, something like having two to three really big events every day and increasing that user base, will be a big thing. And I know they’re going to roll out this whole movement and funding towards like, Proposals that propose conferences and building out games, et cetera.

So that would be a big play are the, at the end of this at the end of this year and next year.

Ben: [00:18:50] So say, yeah, I’m a conference organizer. What is the benefit of doing an event in a place like decentral? And obviously they’re going to work with me and promote it because they want to encourage people to do this.

But like, I’m thinking about my users, the people that are coming to this, why do it in decentral land versus just, Yeah, zoom or whatever.

Matty: [00:19:09] So if you do a conference in zoom, it’s all, obviously it’s there. It does the job, but I would assume with a virtual space where a lot can be done, for example, you know, you can make like a.

Special section, for example, after the conference, people can exchange and ft business cards, and you can have portals that are only unlikeable if you own that business card. So if you want to have a conversation with someone that can give you a business card, you go to the portal and only this is a discussion for people that are interested to learn more.

so suddenly these virtual worlds can give, can play around with the concept of NFTs and what they mean. You can probably sell courses as NFT. people can buy sponsors. as NFTs and that visual thing, maybe we’ll give you some more ad space. Maybe you can have some banners around and NTI sponsors too.

Once you have a hundred, maybe 200, 300 people attending your events, then it kind of becomes like why, why do people go to real-world conferences as opposed to zoom and kind of find mimicking that in a virtual space, which suddenly opens it to the whole global space, as opposed to the district local area, when you’re running conferences.

So whatever can be done in the real world, it’s kind of finding some sort of a solution in the virtual world.

Ben: [00:20:15] Yeah, well, I mean, the stars have aligned with COVID and kind of the depth of the in-person conference. I don’t know if he went to like consensus or LA blockchain, weekday, but they use Brella, which is like really nice, but not the same as, virtual conference that I can walk up to your little avatar and say, Hey, in a place like decentral land, I’m curious being well-versed on all these different, NFTs.

It sounds like you particularly follow virtual real estate, virtual land artwork, but what is the NFT category that you like if you had to bet that would gain mainstream adoption and use the quickest.

Matty: [00:20:55] there’s just so many to choose from. That’s the problem. I feel it would be either art or gaming because they’re both already proven industries.

virtual land is obviously very promising, but it’s still a new industry, right? It’s not a very, there’s still a lot to figure out to make it use utility wise, attractive. Then investment wise, even more attractive, but art has been in the traditional world of collecting for centuries. So, and gaming, you know, you have people that come home, kids that come home and glued to the screen playing games for like the next eight to 10 hours.

So I think gaming and art, for example, right now snapshot view, I’m just so bullish from the art market, but not the art market as a whole certain artists that I’d like to invest in and buy and help promote, because I think they’re going to be pretty big. So. I think, yeah, the whole art, or just like, you know, even musicians coming in.

Other artists that develop things, even people that will probably start to make 3d art that will sell the NFTs. And you can take that NFT and deploy that 3d art in a virtual world, like the central land or just that whole art scene where it’s going to give creators creative value and just have like this whole bunch of collectors that will come to, I feel like collecting is at the core of a lot of people in blockchain.

I don’t know why I, I feel like just at a human level, you want to collect things like some people have. That desire to just hold onto things that are special to them and blockchain crypto. There’s a lot of people that came from gambling gaming and this whole like tech space. And I feel like a lot of them come from.

this collectability thing. So I feel like there’s a big intersect there when they realize there’s art and game assets and stuff, they can collect.

Ben: [00:22:36] There’s like a hundred plus billion dollars spent in Epic games just on skins. it’s just like a shirt or something to it’s a bit of collecting as well. I totally get it. I’d be curious, what’s the bare case? Like why wouldn’t crypto art take off?

Matty: [00:22:54] I think the big case would be if Bitcoin and Ethereum and these major currencies take a big hit. The reason why? One of the big reasons why people are spending X amount on these is because if their home is worth a few hundred dollars, like four or $500.

So when you spend a three to four Ethereum for the crypto person, it’s not that much money. It may be in some scenarios, but a lot of people bought. If they’re in Bitcoin for, for a couple of dollars, especially Ethereum and Bitcoin, maybe they bought for a few hundred dollars and then. Easily kind of them spending the same one Bitcoin, but now being able to buy like four to five art pieces is a big deal.

And so for the artists, it’s like, Holy crap, this is big money. Like how is someone spending a couple of thousand dollars on our art? But for us, it’s like three to 40 theories and many of us have a lot of Ethereum. Right. But if in theory, I’m in Bitcoin and like that’s sort of, the cryptocurrency market takes a big hit and we start to see, you know, two to $3,000 Bitcoin.

