Liam Herbst, Growth at Stealth NFT Startup, on NFTs, $BLUR, and $PEPE | Ep. 230

In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Liam Herbst, NFT Trader, talks about why NFT business models are broken, the long-term bull case for NFTs, and why NFT perps are likely the next big thing in NFT trading.

About Liam Herbst

Liam is leading the go-to-market strategy for a new NFT company currently in stealth mode. He previously worked with BasedAF, Blur, and DeSo, and his NFT trading journey began in January 2021 with NBA Top Shot.

Before getting into NFTs, Liam worked at a startup accelerator called On Deck. He graduated from the Ivey School of Business at Western University and played four years of professional junior hockey.

Liam Herbst gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview which you can see below, and we are happy for you to use it for publication provided there is a credit to www.cryptonews.com. 

Highlights Of The Interview

• Why NFT business models are broken
• The long-term bull case for NFTs
• Why NFT perps are likely the next big thing in NFT trading
• The importance of L2s and how Polygon is killing it with early NFT partnerships
• The history of Pepe and the power of memes
• Why $BLUR created a massive pump and dump in the NFT market

 

 

 

Full Transcript Of The Interview

Matt Zahab 
Ladies and gentlemen, we are buzzing as always, and I’m pretty friggin pumped to have this lad on the show today. Only met him a couple times in person, but we have developed a bit of a friendship and it’s always nice having a Toronto lad on the show. More specifically, it’s nice having a Toronto lad who is also a hockey player and is a big fan of Crypto and NFTs. We love to see it. Pumped to have Liam Herbst on the show today, who is currently leading the go to market strategy for a new NFT company which is currently in Stealth Mode. Maybe we’ll get a breaking take on the show, maybe not. Who knows? We’ll see. This lad also previously worked for BaseAF, Blur, and DeSo, and his NFT trading journey began in Jan 2021. Like most of us with good old NBA Top Shot. Before getting into NFTs, Liam worked at a startup accelerator called On Deck. He graduated from the Ivy School of Business at Western University, heard that school is a terrible time and has the worst parties ever, and also played four years of professional junior hockey, which I can’t wait to get into. He’s also one of my favorite Twitter follows and is currently blowing up. You can follow him on Twitter @liamherbst_  where he posts informational threads on the NFT market. Super pumped to have Liam on the show. Welcome to the show, my friend. 

Liam Herbst 
Happy to be here, man. Thank you so much for the amazing intro. Stoked to see you over camera instead of in first. 

Matt Zahab 
Yes, normally we run into each other after a couple of bevies somewhere on King Street or in our beautiful city of downtown Toronto, but yeah, truly pumped for this one. This will be an absolute treat. I have to give a shout out to your brother. Folks, we have a crazy story. Normally we don’t jump into the pod with something that isn’t related to our guest. However, this is related as it is his brother. But Liam’s brother Spencer a friend of mine, a dear friend of mine who I used to play hockey with and I’m still friends with to this day. About three weeks ago, a couple of his buddies were like, hey Spence, we are running the Toronto Marathon, a full 42 kilometer marathon. Spence ran the longest I think he ever ran in his life before that was ten clicks, 10 kilometer. And I may not have seen him at the bar on Friday night. And he may or may not have been partying till three in the morning. Not with me. I wasn’t there. I’m a good boy, I was back home. But Spencer may or may not have been partying until 03:00 a.m. And 36 hours later, this gentleman proceeds to eclipse the four hour milestone in his first marathon ever. Had hip surgery last year. Never ran more than 10 kilometer. And finished a 42 kilometer race in less than 4 hours. What and where were you two born? What kind of lab did your parents create you in? How the heck does one run a sub four hour marathon with no training? What the hell is going on in his head. 

Liam Herbst 
Man his head, he’s just got that dog in him. That’s it. It’s that simple. It gets crazier too. He got a call from his doctor right after he finished the race and he has a herniated disc in his back before the race, from three weeks before the race and MRI in his back. So yeah, he’s just one of those people where he puts his mind to something and he could do it. And the odds against him, the bet was if he can complete it in 5 hours and the odds were like five to one or ten to one, and he did it in four. So I don’t know how he did it, man, but very proud brother, for sure. 

