Investing in Consumer Crypto | Derek Edwards
In this episode we chat with Derek Edwards, co-founder & partner at Collab + Currency as well as co-founder of Glitch Marfa. We dive into his focus on investing at the intersection of crypto and consumer technology, his passion for digital art and more.
Art, Music and Festival Culture with Refraction — Malcolm, Raf, Greg
Malcolm Levy, Raf Katigbak and Greg Liburd are co-founders of Refraction. An artist-owned community leading the next wave of digital art, music and culture — online, onchain and IRL. They all have extensive backgrounds in media, culture, festivals, films, brands. As artists, designers, writers, producers and creative people. Raf was early at VICE. Greg did a bunch with Jordan. Malcolm was the Director of the New Forms Festival 2001-16, and Curator of CODE Live during the 2010 Olympics Games. Today we reveal that Refraction and UFO are teaming up via our radio station. And exclusive alpha is shared for the future of Refraction for the first time on this show. Sponsors: Your crypto wallet for everything onchain — zerion.io Create, distribute and monetize on your own terms — paragraph.xyz Higher is a lifestyle — aimhigher.net Home of onchain ticketing — onopen.xyz Where group chats make more money — lore.xyz
Building $DEGEN: Jacek on Internet Culture, Web3 Social, and Skin in the Game
This episode welcomes Jacek, the founder of Degen, or as many know it as Farcaster’s culture currency that’s made waves across web3. We spend the hour digging through his founder journey, from working in trad fi to entering crypto and eventually birthing a passionate community predicated around tipping. This is a great conversation covering his humble beginnings, internet culture, and building the future of web3 social. I hope you guys enjoy our conversation.
Shorts | Julian Holguin: Why Content is The Hook
This short highlights one of my favorite moments from my conversation with Julian Holguiin of Doodles and Jesse Pollak of Base. Content is the hook that will usher in billions of users from web2 into web3. Doodles knows this best, and with Julian's prolific background in media and music, coupled with their acquisition of a major animation studio, they're perfectly positioned to execute on this strategy. Listen to the full episode: https://pods.media/mint-podcast/doodles-moves-to-base-ft-jullian-holguin-and-jesse-pollak
Paradigm Placed A Multi-Million Dollar Bet On n.xyz And Here’s Why
Mint Season 6 episode 19 welcomed the co-founder and CEO of n.xyz, Sridhar Ramaswamy. This ex-googler previously led the largest search engine’s $115 billion advertising division and has his eye on a new focus: blockchain data. With their debut launch this week, followed by an impressive series A led by Paradigm, we explore how he’s building web3’s indexer of choice and how his time at Google lead to where he is today. I hope you guys enjoy our conversation.
How To Leverage Social Media Data In Crypto
Mint Season 6 episode 17 welcomed a dear friend and mentor Joe Vezzani. He’s the CEO and Co-founder of LunarCrush, a social media analytics platform empowering traders with top-tier insights and sentiment on your favorite crypto projects. In this episode, we discussed key strategies for navigating through a bear market, the evolution of the web3 social landscape, onchain data vs. offchain data, how traders and creators can best leverage data, common pitfalls analytics fall trap too, and what Joe is focused on in the bear market, and so much more. I hope you guys enjoy our conversation.
The Birth of Bonsai: From Meme Coin to Culture Currency
The episode welcomes Carlos Beltran, the creator of MadFi and the Lens-native culture currency, Bonsai. Throughout our discussion, we dive into his journey as a founder, the highs and lows of building MadFi, and how Bonsai is shaping culture and creativity within the Lens ecosystem. Carlos also shares his ambitious vision for Lens to reach a billion users and how Bonsai plays a key role in that growth. Finally, we chat about the importance of grants and the need for founders to rethink social from the ground up. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Nick Tomaino: Skin in the Game
The following episode is made possible thanks to DEGEN. 🎩 --- This episode welcomes Nick Tomaino, Co-founder of 1confirmation. He's an early adopter of Bitcoin, and former Coinbase employee, who shares his journey in the crypto space and his investment philosophy. We discuss the rise of meme coins, the value of prediction markets in providing more truth to the world, and Tomaino's core value of 'skin in the game' that drives his investment decisions. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
From Coinbase Employee #20 To Building Farcaster With Dan Romero
The following episode is made possible thanks to DEGEN. 🎩 --- Mint Season 6 episode 20 welcomed Dan Romero, Co-Founder of Farcaster, the sufficiently decentralized social network. Throughout the hour we discussed his thesis for web3, the current state of web3 social, building an audience as a crypto-native creator, what it means to be sufficiently decentralized, how web3 will beat the bots, and so much more. Previously, Dan was the 20th employee at Coinbase and is an active early-stage angel investor across web2 and web3. I hope you guys enjoy our conversation.