50 to $100. Ethereum, I think people will want to hold onto their crypto a lot more, not be as much spend I’m happy and artists we’ll probably see that happen in the short term. That will probably be the case, but in the longterm as just money turns digital, and then these digital. Solutions become more mainstream.

I think longterm, then it’s not going to have that big of an impact.

Ben: [00:24:10] Yeah. Yeah. I’d agree with that. I think that makes a lot of sense. Looking at all of these developments. I mean, there’s a lot of hype within the NFT space. What aspect is getting you so excited or what crazy new things are you looking at that, that gets you really, really excited in the space.

Matty: [00:24:26] So. I’ve been invested in the NFV space, you know, mentally, emotionally, physically, everything for like the last two to three years. So I’ve watched the space mature, and I have known that, you know, some projects have put like their heart and soul into developing their product. And although now they’re getting attention.

and I guess you can say there’s sort of a hype cycle. You know, and if these have been selling for like 50,000, a hundred thousand dollars before it, not many people even knew about them a year or two ago, we had like,  land sell like a $250,000 land. And, you know, we seen so much happen over the last two years as opposed to the current cycle.

So for me, it’s not so much what’s new it’s, it’s, who’s established. And I know that the previous cryptocurrency mindset, especially in 2017 was, or who’s the new next so-and-so and who’s the next. More market cap coin, and that’s going to be the next kind of Uber or whatever it is. Right. But the NFD space, especially with gaming and platforms, virtual worlds, this is so much dev work that needs to be done.

two years, three years, heads down creating a product, stabilizing it. They’re still going through issues and trying to make the voice chat more better, and people are jumping in the platform. So having bugs and stuff. And for me, the question becomes. Do I really want to invest in something where I have to wait another one to two years past the hype cycle of, Oh, it’s a low market, low market cap coin, or it’s new.

There’s going to be so many shiny, shiny things. And the ones that are going to stand out are the ones that already have a product currently and a user base that’s growing. So I’m excited to watch. Whoever’s already established. Start to hit that exponential curve. Like you start to see the curve going like this, not in terms of price, but in terms of user base, thousands of people starting to play ACCE infinity or hundreds of people going to conferences in decentral central.

And that going 300 people, 500 people. That’s my excitement level. Not so much the price, the price will go up and down, but. The user base will add to that kind of floor structure of these projects. So I know there’s many projects coming up like  and, you know, a bunch of different projects that are saying, they’re going to do this.

They’re going to do that. But for me, like, do I really want to wait another one year? I’m I’m exhausted, man. Like, I just I’m happy with like the products that have already established. So I I’m a conservative guy. I just wait for momentum and the right kind of momentum before I put my money. I’m happy to be late to the party and miss a pre-sale, but still be early and getting away before it goes exponential.

Ben: [00:26:52] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. investors, you know, they survey the landscape, they’re interested in, NFTS. These undoubtedly will be around whether it’s, you know, an individual crypto artists or whatever, but like the concept of NFT will be used in game items, tickets, something like will be a use case.

Right? How do you, talk to investors about finding out more in the space, where do you point them to get started?

Matty: [00:27:16] Right. That’s a common question I get, and it’s, it’s quite difficult because, one, the, the kind of websites that display data in a user-friendly way where you can make these investment decisions real quick.

They’re not there yet. they’re not UI friendly yet. I coin market cap. You can just scan it and suddenly, you know how the top a hundred coins are doing within the next two to three minutes. Right. but they’re not there yet. So I’m working on a couple of websites that will disappear in a very coin market cap way friendly way, where you can just go on and see the top training artists, the most recent sales, the profits that they, the profit, the collector made the overall market cap of each artist, the platform they’re on, et cetera, and just scan it the way that you want.

And I think once these kind of things come up, there’ll be very easy for people to learn too. Take the next step and invest. But at the moment, it’s just, it’s just old school. You got to go to, I think open sea rankings is a good way to just see who the top trending projects are by volume. And then it’s kind of like watching coin market companies suddenly see something go up a hundred percent.

You pay attention, you jump in, ask questions, you ask why. And it’s one of those things. It’s a similar kind of. educational process where you can go to open, see ranking, suddenly you see something go up like 800% in terms of volume, you click in, you join the discord. You ask what’s going on. You learn about the assets that of saw, Oh, you can get an unfundable.com as well.

