Talking Crypto #78 - Fiskantes #2
Primer: Fiskantes returns to the Talking Crypto Podcast for a second time. He shares his thoughts on memes, crypto games, Olympus DAO and its forks, and good philosophical advice on what to do once you have made it in crypto. The alpha is not in the projects shared, but in how to live your life!
Background
💡 Gabriel last spoke to Fiskantes 6 months ago in April 2021
Crypto Twitter Degen investor extraordinaire
Partner at Zee Prime Capital
CIO at Sigil Fund
Conference Experience
Conference attendees are mainly lawyers and legal service providers
These people are good at structuring companies, providing legal advice
Some of them have never used MetaMask before
Lawyers were discussing IP rights and NFTs
Thoughts On NFTs
Did not expect NFTs to blow up so fast
Thinks that some NFTs are lazily drawn with no fundamentals or promise of anything else in the future
Was watching early NFT auctions and saw whales outbidding each other to the point of personal competition and not for their investment value
"So it was like me fucking around in these like weird areas. It may seem like just a waste of time, but it sometimes bears fruit." - Fiskantes
Had a NGMI mindset around NFTs. Found CryptoPunks kind of ugly
Was early to the NFT scene in 2019, but he wouldn't buy something that does not appeal to him aesthetically. Hence, he missed out on them
He ventured into NFTs when it wasn't clear that it will be a trend. Helped him to formulate his NFT thesis quickly when he saw the space growing
Embracing Memes
Memes are the biggest driving force in a post-value society
A post-value society has a digitally native culture where the scarcest resource is not natural resource or capital, but human attention. Anything that can capture human attention sustainably for a period of time can become a major project/asset class/asset
Zee Prime Capital would rather invest in NFT marketplaces and infrastructure rather than NFTs themselves
NFT valuation relies on tastemakers who create a narrative around the NFT. Tricky to find something that is not trendy for only one season
They also invest in projects that they do not expect to be mimetic but are technologies that are necessary to the space
"Something that I took out of that just now is it's not memes for the sake of memes. Yes. Doge is kind of the embodiment. It's just a meme that is a meme, right? You can have an investment that solves a problem. And on top of that, you overlay the meme narrative." - Gabriel Haines
On Middleware
Many investors believe that middleware would not capture value. Instead, they think that value capture would occur in the app layer, aggregator layer, or social layer
These investors point to super apps like Google and Facebook and think of middleware as HTTP or SMTP protocols
Thinks that middleware with the following features differentiates them from old school protocols:
Have tokens
Have a decentralized network
Have a community of independent operators
Such middleware solutions would be able to capture significant value with a token through the provision of services
On Cynicism
Easy to become super cynical in crypto because of the cesspool of Ponzis and outright scams in the space
If individuals do not have an overarching set of values that they anchor their life to, they can grow cynical very quickly and feel empty inside even though they are making money
There's also the risk of the underlying tech becoming more centralized over time until it gets choked by custodians, regulators, and the establishment
Have to move from short-term gains to long-term thinking. Would expect a backlash from society against the crypto rich like how people who got rich from internet technologies took a lot of heat from society. Hence, it's important for big actors in the space to have some sort of values that are net positive for society
One answer is to lead by example. Gitcoin makes donating to public goods cool
What Has Changed In His Life
Gabriel referenced a tweet that Fiskantes made about making X amount of money and not feeling anything
From a materialistic perspective, nothing much has changed in his life
His mindset has changed a lot. Became less patient with playing short-term games that he used to enjoy
Starting to focus more on health, fitness, and personal relationships to bring balance to his life
Waiting to be able to travel again after the COVID pandemic blows over
Saw a smaller account on Twitter coining the term Return per unit of Mindshare, which means how much attention and mental energy that someone needs to spend on something versus how much profit they can get from it
Starts to think in terms of best possible return with the lowest possible mindshare spent
Realized that most drops and mints are not worth the trade-off anymore. Knows that life is short and he wants to enjoy stuff and be healthy
How Is He Spending Most Of His Time These Days?
