 And now, I look like a genius, right? But, you know, back then, it's not the same. So I think crypto has given me that thick skin to handle cynicism. I just tell people who really are cynical about it and negative about it that they don't have to care about it, right? Like, go do something else. Hello! Jonathan Mohan is out today. On this episode of Speaking of Bitcoin, we're joined by Vignesh Sundaresan, a past guest of the show and the real-life personality behind MetaPERS and the MetaCovin, let's call it, Avatar. For those of you who haven't been following closely, MetaPERS is the fund earlier this month won the Christie's Auction, the Beeple first 5,000 piece. So he's got the dual distinction of outbidding trons just in Sun and also of having spent the third largest amount of money ever on a piece of art from a living artist. MetaCovin, thank you very much for joining us today and welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. So let's take the opportunity to kind of zoom back out from India and get a little bit more specific on kind of the moment that we're in right now. Because as we kind of were discussing in earlier parts of this conversation, NFTs and collectibles and blockchain stuff is having a bit of a moment now. And it didn't really start with Beeple, but I would say that that was sort of the last biggest event. I would actually argue that this kind of started with the NBA Top Shot project, which frankly was the thing that started getting me really excited over the early part of the year. Because for as long as we've been talking about tokens and as long as I've personally been working on token projects, the thing that's always been that kind of eventual goal is going effectively mainstream, right? Is taking these ideas that a small number of enthusiasts are very passionate about, willing to jump through the hoops, willing to brave kind of the metaverses before there's anything really there. And so I'm not a sports guy. I don't particularly care about basketball, but just the interest and the kind of grasp that I think that we saw come out of that and are continuing to see today told me that something was different. That what I had looked at for the last number of years, something had changed over the last couple of months. And now I'm still kind of trying to look around the environment and see what has happened. But before I throw it back to you, I want to put kind of another part on this, which is that it's not about the price for us, but it's about the price for a lot of people. And people on an interview that he did shortly after the sale made a comparison to kind of the dot-com era and how although there was a dot-com bubble and people paid silly amounts of money for like investing dot-com and stuff like that, right? That even though there was this collapse, the technology wasn't the problem. It was the speculation on the technology that was the problem, and it was sort of the run-up in excitement and sort of FOMO around it. So I mean, talk about the current moment that we're in with NFTs as you see it, and then talk about kind of what you think comes next after this, not far into the future as we've perhaps talked about before, but like, what's the next step for this stuff? So I'll also speak in a way where, like what we have built through Metapos is understanding of this thesis where I think there'll be infinite number of NFTs, right? Like the same way we can wish so hard that people don't make so many NFTs and flood the market, but we've opened up a new technology which allows you to just create something, and that means that there going to be infinite number of NFTs. And in that world, obviously, like if you think about this moment and say one or two years from now, there'll be a exponential number of NFTs that exist. So what is happening today in a sense could mean that there is more demand than supply, right? And in a year, if there is a lot more supply and then there is demand, it's going to really affect the whole market and people's mindset. And it's also going to create this moment where people are going to think, oh, I thought this artist will not release more NFTs, right? It's going to create that feeling or it's going to give people the feeling that, oh, I thought NBA top shots is not going to release more of these moments. And that feeling, when it hits them, I think there will definitely be a sobering of this whole industry where the prices right now, if you think about the highest priced item, people are anchoring it to that and then saying what is the next best priced item and the next best priced item. So maybe my item is worth this much, right? But in my thesis, what I feel like is that most of the value is going to accrue to a few pieces of this NFT. They're going to capture so much attention of this world and they're going to be so relevant and popular in this world and most of the NFTs, there'll be no secondary market for it because people will be like, yeah, I can just buy a different moment or I can buy another moment from another guy which looks very similar. But as a collector, what we have done is not focus on quantity, but other qualitative moments. With art, we don't have more than 300 pieces and 300 pieces is a lot because we collect each one of them by really looking at them and seeing if that will hold value and most of the art we bought is not high valued, right? Like this Christie's auction, I think whatever we paid, it's going to be an interesting number over years because if NFT is going to stay relevant for a year or two, I think it's made