Rediscover Boredom
We just got back from vacation. Despite a **late-week** rant on Flote, it really was a good trip all things considered. Sunshine, the beach, beer, way too much food, and Mickey, of course. There was very little time to be bored, truth be told. But when waiting in lines for mediocre rides all day at Disney World, boredom has a funny way of becoming present. The way many of us choose to deal with that boredom probably needs tweaking. https://flote.app/post/804ba8e4-5e7b-4c4f-84b8-ad6744f822d0
I’m a curmudgeon
Disney theme parks aren’t my thing. I willingly admit that right off the bat. But after the latest sampling of fun this week from the Mouse Empire, I’ve now been to a Disney theme park three times in my adult life. The first time was before my daughter was born. The second time was with my daughter as a baby. We just took her back this past week. She is currently a little over four years old.
I found myself really interested in what my daughter seemed excited about and what she wasn’t excited about. My surprise probably stemming from a combination of still learning who she is growing into as an individual and also still personally being a rookie in the theme park parent life cycle. Seeing characters she recognizes walking around? That was a big friggin’ deal. She was legitimately starstruck at the sight of Olaf. Going on the rides that we waited long periods of time in line for? Meh. Much less impressive.
While I think this is probably normal for a 4 year old, her 8 year old cousin was with us as well and their engagement with activities seemed roughly similar. When asked later what their favorite part of the day was, they both gave the same answer:
Swimming in the pool!
Cool.
The pool was at the hotel. We did that after the day was over. Four rides, a live Frozen sing-along, and several hours of total wait time for those attractions; all defeated by something we could have done in Ohio. It’s good to know but it isn’t necessarily reason enough to not go back to the park down the line.
Old TVs are Lame
At the end of the night, the girls wanted to watch a little Disney before going to bed. The hotel had cable but not the Disney plus streaming service on the TV. This led to explaining that unlike our TVs at home, we couldn’t control what shows were playing on this TV. My niece:
I don’t like these kinds of TVs.
Rather than go all “back in my day,” I agreed and tried to draw some connections between what I had just been told in the hotel and what I had seen at the park earlier.
First, both of these kids have a clear expectation of on-demand availability when it comes to watching videos on a television or smaller device. While home viewing of Disney movies on demand has been possible for decades through various formats (DVD/VHS), streaming through a connected TV has created a situation where there is no longer any distinction between television inputs and viewing methods.
On our Roku TV at home, I can watch a game with the Live TV icon and my daughter can access her stuff through the Disney icon. Both icons look and behave essentially the same from the main menu even though they’re using entirely different distribution rails; internet for Disney+ and over the air antenna for live sports. The difference now is there is zero friction when changing inputs or devices.
No Patience
I can’t help but wonder if this expectation of on demand is impacting patience in society broadly. Not just for kids, but for adults as well. The other thing I noticed at the theme park was a pretty clear reliance on smartphones for absolutely everything.
It was most evident when waiting in line for rides. Almost every adult waited in line with their faces buried in their phones. It was the same at restaurants. We have come to the point socially where we can no longer tolerate 60 seconds without some sort of external stimulation.
Apathy’s a tragedy and boredom is a crime.
Bo Burnham, ***Welcome to the Internet*** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU
Maybe more concerning though is that the preferred way to spend time seems to be mindlessly scrolling Facebook rather than actually engaging with family. I witnessed family members who hadn’t seen each other in years standing next to each other in line completely consumed by whatever it was the algorithm was serving them. And this isn’t a younger generation thing. It may have been at first but this addiction to dopamine now transcends age.
It’s depressing, but I don’t know what the fix is at this point. This problem is much more broad than just theme parks but we can use Disney as a decent proxy. Smartphones have become essential to do anything at Disney. We got into the park with smartphones. We ordered our meals with smartphones. At the end of the night, we needed the smartphone just to get into the hotel room. We were literally standing outside our hotel room door at the end of the night but couldn’t get in until we logged into the Disney app and held the phone near the scanner by the door handle. That’s too far for me.
Convenience Has a Price
The Smartphone has become a single point of failure. Maybe I’m a Luddite. I don’t know. But computers and the phones that are now essentially computers in our pockets should be a tool that can simplify certain aspects of our lives. They shouldn’t be essential. It doesn’t feel like a tool anymore. It feels like we’ve officially crossed the Rubicon from convenience to dependency. I shouldn’t need the internet to physically walk through a door. That’s scary stuff.
This level of smartphone dependency also eliminates any semblance of privacy. And this sacrifice of our privacy bit by bit has slowly taken away the power of choice through the constant nudging into the digital prison that we have willingly entered. There are many who fear the chip implant. I fear the implant isn’t necessary. We’re all carrying the chips in our pockets already. And we didn’t put up any fight because most of us didn’t realize it was happening.
Rediscover Boredom
I think we need to individually reassess our relationship with devices. I think we need to get to a place where a lost smartphone doesn’t trigger complete panic. I think we need to rediscover boredom. Great things can come out of boredom. People invent games when they’re bored. I discovered I enjoy writing because I was bored one day and decided to start a blog.
Look, I hate waiting in lines too but I really thought the rides we went on at the park would have left more of an impression. I’m not surprised video on demand services are the desired viewing method. That I get. That said, I do think we need to remember that it’s okay to not be able to watch exactly what we want at a moment’s notice. In the hotel room at the end of the night we didn’t have access to Disney+. Guess what… everyone survived.
If you’re enjoying the reads please consider liking and sharing on your social platforms. I know everyone says it but it really is a big help. And don’t be afraid to comment! If you want to connect elsewhere, I’m on Flote, Gettr, StockTwits, and Discord. And I don't always syndicate my work with Read.cash so head over to my Substack to get everything! If you want to see my paywalled Mint Songs NFT picks, you can use this 40% off lifetime promo link. https://flote.app/user/Faybomb https://gettr.com/user/faybomb https://stocktwits.com/Faybomb https://discord.gg/zypCbTmq https://faybomb.substack.com/5cba9249
Changing The Game With Music NFTs: a Conversation with Rapper Dom Deshawn
This week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dom Deshawn. Dom is an up and coming Hip-Hop artist from Columbus, Ohio. In this conversation, Dom describes his background, his stylistic approach, and his thoughts on Web 3 and the future of music monetization.
One of my favorite parts of the podcast was when Dom described leaving the job that he wasn’t passionate about to fully devote his time to growing his career in music. As a fan of Hip-Hop music personally, I’ve had a difficult time figuring out who Dom sounds like. Part of that difficulty comes from the fact that he’s not trying to sound like anybody else. On his approach:
Very authentic. I just talk about my life. I care deeply about rap. I still try my best to get these bars off but do it in a way that makes sense for me.
Later in the episode, Dom speaks to the importance of taking the time to personally learn about different blockchains and learn about gas fees. The importance of educating yourself in Web 3 and maximizing what it can do for you comes down to putting in the work. And Dom has certainly done that.
While it’s easy for many who aren’t in the music business to look at musicians and assume they make a lot of money, Dom sheds light on the fact that art lacks a sizeable middle class. For many artists, there is no real space between making millions and making very little. But Dom isn’t looking to get rich.
I just want to be able to make a comfortable living off my music.
This track is called “Autumn Epilogue. It’s the first track from his *Tale of Two Seasons* project and it is available to own as a 1 of 1 NFT through Zora.co: https://zora.co/collections/zora/7575
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEYh0Ghu5pw
*Tale of Two Seasons* is available to stream free on Spotify and was released on Mint Songs as a two-part NFT. It has since sold out. Dom still has editions of his genesis track “That Be Me” available on Mint Songs. That song has a special story behind it that he explains in the podcast. You can watch the full episode via Odysee here. You can also find Dom Deshawn and his music here: https://open.spotify.com/album/3xoUpollRijcGfHR5DcMHf?si=RNleMMibRqG5qf_NzJKeiw https://odysee.com/@Faybomb:d/Dom-Deshawn-Interview:a
Bandcamp https://domdeshawn.bandcamp.com/
Mint Songs https://www.mintsongs.com/u/domdeshawn
Twitter https://twitter.com/DomDeshawn
Linktree https://linktr.ee/domdeshawn
My chat with Dom was one of my favorite podcast episodes to date. And I look forward to rooting for his success and following up with him down the line.
*Disclaimer: I am an owner of Dom Deshawn’s NFTs through Mint Songs.*
The Good Part About Blockchain Transparency
I love when you guys comment on stuff. It keeps me honest and always challenging my own beliefs. There was great engagement on *Russia, SWIFT, and the Urgent Need for Privacy Coins*. I think the level of economic sanctions that we’ve seen recently, not just against Russia but also civilians in Canada, has shown the need for private value exchange. CBDCs are going to happen. It is inevitable. And that reality likely means the end of paper cash as legal tender.
For people who wish to maintain some semblance of privacy, currencies that hide sender, recipient, and value total are needed. While I’m very clearly partial to Zcash (ZEC), there is a case to be made for Monero (XMR). While I’m not sure that Monero is as private as it is advertised, what Monero can claim that Zcash *can’t* is the coin’s intended privacy is the default functionality. The Zcash blockchain allows for visible transactions. I’m completely okay with this and let me explain why. https://ciphertrace.com/ciphertrace-files-two-monero-cryptocurrency-tracing-patents/
When Transparency is Good
Part of what makes decentralized currencies so appealing is that you can use them to support anyone or anything. Like the people in Ukraine, for instance. And that got me thinking, transparency in charity is actually good in most cases. We learned donating Bitcoin to the truckers in Canada can get you in trouble with the state-regulated financial system in that country - that’s bad. But I’d imagine donating Bitcoin to a less controversial cause like building a non-profit hospital would be fine with the clown prince of Canada. Here, we can see personal discretion regarding transparency is important.
The fact that Ethereum is so easily trackable can actually be very helpful in the NFT space. Beyond the data mining capability that the blockchain provides when seeking a market edge, knowing ETH addresses allows us to differentiate between real projects and scams. I’m sure you’ve heard, the crypto space is full of scams. Check this out:
Webzee isn’t even a popular NFT project and yet there are three scam collections trying to bamboozle people who don’t know any better. This is why the proper process for buying NFTs has always been to follow trusted links and to avoid large non-curated marketplaces like the plague. Unless, of course, you actually know what you’re doing and know what to look for. https://opensea.io/assets/webzee
A Bid Drop Coming?
Mint Songs is a bit more like OpenSea than a more curated NFT marketplace like SuperRare. This is why it’s so important for artists to share their actual NFT links with their fans as opposed to making them go look for them on their own. Me though, I’ve found the discovery process to be half of the fun. I actually like scanning through the marketplace looking for opportunities. If I’m not sure of something on Mint Songs, I always do research before buying. Did the artist tweet about the listing? Is it on their Instagram? Generally when the artists mint on Mint Songs, they tell their fans so their fans can go buy the NFTs. That’s really the entire point. A couple weeks ago, I found something that I thought was pretty interesting when scanning the artists page.
