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NFT Talk with Joel Comm of Bad Crypto on Digital Collectibles And Why They Matter, Plus $17M Crypto Punks Bundle, NFTs on ebay, Boxing NFT & Animoca $1B valuation
Ever wonder why some people are going crazy over NFTs despite no guarantee of increased value? Eathan Janney, Jeff Kelley and Josh Kriger sit down with Joel Comm to talk all about NFTs, the digital token that has taken the world by storm. Joel is a futurist, speaker, author, and the co-host of the Nifty Show, the first show of its kind to bring the latest information on all types of non-fungible tokens. He shares a brief background of his humble beginnings, starting from his stint with ClassicGames and being acquired by Yahoo! Joel also shares his insights on the current trends and offers some important advice for people who are slowly getting into NFTs, while getting into the topic of Ethereum, Bitcoin, and everything else about digital collectibles.
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NFT Talk with Joel Comm of Bad Crypto on Digital Collectibles And Why They Matter, Plus $17M Crypto Punks Bundle, NFTs on ebay, Boxing NFT & Animoca $1B valuation
We aim to bring you not only the top 1% of what’s going on with NFTs but also what will stand the test of time. We explore the nuts and bolts in the business side and also the human element of how NFTs are changing the way we interact with the things that we love. This show is for the futurists and dreamers, disruptors and creators, fans and connectors, and makers and doers that are pumped about this ecosystem and driving where it goes next.
This episode features guest Joel Comm, co-host of The Nifty Show and The Bad Crypto Podcast. Joel is a Futurist, Speaker, Author, Influencer, Podcaster, and a whole lot more. He has advised countless cutting-edge, impactful projects within tech and crypto. Some of his killer projects include Blockchain Heroes, The Bitcoin Collection, The Nifty Box, and Upland Collectibles Blockchain Heroes edition.
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Joel, it’s great to have you. Welcome.
Thanks for having me. I especially like the much more part of my bio. It leaves it open.
It makes you go, “He did all the other stuff? Where does he find the time for more?”
It makes it sound like I’m super busy, but I don’t feel. Some days I feel super busy, but most of the time, I love what I do so much. My career has probably been mostly play. It’s doing what I want to do, so it doesn’t feel like work. I was looking at my email before we started. I was like, “Crap. I got to go through and get back to inbox 0, 5, or something.” That feels like the stuff I got to do, but for the most part, I’m having fun.
Tell the readers where you’re at.
I’m in bed.
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system. That’s what it’s designed for. Click To Tweet
In what geographic coordinates?
I don’t have the exact latitude and longitude, but I’m in Puerto Rico. It’s my new home.
Mofongo, do you like it or is it not your thing?
It’s great. The ocean is right outside my door. I got a condo I’m closing on. If you want a timestamp, it’s May 13, 2021. It’s got a terrace with ocean views and I’m like, “I can’t wait to get in there and settle in.” I’ve been here in an Airbnb, living out of boxes and suitcases. Every night, it’s late. We would go out and take the dog out to the beach. It’s so quiet except for the waves. I look up at the stars and I’m like, “I want to do this every night.” I come down to the beach, feel the cool sand on my toes, watch the waves, look at the stars, and be grateful. It’s gorgeous.
I feel you. I’m in Sarasota, Florida. Having that beach access, you can’t beat it.
I spent a month up there before here. I spent a month in Venice and loved it. It’s not too far from Sarasota.
Did you hang out with Charlie while you were over there?
I did not hang out with Charlie Shrem. We tried to get together and it didn’t happen.
The Fun Formula: How Curiosity, Risk-Taking, And Serendipity Can Revolutionize How You Work
Joel, I got to ask you. I want to go way back. I’m talking about games and having fun. ClassicGames.com, thereafter Yahoo! Games. You’re responsible for millions of hours of people playing Hearts, Solitaire, Spades, and all these fun games on their computers from the late ’90s until now, probably still.
We sold it. We made ClassicGames. I didn’t code. I can’t code my way out of a paper bag. My webmaster knew I was into games. He discovered this beta site that this UCSD grad student had created called Springer Spaniel Games. He had the rudimentary Java code for Hearts, Spades, Chess, Checkers, Bridge, and Backgammon. He and a few of his friends were playing it. He said, “You should check this out.” I did. I was like, “This is amazing. This is multiplayer gaming on the internet.” I wrote the dude and we went to business together. We renamed it to ClassicGames. I did the marketing. He did the building of the site. We grew to thousands of registered users. We’re talking 1997 here.
