Zima Red ep 147: TylerD - The most trusted source for NFT news & information

Primer: How did TylerD join Lucky Trader, the most trusted source for news in the NFT and Web3 space? What has he learned about content creation? What is the secret sauce behind Lucky Trader? Let’s find out in this episode of the Zima Red Podcast.

Getting Involved In NFTs

• He and his wife decided to invest in crypto in December 2020

• He first bought a small amount of ETH in 2017

• Have been active on Twitter for years. In 2020, he saw more thought leaders talking about crypto

• Saw people starting to talk about NFTs

• Bought EulerBeats, his first Ethereum NFT

• Dove deeper into NFTs

• Left his corporate consulting career

• Started his YouTube show and started trading full-time

• In the 2022 market downturn, he realised that it made sense to start working in the industry, starting Lucky Trader

Initial Attraction To The NFT Ecosystem

• The New York Times ran a big story about how rich investors were buying art and storing it in airport hangers

• The investors did not touch it. It was mainly investments for tax write-offs

• Saw the parallel in digital art, which has an even lower barrier to entry

• In the late 2020s, the Honus Wagner cards set an all-time record in the sports card market

• His friends who were involved in the sports card market had to travel to shows, store their cards in good condition, and had to get the cards graded

• When NBA Top Shot came out, it removed all those barriers and people could operate in a 24/7 marketplace

Thought Process Behind Starting His Show

• The early group of people he spoke to were involved in fantasy sports

• Through them, he got connected to Pat Mayo, who is big into fantasy sports and sports betting

• Pat Mayo introduced him to the producer

• Started filming 2 days a week for his NFT market show

• His show lasted 6-7 months, with 200-300 views from a niche audience

• When the market went down in 2022, people started to lose interest

Purpose For Starting The Show

• Was leaving his corporate career at that time and wanted to do something different

• It was just to have fun and force him to dive deeper into the market

“I think one thing anyone who does frequent content knows, you have to stay on top of things. It forces you to stay in tune with the market.”

- TylerD

Getting Connected To Lucky Trader

• Wanted to start talking to them

• Invited Logan Hitchcock, the Editor-in-Chief at Lucky Trader, to be on his show

• They invited him to their show

• Started doing freelance writing for the Lucky Trader

• In September 2022, he started working at Lucky Trader full-time

Lucky Trader

• Lucky Trader has been an evolving product

• At its core, Lucky Trader is the most trusted source for news in the NFT and Web3 space

• They are mostly focused on the NFT market

• Have 3 primary channels:

  • Their website — Articles, guides, analytics, historical floor price information

  • Morning Newsletter called the Morning Minute

  • A daily Twitter Spaces show

• Their differentiator is that they make sure the stories they share have trusted sources

• As a result, they are slow to breaking news

• There was a story about the Amazon NFT marketplace. They did not cover that news as the source was not viable. Hence, making the right call

• A lot of people in the NFT market are focused on trading and making money. Hence, trading news is an edge

• When news came out that Nike had acquired RTFKT, Clone X doubled from 3 ETH to 6 ETH

The Morning Minute Newsletter

• He was running a weekly Monday’s market outlook

• Logan suggested that it could be run daily

• Was a huge commitment for him

• It has changed from a brief market report to more of an editorial covering one or two major stories before getting into the market action

• Had to dive into crypto as well when there was not enough NFT news to write about

• When SocialFi came on the scene, he began focusing on it

Where Does He Get His Information From?

• They have a Discord setup internally at Lucky Trader

• It was tied into the top 100 NFT project Discords, sourcing all their alerts and announcements

• Started linking to major crypto news accounts and thought leaders

• There are days when they get 100 pings an hour and they have to sort through what is meaningful

• Logan scans the PR wires for breaking news that has yet to hit Twitter

• They use AI as part of their system at Lucky Trader

Lucky Lead

• It’s a Twitter Spaces

• They record it and publish it to Spotify and their pod network

• Realised that people gravitated to social audio

• Initially, they went with a weekly schedule but found it hard to build an audience

• Switched to a daily show that runs for 30 mins each day, providing a quick rundown of the news