This is the user account for an entity claiming to be The Mac Miller Fund. Mac Miller was a Pittsburgh-based rapper who passed away in 2018. Even almost four years after his passing, Mac Miller still has 18 million monthly listeners on Spotify. The Mac Miller Fund is associated with the Pittsburg Foundation and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for young musician grants. And yes, when you get to the Mac Miller Fund profile on Mint Songs, you can see the ETH address associated with the profile. https://pittsburghfoundation.org/macmiller https://www.mintsongs.com/u/MacMillerFund
This is the address: 0x638b19D04b8f5F9Eb3a2F3513F3949E1014ADA34
That address currently has a zero balance on the ETH chain, but it holds 150 ERC-721 mints on Polygon on the Mint Songs token contract. We just can’t see what they are on the platform yet. But if the naming on the profile is any indication, it looks like some unreleased Mac Miller music is about to wind up on Mint Songs. If it’s real, this could be really exciting for Mac Miller fans, music NFT investors, and Pittsburgh musicians looking for a fund raise. And the transparency of the blockchain will allow NFT investors (or donors) to see exactly where those funds go if they stay on-chain.
*Disclosure: I’m not an investment advisor. I merely share what I do and why I do it. You shouldn’t take anything I say as investment advice and always do your own research when making investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies, tokens, STONKs, and digital trinkets could all go to zero. I have no job and I live in my wife’s basement. I’m the last person on the face of the earth who you should listen to for financial advice or life advice. I’m not featured on trustworthy financial news sources like CNBC or Bloomberg and I don’t wear a necktie when I make my trades. I hold dozens of Mint Songs NFTs and multiple Webzee NFTs.*
I Bought AVAX This Morning, Here's Why
With the crypto market (HOPEFULLY) finding a bottom over the last few weeks, I thought it would be good to take a look at some of the alternative coins (AKA shitcoins) to see if there is either a market disconnect or an opportunity to try to take advantage of. The first thing I wanted to do was see what the market participants in Coinbase have been doing. Coinbase doesn't provide a ton of insight into what it's user base is doing in the platform, but they do offer 24 hour buy/sell percentages and coin popularity metrics. I decided to look at the top 10 coins based on market cap rank via CoinMarketCap.com and compare market cap rank with coin popularity. https://faybomb.substack.com/2d932e31
For full disclosure, I did not include the stable coins USDC (#5) or Tether (#3) in the Top 10. Now I want to be completely upfront about this, I don't know how valuable these metrics really are. I think it's interesting that Polkadot (DOT) is more popular on Coinbase than Dogecoin (DOGE). Everything else pretty much falls in line. Coinbase users are generally buyers, so I think finding the higher percentage of buying is the best way to view that information. In the top 10 list above, DOT is number 2 in that metric after Solana. Avalanche is near the low. I find that interesting and I'll explain why.
Back in November I covered Ethereum for Seeking Alpha. Though the overall point of the article was why gas fees were problematic, I compared ETH's Token Terminal metrics with some of the "ETH Killers" that had been crowned in the crypto sphere. Specifically Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), and Avalanche (AVAX). At the time, it was clear that pricing levels in SOL, AVAX, and ADA where way ahead of themselves based on the lack of activity. Two and a half months later, how do those same metrics compare? https://seekingalpha.com/article/4471627-yes-ethereum-has-gas-problem
Based off the action since late November, the 30 Day revenue trend in Avalanche is far superior to its "ETH Killer" competitors. ADA is up slightly. Solana has kind of collapsed. Now, these aren't adjusted for coin price. So that should be considered.
But all of three of these coins are down big time since late November. Avalanche has still seen a surge in 30 Day revenue while the other two have lagged. To expand on Avalanche specifically, here's the fully diluted market cap over-layed with the total revenue from transactions. As I said back in November, the market cap got way ahead of itself.
What's interesting now though is the revenue volume has held up really nicely. Given the big selloff from the peak in just a few weeks, I think Avalanche is worth a look as a long term play here if you like to dollar cost average into positions. I actually don't hate that only 60% of Coinbase users are buying Avalanche while 75% are buying Solana. I think that can be explained away by users with a much higher cost basis in Solana simply averaging down.
*Disclosure: I’m not an investment advisor. I merely share what I do and why I do it. You shouldn’t take anything I say as investment advice and always do your own research when making investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies, tokens, STONKs, and digital trinkets could all go to zero. I have no job and I live in my wife’s basement. I’m the last person on the face of the earth who you should listen to for financial advice or life advice. I’m not featured on trustworthy financial news sources like CNBC or Bloomberg and I don’t wear a necktie when I make my trades. I purchased AVAX this morning.*
Strike Could Be Venmo for Bitcoin Advocates
One of the things that I left out of my crypto crash course article from a couple weeks ago was Bitcoin's Lightning Network. Why? It's confusing AF and not necessarily a great way to persuade adoption from people who aren't as crypto or tech-savvy. But the point of the Lightning Network is lower transaction fees and to allow for micropayments. The Strike app looks like it could be Venmo for Bitcoin advocates who want to support content creators. I'll get into why in a moment. First, the issue with Bitcoin transactions for the last few years is that the average price for a peer-to-peer transaction without a custodian has been very cost prohibitive. Currently, it would cost $2.30 to send Bitcoin on-chain in a true peer-to-peer capacity regardless of how much is being transacted. $1,000,000? That costs $2.30. $10? Also $2.30. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#3y
Peer-to-peer exchange with Bitcoin is literally the entire point of its existence. The white paper written by Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2009 has the phrase "peer-to-peer" in the title. What is peer-to-peer in finance? It's basically the ability to transact value with another consenting party. Good peer-to-peer solutions enable sharing with each other with as little friction as possible. The best way that I like to explain things is through an analog. If my buddy and I go out to the pub and get lunch together and we decide to split the bill but only one check comes, rather than making the server go back and rerun the checks, my buddy can just give me cash to pay for his part of the lunch and I can swipe my card to cover the full bill. Him giving me the cash is physical peer-to-peer exchange. https://bitcoinwhitepaper.co/
PayPal and Venmo have proven that this can be done electronically without paper cash. "There's an app for that." Remember that saying? With Venmo, rather than paying with paper cash, my buddy at the pub can send me his portion of the check instantaneously through the app. Now, this only works if we both have Venmo. What Venmo does is it has an internal ledger that keeps track of all of the customer assets that it has under custody. When someone sends ten bucks to a friend from one Venmo account to another, Venmo is able to process this nearly instantaneously because nothing is physically moving and nothing is moving out of Venmo's corporate balance. The ten dollars are just moving from one Venmo ledger line to another. Those ledger lines represent the two accounts that are involved in the ten dollar transaction. Since the Venmo transactions don't change from one bank to another, there is no traditional payment rail friction. This keeps transfer costs between accounts on the Venmo platform virtually non-existent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szrsfeyLzyg
The point of sharing this is to provide a fundamental understanding of what some are trying to do with Bitcoin's Lightning Network. I'm not going to try to explain how the network functions because it's a bit difficult to comprehend. But if you're curious, this video is good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrr_zPmEiME
Why Strike?
All of this brings us to Strike. Strike is a Bitcoin payment app that seems to be for Bitcoin's Lightning Network what Venmo has been for US dollars. By utilizing the Bitcoin Lightning Network to make payments off-chain, Strike can keep Bitcoin payments as cheap as possible. Of course, like Venmo, both parties who wish to transact with each other need to have Strike accounts to pull it off. And frankly, if you're trying to send Bitcoin to a friend, you don't need a custodian at all if you're willing to swallow the $2.30 network fee. But that fee probably eliminates the ability for my buddy and I to exchange Bitcoin in our lunch at the pub in the scenario I described above. Furthermore, people who have Coinbase accounts can already do this. If you have my Coinbase Bitcoin wallet address, and you have a Coinbase account as well, you can already send me Bitcoin without fees. For the exact same reason that Venmo users can exchange value with no fees.
So what is so special about Strike? Strike has integration with something called PlebPay. And this is not me trying to hype, I really mean this; PlebPay looks like it could be game-changing for content creators and their fans. Because PlebPay enables Bitcoin micropayment paywalls. You have to have Strike to use it, but PlebPay allows me to put a paywall on any link. So I thought I'd try it out. Remember the *You Have the Power* series? For Christmas, I added a chapter to the series and extended two of the four previously published chapters to create a mini eBook. I gave that eBook away to my paid members. That means a lot of you didn't get to see it. And though some of you may have wanted to, paying $10 just to get a 45 page eBook that you've likely seen 60% of already may not have been a compelling enough value proposition. https://www.plebpay.com/ https://faybomb.substack.com/2d932e31
What about $1? Would you buy the eBook then? If so, you can! Through the PlebPay exension, you can send $1 over the Lightning Network and get access to a downloadable PDF of that eBook. This is big for content creators because it means I don't need something like Woo Commerce to setup up an online store with traditional payment rails. Now, I'm going to fully admit that I'm new to Strike. I'm sort of figuring this all out with you. But the future of Web 3 and online micropayments are very interesting to me as a content creator. Micropayments figure to be completely disruptive to paywalls, in my estimation. In the future internet, content creators will still probably be able to offer subscription packages that give their fans and followers access to content in bulk. But the adoption of micropayments will allow content creators to offer a la carte payment options as well. https://www.plebpay.com/7e92c0af-900e-4b73-8772-2ed70b30291a
For instance, what if you like my crypto content but not my stock ideas? You could pay for what you want if I priced things individually. It's a very interesting concept and I think those of you who are content creators yourselves should consider taking a look at Strike and PlebPay. You can actually use my Stike referral link and get yourself $10 for signing up and trying it out. Strike has an iOS app, an android app, and a browser extension. So there are options depending on what device you use. https://invite.strike.me/NJCFW9
I've obviously spent quite a bit of time lately focusing on censorship, privacy, owning your own platforms, and generally just opting out of a system that has a lot of problems and leadership that doesn't seem to have any urgency to solve them. So, it's up to us to do it ourselves. It's up to us to build something better. And to me, it starts with the freedom to exchange ideas and value. Crypto still has a long way to go. But Strike and PlebPay seem like a step in the right direction.
*Disclosure: I’m not an investment advisor. I merely share what I do and why I do it. You shouldn’t take anything I say as investment advice and always do your own research when making investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies, tokens, STONKs, and digital trinkets could all go to zero. I have no job and I live in my wife’s basement. I’m the last person on the face of the earth who you should listen to for financial advice or life advice. I’m not featured on trustworthy financial news sources like CNBC or Bloomberg and I don’t wear a necktie when I make my trades. I am not being compensated by Strike or PlebPay for this post.*
SA After Hours: Roku and ATSC 3.0
This morning, Seeking Alpha published my latest piece, *Roku: The Bottom is In*. I have an anecdotal story that I didn’t share in that article because it didn’t really fit. But I think it helps add some additional insight into what I see in Roku fundamentally. Back in June 2018, I attended the ATSC 3.0 Midwest Next-Gen TV Summit. I know what you’re thinking. “Cool. What the hell is that? It was a local TV broadcaster conference that was sponsored by LG and Sinclair Broadcasting. The main theme of the event was to educate industry leaders at the station level and build broad support for ATSC 3.0 standard technology. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4484619-roku-bottom-is-in
What is ATSC 3.0?
ATSC stands for Advanced Television Systems Committee. It’s essentially the technology standard for broadcast television. If you’ve always used an antenna to watch your local TV stations, you may remember needing a digital converter box about a decade ago. This was when the industry standard transitioned from NTSC (analog) to ATSC (digital) signals. That was ATSC 1.0. When the transition took place, viewers needed special adapters if they wanted to be able to use their old tube TVs. The adapter was the digital converter box. All of the new TVs now come standard with digital receptors. We’re still on ATSC 1.0 in most areas. So why the jump to 3.0?
