Twobadour Of Metapurse (Medicis Of The Metaverse) Presents Dreamverse: A History-Making NFT Festival, Plus: ADA Invests In NFT Education, ArtOfficial, And More...

NFT 51 | NFT Festival

Have you heard? The most monumental NFT gathering in the is world happening soon! Dreamverse is the world’s first NFT Festival happening on the 4th of November and features top musical acts such as Alesso and an array of OG NFT artists. Joining Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger is Twobadour, also known as the Steward of Metapurse, the world’s largest NFT fund and production studio. Today, Twobadour goes in-depth about what is perhaps the most exciting event in the NFT space. He also discusses the growth of NFT and offers advice on how you too can smoothly make your way into the space. Listen in for a fun and informative discussion on what’s next in NFT! Stay tuned for updates on NFT’s trending topics, plus earn chance to get into Dreamverse!

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Twobadour Of Metapurse (Medicis Of The Metaverse) Presents Dreamverse: A History-Making NFT Festival, Plus: ADA Invests In NFT Education, ArtOfficial, And More…

Talk about disrupters, this episode features Twobadour. Welcome to this special NFTcon fireside chat with Twobadour. He’s the Steward of Metapurse, the world’s largest NFT fund and production studio. He’s a former journalist across print and broadcast, an associate of MetaKovan since 2017, a digital truffle sniffer, gets DeFi, loves NFTs and writes everything. The crypto fund Metapurse is the buyer of Beeple’s digital work, Everydays: The First 5000 Days. The Metapurse crypto art fund aims to be a tastemaker for the world as the conventional art community and buyer’s interest shift to non-fungible tokens. Twobadour, welcome. Thank you for being here with us.

Thanks, Eathan. It’s a pleasure to be here.

We’ve been excited about this show ever since we heard about Dreamverse and the chance to come and hang out with you and create the future together.

The Beeple purchase was big news and brought massive attention to the NFT space. It was an inflection point in the NFT awareness. I want to take it back a little bit further. When did you first hear of NFTs? What disrupted your life and what led to the creation of Metapurse?

I’m glad you asked about the NFTs and didn’t ask me to go all the way back to when I heard about crypto because that journey is full of missed opportunities. MetaKovan discovered Bitcoin in 2013, which is pretty early in the game. He promptly told me all about it. That package of information, which was enough to give him wings and set him off on a journey of entrepreneurship in the crypto space, left me completely unaffected. I couldn’t process it. I write and use words for a living but I couldn’t understand for the life of me what all of that meant.

Four years later, I meandered in journalism. I was in supply chain finance. I wrote about financial technology and I dabbled in advertising. For six months, I still don’t know why I wrote about multi-axle and single-axle trucks. I know all about it but it’s a complete waste of time. When I finally got back together with MetaKovan in 2017, I started to write about DeFi. All of this meandering served a purpose. The more I understood money, the more I became more socially and politically aware. I began to understand the magic of the blockchain, the necessity of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. My crypto journey became much more meaningful after that.

My life was disrupted by the COVID pandemic as it did for many people. We were all forced to look inwards at our place in the scheme of things. Suddenly, I discovered the NFT space. I heard about NFTs but we completely bypassed CryptoKitties, CryptoPunks and everything else. MetaKovan has been dabbling for it a little bit. He was taken by the idea of inalienable ownership that virtual land represented. He went on to become the largest single estate owner in Decentraland, vast estates in Cryptovoxels and whatnot.

It was a massive a-ha moment for me because all of these abstract concepts in crypto, financial independence and immutability ownership suddenly became vivid and experiential in the NFT space. They began to dance in front of me. I finally realized that I’d come home after 6 or 7 years of meandering. That’s not the short version of my journey into this space.

**I could tell you’re a writer but also quite a great speaker. They were dancing in front of you. I love the way that you put it. **

The idea of you meandering around it is such an accurate description. Even those of us who have been in crypto for years have always been meandering around some element of it that we didn’t go down that rabbit hole. We went down another rabbit hole because there are many different rabbit holes. I feel you on every level.