its value because it's going to be so hard to keep that kind of attention on something with people's attention always changing. So that's my overall thesis where what I'm trying to say is instead of looking at 1,000 NFTs and investing $100 in each of them, maybe there'll be one NFT that's worth $100,000. But it might not be the NFT you are investing your money in. And it's very rare and very hard to identify those stories and moments and if you do identify one of them, it's like finding a gem as a collector, you have to make sure you do something about it, to bring more attention to it, to keep it relevant or else the narrative will die and that NFT will just become a token in your wallet and no one will care about it. One of the things that really speaks to me in terms of NFTs is the disintermediation of the platform and the ability to directly connect the artist with their audience. But, you know, what you just said kind of opened my eyes to another angle which I think is equally important that you just mentioned. You talked about NFTs as something that you, the owner, invests in. Not invest money, invest time and effort into kind of keeping the focus or bringing focus or creating and weaving a story as you talked about it before around that NFT. And it sounds like you are speaking of the NFT as kind of a focus point for you working with the artist to give meaning to this story and no longer really separating artist and audience and I thought that was a really interesting way to look at it. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Sure. And you did identify a very interesting area because that's something a lot of people miss also. So when we talk about disintermediating this whole industry where artists and fans have maybe a platform in the middle like say Instagram or whatever, right? And there has been this problem where Instagram probably takes most of the money and artists don't make any money. And in another side of things there could be an artist, there could be managers or record labels in the middle and the fans on the other side. So the whole economic model of how an artist works is what is changing. So it's not that the artist is connecting directly with his fans but there is this possibility of a decentralized record label, right? A decentralized Instagram. There are all these middleware between artists and fans because it's impossible for the artist again to connect with all his fans. The whole industry came about because the number of people the artists can connect to is very limited again and the number of fans could be so much that you know you required some kind of middleman who could manage it for you. So now instead of looking at NFTs as collecting as a fan you can also make your own business here and become kind of a decentralized middleman. Why I mean decentralized middleman is that you are not able to lock in the artist or lock in the fan and as a middleman here you are open to competition from any other person who also wants to work on the same artist's NFTs and the way to differentiate yourself here in this middle layer would be to find a niche and really become big in that. I will give you an example of that. So NFTs are now thought about as collectibles art etc. But even if you think about art we are only thinking about art in a single dimension where we are all looking at oh yeah this is art right but once you split them into you know there could be artists from Japan who I have no idea of and I would not be able to identify them and collect them but a collector in Japan would be able to identify and collect them and thereby become the niche person who understands Japan. There could be a Singapore one, there could be India one, there could be a Thailand one and all this is a lot of manual work. So it's not easy is all I am trying to say and there is so much scope for new industries to be created in this area and so much scope for a lot of job descriptions also to be created in this area. So in an environment in which access to creating art and the ability to make a living as an artist has opened up because of digital media and we've seen that with music we've seen that with video and we're seeing it even more now with NFTs very very quickly you find an environment that's saturated with content that's saturated with creators and you have the emergence of not intermediaries but curators and these curators have different names depending on which industry they're in but I remember telling a friend back in 2001 I said you know if you look at Moore's Law and you look at hard drives at some point a music player I think it was maybe 2005 actually a music player at some point will have enough discapacity to store more songs than you can play for the rest of your life on shuffle and then what you really need is a DJ so all of the value shifts from do I own the song and am I able to discover the music I like to the value proposition of can someone create a mood for me can someone understand what I'm looking for and cater to my perspective my point of view my artistic sensibility or whatever and help me find the art that fits that and I think that's really a very big and overlooked aspect of this which is we're seeing an environment in which there are no longer gatekeepers as to who can be an artist or can't be an artist and still make a living and it's now possible to distribute the art anywhere in the world and then you arrive at meta problems for which you need meta curators just like a DJ becomes an artist themselves yeah and in a way this whole perspective has also come