Here’s the best part; ATSC 2.0 never actually launched. That’s how slow legacy media has been to change. Certain doom as a result of the sloth-like acceptance of changing consumer behavior be damned. ATSC 3.0 utilizes a lot of what was planned in 2.0, but it adds even more fun stuff. Without getting too into the weeds technically, 3.0 will allow for better quality video, more free digital sub channels, smartphone reception, and measurement upgrades. It would also allow for multiple different “pipes” for signal transmission. This would theoretically make TV advertising more like digital advertising. For instance, two different households watching the same Sunday night football game on NBC could be served two completely different ads. Fun stuff, you know, if you hate personal privacy.
But back to the conference
Sinclair and LG are two of the companies that have been championing this standard upgrade which is largely why they sponsored the summit. There were over a dozen speakers including industry pros, an FCC representative, and a guy named Tim Hanlon. Hanlon spoke last and he came with a sense of urgency that I appreciated.
Tim Hanlon is a media consultant with The Vertere Group. He has over two dozen years in digital media and advertising. I don’t want to misquote him as this was nearly four years ago, but the tone of his message was legitimately “adapt or die.” If memory serves, he was forecasting 3 to 5 years until local TV obsolescence if the industry didn’t enact the standard upgrades provided by ATSC 3.0 as quickly as possible. https://www.verteregroup.com/
4 years later, there are roughly a handful of stations that have implemented ATSC 3.0. I believe there is one on the west coast, a couple in Texas, and one in North Carolina. The adoption probably hasn’t been fast enough and could conceivably suffer the same fate as ATSC 2.0, in my opinion. Why? Something Hanlon said at the conference has stuck with me ever since.
He shared a mockup of what could be roughly described as a cable news channel grid. The only difference was it didn’t have cable news channels. It had local stations, cable stations, and streaming services all in one lineup. He essentially said, “whoever figures out how to do this wins.” His point was largely that people don’t want to mess with multiple device inputs. They want everything at their fingertips as seamlessly as possible.
I remember thinking in that moment that the closest thing to what he was talking about was probably Roku’s operating system. I also wondered in that moment if the internet had already rendered ATSC 3.0 obsolete anyway. My thinking was if media consumers have decided already that on-demand is the choice over pre-formatted appointment viewing, why do we need the antenna at all? If switching inputs are that big of a concern for users, then the internet wins. And that means Roku wins because the operating system has a cleaner, better user interface than anything else on the market. My opinion, of course.
Oh, and that grid that Hanlon was talking about, Roku is halfway there. Here’s a shot of my Roku TV. This grid has my local CBS station (via antenna) and a Vevo streaming channel (via internet) right next to each other. ATSC 3.0 not required.
*Standard disclaimer: I’m not an investment professional. I spent over a decade in local television broadcasting with experience in production, marketing, and sales. I am long ROKU shares.*
My Music NFT Playlist
Despite the initial plan when this series started on Monday, Part 5 is free for everyone. Yay! We end the series how we began. Don't worry though, paid subs, I'm keeping the artist deep dives just for you - and I have one more music NFT related post as a follow up to this one that I'll keep paywalled. It's a little data heavy. Why'd I opt to free up Part 5? Essentially because there was a pretty big announcement from Mint Songs in the middle of the week after construction of the series began.
That news was Mint Songs will be utilizing Moonpay as a fiat on-ramp. The Moonpay integration is important because it opens up the market opportunity to people who aren't crypto-native in a bigger way. I've now, obviously, unmasked **Mint Songs** as my chosen music NFT platform - paid subs found that out in Part 2. I've been buying music NFTs on Mint Songs for several months. I've probably spent *days worth of hours* listening to the music, researching the artists, analyzing the broader space, lurking on the **Discord server**, and writing about a lot of it here. https://www.mintsongs.com/ https://discord.com/invite/EJjb426b9q
That brings us to now. I'll briefly elaborate on why the Moonpay integration is a big deal. I've said this before, but I'll say it again, *unit pricing is critical*. And while the prices on a lot of the editions on Mint Songs are very attractive compared to peers, *total cost* has still been an obstacle. In my opinion, what has been working against the artists on Mint Songs is the Ethereum gas fee associated with bridging ETH over to Polygon on the initial transactions. Look at this 3 year trend in average transaction fees on the Ethereum network:
**bitinfocharts.com** https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/ethereum-transactionfees.html#3y
$50 to move ETH? Gross. No thanks. While layer 2 networks like Polygon eliminate the gas fee from being paid on the Ethereum network every single time somebody mints an NFT, those of us buying still had to pay the gas fee upfront to bridge ETH over to Polygon. The most economical way to do this is to send large sums of ETH all at once. And, thus, the disconnect. If you only have $100 to spend on music NFTs, you can't do it. Because the total cost after ETH gas eats it up. Mint Songs NFTs are priced properly for the masses. But the masses aren't crypto native. When the non-crypto native music fan arrives on Mint Songs to buy an NFT of the artist who led them there, they quickly realize it doesn't make any sense to spend $50 to $100 to bridge over $10 to buy a music NFT. This makes onboarding an existing fanbase challenging. But if you're crypto-native already and you found the site, Mint Songs has been a friggin' gold mine of music NFT opportunity.
Moonpay fixes the initial gas fee problem because now buyers don't have to interact with the Ethereum blockchain at all. This is a big deal. There is now considerably less friction for the end users. So, now it is much easier for all of you to buy these NFTs with Moonpay. If you're interested in buying these NFTs, you'll want a Metamask wallet so you can custody assets. There's a good **tutorial here** that shows you how to get that setup. Without further ado, here's a list that I've been playing pretty much everyday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqBuWJ-tbNw
I own editions of everything on this playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0OdD9OlbWiSJdN4NJQXac7?si=b8ed013513f14795
Art is subjective, obviously. And what is good to me may not be good to you. But I can confidently say I've stayed true to my approach to NFTs. I bought these tracks because I liked them. If they appreciate in value, that's great. If they don't, I'll still enjoy having them regardless and I'll know that I've supported independent artists in the process. I'll link to the Mint Songs pages for each of them below. Many of the tracks in that list have quite a few editions remaining. Some not as many. Four sold out their offerings. "Paranoia on Main Street" was a 1 of 1. Tracks that are sold out will instead link to the artist page. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0OdD9OlbWiSJdN4NJQXac7?si=b8ed013513f14795
**50K** by Alpha23 https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/1345
**TALK** by Danny Ali https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/124
**$ & Problems** by Samwyse https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/2131
**Wrong Guy** by Zeke https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/278
**Cherry** by Jonny Lemons https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/2661
Who by **Elevate** https://www.mintsongs.com/u/elevate
**Famous** by Micky Blue https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/2086
**Tokyo Moon** by AAA+ https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/528
**Versace** by The Same Persons https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/342
I Need by **capshun** https://www.mintsongs.com/u/capshun
**Pull it Up** by BASE https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/193
**In My Soul** by Griffter https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/2403
**Time Wasted** by YATTE https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/827
**Clay** by Papi Thereso https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/978
**Healing** by Ayotemi https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/2090
**Grown Ass Kid** by Benny Universe https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/166
**FREE FROM MIND** by SAGRADO https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/1153
**Old School Vibe** by Deerock https://www.mintsongs.com/songs/167
Paranoia on Main Street by **Demi the Daredevil** https://www.mintsongs.com/u/demithedaredevil
Blood Moon Voyage (Light) by **FiFi Rong** https://www.mintsongs.com/u/FifiRong
This is just the beginning
This week I heard someone on a podcast describe our current position in the NFT boom as "Inning Zero." I completely agree. Just like cryptocurrencies in 2017, we need to get the speculative mania in the broad space out of the way before we can start to build real use cases. This is true in the NFT space. I believe we've had our speculative mania in NFTs and it manifested in Avatar projects. Most of those are going to crash, in my opinion. As long as digital assets remain in a bull market, 2022 will probably have a theme just like 2020 (DeFi) and 2021 (Avatars) did.
What will that theme be for the next 11 months? That's anybody's guess. Maybe Level 0 blockchains. Maybe Zero-Knowledge Proof projects. Maybe creator coins. Maybe Metaverse. Maybe gaming. Maybe music. I don't know. What I do know is we haven't even sniffed the potential for music NFTs yet and I'm convinced its going to be one of the most fun expressions of blockchain utility 10 years from now. The artists have to learn the basics. The fans have to learn with them. It's not easy and there is a learning curve. But when everybody is on the same page, look out. I tend to believe we're still at least a year or two away from that. But if music NFTs follow what we've seen in some of the other popular digital asset investment ideas, adoption is slow until it suddenly isn't.
What the future holds
I want to see music NFTs transform streaming entirely. I want to see streaming become completely decentralized. Here's the analog I envision: right now you can enter your wallet seed phrase in any wallet app and access your funds. If you have Bitcoin and you find out you don't like the user interface in Coinbase Wallet, you can import your seed phrase to Exodus, Unstoppable Domains, Edge, BRD, or countless others. Your BTC funds will be there because they aren't stored in the mobile app or in the extension. They're stored on the blockchain. How you get to them is entirely up to you. I want the music NFTs to be the same way. I want to be able to connect my Metamask wallet to a streaming platform and be able to create a playlist with the NFTs that I own. That's what I hope to see someday. I could go further with my 10 year vision, but I don't want anyone's head to explode. In time...