Matt Zahab 
It’s insane. Yeah, Sunday I’ll never forget the text rolling through and when the boys are like, you wouldn’t believe what Spence just did. That was absolutely bananas. Anyways, on to the other Herbst, brother. Liam, you are the star of the show and we’re going to jump right into it. I need to preface this first topic that we’re going to jump on. For the listeners that might not be too familiar with Toronto and hockey, those two things are synonymous. Toronto is the hockey capital of the world. The biggest hockey league in the whole world resides in Toronto, the GTHL, the Greater Toronto Hockey League. This isn’t like growing up in Europe and being and dreaming of playing for Manu or Barsa or Byron or PSG and being a professional football, aka soccer player. When you grow up in Canada, there is one sport that almost everyone, if you’re fortunate enough, and to have the opportunity to plays, and that is hockey. Liam and I were both pretty good hockey players. Liam obviously better than me. You went on to play major junior hockey, you got drafted to the OHL, you were living the dream and then you had a crazy injury. I don’t want to start on a dark foot, but this is a great opportunity for our listeners and for myself to get to know you a little bit better. I’d love if you could tell me that story, what exactly happened and what you learned from that crazy injury playing hockey? 

Liam Herbst 
It was a crazy series of injuries, actually. So my background was I was drafted in the first round of the Oito Draft in 2012 by the London Knights. The first overall pick in that draft was Connor McDavid. So I was 22nd, 21 worse than Connor. But then after two weeks after the draft, my life took a massive turn where I was just skating one day I felt a pop in one of my knees, got it looked at, ligaments were intact. But then I had to have I had cartilage damage on both of my knees and had to have a major surgery, the same surgery that Greg Odin had, that he, like, struggled through the rest of his career after had to have that on both my knees. Recovery time was about twelve months. Probability of me playing again was maybe 50%. So I went through that rehab. Did, you know, three, four months of rehab. And then I left the doctors I was seeing got second opinions, and that team identified that my hips, like my brothers, funny enough, were in bad shape, and I needed to have reconstructive surgery on both of my hips too. And each one of those surgeries was a six to nine month recovery. I couldn’t do them at the same time. So basically when I was 15 to 16, I went through 16 months of rehab to just have the a chance to be able to play again. And while all of that was happening, I was a first round pick in this league. And if I played just one game in the league, I would get a full scholarship for when I finished hockey of like, $100,000 plus. But I needed to play one game. So I was at a point where if I didn’t play again, I would have ended my hockey career with nothing. I had to make it back. I still believed and wanted to play in the NHL, but truth was, you go through all of that, it’s hard to be the same player. And I definitely wasn’t after all those surgeries. Although I did do my best. I came back in 2015 I was the 11th ranked North American goalie for the NHL draft. Didn’t get picked, but it was fun. Got to go to San Jose Sharks camp, was one of a few free agent invites there twice and didn’t sign a contract, but had a great experience. 

Matt Zahab 
Craziness, man. Well, one story to hear about the injury, of course. Walk me through life after hockey. And again, I’ll just preface this a little. I also had a dream of going to the show. I mean, obviously, I was not even close to where you were. You got drafted first round of the OHL, was invited to a National Hockey League, AK Creme de la Creme, the best hockey league in the world, bar none. I don’t even think there’s a second. I don’t even think there’s one close. But nonetheless, what goes through your head when you finally realize like, oh, shit, I got to figure out what want to do in life. Because from age five, let’s say when you started to play hockey all the way up to the age of 18, right before you’re going to uni. You’re like, this is what I’m going to do. Like me, you probably barely thought of what was the next chapter in life, right? I never knew that I’d have a Crypto podcast talking to Liam right now. I never know that I would start an agency or work for startups or work in finance or wherever the case may be. I was like, yeah, I’ll go to the show, play hockey for 20 years, retire when I’m 40, still working hockey for the rest of my life, hopefully be rich enough, be a billy goat billionaire, buy a team when I’m 60, and sail onto sunset. Of course, that never happens. Flipping it over back to you. What went through your head? What was that internal conversation like when you were like, shit, I got to hang up the skates and actually find a real job now. 