That show recent sales history of different projects, but you got to learn exactly why these specific NFTs are selling for that price. Maybe it’s, you know, maybe like the. Plant axes in these, in ACCE infinity, which is like a Tamagotchi kind of Pokemon kind of game. Maybe the plant. Ones are becoming that maybe they made a tweak to the algorithm and now suddenly the plant wants to become really strong.

Right. And that maybe that’s what’s happened or maybe some big investor came in and bought like the bottom floor of the cheapest, fire type or whatever it is. So, you know, you’ve got to know what happened and how the game’s been influenced and then kind of educate yourself on the whole thing. But it’s something that you can’t learn in a day or two, I think the best way to just observe the space, be immersed in it.

Find the tools and just watch the space for a bit until your mind kind of collects exactly what’s going on. It’s kind of like trying to understand the Pokemon card collection. Well, the whole art collection world, the whole like, you know, YPO, the blue collect the magic, the gathering cards or whatever it may be is trying to like try and understand all of those industries in a day.

It’s not going to happen. Right. It’s going to take your time.

Ben: [00:29:49] I love this about crypto, right? I mean, cause you, you try to wrap your head around something like Bitcoin is like, well, you need to not understand monetary policy and economics and financial and, and, and like all of these things and the same thing within FTS is like, I want to dive into NFTs.

It’s like, okay, do you understand the art collection and do real estate investing and all of the gaming, like all of these things, right. All wrapped up into NFTs.

Matty: [00:30:18] Yeah, I’m going to be releasing a 15 video, kind of free video overview tutorial set for people though, what NFTs are, why collectors want them going over, like the art market, the collectible market, the top projects, et cetera.

So I’ll probably be dropping that by the end of the week. So that’d probably be a really good starting point if you just want to absorb all this knowledge and the kind of go on your way. so I think people that do more of that will definitely accelerate the space. Awesome.

Ben: [00:30:42] Yeah. And I’ll definitely link that in the show notes when it comes out, there’ll be released by the time it’s out.

For sure. the, the tools that you had mentioned were fungible, I think it’s dot com open. See, I mean, do you use like dune analytics for some of this stuff too? Or what else?

Matty: [00:30:58] I don’t use Dunam analytics. I really just heard of it like a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I should. But yeah, my, my, my I’m so immersed in the, in the space, my Twitter feed just notifies me.

Every time something happens. I have a discord channel called NFP investors hub, where I’ve got bots that ping me every time a sale happens or pings us every time a sale happens. So we all go in and we’re like, Oh, Holy crap. This sold for $2,000. We will discuss about it. It’s one of those things where every day, you know, you’re getting notified that this sells that soul in over like a period of two to three months.

You kind of know the valuations in your head because you’ve just been so. Part of that conversation and discussion

Ben: [00:31:34] that bot sounds like my nightmare, especially now when it was once a day before, it probably wasn’t a big deal. Now it’s like multiple times a day hour.

Matty: [00:31:45] So yeah, you can. So the thing with the discord bot, I know like I have like 10 to 15 of those bots that ping you on different projects, but you know, if you mute the ones that you don’t want to hear from, but you leave like the digital land ones, then you’re like, you know, you get pinged.

Four or five times a day. And if you’re in that learning phase, it’s really good because you want to know why and how these cells, so it’s good for at least a week or two until they figure it out, then you can just mute it.

Ben: [00:32:08] Gotcha. And I’ll link all those things in the show notes, for sure. What is the biggest mistakes that you see new ambassadors in the space make?

Matty: [00:32:15] I think coming with the mindset of just, throwing your money into the next big thing. In the NFT industry, it’s different because it’s the maturity of that specific product that gives it longterm value and there’s going to be, so it’s kind of why the ICO thing went to 2017. Like so many companies, they had beautiful ideas, but they couldn’t execute.

And suddenly most of them went down like 95, 99%. Right. 90% plus was like the majority of the projects from their all-time highs. So I think like, You know, it’s easy to get carried away with hype and especially pre-sales pre-sales for NFT projects where they say, Hey, we’re going to release a thousand of these, special exhibitions for our game.

And traditionally what’s happened with pre-sales is that these projects, they run these pre-sales for like a month or two, and everyone kind of runs in because they’re like, Oh, this game is going to be huge. They buy them. Well, that’s tough. And then they got to wait a year or two for the game to develop.

And in that year or two, there’s another pre-sale, there’s another, like 10 to 15 pre-sales that people are throwing their money out because it’s more shiny. It’s more, it’s more better. But during that time where we’re all this is happening in these games are under development. You see those people that FOMO in, into the presale just sell their NFTs.