NFTs are not things that ought to just be discussed, talked about or just shown. These are experiences and these are supposed to be fun. Click To Tweet

With NFTs, you get to write about them in color. There are only 4 or 5 adjectives you can put in an article about DeFi. For instance, look at the background behind you, Josh. You’ve got to hack it out. There’s so much color. You can talk in color. For communicators, writers and speakers like us, you need more meat, juice and colorful stuff in front of you to talk about. That’s what the NFT space does.

I remember a panel with a body painter who said that her work could not be purchased and seen in its true form by art collectors until NFTs came along. That’s another example that came to mind. The world is full of sound bites about the Beeple purchase. They miss all the color in terms of what you guys are doing, which is pretty remarkable. How do you plan to build out this online platform for crypto artists worldwide through the crypto art fund?

We’re still trying to figure that out ourselves. Metapurse itself has evolved so much as a simple idea. We wanted to dip our toes into the space with some intention instead of a couple of guys knocking about and trying to buy up NFTs. Metapurse is a spearhead in terms of our intentions in this space. We started by collecting NFTs but then we’re overcome by this question, what do you do with these NFTs? The answer to that question has been a series of experiments in the space, starting with something called right share which is using a smart contract, and being able to lease or lend NFTs or even aspects of NFTs. For instance, you can either rent out a parcel in Cryptovoxels or Decentraland, or rent out the rights to build on that parcel to somebody and stuff like that.

There was a B20 project, which was an experience in shared ownership, but also an alternative to flipping an NFT or holding it in a wallet. How would you build monuments around it and make that a focal point for culture, events or stuff like that? The next experiment is Dreamverse, which is a physical manifestation of our entire journey in the NFT space. What happens when you take what people still do, imagine these virtual abstract things called NFTs and drop them in the physical world? Dreamverse is what happens when NFTs make landfall. This has been an evolution.

**We’ve got to learn more about it. We’ve got a lot of questions about Dreamverse to unpack it. First, we saw this killer video on your website that we want to share with folks. Let’s dive deeper into this video. Thank you so much for doing this killer giveaway for us. For everyone that’s paying attention, we’ve got a completely sold-out event VIP experience plus seven GA tickets. Check out Edge of NFT on Twitter for that information. **

We want to know more about Dreamverse. That was a sick video. That was awesome. It’s launching on November 4th, 2021. Tell us more about it. What’s it all about?

We are excited. It keeps us up at night. It keeps growing legs of its own and becoming bigger. It’s a two-part event. It’s happening on a single day on the 4th of November 2021 at Terminal 5. The first part of the event is the largest collection of NFT arts in a physical space on the planet. It’s curated by these ten OG artists that we fell in love with when we entered the NFT space. Through them, we fell in love with the NFT space.

What I didn’t want to do was to curate art by myself or by ourselves at Metapurse. It didn’t make sense to us. On what basis would I choose the artists? We did a decent thing. This idea was fabulous. Why don’t you decentralize? It seems obvious. These ten OG artists picked ten of their favorite artists in the space. Some of them are old, some of them are new, and some of them are exciting. It is also co-curated with Keith Grossman’s TIMEPieces which he launched a few years ago. They are going to be showcased at the event as well. We have a collection of work from 150 artists in that space. A lot of them are on LED screens, AR, VR headsets and so on.

The latter half of Dreamverse is this massive EDM party. Let’s face it, NFTs are not things that ought to be discussed, talked about or just shown. NFTs are experiences. NFTs are supposed to be fun and that’s where the party element comes in. We have an EDM party headlined by Alesso with opening performances from RAC and PLS&TY. At that party, we unveil The Beeple’s 5000 Days officially for the first time on massive 24-foot screens. We will also unveil a virtual space where the Beeple’s 5000 piece comes to. That becomes its permanent address. It has been designed by Holly13, the incredible architects out of New York who are designing the Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center.