• The lesson he learned from social audio is that people want to be a part of the conversation

• In the last few months, they opened it up to audience members and it has improved the quality of the show

Content He Would Create If Starting From Scratch

• A good portion of the audience still wants the trading alpha and the core news that matter

• They missed out on creating enough interaction with the community early on

• Having the newsletter done in advance of the show has made his job easier

• Once you get a system in place to source the news, a framework/outline structure to turn that into content in bite-sized chunks, then you can build a newsletter

• Once you have a newsletter, turning it into a show is just having your own talking points on top of the news and someone to discuss it with

His View On Content Creation

• Bill Simmons is one of the biggest influences on him

• In 2010, he has been reading Grantland, Bill’s website, every day

• When building Lucky Trader, he asks himself how would this be like Grantland

• Everyone’s attention span has become much shorter

• Over the last 2 years, they have revamped their writing style to be straight to the point

• Turn news into bite-sized chunks that can be consumed in 15 seconds, and why this matters for the viewer

Has Content Creation Opened Doors For Him?

• Professionally and personally, he has been approached by a few different protocols

• The content creation world is small

• Went to some IRL events last year and got to build connections with other people

Becoming A Good Content Creator

• Work ethics

• The algorithm rewards people who show up every day

• Being involved in the market you are covering

• Finding a voice and writing style

• Another benefit of consistency is fast iteration — when you do it every day, you improve faster

The Evolution Of The NFT Ecosystem

• In 2021, there were so few projects to invest in that people used the spray and pray method of investing

• The winners outpaced the losers, with it playing out in the generative art and PFP market

• He was more interested in the 1/1 art market

• Thought that the PFP market would be a fad and that it would all come back to art

• Learned the lesson that the generative art and 1/1 art markets were in a bubble

• In 2022, the marketplace wars started to pop up

• In Oct/Nov 2022, the biggest impact on the NFT market is incentivized bidding and listing

• The price arc for collections that were listed was different from those that were not listed

• The trend of turning NFTs into fungible tokens is destructive as people are attached to their JPEGs. Making it fungible chips away at some of that non-fungibleness

• For him, the defining artists of 2023 are Jack Butcher and Refik Anadol

• The trends he is watching include the sports NFT market and the SocialFi market

Bullish Or Bearish?

1/1 Arts

• Bullish

PFPs

• Bearish on existing PFP collections. Bullish that everyone will want a PFP

Gaming Assets

• Bearish. It will be a tricky market for people to enter as they need to spend the time, play the games, and understand the assets

Virtual Lands

• Bearish. The concept of the metaverse does not necessarily need to be tied to an NFT you own

• Can be bullish on metaverse adoption without being bullish on the existing virtual land parcels that exist in the market

SocialFi

• Bullish. Content creators have more direct control over their earnings and the ability of others to bet on them

Where Does The NFT Market Evolve From Here?

• Think that it will start in the digital art space

• There’s a trend of artists going into these edition collections (e.g. one of a hundred, one of a thousand, etc.)

• It’s easier to build a community compared to 1/1s

• Even though he is bearish, Web3 gaming is coming. Hard for him to predict who are the winners

Thoughts On AI

• His advice to everyone is to play around with AI and try to familiarize yourself with it

• Have incorporated AI into their business at Lucky Trader

• When he joined Lucky Trader, there were 10 writers

• Now, they are down to 2 writers because they use AI to help in content creation

• Create templates, find a voice that you want, write and feed it source content and it is 80% done. The remaining is to fine-tune it

• On the art side, the supply will become infinite as people use AI-created or AI-assisted art

• Picking art from an investment standpoint is going to get harder

The Impact Of AR/VR On NFTs

• The world will be getting more digital

• Bearish on clunky headsets

• Seeing a digitally native future in the younger generation

Is He An AI Doomer Or Optimist?

• An eternal optimist

What Motivates Him?

• Trying to build a better life

• He has 2 toddlers and it is his responsibility to make this world a better place and to be a good role model for them

All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. Summaries are prepared by The Reading Ape. While reasonable efforts are made to provide accurate content, any errors in interpreting and summarizing the source material are ours alone. We disclaim any liability associated with the use of our content.