Here are some free NFTs to get you started
Before you jump into buying anything, **download a Metamask** wallet. Learn how to use it; **here's that tutorial again**. Add the Polygon network to your Metamask wallet; **directions here**. You're off to the races. Download some free NFTs from Mint Songs. Here are some links: https://metamask.io/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqBuWJ-tbNw https://bitcoinquirks.com/how-to-setup-polygon-matic-network-on-metamask/
**Poster 1** http://mintsongs.com/poster/1/collect
**Poster 2** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/2/collect
**Poster 3** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/3/collect
**Poster 4** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/4/collect
**Poster 5** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/5/collect
**Poster 6** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/6/collect
**Poster 7** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/7/collect
**Poster 8** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/8/collect
**Poster 9** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/9/collect
**Poster 10** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/10/collect
**Poster 11** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/11/collect
**Poster 12** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/12/collect
**Poster 13** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/13/collect
**Poster 14** https://www.mintsongs.com/poster/14/collect
After you've collected some posters, pop over to **Opensea.io**, connect your Metemask wallet there and head over to your **hidden folder**. It is there that you'll find the Mint Songs posters that you claimed safe and sound. They're yours now. This process might help you figure out how some of this stuff works. Have fun and enjoy collecting. Remember, you don't need to buy Ethereum through Coinbase or any other exchange. **Moonpay** ***should*** allow you to buy Polygon ETH so long as your bank or credit card cooperates. The first time I tried with my Fidelity credit card it was blocked by the underwriter (Elan Financial Services). When the transaction failed, I used my BofA debit card instead and it worked fine. Some institutions don't like letting people use debt to buy magic internet money. I get it. But still. It's annoying. https://opensea.io/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omkr5g6h9ZE https://www.moonpay.com/
Continued NFT Reading ICYMI
**Music NFTs Part 1: Why Buy Them** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/part-1-why-buy-music-nfts
**Music NFTs Part 2: The Platform Pick** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/part-2-the-platform-pick
**Music NFTs Part 3: Artist Profile 1** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/part-3-artist-profile-1
**Music NFTs Part 4: Artist Profile 2** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/part-4-artist-profile-2
**We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Program** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/we-interrupt-your-regularly-scheduled
**Drop Analysis: Nas on Royal.io** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/drop-analysis-nas-on-royalio
**T-Pain Gets It** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/t-pain-gets-it
**The Fight for Domain Supremacy** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/the-fight-for-domain-supremacy
**Art Not Charts** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/art-not-charts
**The Intersection of Art and NFTs** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/the-intersection-of-art-and-nfts
**Forgive Me Father, For I Have Sinned** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/forgive-me-father-for-i-have-sinned
**Lessons in Liquidity** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/coming-soon
**Re-Anonymizing Digital Identity** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/re-anonymizing-digital-identity
*Disclaimer: None of this is investment advice. I’m not an investment advisor. I have no job. I live in my mother’s basement. That last part is a lie. I live in my wife’s basement.* *Everyone talking about NFTs could be a magic internet money charlatan, myself included. Do your own due diligence and allocate your investment capital according to your own personal risk tolerance. Digital trinkets and shitcoins are probably all going to zero. Remember: nobody cares about your personal wealth more than you do.* *Always consider the motivations of those who give you advice and only make decisions if they're good for you.*
We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Program
Today was supposed to be a big day. Less than a week after the announcement, the Nas NFT drop was so close I could taste it. I can't lie, I've been looking forward to it since the announcement. With “Meet Joe Black” blaring in the background, palms sweaty with anticipation, I logged into my Royal.io account at roughly 12:30p this afternoon. All seemed fine. There was a Nas video clip as a looping page background and a timer counting down the minutes and seconds until the drop for “Ultra Black” NFTs would be live. Within 15 minutes, all hell broke lose. It started with a Royal branded error slate popping up with the words “uh oh.” I kid you not. It looked like this: https://faybomb.substack.com/p/drop-analysis-nas-on-royalio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szaiIPewEZQ
Frantically, I tried to log in on my phone’s Metamask browser. Suddenly my password didn’t work anymore.
**Shit.**
This prompted me to check out the Royal Discord server where I quickly found hundreds of others explaining similar issues. I’m not a huge Discord user as Murder of Crows can attest, but the level of engagement in the Royal server was so intense it was nearly impossible to read anything. Shortly after 1p, the Royal team announced in the Discord that the drop would be delayed until 1:30p while they worked on a website fix. A 30 minute delay turned into a several hours delay with plans to try again at 8p tonight. This would be an hour before when the second drop was supposed to launch. https://discord.gg/99EBSgBE
At 2pm, the team began it’s Twitter Spaces AMA session where they brought on Nas, VÉRITÉ, 3LAU, and a bunch of other people to do a virtual victory lap to celebrate what I’m sure they imagined would be a successful sellout when they originally scheduled the call. Inexplicably, they didn’t cancel the AMA session while they got their website back online.
It was, frankly, hilarious and somewhat surreal listening to them sort of congratulating themselves for changing the world without having sold a single damn NFT yet. The session lasted about an hour. In that call, Royal said the website crashed after 137,000 US users alone tried to log on. The servers couldn’t handle the traffic and the meltdown ensued. Following the end of the session, we got the news that I had been expecting all afternoon; the drops were postponed. The new date for both Nas drops is now January 20th.
Good, bad, & ugly
The ugly is obvious. I can’t comprehend how the team at Royal didn’t know that traffic would be what it was. I’m not a web developer, so I don’t know what level of traffic should be normal before servers start failing, but I feel like they should have known better given how large a following a highly successful mainstream artist brings. This isn’t someone with a couple independent singles and a million total streams. It’s friggin’ Nas, guys.
The bad? Cancel the AMA for the love of God. Don’t preach to me about how you’re changing the game and empowering creators until you can actually display that you can do it. Okay, I’m done kicking their asses now.
The good: the demand is *bonkers*. There are 760 total tokens for “Ultra Black.” 137,000 people trying to get one of those means users today had about a 1 in 200 chance of scooping up one of these things even if it worked without issues. Not great odds. The demand is real.
Do you doubt my music NFT thesis? Still need convincing?
Royal did an airdrop
To give you an idea of what these Nas NFTs could do from a “number go up” perspective, we can actually look at what 3LAU gave his early platform users. When 3LAU announced Royal several months ago, he promised a surprise for winners of a referral link contest. The 333 users who provided the most referrals to the site were airdropped NFTs of a 3LAU track called “Worst Case.”
Opensea data as of 1/11/22 https://opensea.io/collection/worst-case-by-3lau-royal?tab=activity
Those 333 NFTs now have a floor price of 2.85 Ethereum. That's the equivalent of about $9,200 ***per*** NFT. Again, this is very much the “number go up” speculation we’ve seem throughout crypto and NFTs for years. But these ones are unlike anything we’ve ever seen before because the represent a share of royalty rights. They are literally a cash flow asset living on a public blockchain. The volume traded is over 280 ETH. 2.85 might be an absurdly high price, but it isn't a fluke.
Nas and 3LAU are established artists that are probably as big right now as they are ever going to be. If there is still more fanbase growth for them, it’s probably going to be a decelerating rate. I want to find the artists who nobody knows about today but who could break servers like Nas tomorrow.
Today I told paid subs the platform to look at. Tomorrow, I’ll share my biggest artist bet. Don’t forget, you can still get access to these ideas right now if you’re not a paid member. 25% off for a full year while supplies last. https://faybomb.substack.com/p/part-2-the-platform-pick
Get 25% off for 1 year https://faybomb.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=a0ed92d2
What would the devil on your shoulder say? Probably something like, “do it. Gamble.” How about the angel on the other side? Probably something like, “do it. Support independent artists.” You only live once and you can’t take it with you.
*Disclaimer: none of this is investment advice. Everyone talking about NFTs could be digital hocus pocus money charlatans, myself included. Do your own due diligence and allocate your investment capital according to your own personal risk tolerance. Digital trinkets and shitcoins are probably all going to zero.*
Drop Analysis: Nas on Royal.io
I've been talking about music NFTs and some of the specific platforms in that space for a little while now. Long story short, I like music NFTs (a lot). Far more than I care about digital art, especially avatar projects. The thesis, mainly, is that music NFTs allow for fans of artists to claim ownership to streaming rights and potentially gain from an artist's rise in popularity. Last week I talked about T-Pain tweeting the issues with the current streaming royalty system. It doesn't help the artist nearly as much as you might think. https://read.cash/@Faybomb/t-pain-gets-it-38b09324
There are a variety of different music NFT platforms out right now. In the T-Pain article, I specifically mentioned Royal.io, Sound.xyz, and Catalog.works. There's another one that I'm keeping kind of close to the chest because it's my favorite and I don't want to shill it too much. I'm going to do a members only post about that music NFT platform soon. It's where I've been buying dozens of music NFTs. Until then, today was a big day for my music NFT thesis going forward.
What happened?
Last week I said watch out if/when T-Pain joins one of these platforms. Well, somebody bigger just did. Royal.io announced its first official NFT drop. And the drop is for two tracks off recent Nas albums *Kings Disease* and *Kings Disease II*. Nas is a grammy award winning, legendary rapper from Queensbridge, NY. He also happens to be my best friend. That's a joke. But Nas is legitimately my favorite artist. Period. His music has helped shape my world view. It has helped mold me into an anti-authority, contrarian who thinks for himself, questions narratives and doesn't really trust establishments. If you're a regular reader of my stuff, he's probably right up your alley!
Why does this matter?
While Nas is very clearly most well known for his music career, would it surprise you to know that Nas is a wildly successful venture capitalist? Here's a list of just a handful of Nas' VC investments that have made him bank:
Coinbase
Robinhood
Lyft
Dropbox
Ring (Amazon buyout)
Pluto TV (ViacomCBS buyout)
Pillpack (Walmart buyout)
Nas is ahead of the curve. Pure and simple. He's a leader not a follower. And his VC portfolio has more mainstream hits than his music catalog. And yes, he's invested in Royal.io now as well. This is going to be another winner for Nasty Nas. I can feel it.
What do these NFTs get you?
As part of the NFT drop, Nas is providing two songs with varying levels of royalty rights. Per 3LAU's Medium post about the drop, this is how the NFT tiers break out for "Ultra Black:" https://medium.com/join-royal/coming-on-1-11-nas-drop-on-royal-4a0b4ba0d441
Gold: 0.0143% streaming royalty ownership for $50
Platinum: 0.0857% streaming royalty ownership for $250
Diamond: 2.14% streaming royalty ownership for $4,999
"Ultra Black" will be dropping Tuesday 1/11 at 1pm EST. The same day, will see the drop for "Rare" at 9pm EST. That royalty structure breaks out like this:
Gold: 0.0113% streaming royalty ownership for $99
Platinum: 0.0658% streaming royalty ownership for $499
Diamond: 1.5789% streaming royalty ownership for $9,999
One thing; Royal.io is referring to these NFTs as "Limited Digital Assets" or LDAs." Likely because "Non-Fungible Tokens" are more confusing as a description. But for the sake of uniformity, I'm going to keep calling them NFTs in this post. Unlike most of the popular NFTs you'll find on Opensea, these NFTs are going to be minted on the Polygon network. And you'll be able to pay with a credit card or USDC stablecoin rather than Ethereum. The natural question that follows would be are these NFTs good investments?
How do I get my money back?
The answer to that question is almost entirely dictated by what your time horizon is. While I would imagine there will be a robust secondary market for these drops, if you're not buying purely to flip, how long before you get a return on your investment? It's difficult to say because we don't know what Nas' royalty structure is with all of the streaming platforms that have his music. If we use the graphic that T-pain shared last week as a rough estimate, we can guess how long it might take to get an actual return. For simplicity's sake, I'm just going to analyze the cheapest option. That's the Gold tier for "Ultra Black."
This is how Statista shows market share of streaming users by platform:
via Statista https://www.statista.com/statistics/653926/music-streaming-service-subscriber-share/
Now this is an important distinction: this is an estimate of subscribers, not streams. But it's the best you're gonna get for free research. If we use this as a proxy for Nas' streams breakdown and apply the figures from T-Pain's streams to $1 graphic, we can estimate how long it will take to get $50 back from the streaming royalty for Gold "Ultra Black" holders. Here's that breakout for 10 million total streams:
At 10 million total streams, the payout for Gold holders is projected to be a little over $5. So basically, we need about 100 million streams to get into passive profit on "Ultra Black" at the Gold tier. Since it's release in mid-2020, "Ultra Black" currently has 8,045,403 streams on Spotify. If this is reflective of Spotify's streaming market share, than we can reasonably assume "Ultra Black" was streamed 24 million times last year and half among all of the platforms available. That means at the current pace, it would take about 6 years to get the investment back. Anything after that is house money. And this doesn't take into consideration the collectible secondary market value.
One more thing to consider: there are a lot of assumptions in this post. We're assuming "Ultra Black" will be streamed at the same pace for the next six years that it has been streamed at for the last year and half. This is probably optimistic as the track was released in 2020 and Nas has since released two newer albums. It assumes all of our third party metric estimates mirror the reality for the Nas streaming market. And it assumes the royalty agreements for Nas' catalog are in line with what we saw in the reddit graphic that T-Pain shared.