I can tell there’s more. We’re excited. We’re headed out to NYC. New York is a place that I have lived in for many years. I’m excited that it’s happening there. It would give me an opportunity to visit. We’re all going to be working hard to network and meet people because it’s a limited opportunity to get all these cool people together in the same space. I’ll have to have some guilty pleasure enjoying the music and the art as well. It’s going to be fun. I’m curious, who else is part of the Dreamverse dream that brought this all together?

NFT Festival

NFT Festival: Dreamverse is a physical manifestation of our entire journey in the NFT space. It’s what happens when NFT’s make landfall.

We put together this Zoom call of all the stakeholders, the people that were putting Dreamverse together. It was overwhelming. I’ve realized there are about 100 people involved in putting this event together. We have an award-winning event firm that’s taking care of the production. We have Holly13. As sponsors, we have OneOf, Dapper Labs, Flow, Animoca Brands and Metacask. We have The Syndicate, which is taking care of the marketing aspect of this. We have a composer who is designing the soundscape for the NFT gallery.

We have all of these amazing feature artists like Drue Kataoka, Refik Anadol, Diana Sinclair, David Bianchi. I could go on for the next hour and talk about the people involved in this. The beauty of it is not just the names of people or the list of people. What surprises me to this day is that they all said yes when we approached them about Dreamverse and shared this dream and idea. They shared that dream too. They thought it was a good idea. That is so reaffirming. It’s typical of the NFT space. All of the complexities of the real world and trying to get people to work together at this scale meld away when you’re part of the NFT ecosystem.

**As you name all these people that are being involved, it’s turning out to be almost like a Mecca where all these important figures can come together. I also agree that the movement is important and that it deserves this particular event. Not to draw a direct comparison but for some reason, it makes me think of A Great Day in Harlem. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with this. There was a day where all these awesome jazz musicians got together in Harlem and took a photo of them altogether. They probably all didn’t even know what a historical moment that was at that time but it is. We all look back on that as something very special. It sounds like that’s what you guys are cooking, something of that caliber. I’m excited to be a part of it as well. **

It sounds like an Oscar or a Grammy speech. The list of people that contributed is amazing. Bringing many people together to do a real-life project is a very complex thing. We’ve heard time and again that when it’s folks within the NFT community that come together to work on things, people have had the best collaboration experience of their life. Over and over again from all these projects, we’ve heard this. It speaks to the community and what it’s all about, the ethos that drives the people, the projects, and everything that’s happening. It’s cool to hear that again from you.

It’s not surprising to me because you guys represent a key pinnacle moment in the history of NFTs with that purchase. Everyone wants to be there to celebrate where it’s gone from there. It’s exciting. YellowHeart, OneOf, Animoca Brands are folks that have been on our show. We felt the same energy and the same ethos from them that you’re exuding in this conversation. Of course, these are your friends and these guys want to be there to high-five and dance. It should be a great time. To clarify, there are two different parts of the event. Could you elaborate on that a little bit more, please?

The first part is the Dreamverse gallery, which we are super excited about. Quite unintentionally, it represents the largest physical collection of NFT art on the planet. It’s been curated by these ten amazing OG artists who we fell in love with in the space and through them, we fell in love with the NFT space itself. Off the top of my head are Mattia Cuttini, Sparrow, Angie Taylor, Josie Bellini, Metageist, and SnowFro.

What we did was decentralize curation. We didn’t want to do it ourselves. We lead it to these OG artists to curate other artists. They chose ten of their favorite artists from the space. It represents such an eclectic mix of art across mediums as well. We’ve got AR art, VR art, two-dimensional art, static art and animated art. It’s also being co-curated with TIME. The newly launched TIMEPieces will be on the showcase as well at Dreamverse.

The latter half of the show is an EDM party headlined by Alesso and with opening performances by RAC and PLS&TY. This is where the Beeple’s 5000 piece also will be officially unveiled for the first time on massive 24-foot screens in the background. To top all of that up, we will also unveil and announce a virtual structure designed by Holly13, the amazing architects out of New York who are designing the Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center. All of this, in a nutshell, is what happens when NFTs and the ethos of the NFT space are transplanted from the metaverse into the physical world.