through me through experience so when I started with NFTs I didn't feel this way but I had the same question when I was collecting a few NFTs the first few were okay because they're not a lot of competition and I will just collect them and then after some time I felt like there was another collector who was wanting the same piece now it's about deciding our budget and I had no way to figure out what my budget was right because how much will I pay for this like I don't have a value model for this right so I used to go into auctions sometimes like also let myself be outbid by stuff for example I lost the auction on people's first stop which went for $66,000 right and the same piece sold in 4 months for $6.6 million now like I've always think to myself was that a mistake right where should I have gone more because looks like it has more value but instead of thinking about it like that it gives me a lot of peace and perspective I want an NFT and I can understand and tell what I want to do with it right and maybe I want to build a gallery with it maybe if it's just land which is also an NFT maybe I want to build a gallery on the land right so all these kind of what the NFT allows me to do implicitly or explicitly is what gives value to that NFT and that's very different from physical art which had only the bragging rights here you can do a lot more and still have the bragging rights also Do you ever find yourself battling cynicism in the way that people perceive these things I certainly find that very much like you find in conservative circles there's a dismissive attitude towards modern art and people will say I don't understand it I don't see why it's valuable it's a fire skill and you know if you look back at how people like Warhol or other modern artists or even Picasso would treat it for their work in their time they were dismissed by a lot of serious analysts and critics as inferior to classics we see the same now Do you find yourself exhausted by this kind of cynicism or how do you respond to it to that constant wave of cynicism it's a very emotional point you just made there for me because I'm perfectly alright with people not getting it in fact I feel like if less people get it I have less competition so NFT will be less advanced so that's perfectly alright because that's why even what happened at Christie's right now we talk about it as a competition between like maybe 20 people and maybe 2 in reality but if people really understand what we were trying to do here maybe I would have had more competition and it's all the decentralized class would be bidding so I was really worried that someone like CZ might come into the picture because people they understand just the signaling part it's going to be huge so I'm not too worried about the cynicism itself because that's how Bitcoin was also no one accepted Bitcoin people used to make fun of me when I said like I went through Y Combinator and I was the only person who lived on Bitcoin and there was a shift in my same batch that got acquired by Coinbase right so I was their first customer with a name list card I used to spend bitcoins for my bagels and people used to make so much fun of me right because they were like I used to pit you should have something else and now I look like a genius right but you know back then it's not the same so I think crypto has given me that thick skin to handle cynicism I just tell people who really are cynical about it and negative about it that they don't have to care about it right like go do something else but the one thing that really I should not say affects me but around me also is the fact that there is a difference like I sometimes feel like because I am doing this like I from my background and who I am like instead of just being cynical about something people always try to find some other scheme behind it and I don't know if it's me or because I'm from this industry or whatever but people always try to attach a bad intent to it right like there is fraud someone is trying to scam someone they're looking for an agenda behind all of this yeah people don't understand it I mean that's the kind of big thing so when you don't understand it right you try and kind of invent the rationale that what could be driving it and I think again this is what we've been talking about with the perspective that you have on a lot of this stuff is that it's just kind of hard for people who aren't as deep into this to really think about it in that way and so I mean like I read the Amy Caster piece on you and it did have a number of theories about how you were making money off of these things or it was a like a conspiracy between you and people and the thing and it's just like well but Justin Sun was right there right like it's not like you were bidding up the price by yourself that just like happened yeah like I'm not saying I don't have motors but definitely it's very long term right and if it's on the blockchain right like people claiming that you know there is say something to do with B20 they can just look at the blockchain and you would know the truth because blockchain is one single place of truth I cannot hide my tokens or anything right like that's my intention and so sometimes when people see that who are around me I'm okay to have that thick skin because I know that in the long term I'll be fine but you know like people around me and people who might want to partner with me like it's very simple people say if there is more probably there is fire so like these kind of things really affect me a lot not personally but in terms of business