How Crypto And Web3 Will Change Social Media Forever
Mint Season 5 episode 9 welcomed Wilson Wei and Ryan Li, who shared their vision for putting creators and users at the forefront of ownership with their decentralized social graph, CyberConnect. Throughout the hour, we discussed: 09:13 – What Inspired Ryan and Wilson to Build in Web3 Social? 15:07 – Elon Musk’s Potential Acquisition of Twitter 18:34 – How To Defeat Bots and Spammers in Web3 Social? 20:53 – What Does Ownership Actually Mean in Web3? 29:59 – Web3 Social Tools to Empower Creators 33:08 – How Does Virality Work in the World of Web3 Social? 42:38 – What is a Social Graph? 54:12 – Big Picture Vision for Web3 Social I hope you enjoy our conversation.
NFT Ticket Case Study: Queen George on Growth Hacking Collectors
This episode, from Mint Season 4, Episode 21, is a pivotal moment in my journey as a web3 founder. It significantly contributed to the development of Bello through the insights gained from my conversation with Queen George, a crypto-native jazz-pop artist, who has been exploring web3 since April 2021. We discuss our strategy in building a collector base in web3 and the success of her live concert at ETH Denver in February 2022, where she effectively minted tickets as NFTs, attracting 120 collectors. This conversation documented our thoughtful experimentation with NFTs and planted the seed for a whole new chapter in my life.
Going Viral Onchain
This episode welcomes Cooper Turley, Founder of Coop Records. Cooper is a recurring guest on the pod, though this time, we focus all of our attention on how to go viral onchain. Consider this a round table discussion where him and I share our insights, lessons learned, and debate our perspectives on the current state of the onchain creator economy. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Reo Cragun: The Journey As An Independent Artist In Web3
Mint Season 6 episode 14 welcomed Reo Cragun, the web3-native music artist, multi-talented rapper, singer, producer, and songwriter who shares about his journey in web3 and his vision behind his biggest NFT project to date called Frameworks. We also discuss how Reo uses data to be a smarter creator, his relationship with Nipsey Hussle, the dynamics between artists and labels, and so much more. I hope you guys enjoy our conversation. Time Stamps 00:08 – Intro 09:14 – Current State of Music in Web3 11:41 – Your Connection to Music NFTs 13:59 – Using Data as an Artist 20:44 – The New Sound.xyz Drop 25:35 – Reo’s Creative Process 27:03 – Pre-Web3 Reo Versus Now 30:01 – Creating Experiences for Your Collectors 33:49 – Lessons Learned Along the Way That Helped Perfect this Drop 34:34 – Your Relationship With Nipsey Hussle 39:05 – How Artists Should be Thinking About Label Opportunities 40:19 – The Value of Web3 as an Artist 43:07 – How Labels are Thinking About Music NFTs 45:14 – What’s the Status of Loners Dao? 47:58 – Joining the Music NFT Launchpad 49:44 – The Process Post Launchpad 50:56 – What Do You Look For in an Artist While Collecting? 55:07 – Outro
Why Web3 is the Perfect Home for Creators
Mint Season 4 episode 15 welcomed Matt Alston and Melissa Zhang, the power duo behind Bonfire: the front page for onchain communities. In this episode, we discuss: 01:27 - Intro 06:37 - How Did You Guys Meet? 09:59 - How Did the idea move from Events to Creators? 18:27 - Are Creators Good Community Builders? 22:25 - Is Web Three the Perfect Medium for Creators? 33:32 - DeFi meets the Creator Economy 38:12 - Governance and the Creators 47:06 - Bonfire 53:36 - Building a Bridge between Web Two and Web Three Audiences 56:30 - Converting viewers into collectors 58:59 - What’s next for Bonfire? 60:10 - Outro I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Alex Masmej Talks $DEGEN: Fueling Drakula's Growth and the Onchain Creator Economy
Join us in this episode as we sit down with Alex Masmej, the brain behind Drakula and a key player in the farcaster ecosystem. From his early days of conceptualizing Showtime as the 'Instagram of NFTs' to pioneering Drakula, Alex's journey is nothing short of remarkable. Drakula, now making waves as the 'TikTok of Web3', has seen an explosive start with over $30M in transactions in just two weeks, introducing a new and engaging way for fans to support video creators. Alex returns to the podcast to share the lessons learned from pivoting Showtime to creating Drakula, highlighting the strategic moves, go-to-market strategy, and the decision to adopt $DEGEN as the native currency of the app. I hope you enjoy our conversation and our genesis episode on Pods!