The bigger takeaway
Now that we have some offering specifics from Royal.io, I am positive that Royal.io is going to ultimately be the winner in the music NFT (LDA) space. Beyond the fact that the platform has the star power backing of 3LAU and Nas, they're just doing a much better job from an execution standpoint as it pertains to usability. While Sound.xyz and Catalog.works are doing super scarce mint total, higher value NFTs on the Ethereum chain, Royal.io is staying cognizant of unit pricing and providing the market a lower cost entry point. Royal is also allowing for credit card sales through the Polygon network.
It is imperative to understand how much better this is for scaling and for user adoption. It means my wife could figure out how to get one of these if she wanted to and she knows pretty much nothing about crypto. To use the platforms on Ethereum, you need to have quite a bit of ETH and you need to understand the gas component of the sale. It's a lot for normal people to have learn. If you can enter your credit card and pay $50 to get a Nas LDA and mint it for virtually nothing, your immediate addressable market is *exponentially* bigger.
Yes, I'm Buying One
This is a slam dunk for me. I'm a Nas fan. First and foremost. Because of that alone, I want one of Nas' first NFTs. When you add in the streaming royalty component of it as well, it isn't just a digital collectible, it's a passive income investment. Whether it takes 6 years to get the $50 back or 10, I really don't care. I'll know that every time I stream "Ultra Black," I paid myself a little bit. That's pretty damn cool.
*Disclaimer: I'm not an investment advisor. None of this is investment advice. NFTS, cryptocurrencies, and STONKS are probably all going to zero. Buy magic internet money and digital beanie babies at your risk.*
Is GETTR the Winner?
It's been almost a year to the day since the "iNsuRReCtIOn." Since then, Twitter has banned just about anyone worth following, including the sitting US president at the time. Shortly after whatever the hell that was at the US Capitol building, there was a massive purge of Trump supporters on Social Media. It got so bad, that Silicon Valley orchestrated a take down of Twitter alternative Parler after the app shot up the download charts pretty much overnight. That's when the social-censorship movement got really out of hand.
Even though I never voted for Trump and have generally split my ticket in every election that I've voted in, I was deeply troubled by what I saw happening with the censorship and did the only thing I knew I had the power to do, **delete my accounts**. Frankly it would have been just a matter of time before Twitter and LinkedIn got rid of me anyway. Such is life when you ask questions that authoritarians know they can't answer. In my *Goodbye, Big Tech* declaration, I mentioned Flote. Several months after that post, I did indeed signup for that platform. You can check me out on **Flote here**. I try to post something every couple days or so. https://faybomb.substack.com/p/goodbye-big-tech https://flote.app/user/Faybomb
I like Flote. I've enjoyed the people I follow on there. Philosophically, I align very nicely with the creators of that platform. It's good, I like it, and you should check it out if you haven't dumped Twitter yet. That said, I'm totally willing to have another option. At one point, I had Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Each of them served a different purpose. Now I have none of them. Point is, I'm not opposed to multiple social platforms if they all play a different role. Rules that I'm sticking to though; I will NOT put any app on my phone. I will not allow the platforms to dominate my attention the way Twitter once did. I have them for a purpose. They will not *be my purpose*.
So GETTR... is it just another Parler or Flote? I don't know. But I signed up today. And the reason is because el gato malo joined. Cat memes, baby! It's what was so fun about the internet before it started to suck! Seriously though, I can't compare GETTR to Parler because I was never on Parler. I'm not on Gab but that seems to be another Twitter alternative. I signed up for GETTR because of the Gato. The memes are fire. Especially this one:
I can safely say in my 5 hours since joining GETTR that the interface is pretty darn good. It's basically Twitter but you're allowed to say the shots don't work. And el gato malo isn't the only popular Substack writer who announced their migration to GETTR. There **are others**. This seems like it's the place where people are going, to me. A lot of this is probably driven by Joe Rogan's recently created account. **Less than 24 hours ago** and he already has over 8* million followers. ***Everyone*** is talking about Joe Rogan right now. Probably because of his recently released episode with Dr. Robert Malone. Interest in Malone has also gone parabolic: https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/i-am-migrating-from-twitter-to-gettr https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-joe-rogan-joins-gettr-as-twitter-censorship-intensifies
There are a lot of Twitter alternatives. Parler, Gab, Minds, Flote, Mastodon. With respect to Parler getting jobbed by Big Tech, none of them have really felt like a valid heir to Twitter's throne. Now we have GETTR. I don't know. It just feels different this time. I've been following a lot of the kind of people who ultimately get censored for a while. These Twitter-alts have been available. What's different this time? I seems like the other platforms are suffering from fragmentation. There has been a noticeable push to GETTR by the banished. GETTR seems to be winning to me.
So if/when you get GETTR, **follow me**. It think this platform might be the one that finally kills the little blue bird. https://gettr.com/user/faybomb
Also, I've kept this close to the chest, but I have a Discord. I've generally only used it for joining other servers. Finance. NFT projects. Stuff like that. But if you have Discord and you want to connect, dare I say, create our own community... I made a Heretic Speculator server that you are **free to join**. The purpose? There is none. It's literally just a chat room. Remember those days? I do. https://discord.gg/aAEqtySz
**Clarification on Rogan’s followers: this was misleading and I should have done better research. Rogan imported his Twitter feed when he signed up for GETTR. That import brought in all of his Tweets and his Twitter follower number (for some reason). GETTR actually only has 3-3.5 million users. 7.8 of Joe Rogan’s 8.5 million GETTR followers are actually from Twitter, not GETTR.*
T-Pain Gets It
A lot of people don't know this about me but when I was in college I produced and hosted an R&B and Hip-Hop show every Friday night. I produced that show the entire four years that I was there. Something that you could call a running joke while I was at school and even after was my relationship with T-Pain. Long story short, T-Pain was doing a show at a now defunct club in my small college town and my campus radio station (NPR-affiliated) was going to get access to T-Pain for an interview after the concert.
This was in 2007, I believe. T-Pain certainly wasn't a household name in the music business but I think most of the students at my college had heard of him. He was coming off moderate chart success with "**I'm Sprung**" - a track that eventually went platinum in the US. I was actually supposed to interview T-Pain following his show at the night club but couldn't make it because I left town for the weekend. I sent a friend who also worked at the station in my place to just ask a few questions and get a drop for my show. It's actually kind of funny. I still have that drop and you can **listen to it here**. https://open.spotify.com/track/0DLOyyQvwPTSDKuhpzMMwA?si=70a800aded2548fa https://faybomb.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/06-T-Pain-Promo.mp3
"Do ya thang, pimpin' - you already know."
T-Pain
Thanks, T-Pain. I love you too. In hindsight, I wish I had gone to meet him myself. Oh well.
T-Pain is a Pioneer?
While T-Pain's music certainly isn't for everyone, I don't think there's any denying that the guy is ahead of the curve. T-Pain is largely credited with popularizing the auto-tune movement. Auto-tune is a software that allows bad singers to not suck as much by fixing problems with pitch. Many artists started using it after T-Pain made hit singles with it. A lot of people **hated auto-tune**. I'm actually someone who has personally never cared for it. I've taken the old school view that it helps create "studio stars" who can't actually sing. Though, I've softened in my 30's and view auto-tune more as a stylistic choice for ***some*** people. T-Pain apparently being one of them because we found out years later that he actually ***can*** sing despite his auto-tune use. Don't believe me? https://open.spotify.com/track/5kMsjfhYMZ1L9Btuu0AIRx?si=767fd0bb03254af1
T-Pain beat Gladys Knight, Donny Osmond, and Joey Fatone in a singing competition in 2019. That competition was the first season of *The Masked Singer;* a show that at the time was weird and not fully appreciated. It has since become one of the most popular programs on television/streaming and it is actually the only show on broadcast TV that my wife, my daughter, and I all enjoy together. Again, T-Pain was at the beginning of a trend and helped propel that show forward because his win was so surprising.
Business Disruption
I share these stories with you all because of something that came across my "digital desk" this week. T-Pain tweeted this graphic with the caption, "just so you know" to his 1.3 million followers.
He obviously got the screengrab from a reddit thread, but the point he's making is absolutely spot on. And it speaks to why I have a drop from T-Pain in the first place. No offense to the Gem City (hey, Quincy. I miss you), but with a platinum record, T-Pain was probably too big to be performing at the Backwaters night club. So what the hell was he doing there? Artists have notoriously not made money from releasing records. They make their money touring. The record label/artist relationship, in my opinion, has skewed too far to the label. For what essentially amounts to a small advance to produce an album, the label funds a project and then gets basically everything when that project is monetized through royalties.
Again, I know this because of my time at a radio station playing music. Even at a college station in a very small town, I was lucky that I had a contact at Def Jam. This contact sent me vinyl, hooked me up with artist interviews (so damn close to landing Nas one time), and most importantly, the contact got the artists on his label **played** on my station. That's historically been the role of the label. The artist signs their life away and the label then makes decisions on marketing, distribution, and even the content itself. The more spins, the more royalty payments. While artists get paid royalties for those spins, he who holds the masters holds the world.
It's easy to argue that labels ***should*** make money off the artists because the label is essentially working as a venture capitalist and as a publicist. The label is taking the chance on artists that might not make it. Most artists don't make it, even good ones. But, over time the artists that do make it end up getting pimped if their agreements with the label are too one-sided, as most are. Now, if you're an artist, you can go independent and not give your rights to a label. Streaming has largely changed the game. Artists don't need a label distributing their material to thousands of radio stations all over the country anymore. It's very easy to just upload music to platforms like Spotify or Apple Music and get discovered. And that brings us right back to the reddit graphic. How many streams should it take to earn a $1?
What's the Fix?
Artists like Taylor Swift are re-recording their old albums and hoping their fans make adjustments to which versions they stream. The graphic above shows how many streams you need to make $1 in revenue. I don't know what the correct number is, but I think we can probably agree there is something very wrong with what YouTube Music is paying. There are several different ways that this revenue gap for artists can be solved and there are a handful of groups that are working on it. One is Audius.
According to Audius, artists get just 12% of the $43 billion in annual music revenue. That's pretty bad. Audius is basically a crypto-centric music streaming platform. The token for Audius is $AUDIO. The projects **white paper** details what that group is aiming to do for artists by making the relationship a little more direct. Even still, though it claims to be a decentralized protocol for governance reasons, the platform is a centralized entity. When you get into the tokenomics aspect of it, the project can become confusing. I'm not against Audius at all. I think it's a step in the right direction. I just like the digital collectible route more than the streaming rights route to fixing the music industry. https://whitepaper.audius.co/AudiusWhitepaper.pdf
Platforms are hard to avoid
Centralized platforms are hard to avoid. I get that. Even though **you don't have to**, chances are you're reading this on a centralized platform. There are a bunch of other groups trying to fix the artist/fan relationship as well. **Rally.io** comes to mind - token is $RYL. **Royal.io** comes to mind. One that I've recently discovered is Sound.xyz. Sound.xyz is taking a very interesting approach; rather than messing with royalties and confusing governance tokens, artists and fans can link through Sound.xyz to transact in NFT versions of new song releases. https://faybomb.com/2021/12/30/t-pain-gets-it/ https://rally.io/ https://royal.io/
The song drops on Sound.xyz are limited to 25 editions and each edition costs 0.1 ETH to mint. Sound.xyz has been doing new drops each day and selling them out very quickly. For instance, yesterday's MoRuf drop sold out in under 30 seconds. Sound.xyz isn't the only platform selling music NFTs. I shared one that I'm very fond of in a previous members only post (our little secret for now).