In 1998, we were acquired by Yahoo! He became the Chief Game Yahoo! I went out there. I was offered a job. I said, “No, I did not want to work for anybody. I did not want to move to California.” I took the money. He took the stock. He was a lot wealthier as a result. They shut it down. Yahoo! screws up everything. A lot of people were sad about that. A lot of people who played it don’t know that when you log in, you will pick the icon, a face of a character or an avatar you would play with. The first one that would come up is the guy with the glasses and goatee in a red cap. That was me. My partner, Aaron, who coded it, was the blonde hair, blue cap character. The devil was just the devil.
The actual devil was also a friend of yours who you made a deal with at the crossroads so you could be a killer guitar player.
It didn’t happen at all in any respect. I didn’t make a deal but I do enjoy listening to Eric Clapton.
At the inception of gaming on the internet, you were there and a part of it at that time. What’s it like seeing the transition that everything is made? We’re at such an inflection point where things are going crazy, exponential growth, and all kinds of directions. What’s it like seeing that now? How do you feel about that?
What’s interesting is I was slow to blockchain, which is weird for me. Usually, I hear about the new tech and toys and I’m like, “Bright, shiny object, what’s that? I want to play with the new toys.” I was preoccupied with personal stuff in my life because I didn’t understand Bitcoin, “What is Bitcoin mining?” My thoughts at that time were not, “Go learn about this.” It was, “I’m confused. Are there little people inside my computer going ding?” I didn’t get it. I didn’t care too, which was unusual for me, but I guess everything is supposed to happen in its time.
When I finally understood Bitcoin in early 2017, I went, “Holy crap, this reminds me of 1995 when I discovered the World Wide Web because I built my first site in 1995.” I said, “His is déjà vu all over again.” That was when I went down the rabbit hole and I knew what we were getting into. Travis and I started Bad Crypto that year. We got in before to the post having run-up, which was crazy. We were there when the bottom fell out. We survived the Great Crypto Winter. We knew it would come back. Unlike a lot of opportunists who jumped on the crypto bandwagon in 2017 who abandoned doing shows and talking about it when everything went down, we stuck with it because we saw that this is the future. Everything is moving to blockchain. More verticals are going to be disrupted by blockchain than anything we’ve seen in our lifetime. We’re glad we stuck with it.
WAX is the biggest undiscovered treasure in the NFT world. Click To Tweet
We discovered NFTs when CryptoKitties came out in December 2017. We’ve been following those all along. We knew it was a matter of time before those would blow up. I feel like on January 1st, 2018 we turned the corner from pioneering NFTs to the early adopter at the beginning of that place on the curve. That takes a few years before you get through that cycle before you even tap into the beginning of mass adoption. We are at the beginning of the early adopter cycle, which what I’ve noticed is there’s a pattern.
At the beginning of the early adopter cycle is when the first media hype cycle takes place. We’ve seen it where they talk about people, Grimes, crazy sales, and memes going for $400,000. Everybody wants to create NFTs, but there’s going to be a bust to some degree, especially in the art world. That is where it has found the most hype. NFTs are here to stay. They’re not going away. We’re going to discover that as long as there are audiences for specific artists, athletes, brands, musicians, and other performers, there’s going to be an audience to purchase these NFTs. It’s exciting to be at the beginning.
William Quigley says, “Everything that you cannot eat will be an NFT soon.” Do you see that happening?
There’s hyperbole there. Everything is not going to be an NFT. In the future, we will see anything that can be owned. There are going to be practical uses. In the beginning, it’s art and collectibles, but it’s going to be music. Further out, at a large scale, it’s going to be the deed in your home, automobile, and insurance policy. What better way to show proof of ownership than to have this non-fungible token in your walls, “This is my house. This is my car. This is my health insurance policy.” They’re all going to be NFTs. Everything but what you can eat, I don’t know that far. I don’t think soon. We’re further out on it. Soon, that will be towards the beginning of the mass adoption part of the technology curve.
**What do you say to people who complain about energy and efficiency in the NFT world and have the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” Why is the current system not adequate? Why do we need all these NFTs? We have our thoughts there. I’m just curious how you respond to that type of feedback. **
First of all, when we talk about energy, you’re talking about Ethereum. Ethereum is great for smart contracts. As far as NFTs go, it’s the McDonald’s of NFTs. People use it because it’s there because there’s a lot of money in it already and they know about it. As far as NFTs go, I call it inferia. It’s a horrible platform for NFTs. There’s no reason to use it. We use WAX. We’ve been using WAX since we produced the first Blockchain Heroes. There are no gas fees and negative environmental impacts. WAX has built themselves as the king of NFTs for a good reason. They do it better than anybody.
There are more brands apart from Ethereum that are launching on WAX without having any negative environmental impact and without skewering and robbing users with these outrageous gas fees. Who’s benefiting? Only the miners. That’s it. Everybody else is getting hurt. If you’re a seller using Ethereum, you have to raise your prices because people don’t want to spend $2 on an Ethereum NFT that they got to pay $100 in gas for. You get skewered if you’re the customer because you’re paying this tax and the environment gets clobbered. What’s the point? Ethereum sucks for NFTs. Don’t use it. Say no.