Liam Herbst 
I had a taste of it when I was 15 when I had all those surgeries because people basically told me, like, you’re done. Don’t get your hopes up too much. If you come back, it’d be amazing, but it’s very realistic probability that you won’t be able to. So I was lucky in that sense, honestly, because when I was 20 and my OHL career was finishing and I didn’t have the best two final seasons that I played, I didn’t play as well as I could have and realized I was either going to have to grind it out in the minors or go to school. And I was a decent student. I mean, I was actually a bad student, but I had decent grades, so I knew I could go to a good school. And I knew that hockey would help me get into school. And I decided, okay, I’m going to go to Western. I’m going to continue playing hockey just to have fun, but no aspirations of playing a pro after. Going to play pro after and I started at Western, and once I got there, as you alluded to, it’s a pretty fun city. And then, like six weeks into the season, I got hurt. I hurt my hamstring. It was bothering my one knee, which I had operated on, obviously on my hip, operated on too. And by around Christmas time, I was just getting better. I was going to rehab. But I thought to myself, my peak is gone. The best of my hockey days are past me. And I can either decide to continue spending 20 25 hours a week playing hockey. Or getting started on the next chapter in my life and making the most of my time at school, and that’s what I opted to did. I hung my skates up. It was a tough decision. But honestly, when I reflect on my life, two of the best decisions I ever made was continuing to play when I was 15 and the mental resilience that I built through that experience and then also having the humility to admit that it was time to hang them up and move on from this thing that I invested so much into over a dozen years. 

Matt Zahab 
Well said. Did you have a period of darkness? And I don’t mean to get too personal here, but just for a little antidote myself in grade twelve when I tore my MCL meniscus, and I was like, okay, my chance, which was much slimmer than yours, is now done. As soon as I tore my knee and I was like, Look, I’m hoop now. The show is unfortunately concluded. Time to go to Union and start the second chapter of life, or whatever chapter that may be. I don’t want to say I went on a bender, per se, but I definitely was partying a little and definitely could have treated my body better. And I did that as a little bit of an escape because I was just like all my friends were partying all the time in grade twelve, and I wasn’t because I was dedicated and was really structured with hockey. There was a bigger purpose, and when you’re 17 years old, you don’t really have a purpose in life, but you and I had that sort of North Star, that moral compass that we could look forward to and look towards. Did you have a dark spiral at Western when you really knew? Did you just, like, were you hitting the ball hard or anything of the like. 

Liam Herbst 
When I was at Western, I’ve had in multiple times in my life, to be honest, when I was 15 and going through that, I kind of just buried everything and suppressed it, as you know, especially as a goalie. There’s so much pressure on you to not make an error and succeed, not let your teammates down and you had to always be like 100%. You had to always be right. It’s for all positions. But I feel like goalie is particularly unique on the not, I don’t want to mess up aspect of it. So when I was 15 and I was losing my identity, my friendships were becoming more distant, I had to switch schools. I was losing that sense of affirmation from being such a skilled athlete. It was lonely and I buried a lot of that my motivation, a lot of my motivation to come back, honestly was trying to fill that hole that I had within me. And then when I was 18 and I was ranked to get drafted, I played an NHL top prospect game and I didn’t. And then I came back that next season and I was in a very fragile state mentally, and one of the first games of the season, I didn’t play so well. And the coach like, just reamed me out. And I was at a place there where it was kind of I was kind of realizing or like teetering on the edge of if I was ever going to fulfill that dream that would fill that, you know, that hole and, and that seeking within me. And that broke me down. And I struggled for a few months that season. And to be honest, that was an inflection point in my career. So I was in a pretty dark place then when I was 18 19 and honestly over, I’d say a lot of 2022 even, I wasn’t in the greatest place. I was struggling, like, coming out of COVID switching jobs, trying to find my place, trying to manage these markets. Being online 24/7, you mentioned something to me before the podcast on how oftentimes happiness in many ways can be a choice. And I have started to feel that more and more recently on the decisions that you make and the thoughts that you decide to have, the people who you decide to hang around with make a huge difference. And if you’re sitting in Crypto markets, 24/7 and you don’t have a clear vision of where you’re going, man, it’s tough. It’ll mess your head up. For sure. So that’s something I learned over the last year. 