Will be travelling more
Their team has grown and he is outsourcing more to other members
Doing more strategic and management work
Recently started looking at crypto gaming. His colleagues and himself have the experience and an edge in this area:
He is a poker player, poker coach, and poker community administrator in the past
His friends have experience in eSports and other games
They missed out on Axie Infinity
Crypto Games
Doing some cool stuff with Parallel. Will be out soon
People have been bashing play-to-earn because it's more like work and less like play
Thinks that it is one of the avenues that people could take if they are displaced from their job by automation. In addition, play-to-earn means that others are willing to pay players for doing the things that they are doing
For the first time, people have ownership of their in-game items. If the game shuts down, they will still own their assets
Would like to see community members building up a gaming ecosystem from the bottom up and making NFTs interoperable with one another
Doesn't think that Loot will be some sort of coherent gaming experience. Loot is the first demonstration that people can bootstrap a community that will independently build some part of the experience
One of the criticisms that people levelled against Loot is that it is not affordable for the majority of players. He finds this sort of criticism very weak as there are more affordable versions available such as mLoot
A better criticism is that games are built from a simple primitive such as the rules and the goals of the game. Building a game from an item set, such as Loot, is more restrictive
Another point to consider is that developers are free to build their own game and then give something to Loot holders in their game. They do not necessarily need to build on Loot itself
Thinks that multiple primitives will be built around Loot and that they can be connected together or be used in different ways
They invested in many games. Particularly excited about one game he invested in which he cannot disclose yet
Another game they are looking at connects crypto incentives to real-world tasks that need to be completed by the player
Thoughts On Olympus DAO
Attributes its success to the following:
The design of the protocol. The biggest liquidity provider is the DAO itself
Their bonding mechanism is a better way to do a token sale
Olympus Pro product is already being adopted by other projects
Have super loyal, long-term, and active community members
"I think I've said it before multiple times, you need to make enough random community members well off so they can quit their job or start focusing on other investments and start focusing fully on the one that made them the most money, which in many cases was actually Olympus." - Fiskantes
Had random people on Twitter thanking him for his thread on Olympus DAO as they made a ton of money from it
Critics point out that Olympus DAO is not capital efficient. They have a lot of assets but only deposit them in passive pools. People forgot about the value of redundancy because this is what makes systems survive when a black swan occurs
"You do not necessarily want to have everything like superefficient and cutting edge fast. I kind of feel that there is this forgotten value of redundancy. Like nature is actually doing really well with us having like two lungs and two kidneys and like two hands. And if you lose one, you can still survive." - Fiskantes
Thoughts On Forks Of Olympus DAO
Temple DAO is no longer a fork. They started out as a fork but added a lot of their own innovation
As he has already invested in Olympus DAO, he didn't want to touch any Olympus forks. Realized that Zeus was advising Klima DAO and that they were legitimate
Klima DAO reached out to his team. Even then, he was skeptical and did not care about carbon offsets. Felt that it was social signalling
He told the Klima DAO team that if they manage to win him over, he will invest in them. After 2 hours, they made him care about carbon offsets
There are 2 types of carbon credits:
Issued by governments and forced upon factories
Voluntary carbon offsets bought by companies that want to be carbon neutral. It is still about social signalling
There are non-profits that are issuing these carbon offsets. Large companies would buy these carbon offsets and the former would use them to engage in green activities
The carbon offset market is very small and inefficient. Klima DAO is the first project to tokenize carbon offsets from the off-chain world to the on-chain world
The only asset in the Klima DAO treasury will be these tokenized carbon offsets. They will release KLIMA, an independent green currency against the treasury
"So a very cynical way to think about it is to see it as some sort of like huge organized pump of price of carbon offsets, which in turn will lead to more green projects being able to profitably do green activities off-chain because their carbon offsets that they got for free are now worth more." - Fiskantes
Klima DAO will incentivize people to buy these tokenized carbon offsets. This will incentivize entities that are able to buy these carbon offsets off-chain and bring them on-chain to cover this arbitrage
Do The Incentives Create Artificial Demand?
Gabriel highlighted that the incentivization might create artificial demand
Fiskantes does not differentiate between demand from crypto legions and demand from big companies. Both groups have put money behind them
It's a new way to channel crypto speculation into something outside of crypto that is a net positive
Not sure how this would end but is excited to see it in action
It's also very risky due to the many bottlenecks that can make it friction heavy (e.g. not enough carbon offsets bridged on-chain to cover the demand)
The Carbon Credits Market
There are a couple of global non-profits working with governments to issue voluntary carbon offsets
This market is growing. Many large corporations have already committed to spending an extensive amount of money on carbon offsets in the next 10 years
Other Investments They Have Made
Pokt Network is an underappreciated investment of theirs. It already has a working product but due to a lack of a token, no one is talking about it
Pokt Network's focus is to create a decentralized network of node providers for various blockchains, something like a decentralized Infura. It is a network and marketplace at the same time
Currently, node providers are centralized and they can become a bottleneck if blockchains get more adoption. Pokt Network wants to challenge that with a middle layer network with many different node providers that are economically incentivized to run these nodes
Token and the network will be pushed out by the end of this year
His Personal Goals
Short term goal is to go through medical exams and tests to see if there are any health problems that he should focus on
Subsequent step is to focus on living a healthy life for as long as possible
Would like to travel more and to have a balanced life
What Travel Destinations Is He Looking Forward To?
If the COVID lockdown is lifted, he wants to travel through some Asian countries that he hasn't visited yet. If not, he will try something in South America
Will have a shorter European road trip with his friends
What's A Memorable Occasion He Had On A Trip?
Travelling to Sri Lanka for 3 weeks without any plans
Encountered many locals who invited them into their village for a local barbecue experience
When they got there, there was no food. The locals expected them to buy everything. It was affordable, so it was alright for them
Had many such experiences
If He Had A Billboard, What Would He Put On It?
Would either channel people to follow him on Twitter or put up some silly meme
Has His Experience On Twitter Changed Now That He has 50,000 Followers?
Felt like family when he had under 10,000 followers. People understood his jokes and his memes
Now, there are many people who don't get his sarcasm, think he is dumb and try to explain things to him. Has a much larger responsibility but still tries to have as much fun as possible
How Can Listeners Take Action?
Advise people who have made at least 6 digit profits in crypto to put some of that into quality healthcare prevention, especially if they are over 30. Sitting behind our computers and clicking buttons every day is not healthy
Another advice is to anchor yourself within crypto with some set of net positive values. It's very easy to become a cynical speculator who thinks that everything is a short-term zero-sum Ponzi game and everybody's going to dump on you so you need to be first to dump on others
"And if you do this, you will definitely be able to make a lot of money, but you will gradually become empty inside. And this dark pill will create a void within you that you cannot fill with money later on. So it's always better to whether it is within crypto or maybe outside of crypto to anchor yourself to some sort of good values, I would say whatever it is, it should be net positive, meaning it should be constructive, not destructive. But it should be something that transcends the numbers on the screen." - Fiskantes
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