For cheaper on open sea or whatever, just to quickly buy into the next one comes to that hype cycle. So I see like the same mindset happening where people just want to get into the next big thing, but it’s one of those things. Just take your time to learn exactly what the hell is going on. if you want to be a short term investor and you want to just trade, then maybe, you know, things better than me jumping to the presale.

If you just want to buy and sell real quickly or. However you want to play the market, but if you are a more long-term person that actually wants this to have value, then I think those stronger bet are with the communities that are already formed. The discord groups that are already 5,000, 10,000 people strong that already have buzzing conversations with people that are excited to play the game.

And, and you know that they’ve had 10 to 15 tournaments for the last year and each one keeps getting bigger and better. I think stable growth in these projects are very underestimated from the broader crypto crowd, because stable growth is one of those things where it’s just a matter of time until it goes exponential, as opposed to just a big spike up and then like nothingness for the next year or two.

So I think, yeah, people just not doing the research and, and just funneling in, which is the language of crypto. But, you know, with NFTs, you can lose your money much more, much more quicker because, You know, if you buy into this stuff and you, and the volume drives up, well, then you’re just left with an image or an NFT that no one wants to buy.

Ben: [00:34:44] yeah, I mean it’s or to the real estate or the art market, right. There’s not this massive liquid market for this obscure painting on my wall. There’s not many people that are willing to buy it. And the same thing goes for digital art.

Matty: [00:34:57] Yeah. The liquidity is just so thin, you know, especially with people, may FOMO in because there’s a thousand dollars sales happening and they’re like, Holy crap, this thousand dollars sales happening.

But. The overall volume is probably like half a million dollars that the company generates, which is tiny. It’s so tiny. So in a, in like three to six months, if they can have some sort of decent secondary market volume, you can’t sell anything. So for me, you know, decentralized is great because it’s fun.

It’s got like 25 to $50 million with a volume of the last two, three years. So I know people. Will continue to come and buy and sell land. There’s enough of a base there. And I look for projects that have similar type of things on the like super air, or it was just the art industry altogether is kind of going down that trajectory as well.

So for me, I want to see these immature to a level where I’m comfortable putting in X amount of money. Cause I know I can pull it out and that’s the most important thing.

Ben: [00:35:48] Nice. I’d be curious on your thoughts on, like fractionalized, NFT ownership. Like I think if decks and then, NFT backed loans. Which I think are two, like, support niches that have popped up.

Matty: [00:36:03] Great. I love Nintex. I talk to them quite a lot. I’m probably going to invest in, in the, in the company as well. I just love what they’re doing. You know, fractionalizing oil providing liquidity to these non liquid markets. And I think as more people come to know about this project, something like Netflix will be perfect right now.

It’s quite niche. someone wants to shod, or fractionalize a ACCE infinity asset. There’s only like a thousand people that know of it. Maybe 50 to a hundred people that participate. But the moment these projects grow and become huge, a product like . What, you know, you could shot or factionalized like a million dollars, million dollar on sword.

It’s going to go nuts. It’s going to be an awesome one. It’s really cool because. You know, everyone can now own the piece of the sword and then you, I can add this new thing where, okay. Everyone that owns a fraction of the sword. Well, you’re going to own when you’re using, you can also use the sword, not the main sole, but you can use maybe a skin that represents the sword or something.

So, so much more can be done now with this nationalize fractionize fractionalizing or whatever it is. but yeah, very excited for them to mature and hopefully they that’d be a big part of this industry. I think it’s. You know, I kind of think in my mind, how are buying it? So the bigger cryptocurrency exchange is going to capitalize on the NFT trading space with these volumes, because it’s not easy to build some sort of a interface that’ll that everyone are comfortable to buy in and trade easily.

Right. Because each asset is different. It’s not like you can’t put the same indicators that you can in, in Binance we’d like charts and stuff. So something like Netflix will probably do it better. And ft back loan is quite interesting. It depends what you’re backing it by you’re backing it by crypto or Fiat.

you know, with Fiat things that are so volatile in the NFP space, because one, the asset there’s so many factors yet. Bitcoin. If Bitcoin moves, if theory moves, if the NFD space, moves, if Viet kind of drops, you know, like there’s so many factors that now,

Ben: [00:38:00] how do you value it? Right? It’s like, I have this parcel of land in the boondocks of a decentral land.

It’s like, yeah, it’s worth this Mount. Like who knows?

Matty: [00:38:12] Yeah. It’s just so much to do. Right? Exactly. The learning curve is big, but. especially with decentralized because you have now manner as well, and then you got Bitcoin Ethereum. And if any of these currencies move, it does move the marketplace mentality.