Matt Zahab 
It’s cloudy. Wow, we’re getting a little deep here. Jeez. 

Liam Herbst 
We’re diving right in then. 

Matt Zahab 
I love this. Just cutting each other open. You got the knife on the table. I love it. Last thing on hockey and sports here, and I have this debate all the time, forward thinking. I love to have hopefully I’m fortunate enough to have a family. Heck, I’m getting sort of close to that age and 28 now. But five, six years down the road, the wife and I pop out a couple of kids, a couple young curly headed Matts running around, terrorizing the planet in the best way possible. But the whole hockey thing, even hearing the lessons that you just told me and how that turned you into an actual high quality man, and I’m not saying it was just because of hockey, but the lessons you learned and the pain you felt, like that shit doesn’t grow on trees. You gotta you know that there aren’t a lot of opportunities in life that give you those lessons where it can help you grow exponentially like you did. I don’t know if I want to put my kids into hockey because I look at how many concussions I had, how many injuries I had. I’m sure you and I are sitting in the same yacht. How do you feel about that? You want to put the young herps into hockey or contact sports? And if you don’t, then there’s the lessons they don’t learn. And then I look at my friends who played sports like golf or tennis, and again, still incredible guys, incredible girls. But what you learn from being in that team sport, and more so, that war type sport like hockey or football or rugby or whatever, again, that shit doesn’t grow on trees. You can’t put a price on that. With that being said, what’s your whole take on that? You’re going to put the little ones into sports? And how many incredible lessons did you learn from the game? 

Liam Herbst 
I mean, I learned a lot. I learned how to work hard. I learned how to be disciplined. I learned how to pick teammates up when they were down to collectively work towards a shared goal. A lot of stuff that really helps you in your career and in building relationships with other people. I’m on the fence because the thing you mentioned with concussions is the big thing for me. Hurting your knee, hurting your hip, hurting your back. It sucks. It’s not great. But if that’s the consequence to embed those lessons in somebody, it’s arguably worth it. Hurting your brain and lowering your cognitive ability and potentially all of the mental health things that may come with that. I wouldn’t want my child to go through that. So ideally, there’ll be a world where they can play those games and get the good without the bad of brain damage, because that’s obviously not ideal. 

Matt Zahab 
You can get new knees, you can get new hips, you can’t get a new dome. Unfortunately, who knows? Maybe in 20 years when our kids are there, maybe OpenAI will give us something good there. All right, folks, we’ve done enough on the personal stuff here. Let’s get into Liam Herbst, Crypto magician here. One of my favorite followers on Twitter, I said that during the intro, truly is when I started following you. Heck, even a couple of months ago, I think you had a couple of K. Now you’re at, what, almost 18K? You’re absolutely blown up with some big dogs in the space following you. Punk6529, to name one. I’m just looking at it in front of my computer. You truly do have some big dogs, and it’s well deserved. You put time and effort into Twitter, and it shows. Walk me through your Crypto inception story. I know you got into it in Jan. 2021 with NBA Topshot, which seemed to be a rather popular avenue for a lot of sports fans who also did their gaming and are also degenerate gamblers. Not saying you are, but I’m sure you got a couple of degenerate gambler fibers in you, just like all of us. We’re all degens at the end of the day. Walk me through your Crypto Inception story and a quick little caveat and follow up to that. What kind of reactions did you get from your family and friends and loved ones when you started doing it? Because I still get those reactions. Everyone thinks I got four legs and nine arms and 18 heads, but I’d love you to walk me through both those things. 