We’ll talk about it later in the show. We got a punch in the gut with a $300 gas fee, but it was related to an NFT. We couldn’t resist. It’s a little foreshadowing there.
NFT: The market cap of Ethereum will pass Bitcoin, which doesn’t diminish the value of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer system at all.
I bought Gary Vee’s thing. I paid the gas fee. I get it. Sometimes, it’s unavoidable. You’re driving your car down the road. You’re out of gas. You got to go fill up gas. There are some things we do. Overall, it’s not the best platform.
Since you went there, which one did you get? We’ll tell you which one we got.
The only one that you should get as far as I’m concerned is the Gift Goat.
Gary is always going to give value. I think he’s going to work hard to make sure people get the value out of that one. We were picking up one for admission. I like the Bold as Fuck Bat. What’s funny, though, is on MetaMask, sometimes the settings get wonky. My initial quote on gas was $17,000.
Here’s what’s interesting. I bet if you go look at some of those early transactions when it was still messed up, some people paid outrageous, erroneous, egregious gas fees that weren’t even accurate. They paid them anyway because they wanted to hurry and get it. I waited until the auction was over. I knew there was no way these are all going to sell out and I wasn’t sure which one I wanted. I’m not sure if I want to go to a conference or not. That wasn’t my thing. I’ve known Gary forever, it seems like. The first time I interviewed him was back in 2008. Paying for access wasn’t my jam, but I want to see how he delivers on the gifts, six minimum gifts a year for three years.
Think about this. If Ethereum goes where we think Ethereum is going, which is to the moon, the amount of ETH that he has, forget the profits he has already got what he’s going to be able to buy for people. We interviewed him before his sale and I was convinced he’s going to crazy over-deliver. People are going to get stuff from him that they’re like, “What just happened?” I can’t wait to see what he does. It says a minimum of six gifts a year. If I know him, he’s going to do more than six a year. It’s like the ultimate luxury subscription box. Here’s the other thing. Looking at CryptoPunks now, whatever bit they are, a little voxel pixel art is going for 5 to 6 figures. I feel like what Gary has created and the name he has created for himself is going to live on. The NFTs themselves are going to go up in value. It’s my personal opinion, not financial advice. I spent five ETH for it. It will be worth more after all the gifting is done for the NFT.
He said this is his life’s work all-in-one. Gary doesn’t throw around those types of words lightly. Eathan is on the site trying to find his VeeFriend and having a FOMO here.
I got to figure out how. Will I wait two days? I got to get the timing.
Travis was waiting. He also wanted the Gift Goat. He waited until he saw number 21 popped up. I think it was number 21 or 55 that he grabbed. Whatever it was, it was a specific number that he had to have. He was watching and waiting. I was like, “5 ETH, $20,000.” I made that on SHIB because I threw 1 ETH of SHIB before it blew up and cashed in for $25,000. I was like, “Thanks, SHIB. You just bought me a Gift Goat.”
It’s a pretty cool project too. Let’s see where it goes. Speaking of where things go, you mentioned Ethereum going crazy. Do you see the flippening happening here in the near future?
I do. Ethereum has a lot of room to grow. The smart contract aspect of it is going to grow. It’s not going away. I hope the NFT side of it diminishes significantly. There’s so much more that can be done. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system. That’s what it’s designed for. Ethereum is designed to do whatever you can imagine that you can code into it. The market cap of Ethereum will pass Bitcoin, which doesn’t diminish the value of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer payment system at all. It just means that there’s more demand for, “How many projects are built on Ethereum?” That’s going to expand. Now, I’m a big fan of the sidechains as well. Having these sidechains that eliminate a lot of these gas fees is super important.
Who doesn’t want bunnies and pancakes? Those are fun things. Binance Smart Chain is doing a great job with all these different farming platforms that also have NFTs built-in. Once people can figure out how to get over there, that’s the biggest leap. Eathan, Jeff, and I have helped friends get over to Binance Smart Chain. It’s always a ten-minute conversation that turns into a five-hour how-to video.
It’s not that hard. I remember having my early computer and PCs. You had DOS. You had to fiddle with stuff to get it to work. I remember getting into crypto in 2017 and having to figure out DEX, EtherDelta and wallets. It’s more advanced than it was then. You got MetaMask, “How do I add BSC to it? I add a custom server and type this in. Now, I’m buying a smart chain in the same wallet address.” I feel like it’s gotten easier.
**The pucker factor of that first big move was so high in 2017. **
When you see your gas at 1/1,000th of a cent, it feels so good.
Joel, we talked about Gary Vee and some of the projects that people know about. As someone who’s in the space, especially in NFTs, what are some projects we should pay attention to in NFTs that you see are under the radar?