in terms of wanting to talk to people work with them because that'll be the first thing they get introduced about me right not me talking to them or not looking at what I've done even people who talk like that cynical and really it's the negative part they've not even visited these museums or they don't understand right like and there are a lot of people who call themselves proudly no coiners and like I'm surprised and really feel weirded about it because I'm like okay it's like kind of being an atheist right like being a no coiner you should just be doing something else yeah you're not affected by any of this so why do you care I think I've had the same kind of development of thick skin I'm always amazed when I see these critics who are constantly fighting against Bitcoin and you know why do you care in many cases the answer is really simple you can build an entire career around being a contrarian in this space no matter how many years you're wrong in a row but at the same time they try to make me care every now and then I get invited to go and debate someone you know go and explain this to Peter Schiff or Narendra Modi like no why no I don't care if they understand it or not I don't care if they get it or not in fact I'm quite happy if they don't the real question is I'm much more interested in explaining it to a billion people in simple terms for whom it might actually make a difference in their life yeah exactly even if we develop the thick skin I always feel bad about you know people around me because they are not used to that kind of criticism and sometimes a lot of people around me my family my friends they're all very you know like close to me and those people are my strength right so when they see something like negative sometimes it affects them more than it would affect me and you know sometimes I would have to make them feel better instead of trying to make me feel better and yeah these things happen a lot but I think it's the same thing it's part of the rise of the new decent life class and so we're not going to get a easy way out of this but I really appreciate the kind of support that I've been getting from inside the industry and people who worked with me previously to tell that all these things are just narratives and it's fine and it's been so nice to see that kind of love from within the industry and that gives me a lot of energy I hope that we'll still be able to maintain this kind of optimism so let me flip it on its head a bit and say right now we look like geniuses for believing in bitcoin 18 months ago we look like utter idiots and you know many of us Vinesh you too of course we've been through this cycle four or five times now and it's funny because I can already see that there may be a time in a month next week in a year who knows where everybody goes see I told you bitcoin was going to die it's catastrophically collapsed and destroyed to 25,000 and that's it that's the end or whatever the narrative is going to be this time so let's say that happens again and let's say that happens to the NFT market right now we're riding high we look like geniuses how do you feel about that thought that in 10 months 18 months things may be very different for the NFT space again definitely in terms of price moments there is definitely an emotional side to it during the winter we almost don't celebrate anything even the conferences are a little they have that sad undertone to it usually when it's a bull market I think that's the way of life where we have to celebrate and also we have to go through that phases with the NFT market also I don't think it will just be up and up not just times of price in terms of attention there will be again a dry phase of no one caring about NFTs but what could be different here I feel like is similar to what conferences did to crypto so crypto conferences were very interesting because it kind of was therapeutic to me in a lot of ways because I could meet these people and know these people are real and they have the real intention and that kept me going for the whole winter so if you are investing in crypto and you've not been to conferences probably you not have the same kind of confidence because the internet is very different from investing people in person in any ways right and especially I think the best times I've had have been ethereum dev cons and that travel around the world with the whole crew just going along and seeing different places and also at the same time having the positivity being reinforced because of the character of people involved in this so with NFTs also what's going to happen is we're going to have real huge physical events but it may not be just technical right so it could have music it could have art installations it could be a lot of fun so that's something I'm looking forward to as the covid slowly dies down even 2000 people 3000 people together in the same venue maybe how say tomorrow land started it could be a movement from within our industry where people meet each other in person and that could take them through the winter and people who come there I don't think they will never you know totally completely reject NFTs and reject the idea of crypto and it will be a lot of fun so I think that's how you keep it going and that's it for today I hope you enjoyed this episode send us an email at adamatspeakingabitcoin.show and to all of you listening we really can't thank you enough in an increasingly strange world it's really important to find your tribe but especially those of you who have been listening since the early days thank you