Liam Herbst 
Yeah, I’d love to. I’d say quickly on the last point, my family definitely understands it more now. It helps when I have done decently well financially over the last 18 months and stuff being in the space, so that obviously helps. It’s not like, oh, I’m a degenerate gambler, going to the casino every day and we’re broke and I need money for rent. So I think that makes a difference whether people would like to say it or not. But yeah, my Crypto origin story was back in 2017. I started investing in BTC and ETH. My aunt and uncle turned me onto it earlier, I think in the summer. And then I was obviously they had seen it before and heard of it, but they were the ones who kind of pushed me over to actually learn about it, begin to understand what Bitcoin means and some of the valuable utility that it held at the time. So I bought in honestly near the top of that cycle. And then I got rugged as it was coming down by Quadriga. I had my money and I had a good chunk of my holdings in Quadriga. For those who aren’t familiar with the story was the biggest Canadian exchange. And the founder went to India on a trip and mysteriously died. And the keys, apparently he was the only one who controlled them. And all these funds are, like, gone. 

Matt Zahab 
He’s on a beach in Thailand, right? Sipping my Thai 100%. 

Liam Herbst 
But apparently he was using the funds and gambling with it for his long show. Anyways, money’s gone. So that actually set me away from Crypto for a couple of years. I was like, fuck this guy, man. Like, fuck Sifu. Screw Quadriga. Like, I trusted you guys. This whole space is like a bunch of degenerate thieves. And then in 2020, I started to sit back and really think about what Crypto meant, and began to invest a little bit in ETH and BTC in late 2020, when I was still in school. And when I saw NBA Topshot in January of 2021, it reminded me immediately of Hockey Ultimate Team, which is the video game. It’s EA Sports NHL It’s a game mode within that where you can create a custom franchise and trade these players that you can mint in packs and buy and sell them on a marketplace. And so I did that a lot as a kid, and I was a huge nerd about it. Like, especially when I had my surgeries, I would spend like 8 hours a day just trading the marketplace. I like trading the marketplace more than I like playing the game. And when NBA Topshot came, I was like holy shit, I can now do this with real money. Like all those days that I spent playing were not a complete waste. Dove right in, fell in love, made a decent little bit of money, then the rest until about August that year I was just so slammed with work that couldn’t really dive into NFT stuff. I was in Miami doing some things and I didn’t really get back into it until August. And ever since August I’ve just progressively fallen further and further down the NFT rabbit hole. Spent more time trading, beginning to work for some different companies and just solidifying my thesis on the space. 

Matt Zahab 
On why NFTs are long term bullish. Which leads me into my next question and our next point relating back to friends and family thing here. That’s one of the things I often get asked, right? I feel like people have a better understanding of why Crypto and blockchain, more specifically Crypto as a whole does have a long term use case. Obviously, if you’ve ever made a cross border payment, it’s a literal nightmare fuel the banks are taking percentage points in every capacity they can on every angle of the trade and transaction. Fast forward to Crypto. You can send if I wanted to send a Bitcoin transfer to someone in a country 5000 miles away, I can do that. It’ll land right in their beautiful phone or computer and it’ll cost me a couple of dollars, which is an absolute treat. Again, we’ll get into that later. But give me the long term bullcase for NFTs and what you tell your friends and family when they’re like, Liam, why are you so infatuated by NFTs? 