NFT: In the future, we will see anything that can be owned. There are going to be practical uses. In the beginning, it’s art and collectibles, but it’s going to be music.
I still think that WAX is under the radar in general. The fact that it’s only available on a couple of exchanges to US citizens, it’s a matter of time. WAX is at $0.20. Maybe even $0.19. Compare that to Enjin that is $2.50. What’s on Enjin? There are hardly any notable projects that are on Enjin yet. It’s a great fast sidechain for Ethereum. It works well. There’s a couple of games on there. WAX has had Major League Baseball, Capcom Street Fighter, Deadmau5, and Atari. They’ve got a Robotech coming. They’ve had Weezer.
There are all the independent projects, Bitcoin Origins, Blockchain Heroes, Alien Worlds, which is hugely valued already, and Our Planet. The list goes on of all these projects. Most of the NFT world has no idea. They just heard about WAX and the Periphery. The WAX community is like, “We know where it’s at. This is it. Right here, you all are going to be coming here. It’s going to happen. It’s a matter of time once you discover that you’re paying all these ridiculous gas fees.” I think WAX is the biggest undiscovered treasure in the NFT world. I’m glad we found it.
**They don’t get a lot of love in the media. **
The brands that they’re talking to that are calling WAX are mind-blowing. I’m on the WAX Advisory Council along with Travis. We’re privileged to have some more inside baseball, so to speak, but that’s not a secret anymore. It’s a matter of time. I don’t know the deal with why we’re not on Binance or Coinbase yet, but it’s going to happen at some point. When it does, boom.
I don’t think Quigley is particularly impressed with being on some of these bigger exchanges like some of the sacrifices you have to make. Whatever it is that happens, I don’t think there’s some advantage that’s being pushed. That’s what I’ve heard. What’s the history with you and William? Did you meet him first? Did you encounter WAX first? How long ago was it?
I encountered WAX when it was OPSkins and heard of William. I don’t remember the first time that we interviewed him. I would have to do my research on Bad Crypto to see when that was. I liked where they were going with OPSkins. I think I bought some WAX a long time ago. We saw when Topps came out with the first series of Garbage Pail Kids what was possible. That was when I said to Travis, “Dude, look at this mechanism with the packs. This we can build up.” Here’s what’s funny. I remember we were talking about before COVID hit in February 2020. I had this idea of, “Let’s create Blockchain Buddies. Let’s create these NFTs that are based on real people in the blockchain space. Let’s make them cool-looking and we’ll sell them on OpenSea.” He was like, “That’s interesting.”
COVID hit, lockdowns hit, and travel stopped. We put on a one-week event called Virtual Blockchain Week that consumed all of our time and then that died down. It was in May 2020 that we saw GPK. I was like, “Remember that idea I had? Now, we have a mechanism to do this.” We pivoted. I said, “Let’s not do real people. Let’s do superheroes. We’ll call them Blockchain Heroes and they will be inspired by real people.” He dug it. We went to WAX Labs. We were the only content project that was funded before they decided they weren’t going to fund content projects. We marketed the crap out of it, took all of the know-how that I’ve learned from 25 years in marketing and branding, and put it towards this project. I had all kinds of partnerships and the thing sold out so quickly.
My process is my own process, which is why I wrote The Fun Formula. All of these books that give you this list of how you’re supposed to approach business to succeed are all missing the key component, which is that, “We’re all different. We’re all wired differently. You have to find your own fun.” The irony of The Fun Formula is that it’s not a mathematical formula. It’s about tapping into your own creativity and curiosity by following that passion and then taking risks. You have to try stuff. If you don’t try, you’re never going to succeed at it. If you try, you’re going to fail also, but you also can learn from those failures.
Ask me anything.
Do you still get that thing sitting around?
What’s the most recent thing you purchased?
What’s the most recent thing you’ve sold?
NFT some of that.
What are you going to do next after the show?
How are they going to do that?
They’re going to call William Quigley.
Those were sold. It’s nine of them.
You should have offered them an NFT.
That’s Hot Topics, guys.
That would be awesome.
Will do. That’s awesome. Thank you.
It’s my pleasure.
Thank you, Joel.
Important Links:
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Barnaby Andersun – Previous episode
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@JoelComm – Twitter
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iTunes – Edge of NFT Podcast
About Joel Comm
– Co-host of the Nifty Show and of course the Bad Crypto Podcast.
– Joel is a Futurist, Speaker, Author, Influencer, Podcaster and a whole lot more.
– He has advised countless, cutting edge, impactful projects within tech and crypto.
– Some of his current killer projects include Blockchain Heroes, The Bitcoin Collection, The Nifty Box, and Upland Collectibles Blockchain Heroes edition.