There's another one called Catalog.works. Catalog functions a little different from Sound.xyz because it has more of an auction format than a minting format. What's cool about Catalog is it doubles as a music player. I played a track through Catalog and when it ended, a different track from a different artist started playing. I could buy each song and own them as NFTs (for the right price, and it's high). Many of the asks are the equivalent of thousands of dollars in Ethereum.
There's a Drop Today
I've made no secret that my main approach to NFTs is of the IP/Domain variety. I'll buy digital art if I actually like it. But mainly my focus to this point has been music ownership. The platforms that allow for NFT minting have been on my radar for a bit. I've been paying attention to the drops and checking out the artists. In many cases, I've discovered very talented people who I wouldn't have otherwise heard through some of these platforms. Yesterday, something happened that has never happened before. I saw an upcoming drop from an artist that I have already been listening to for years.
Sound.xyz is **dropping a new song** from Jesse Boykins III today at 5pm EST. https://www.sound.xyz/jesseboykins3rd/home-away-from-home
Jesse is a neo soul singer who has been active for over a decade. If you care about these sorts of things, he's Grammy nominated and has recorded with numerous higher profile acts. I first **heard him** in 2010 on The Foreign Exchange's *Authenticity* album (FIRE btw). Like all Sound.xyz drops, each mint costs 0.1 ETH. Which as of writing, is roughly $375. To me, owning an NFT version of Jesse's new song would be awesome. But, I think it's more important that Jesse is even doing it. Many of the artists on these platforms are younger and more crypto native. In Jesse's case, this is an established artist who is entering the crypto/NFT music space after already having success. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's something. Personally, I think it's a great sign. https://open.spotify.com/track/0WpK51zCIa2n6gZPyO37eZ?si=5cc88ad91145483d
And I'm not being facetious about T-Pain. I really think he's been ahead of the curve in the music industry. T-Pain gets it. He knows change is coming. When he joins one of these platforms... look out.
*Disclaimer: None of this is investment advice. I have no certifications. NFTs will probably all go to zero. I have no exposure to the $AUDIO token. Currently, I do hold $RLY tokens. I have not purchased any music NFTs through Sound.xyz or Catalog.works as of publishing. That could certainly change.*
The Fight For Domain Supremacy
Alright, I'm talking NFTs again. But not the digital art NFT variety. This is about the future of web domains. I think there's a big reason why many normal, non-crypto-type people haven't taken to NFTs yet and that's because of the learning curve. I was having a drink with my dad a couple weeks back and I was explaining my approach to NFTs. It took probably 20 minutes, but he finally got it. For me, the digital art component is interesting if I like the art. I have almost no interest in avatar projects, however. What I am very bullish in the NFT space is IP and domain usage. Before we get to why I'm so high on domains, I want to give you guys a baseline understanding for the current analog.
DNS and Web Hosting
Without getting too into the weeds from an IT perspective, if you have a business or run a website this will be much easier for you to understand. Right now the internet operates on DNS. That's the Domain Name Service. To get to my website, Faybomb.com, or any other website that you might visit, you're utilizing DNS without realizing it. The actual addresses of websites are confusing. Websites are stored on servers with IP addresses and are just a bunch of numbers. What DNS allows is for users to access the websites by getting routed through a more understandable name. Like "barstoolsports.com" or something like that.
This is an important part though; even though I paid for and operate faybomb.com, I don't actually own the domain name. I lease it from a web-hosting service like GoDaddy or NameCheap. I forget exactly how much I paid for my site name but these things generally cost like $10-20 or so a year. If I want to use my website to sell a product or a service, which I do, I need to have other layers or "widgets" that allow for me to conduct business. Previously, I've used a PayPal widget (I don't anymore). I could easily set up a Stripe widget if I wanted to (I don't). Both of these are examples of intermediaries that could help me facilitate a transaction with standard payment rails. Now... ***this whole thing is getting disrupted.***
Let's start with the obvious. Substack is different, but on my website, I'm only doing business with crypto going forward. Why? Well, for one, it's far cheaper for us to transact with something like Litecoin than it is for us to use a traditional payment processor. If you subscribe to my Substack for a year, you're paying $100. Of that, I'm getting roughly $85 of it and I have to wait several days to get the deposit. Substack and Stripe both take nice service fees off the top. Now I'm not saying don't subscribe via Substack, please do! It’s the easiest way for you to subscribe and that’s important to me. But, if instead, we decided to handle membership through my website directly, you could buy $100 in Zcash on something like Coinbase. Coinbase will take $3 of it right away. So you'll be down to $97. Then you could take that $97 and send it to my Zcash address for a less than a penny. And I'd get all of it in a matter of seconds. So even though it seems counterintuitive, I actually get to keep more of the payment if we transact in crypto. I'm getting to the point, trust me.
The wallet address problem
In order to send me the Zcash, you would need to have my Zcash wallet address. That address is this: t1e9XtiWUuh7Yc6NU9TrgZE5HEicMv3cFZu
Confusing right? It's a long string of numbers and letters. Nobody has time for that and, frankly, it's easy to screw it up. This is where we have new technology trying to solve a problem. Like DNS for the web, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and Unstoppable Domains are trying to build out systems of unique identity domains for payments. While ENS is focusing on the .ETH naming convention, Unstoppable Domains offers .crypto, .coin, .dao, and numerous other options. There are other differences between the two that I'll get into shortly.
I own the domain "faybomb.crypto." I bought it from Unstoppable Domains about a year ago. While I could actually also use that domain to host my website rather than faybomb.com, currently the function of faybomb.crypto is to router crypto payments in the same way DNS routes web traffic. That Zcash address above is actually linked to faybomb.crypto. So if you have a popular cryptocurrency wallet like Coinbase Wallet, Gemini, or Atomic, instead of typing in the string to my Zcash wallet, you can just type in "faybomb.crypto" and your wallet app will route it to the correct address. The best part is faybomb.crypto can also route to my Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Litecoin, and Monero wallets. I've set all that up through Unstoppable Domains. There are literally dozens of other cryptocurrencies that I can route through the faybomb.crypto domain if I wanted to. But I think I'm good with the few that I've picked.
Key differences
Again, ENS is doing something very similar but with a .ETH naming convention rather than .crypto or .coin. Here is where there are some key differences between ENS and Unstoppable Domains:
ENS is a protocol not a centralized company like Unstoppable Domains
ENS sells .ETH domains for $5, Unstoppable Domains vary from $20-100 depending on the convention. It's $40 for a .crypto
Despite being a protocol, ENS actually requires domain renewal. Whereas Unstoppable Domains sells the domain to you outright
ENS mints on Ethereum while Unstoppable Domains has shifted to minting on Polygon from Ethereum to combat gas fees
The renewal is very important for two reasons. First, while it might seem like a no-brainer to go with .ETH over .crypto simply because of the price variance, bear in mind that if you plan to use these things for any foreseeable length of time, eventually the renewal fee becomes the more expensive option. For instance, while .crypto is $40, .nft is only $20. If I wanted to mint faybomb.nft, I'd own it and that'd be the end of it. If I wanted to mint faybomb.ETH, by year 5, it has become more expensive for me to route payment via ENS. That's not even the biggest concern though.
The second issue is that renewal cost is just one input in total cost. The actual minting of the domain after you've purchased it requires "gas." On the Ethereum Network, gas is out of control. If I wanted to mint faybomb.ETH, for 1 year, it would cost over $100 dollars in gas.
*As of 12/21/21*
And if I decided to renew after a year, I'd have to do the same thing over again. Since Unstoppable Domains moved to a layer two solution for minting, that company is taking on all minting fees over the Polygon network. This means that you could by your name as a .crypto NFT through Unstoppable, own it outright, and pay no gas fee - all for $40. But if you wanted to buy your name as a .ETH NFT, you're going to be in for $100 in gas alone. And to justify that gas expense, you're probably going to be buying more than just a 1 year lease. Which means minting a .ETH can get very expensive very quickly.
Speculative frenzy?
Anthony Pompliano did a really interesting podcast comparing ENS and Unstoppable Domains a few weeks back. If anything from this post has been interesting to you thus far, I'd invite you to listen to the podcast here as well. In the recording, Pomp interviewed Brantley Millegan from ENS and Matthew Gould from Unstoppable Domains. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6p5HzdHUFCgKPtvNAz4OG9?si=d35aa4888bad4ac9
There were some points that were made by Brantly Millegan that I found interesting. Brantley's desire is for ETH domains to have a true use case and not just be a speculative asset like other NFTs. I think we're actually seeing the opposite happen. If we analyze some of the data for each entity from Opensea, we can draw some interesting theories.
*As of 12/21/21*
The first thing that jumps out to me is the floor price in the ENS names. At 0.014 ETH, we're talking roughly $55 at current Ethereum prices. By itself, this doesn't give us too much information because we don't know what the term is on the domains that are listed at that floor. But we can see that the floor price on ENS is 7 times higher than on Unstoppable Domains.
*As of 12/21/21*
Unstoppable Domains has significantly less traded volume too. Actually, if we do some math, we can get a handle on what the secondary markets for these domain names look like through Opensea. I don't want to dig into this like I did the Webzee's World collection over the weekend because we're talking about 100's of thousands of NFTs as opposed to just 438. But if we make some assumptions, we can take a stab at a rudimentary theory. Floor price isn't a great metric to judge the real value of all domains. At 1.1k ETH volume traded against 319 thousand domains, Unstoppable Domains' traded value per NFT is 0.00134 ETH. That's about $12 traded per NFT. There's a key point here: this exercise isn't an attempt to assign value per NFT. It's an attempt to quantify the market per NFT. With 10.9k ETH volume and 443.8 thousand domains, ENS has an average traded value of 0.024 ETH, or just under $100 traded per NFT.
So what does this mean? It's up to your own personal interpretation how you view that market behavior, but to me, it seems like the speculative fervor is in ENS not in Unstoppable Domains. Creating a speculative frenzy is ***not*** what Brantley Millegan's mission is for ENS. But speculative behavior is only one part of the domain story. Something else Millegan mentioned in the podcast above is that he wants usage, not squatting. Are ENS names being used for squatting? Maybe. But it seems like to a far lesser degree than the squatting on Unstoppable Domains. With 64.4k owners and 319.1k domains minted, the average Unstoppable owner is holding 5 domains. That number is only 2.3 domains for the average ENS owner. This would indicate more potential squatting on Unstoppable Domains.
My take
If you think there's something to domains as a payment router and digital identity, for me, it's kind of an obvious choice to go with Unstoppable Domains. I checked out ENS a while back even before the gas fees made it cost prohibitive to get one. At that time, I couldn't be swayed to buy an ETH domain. After going the .crypto route first, I just can't see why anyone would want to lease when they don't have to. Ultimately, I can build a website and route payments through a .crypto domain that I own outright. No more paying for a web host. And potentially no more intermediary taking a huge piece of my transactions with readers. I want to actually use my domain NFT, that's why I want to own it not lease it. I don't want to have to pay gas multiple times just to secure a payment router. And here's the thing; that squatter figure is important. Speculative frenzies come and go. The squatters seem to be betting on Unstoppable Domains over ENS. I would know because I'm squatting on several. For $20 to $40 bucks and no gas, I think Unstoppable Domains is a really asymmetric bet.