So,

Ben: [00:38:26] yeah. there’s so many variables. it gets me excited, right? Because like, these are the fundamental, like foundational, crazy building blocks that need to exist. But like, Yeah. Maybe a little bit early, but Nick texts is super cool.

Matty: [00:38:39] What I mean with de-central and what you brought up is exactly the issue that these data websites need to solve.

Right? So what a website coming out, which categorizes each land based on what they are. So the ones, all the lands that are connected to a road, all the lands that are not connected to anything in the far outskirts. So it categorizes these and it puts it at like the average price, the cheapest ones.

Available, et cetera. So within the price increase over time. So you can kind of know by category five or six categories, a better by a decision straight away, you can scan the market and know, okay, well it looks like Lance connected, the rows are increasing more than the lines connected to that that are not connected to roads.

So instead of going to and looking at each individual piece, these are the things that I need, right? Not just for decentralized, for cross platforms to understand the space better. but just to answer your question on NFT backed loans, I like the concept of it, but I just feel like it’s risky. in terms of just the volatility of the market, like you could default on your loan, just because the Bitcoin market, the crypto market tanks and people are just dumping the land, or maybe they’re dumping their assets.

And suddenly, you know, you can’t honor that loan. It’s just risky because there’s no stability yet in that space, maybe for art, it could be different though.

Ben: [00:39:50] Yeah. still same difficulties of valuing it. For sure. I’m curious that that new website that you’re launching, did you, did you mimic this or design this after some tool that exists for buying land plots and the way that they’re categorized?

Matty: [00:40:05] I did look at what’s around already. I know, there’s a really good website for God’s on chain. It’s called total control.io it’s community website. And what it does is you can actually click on each card. And each card has like thousands of cards of the same card. Right. But you can see each purchase that’s been done over time and it’s been graphed out.

So you can see that. All right. Well, this card went to 0.2 E is swollen duct to 0.1 and it’s got like data plots of the last, like 300 sales. So you can kind of see exactly what’s going on and make a very good. Invest the judgment or where you’re buying it in the cycle of it’s kind of lifetime. So are you buying it at its peak?

Are you buying it? It’s low, such as the volume, but also shows you how many people I’ll buy and get where the volume dips are and how that volume constituted or correlated with the price. And so I took that and also something like non fungible, which shows the data very well. There’s a really good website that.

Existed before I think it was called like disinterest stats or something that was really old. It only lasted like three months, but just taking these into consideration and knowing that there needs to be websites are very easy to just look at and kind of understand straightaway. And that’s kind of how I best the DCLI and also the art one, which I’m hopefully going to release soon.

Ben: [00:41:20] Matty, this was great. I mean, so you have a blog, you have these video tutorials coming out and ebook, tons of resources, this discord, where do you want to send my listeners? Where can they find out more about it? You, what? You’re working on

Matty: [00:41:33] this? Join my Twitter. My Twitter is probably the best thing you guys can join.

DCL blogger on Twitter. Yeah. Every day, I do a two minute update on the NFT industry. So if you don’t have time for anything, you get pinged on Twitter and you know exactly. What’s gone down in the last 24 hours every single day. Monday to Friday, I try and take a break on the weekend, but it’s exciting because every day I’m like looking, they’re hunting around for information.

There’s so much stuff that’s going on and I love covering it in that two minute segments. So I’d say Twitter is probably the best thing you can do.

Ben: [00:41:59] Awesome. And those, those video updates are really great. The last bonus question, because I am very curious. How do you curate the, content to find the, what happened in this day? I mean, is it literally just trolling through Twitter for. While

Matty: [00:42:14] it is, but I’m going to make a website for that too. I have a, I come from a background of making web assets. So as soon as I have a problem, I try and make my own solution to it. But I want to make something that, you know, hooks into the feed of all these blogs on all these websites and filters them for anything NFC related and displays it all into one seat.

Just, just, just the links by link by link. so w on the front front page, you can see the next, the last 30 to 50 articles that are coming out. And if you related, all on one page. So, at the moment, it’s all just, I’m up. I’m in WhatsApp groups, I’m in discord groups, I’m on Twitter and I just screenshot things that I’ve come across over my 24 hour period.

And I just spend some time covering it.

Ben: [00:42:53] Matty, really appreciate having you on today. Thanks so much.

Matty: [00:42:56] My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you for having me

Ben: [00:42:59] There you have it. Thank you for listening. really appreciate your support. Show notes, transcript links, and more can be found on our website at all.

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