Creators, Communities, and Crypto Part II

**Jesse Walden** (0:00)
So should we talk, creators and crypto and communities?

**Blake Robbins** (0:04)
I feel like we were totally blasted off the face of the planet when we had this three-way conversation a year ago at this point. What are the big developments since then?

**Jesse Walden** (0:17)
The thing I like about this trifecta here is that Blake is one of us who doesn't spend like 100% of their time in crypto. And so I'm actually curious to hear from Blake, from your perspective, what has happened, because I think I'm a little brain-damaged in terms of my read.

**Blake Robbins** (0:33)
It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly what it was. Bill, I'm sure you both have a perspective on when NFTs really broke through. I think the last time we talked, all of us were just sitting here like, what does it look like for, I don't know, showing status symbols if you were early to a creator or you wanted to support a creator. And we talked a lot about those pieces. I think even if we look back, there was a piece around like, what does digital merch look like? And it turns out it was actually just digital art. And so we were like weirdly close to that.
You can take a cynical view and be like, it's pure hype. You're buying a random NFT, they'll have no utility or whatever. But like, as I continue to dig, and I'm the least sophisticated in crypto here, like as I continue to dig, it's like there are some really cool elements around this, mainly around this idea that you can like create economic alignment and really create that piece of if someone buys this, they're now have ownership and maybe like your future, like as a creator and therefore you want to support them. I started to dabble a little bit in like DAOs and what that world means. NFTs are really the main thing that I've broken through from my perspective. And there's now starting to be like, okay, what does this actually mean? I occasionally see like social tokens to run around as like this other piece. We also probably like hinted to back in the day when we were talking about how certain creators were creating coins for themselves. And now that's become much more real. So that's at least my perspective. I don't know how you two have viewed it, because again, you guys are way more deep than I am.

**Jesse Walden** (1:57)
I think that covers it well, high level. I have a sort of distilled version of it that I've talked about before, I think, where I think like what happened in the last year was there's sort of like three big inflection points, some unique to crypto, others more general. The first one is that 2021 is the year that investing became mainstream culture. And that wasn't unique to crypto, but it was Wall Street bets, GameStop, right? That was an important moment because I think it taught people a lot about investing. It taught people a lot about internet communities and making money together. And that I think paved the way for the second major inflection point, which was culture then became investing with NFTs. Like you could now invest in culture, in digital art.
And so that's kind of where we're at right now. And then the next step, I think is the complete synthesis of the two. That's where investing in culture, and culture is investing, but just is a team sport that you play with your friends on the internet.
And that's like totally normal. What's exciting is people now understand like crypto is the right stack for doing that. It's just so much easier to play that team sport with your friends using crypto, because crypto is inherently social. The legacy financial system is not.

**Blake Robbins** (3:17)
I wanna come back to that thought and where that leads us in a second.
Blake, how have the traditional creators looked at this whole phenomenon? Like, how do you see them respond to it? We've seen a couple of different approaches so far, whether that's Logan Paul or Gary Vee, sounds like he's launching stuff as NFTs. The thing that gets me the most excited is if we've learned anything over the past year or two, it's like more and more power towards these creators is just happening. There's more and more power to the individual, and these individuals carry so much power on their own. And when they have distribution, let's use OnlyFans as an example. We've seen that just blow up because it unlocked a new way of monetization.
I think we're gonna see that happen here with NFTs, and we already have a pure artist form, but I think you're gonna see it on the creator side as well, where it's like, hey, do you wanna support me? My content's still gonna be out there freely, but the biggest fans will figure out a way to really be aligned and be bought into that world. We haven't seen a big creator really nail it yet, and I'm curious to see if and how someone will do it, because if they do it right, there is no limit. Imagine if it's an individual, and we all are now coming together and be like, this individual is gonna be the biggest creator in the world, and we all have economic upside in that. That's really cool to me.