*Disclaimer: none of this is investment advice. NFTs will probably all go to zero. If you’re interested in Unstoppable Domains, use* *my referral link* *and you’ll get $10 off. This should go without saying, but I am not being paid by Unstoppable Domains for this post.* https://unstoppabledomains.com/?ref=0eba78c95abe436
Art Not Charts
There’s an old theory in the investing world that the time to buy something is when nobody else wants it. Provided, of course, that thing that nobody seems to want has some sort of purpose or value. Last week, I **told paid subs** about Webzee NFTs. Long story short, Webzee is a pseudonymous artist who just released a collection of generative NFTs. Each NFT is a 1 of 1 artwork made from a mixture of hand drawn elements. Those elements include pre-drawn characters, backgrounds, epigrams, marks, and signatures. https://faybomb.substack.com/p/the-intersection-of-art-and-nfts
The mint was initially supposed to be 3,450 pieces in the full collection but after an AWS outage disrupted the initial minting, interest in the project didn’t seem to return when the mint reopened two days later. Webzee and the team closed the mint down for good after just 438 NFTs were created.
Look, I’m not an expert in anything. And I’m certainly not an expert in NFTs or Discord servers. But I know enough to know these NFT projects that are wildly successful are driven more by community than anything else. I would guess there are very few people who actually think CryptoPunks are great for the artistic prowess they display. I’d say the same about most of these dime a dozen avatar projects, punk/ape knockoffs, and yes, even my beloved **PunkTulips**. My point is, turning off the Discord server was a mistake and I hope Webzee’s team acknowledges that internally if not publicly. The best way to eviscerate a community is to prohibit it from conversing. https://solsea.io/collection/6192c26cb9a7cc2a494eab30
Now what?
Now that the negative is out of the way, it’s time to focus on the future. While I did not mint any Webzee NFTs on the 7th, I couldn’t help but see the mint halt last week as an opportunity to dig for buyer-related data. As I detailed in the paid-sub only post, the minters who were holding pre-reveal pieces were generally buying several Webzee’s. My thesis: at a 0.1 ETH mint price, if you can buy several of these things, you probably have quite a bit if crypto and you’re probably doing digital assets somewhat well. One of the original minters who had several Webzee NFTs pre-reveal was also a Meebit holder.
I like betting with people who I think know what they’re doing. Meebits are a very successful NFT project and Opensea user DrBurry4 has 4 of them. DrBurry has also been very active in the Webzee secondary market and now holds roughly 20 Webzee’s at last check.
Follow bigger money
With the exception of DrBurry4 and a few other diamond hands wallets, there has been a bit of run for the exits in some of the lower rarity rank Webzee pieces. My thinking is these pieces are being sold by NFT flippers who would rather cut out under mint than wait for the Webzee market to mature. Opportunity cost perhaps? I’m not sure. I can’t speak for them I can only speculate.
*Source: Opensea.io - As of 12/18*
While the average sale price since secondary trading opened is still 60% above the mint price, we now have a floor price of 0.03 ETH in Webzee’s World pieces. That’s 70% under mint price. Just this morning, Webzee #378 went for 0.02 ETH - 80% under mint. We’ve actually seen the holders of Webzee’s World NFTs start to decline over the last few days while the collection consolidates. The asks and bids are one thing, the real sale prices tell the tale. And that tale is one where rarity rank and price are very aligned.
*Source: Opensea.io - As of 12/18*
The scatter chart above shows how important rarity has been for sale price as the secondary for Webzee's World develops. Generally, rarity rank has to be in the top half for the seller to get a premium over the mint price of 0.1 ETH. To get anything above .25 ETH, the rank has to be top 20. It is my view that this market fixation with rarity is stupid.
Rarity is mostly irrelevant
I believe those dumping out of low rarity rank pieces below mint will ultimately regret it if the Webzee team can get their act together. Getting bent out of shape about rarity rank is silly and it’s the most annoying aspect of NFTs. Take Webzee’s World #128 and #414 for example.
They have the same focal head character and the same epigram. There isn’t a massive difference in rarity between the marks or the background. The biggest rarity differentiator? The signature.
That small difference in signature makes one of them get assigned a 134 rarity rank while the other gets a 423 rarity rank. Without cheating can you tell which one gets the higher rarity rank? Rarity rank in NFTs is manufactured scarcity. In a collection of this nature, it’s of little real concern when it comes to the artistic expression. Here's another example:
The similarities between Webzee #422 and Webzee #235 are apparent. Which one do you think has a rarity rank number that is 261 positions higher than the other? I'm not going to tell you the answer because it doesn't really matter. This is what happens though when communities aren't allowed to engage. Without the ability to converse, there's nothing else for Webzee fans to do ***but*** judge the works based on rarity rank. This fixation with rarity is an entirely self-inflicted wound and it's hurting the real value of the Webzee's World project. The lack of engagement among the community is almost certainly the biggest reason why sentiment on Webzee is so low a week after the reveals.
Open the damn Discord server
I actually think Webzee’s team has an opportunity here and I hope they see it that way as well. The real opportunity I see for the Webzee team is to let the less serious holders turn over and rebuild the base with fresh tone and an open discord server.
I’m beating a dead horse with Discord and there are certainly other factors driving some of this race to the bottom in floor price. Intentional or not, the project just probably hasn’t attracted enough of the right buyers to this point, in my opinion. “Start up, cash in, sell out, bro down,” while funny and endearing if you “get it,” probably positioned the project toward the quick flipper a little too much. I get it, it’s NFTs. That’s pretty much what all these ridiculous projects are.
But Webzee’s actual artwork feels deserving of better than that. The art itself is substantially deeper than "bro down." When you read the project website and then the medium article explaining the process, it’s like they were written by completely different people and about completely different projects. Webzee’s website is whimsical and short.
Using some spaghetti code some rando intern wrote on a scrap of toilet paper this one time, we generate the artworks using math and stuff.
via **Webzee.co** https://webzee.co/
Cute. The process explainer though is educational and deep.
In “Vaporized Space Time”, the electric neon-esque light blue undercoat scintillates through the darker top coat, as though the latter has been scraped off or worn down, conferring it a greater physical rather than digital sensibility.
via **Webzee's Art Dealer** https://medium.com/@webzee/deconstructing-webzees-nfts-52538ccad96d?source=user_profile---------0-------------------------------
Two completely different tones. The point is, nobody knows who this person is yet figuratively or literally. Perhaps Webzee doesn’t even know. All we really know right now is what we can derive from the art itself. What defines Webzee? Rarity ranks and manufactured scarcity of arbitrary characteristics? Personally, I think that’s the wrong way to look at Webzee’s World and Webzee’s Twitter is guilty of perpetuating the rarity silliness.
Every single Webzee piece is a 1 of 1 on the blockchain. None of them are the same. Yes, there characteristics that are harder to find than others. And as we can see above, some of the pieces are similar. But that doesn’t make the low-rarity rank Webzee pieces any less special if you actually enjoy looking at them.
Its real art
It’s conscious of the moment. We see on numerous epigrams that Webzee has something to say about the crypto market, about tokenization, about social conformity, and about the state of art itself. Webzee isn’t a Bored Ape or a fucking Chromie Squiggle. The market will either get it or it won’t. Regardless of what happens on secondary, Webzee is a smart, interesting artist and I hope Webzee's fans are allowed to express that on Discord soon. My hope is Webzee and the team will drop the bullshit and get back to the basics. The art is really good. Build off that.
I bought some
Thursday night I bought #242 and #358. I happen to think they are both awesome. I grabbed #358 for 0.065 ETH and #242 for 0.05 ETH. For a little over the price to mint 1 Webzee, I got 2 and I love them both. Are these high on the rarity ranker? No. Do I care? No.
*Webzee #242*
**Art not charts, baby.**
*Disclaimer: Don’t ever take anything I say as investment advice. Especially not art or NFTs. I thought Webzee’s mint would sell out and it didn’t come close. So my judgement here has a poor track record. These Webzee pieces could all go to zero. I own Webzee NFTs and stand to potentially benefit from any future market demand for* *Webzee art.* *Furthermore, art is completely subjective and those who believe digital art NFTs are a bubble could prove to be correct.*
You Have the Power: Governance
Before we proceed, this series is all about what you can do individually if you're tired of institutions that have no regard for your interests. If you've missed any of the first three parts, get caught up!
**Mainstream Media** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/you-have-the-power-msm
**Corporate Elite** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/you-have-the-power-corporate-elite
**Fiat Currency** https://faybomb.substack.com/p/you-have-the-power-money
In the very first part of this series I shared Gallup poll data showing the level of trust the American public has for the mainstream press. It showed how poorly that trust has performed on a multi-year trend. I won't re-share the whole chart here but there was a significant breakout between party affiliation and trust level. What I didn't share in the first part of this series was if you look at the aggregate number for all respondents, that trust level comes in at just 36%. While that's pretty damn bad, it doesn't sniff the lack of approval we all have for Congress.
Courtesy: **Gallup** https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx
Coming in at a truly wretched 21%, our approval of our congressional representation has rarely been above 30% for much of the last decade and a half. Surely the executive branch must be doing better right?
Courtesy: **Gallup** https://news.gallup.com/interactives/185273/presidential-job-approval-center.aspx
Eh, not much. We could go deeper into those numbers, but like the press approval breakout, our political party affiliations are likely a strong indicator for how we feel about whoever happens to be inhabiting the white house at any given time. That chart above is a little difficult to make out but what I really like about it is it shows, with a couple exceptions, that US presidents generally leave office with approval ratings closer to lows than highs.
In summary, we don't like the legislative branch. We don't like the executive branch. The Supreme Court, where we've largely been split right around 50/50, is now **also at a 20 year low** for approval. **We hate our government**. That's pretty much the point. As has been the theme throughout this series, the power you have is with your dollar and with your feet. https://news.gallup.com/poll/354908/approval-supreme-court-down-new-low.aspx
Taxes
I'm a pretty strong libertarian if you want to put me in a box politically. While I don't own any t-shirts that put it out there on my chest, you could say I'm a member of team “taxation is theft.” However, I recognize that many of you may disagree with that. Taxes do help fund certain programs that help people. Though I'd argue even that tax money could probably be spent considerably more efficiently, I'm pragmatic enough to understand that complete removal of all taxation isn't going to be a popular rallying cry for most people.
“Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Matthew 21:22
That said, your taxes are your power. There are two things you can do to make your voice truly heard with your taxes. The first is move to a jurisdiction that aligns better with your broad philosophical viewpoint on governance. Perhaps you live in New York, California, or Illinois. These are notoriously high tax states that have the added features of being generally poorly run and terrible when it comes to civil liberties. My advice is if you live in a place like that get the hell out. There are other states that will respect your liberty and your autonomy. Texas, Florida, South Dakota, and Wyoming come to mind. But I'm sure there are other options depending on exactly which freedoms you value more. Shop around! And that brings me to education.
