Crypto's SocialFi Moment, Fomo Raises $75M & The Rise of Collectables

**Myles** (0:05)
All right, welcome to Bell Curve.
I've never really done the opener, but we're here without our fearless leader. It's just Xavier and I this week. Xavier, how you doing, man?

**Xavier** (0:16)
Going well, thank you, Myles. Always a pleasure to see you, mate. And yeah, feeling good having an episode without Mike. Time to really show our stripes and prove our colors. So yeah, let's hope this one's a good one.

**Myles** (0:27)
Yeah, we are. We're feeling good. The Battle of Bell Curve last week went pretty well for the US. Sorry about that.
But the Socceroos, they're going to get through, you know.

**Xavier** (0:39)
Yeah, we were just chatting pre-podcast. I don't mind our chances got Paraguay tomorrow. US did us a favor. So yeah, interestingly enough, I guess US beat both Paraguay and Australia by enough that were a good chance. So thanks to USA as always saving the day.

**Myles** (0:56)
Exactly. And fingers crossed for the Scots.
You know, I'll be very upset if they have to go home. I love seeing the kilts around Boston. But yeah, absolutely.

**Xavier** (1:09)
My second team, Portugal, also doing decently. Pinaldo.

**Myles** (1:13)
Love it.

**Xavier** (1:14)
So we've been seeing a week left. And yeah, a very, very cool time to be in US right now, I think. And yeah, no, so Myles, I guess this week we've got a podcast exploring, I guess, some of the things that are happening around collectibles and trading and sort of social, I guess to classify, we could call it retail attention in crypto itself and what's happening and then what's working and not. So specifically this week, we thought it might be interesting to dive deeper into sort of collectibles in particular, which some people want the crypto timeline to have been very deep in more recent times. And I find it quite interesting actually that this is doing very well in the crypto bear market when not a lot actually is. So Myles, you would take us through that in a second. And then after that, I guess I'll take us through the more social trading side, which is a side that I've looked at a lot personally and from an investment perspective, which just seems like Fomo is the front runner of right now on the more consumer facing side trading without realizing it and how they kind of both are similar products that are both successful for different reasons, but I think can show us something about where crypto is heading in the future. So yeah, Myles would love to hear.

**Myles** (2:27)
Maybe just to add to that, I think on crypto Twitter, like our crypto Twitter, you don't see a lot of, I don't know, evidence of activity coming back. And yet we saw earlier this week, Fomo raised 75 million Series B from S tier investors. Like the, I think they have probably three of the top five venture firms in the world. And you hear a lot of sentiment, like, do you know any Fomo traders? Like, who are these people? And like, it's very real, right? And they have successfully like captured the attention of, let's say net new retail channels and bringing them into the space through TikTok, through YouTube, right? And there's something different about these apps. And then, you know, I don't see a ton of activity on My News Feed about the collectibles marketplaces either, tokenized card marketplaces, right? But you look at the charts and they're printing cash. Like, you know, Collector Crypt did like $15 million in the past 30 days. Now these are not like profit numbers. We can get into that. And I've always just kind of like known that these, this category of app existed, but I never really got it. I didn't understand how it works. It's been pretty fun looking into both of these projects. And I think there's some, like, some commonalities that we can draw and, you know, like point to about like what's different about these apps and why they're working. So that's kind of like the broad premise for why we want to do the episode. And so, yeah, we can dive into the tokenized card marketplaces first. So, you know, the leaders here are Collector Crypt, a project called Courtyard, Beasy and Fidgetals. Those are probably the three that are actually doing decent amounts of revenue and volume. And I guess as I was going in to like actually do some research, because we did some research for this episode, by the way, folks, I was like, I don't really get how these work. Like, why would you, if you owned a really valuable card, why would you send it to some random crypto company to hold in like, you know, how do you trust them in the first place? Right. So maybe just starting off with like the supply side, which I think is is super interesting.