**It starts with art and finishes with the party. **

It sounds like an amazing event. We are looking forward to going there and experiencing it ourselves in person. We’ll report back on that to all of our readers but I know it will be amazing. Let’s shift gears a little bit. One of the things that many folks are interested in that are getting in the space is making wise choices with NFT purchases. What advice do you have for those that are interested in investing in the space?

All of the complexities of the real world when trying to get people to work together at this scale, melt away when you’re part of the NFT ecosystem. Click To Tweet

Whatever he says is not financial advice.

The first question will be to ask them if they’re coming in expecting an ROI. Whether they want to invest in the space or they want to experience the space. There is a very important distinction and it will drive a lot of the subsequent choices. I suppose the second part of the answer won’t change much because the only sensible way to approach the NFT space is from a context that you understand very well and in real life as well.

Unlike tokens that have zero historic context and you’re walking in blind, in the NFT space, you already have points of reference. For instance, if you are deep into basketball, start with NBA Top Shot. You’ll know why these moments are priced the way they are. You’ll know if they’re overpriced or underpriced. You’ll know if the economics around it makes sense or not because you understand basketball. If you’re into gaming, start with Axie Infinity.

If you’re a Formula 1 fan, go to F1 Delta Time. If you love art and you understand it, there’s a whole bunch of art platforms out there for you to dip your toes into. The sensible way or the smart way, whether you’re a beginner or you’re a large institution, would be to approach it from a context that you understand. I love this because it forces finance to move out of its comfort zone and engage with culture.

We started out with some of your fun imagery as you’re speaking there and thinking about you being a writer. I want to know right in the NFT space, is writing something that you’re seeing having an interesting place for it? Also, on top of that, any fun facts for us about books that you like or references for people to read.

One thing hasn’t changed, there’s still no money in writing whether it’s the real world or the NFT space. Quite seriously, I’d love for that to change. I haven’t seen any interesting or sustainable ideas around publishing on the blockchain. I’d be all over that if that happened. The thing with artists and writers, in general, is that people write or make art because they can’t help it, not because it’s a way to make a living. It’s usually a way to make a living because they know nothing else. There’s that. There’s not too much incentive to build around it but I’d love to see it.

There have been some quite transformative books for me over the last few years. Incidentally, a couple of them were introduced to me by MetaKovan. One is Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and the other is Skin In The Game by Nassim Taleb. These two had a massive impact on how I look at life, finance, crypto and everything else. There is this 2,500-year-old book called Tirukkuṟaḷ. It’s a collection of couplets by the poet Saint Thiruvalluvar out of Tamil Nadu where I’m from. It’s one of those books where whatever mood you’re in or whatever decision you want to take, you flip through and you find a couplet and it instantly hits you. These three books have had a significant influence on me. I’ve enjoyed Snow Crash. I discovered Snow Crash after I came to the NFT space. You’re suddenly wearing X-ray goggles and everything makes sense to you like, “This is where that came from. This is why Cryptovoxels is like this.” These have been fun to explore.

Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate going down a little rabbit hole there. As we wrap up with our questions, the last one we wanted to ask are projects, platforms and ideas that we might not have already covered that you think could be game-changers in the future in NFTs.

There are many. I’ll leave you with maybe a general Northstar that Metapurse follows when we get into or think about investing. If an idea only makes sense now, I don’t think it’s a great idea. Part of it should have some fit into the existing ecosystem. A major portion of it should make sense to you only 3 to 5 years later. That’s how we look at enterprises mostly when we invest in them. There are obvious choices in the tokenomics, so on and so forth.

If the core idea is something that already fits like a glove into your current ecosystem, it’s not too much fun at all. It’s why we love enterprises like Alethea, which are infusing artificial intelligence and GPT-3 technology into NFTs. I had a freaky experience where they used MetaKovan’s avatar and fed the AI with a lot of GPT-3 data, a little bit of Buddhism, a little bit of MetaKovan-isms and stuff. You can have an actual conversation with it. That’s freaky. You can talk to your NFT. Stuff like that gets me excited.

NFT Festival