Schooling
September 2021 was a horrible month for personal freedom. The obvious example that comes to mind might be Brandon's jab mandate for all companies with over 100 employees. But that's just one part of why September was bad for freedom. Something really interesting happened at the end of that month. On September 29th, 2021, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) lobbied the president to utilize the Department of Justice and the FBI to target angry parents. The NSBA wanted to label the parents of children who appose critical race theory (CRT) as domestic terrorists. A couple weeks later, we learned the FBI was **seemingly on board** with the plan. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-whistleblower-reveals-biden-doj-activated-counterterrorism-division-against
Luckily for parents in half the country's states, the reaction to the NSBA's letter to the president **has been strong**. Without even touching on the absurdity of equating upset parents with terrorists, there does seem to be a movement away from what I'd consider to be traditional schooling in the last 20 years or so. Just 1.7% of school aged kids were homeschooled in 1999. That figure nearly doubled to 3.3% in 2016. I suspect there will be even more homeschooling going forward. This is important; when you punt the power to educate to the state, you give the state access to your child's mind. This is something that has been talked about in the Faybomb household for a little while now. And while no decisions have been made yet, I can tell you we've never been closer to homeschooling our daughter than we are at this moment. https://www.nationalreview.com/news/half-of-state-school-board-groups-downgrade-relationship-with-national-org-over-domestic-terrorism-letter/
I'll share a personal story that involves a nurse at my daughter's pediatric office. I don't know her name, she was very nice and respectful. I don't blame the nurse for the response she gave to a question that I asked, but I think it highlights some of my problems with the current medical industrial complex that we're all now realizing that we're stuck in. I'll briefly explain the situation. I took my daughter to her wellness check last Friday. After checking weight and height, I was told my little girl was due for two immunizations. I asked what they were and the response was the name of the shots which I had never heard of. So I pressed further, "okay, but what are they for?"
Response: "It's so she can get into kindergarten."
Here's my problem with that answer: why is ***the given reason*** for the necessity of these two shots so she can go to a public school? I was expecting something like "they will prevent her from catching whatever-disease or whatever-virus." And maybe the real reason the shots are required for schooling is because they actually are helpful in some way. I have no idea though because the articulated answer wasn't to *prevent illness*, it was essentially *because she has to*. Yeah, nah. I reject that as a sufficient answer. I'll get more details on just what the hell it is they want to shoot into my daughter before they do it. She did not get those shots on Friday. If my little girl, who is healthy AF and has been in daycare for years, can't go to kindergarten because of immunizations that I don't think she needs, maybe she just won't go.
Each parent is different. For some it might vaccinations that *might not be necessary*. For others it could be CRT or something else specific to the curriculum. Maybe opposition to a superintendent. I don't know. Maybe it's the pledge of allegiance. Maybe it's God in the classroom. Who knows? The larger point is, I want some semblance of control over not just what my daughter is learning, but ***how*** she is learning. I don't want her memorizing stuff to pass a test only to forget it in a month like I did. I don't want her to be a book smart social idiot. This is all a long way of saying, you have the power to not give the government access to your child.
I Choose to Vote
This is actually a tough one for me and I'll admit I've gone back and forth on voting a few times in my adult life because I've been so torn. Sometimes I'm very much in the don't vote camp. Other times I've fallen in the vote third party camp. What has been painfully obvious to me as a US voter is neither of these approaches have worked very well in my brief experience as a voter. That said, the fact that abstaining or voting outside of the two party duopoly hasn't worked all that well is not an admission that voting for the lesser of two evils is a good idea. That's what most US voters wind up doing and it's obviously not working either. Consider how large the population of independent voters is in this country.
Data from **Gallup**. Party affiliation Trend from Jan 2004 - Oct 2021. Plots are % of respondents https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
On the latest survey, 44% of respondents said the were independent. If we want to quantify how many people in America are independent against US census data, we're probably looking at somewhere between 100-115 million people. If these people voted for who they liked rather than against who they don't like, we might have different election outcomes. Certainly on the local level. And I'm getting to a larger point. I now acknowledge that there are exceptions to this assertion, but generally your vote on the local level is far more important than any voice you have pertaining to national election outcomes. On the surface, that might appear to fundamentally go against the entire point of *You Have the Power*, but it actually doesn't. You still have an impact in your Congressional representation.
Right now, we have people in Congress front-running their own regulatory considerations by making bets in the stock market. It’s so bad, that following Nancy Pelosi’s trading has **actually become a strategy**. And to just briefly reiterate, our approval of Congress is abysmal. Yet, we continue to vote for the same exact people! Why would they change their ways? We’ve never forced them to do so! Incumbent re-election in Congress is **almost always** over 90%. So, if I could make one recommendation to you all, it would be to turn over Congress. Completely. Every single one of them. Vote them out. Maybe one or two babies will be thrown out with the bath water. They can always run again. https://www.npr.org/2021/09/21/1039313011/tiktokers-are-trading-stocks-by-watching-what-members-of-congress-do https://www.thoughtco.com/do-congressmen-ever-lose-re-election-3367511
Do Not Comply
Local elections are where real change happens and they are *usually* where the decisions that have greater impact on your day to day life are voted on. If, like me, you're in a small town, there's a chance you can run into one of your elected officials at the grocery store or at an event. Maybe you know them personally. Maybe you ***are one***. Maybe you ***should be*** one. In your local governance, you have a bigger voice. You have better access to the people in your community who are seen as leaders. You have local police officers or Sheriff's deputies who you can talk to. Get to know these people. It is imperative that your local police are on *your side*. You have the ability to create real change either by asking the right questions at town hall meetings or by participating in the governance yourself by winning over voters. This is where the political battles are most winnable right now.
"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
Martin Luther King Jr.
The most important thing you can do to fight bad governance though is simply not comply. I had to take care of a business matter with the city where I reside a couple months back. I didn't realize it at the time, but the city building that I walked into had a "mask mandatory" sign on the door. Since I didn't see it I walked in without a mask on. You know what they did? Nothing. You know why? Because they can't. Now, I'm not trying to make this about masks I'm merely sharing this story as an example. Governments only have the power that you give them. Bad laws should be broken out of existence. I'm not talking about anarchy, okay. There are some laws you shouldn't break because they're just. But here are some examples of laws that you **should** and probably **already** break:
Gambling laws - if you have poker night with friends or make a bet on the outcome of a game, you're probably breaking the law.
Food permits - want to teach your kid how to run a business? If your kids have a lemonade stand, they're probably breaking the law.
Auto/Traffic laws - numerous examples, here's just one: in some places it's illegal to warm your car up in your driveway.
Some of these laws I mentioned above vary by state and local jurisdictions. When it comes to the federal government on the other hand, it can be a little scarier to go against what you're told. But the federal government is a bloated, immovable, albatross. Most of the people running this beast of system don't care about you. They don't represent you. And the power they think they have over you is flimsy. It only exists as long as you accept that it must. What can you realistically do? Decrease your tax obligations as much as you possibly can. I'm not telling you to lie or to cheat. I'm just saying utilize absolutely every measure at your disposal to keep as much money away from these people as possible. Here are some examples; if you invest, harvest losses at the end of the year if you trade out of a taxable account. Use cash whenever you can. Cash is private. Credit isn't.
Finally, arm yourself. You have the right to bear arms for a reason.
You truly do have the power
Let's look at the suggestions I've thrown out there in this series. Cut your cable. Cut your screen time. Be selective about which businesses you support and which companies you invest in. Get out of the native currency. Pull your kids from public school. Move to a different state.
It's A LOT. And it is HARD to implement any of this let alone all of it. I get that.
As Americans, we've become very accustomed to convenience. We really don't like doing things that are hard. We come up with any excuse we can to justify sticking with whatever our personal status quo is. But much of this status quo protection comes with an assumption that our conveniences can't be simply taken away even *after* we've offered obedient compliance. We have careers. We have assets. We have family members who will think all of these suggestions are, frankly, crazy.
But if these conveniences aren't really guaranteed, does that change the way we view them? What if the dollar loses 30% of it's purchasing power in a 12 month period? What if that happens for two or three consecutive years? What if that job you got the jab for doesn't exist a year from now? In these scenarios, our livelihoods are wiped out. Perhaps the only true choice is to actually say “no.” To say “I don't approve of how things are going and I'll do whatever it takes to prove it.”
My sister recently let me borrow the book *Originals* by Adam Grant. I'm actually not finished with it yet but one point from the book that I like so far is an illustration that elaborates on Albert Hirschman's writings in *Exit, Voice, & Loyalty*. Grant's version breaks out Loyalty into "neglect" and "perseverance." This is what the illustration in the book looks like:
Courtesy: Adam Grant, *Originals*
Change the situation is obviously what this entire series has been about. Your voice is your power. This is the best way forward because it's actually beneficial to the organization that is struggling. But your voice will only get you so much. At the end of the day, the organization has to put what you're providing with your voice into action. When it can't, or won't, it's time to exit. It might not change the situation for everyone else, but it will for you. And it will ultimately be detrimental to the organization down the line.
Substitute government for organization here. If voice isn't working, it's time to exit. You exit by changing decisions with your feet, money, and time.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the series. It's been a lot of fun working on it and I sincerely hope you got something out of it. Change isn't easy. And it can be scary. But nobody is gonna do it for you. We can't comply our way into freedom.
Forgive Me Father, For I have Sinned
In the past, I've shared my thoughts on avatar NFT art. Long story short, I think it's a bit silly. But I've stumbled upon an NFT project that speaks to me. And I simply couldn't stop myself. Don't ask me how I stumbled upon PunkTulips. Like NBA Paint a **few months back**, sometimes I just find things without any rhyme or reason. You know how it is. You're on the internet minding your own business and suddenly you go down a rabbit hole of hilariousness. You end up wasting an hour doing rudimentary research and deciding it makes sense to spend roughly $15 on jpegs. Or is that just me? This is the description for **PunkTulips**: https://faybomb.substack.com/p/my-new-favorite-nft-artist https://www.punktulips.com/
This is the curious case of a boomer that goes into a frenzy and creates 10,000 unique PunkTulips NFTs. Is it art…a meme…or a tulip mania?
Art... a meme... or a tulip mania? Maybe it's all three? Anyway, I found PunkTulips this weekend and kind of loved what I saw. While the details are minimal and I have no idea who is behind this project, I spent some magic internet money (of the Solana variety) on 5 avatar NFTs. The good news is I don't have to identify as a **cigar smoking Hungry Panda** anymore. I'm now PunkTulip #103. Why did I pick that one for my new digi-persona? Well, of the 200 minted PunkTulips, it was the only one left that had Bitcoin logo eyes. I tracked some of the obvious characteristics and compared what was still available with what was purchased. https://faybomb.substack.com/p/avatar-projects-have-jumped-the-shark
Of the 200 minted tulips, Bitcoin eyes, blooming variant, gradient background, hats, and VR headset seemed to be the most sought after rarities. For instance, I counted Bitcoin eyes on 28 of the 200 Tulips. PunkTulip #103 was the only one with Bitcoin eyes that hadn't yet been purchased. The blooming variant is another characteristic that had a very strong index for purchased against available.
Look, I view this as largely a joke. But it brought me joy and I decided to show the person behind it some love. If this collection somehow takes off, which I highly doubt, I'll be ready with some choice PunkTulips to satisfy secondary market demand.
*Disclaimer: for the love of God, this is not investment advice.*
@Faybomb