Liam Herbst 
The simplest way I can explain it is it’s almost like an ownership contract for an asset. NFT everybody focuses on like monkey photos and the surface level things that are being sold and it’s basically today it’s just a casino. It’s a casino of people trading a bunch of different things that they think are going to go up or down. You have project teams working behind it, providing utility, which is basically just a new narrative and catalyst that can make prices go up and down. But at the core, NFTs are just a better way to represent and authenticate and transfer ownership for an item. So if you have a, let’s say, one application I’m excited about is NFT Sneakers. Nike has a drop that’s coming on May 15th. It’s digital only Sneakers Artifact, which is another company that Nike acquired. They have actual chipped physical items that are tied to an NFT. And it’s a way that these items can be verified that it’s from Nike. It’s a way that they can be seamlessly transferred by having it held in a warehouse trade the NFTs around to act as that secondary market. And it should create an aspect. And you can also see sort of like the provenance of the item, the lineage, how many times it’s been transferred, where it’s been held, etc. So I think that we’re going to see more and more NFT markets emerge that are much closer to what people do today. Things like NFT Ticketing, NFT sneaker heads, that kind of stuff. And people will begin to get it a little bit more. And then the long term view on this is that I think that people are going to we spend so much time on screens and I think that people are going to want to begin, like, owning their, you know, having some aspect of ownership over how much time they invest in different video games, different social applications, etc. And NFTs are a way to seamlessly represent in a way that you can’t get rugged by any one application or any one game. You can transfer these items in between games. And people can actually own digital assets for the first time, where they aren’t effectively like, you know, a prisoner to whatever the big corporation wants to say. So that aspect of like true ownership in a database that’s decentralized, that can’t be manipulated by a single entity. Is really valuable, I think, in the digital world especially. 

Matt Zahab 
Yeah, you and I are in the same yacht here. I also like to give IRL in real life sort of physical examples. Like, if you were to turn car ownership into NFTs, if I’m trying to sell Liam my Whip, I can roll back the speedometer. I can lie about how recently I changed the tires, how recently I fixed the transmission. As you can tell, I’m not a gearhead. I’m not a car guy. But yeah, all these kinds of things. And with blockchain tech aka NFTs there’s a ledger. There’s a source of truth that truly can’t be fucked with. So if Liam wants to buy my Whip, he can go on and be like, well, Matt, did you actually roll back the speedometer? Did you actually get the tires changed? You know what I mean? There’s a lot of use cases like that that I think are really interesting. And another use case that I love is the ease of transfer, right. Where it’s like, if you’re going to digitize real world assets, you need a source of truth. And that source of truth is blockchain technologies, it’s NFTs. If I want to sell a home to you, it’d be nice to be able to do that in the case of an NFT, where I transfer you that ownership via an ERC contract. Right. So I love use cases like that, too. 

Liam Herbst 
Yeah, no, it’s great. I mean, once you have that base layer of this ownership certificate, you can add things on top of it. That, again it’s Immutable. It’s unchangeable to make things, in my opinion, make things more valuable because you know that it’s not fake. Like, I would guess that if everybody knew with 100% true certainty that the sneakers that they were buying were authentic or the Pokemon Cards they were buying were authentic, people would spend more money on it. There’d be more activity in the ecosystem, there’d be more traders. Companies can earn a percentage on that through royalties, etc. So it just builds healthier markets when you have the foundation of true verifiable authenticity and ownership for the users, where they can’t get rugged. 

Matt Zahab 
It’s very true. Now, we’ve discussed the good things, we also got to jump into the bad things. We can’t be one sided on this pod. We can’t be SJWs and just take one side all the time, if you know what I mean. So let’s get into the bad. NFT business models are clearly broken. And again, we’ll relate this back to the friends and family point as many times as we can. But when the topic of NFT gets discussed similar to your first little riff about ten minutes ago, everyone always thinks, oh, Matt and Liam made money trading monkey pictures, which, okay, it’s true. And again, you got to look at the optics. You got to look at why that was the case. We were all locked up. People couldn’t go to IRL casinos. The stock market and the economy as a whole had trillions of dollars ingested into it. All that being said, yes, it was a complete degenerate. Online casino and monkey JPEGs and shark JPEGs and Cool Cats and everything else. Insert animal name JPEGs ended up flying off the charts. That’s not the case anymore. All those prices have came crashing down. Now we actually need utility, quote unquote. You’ve had some incredible Twitter threads on this. I’m going to throw the ball into your court. I’d love if you could go on a nice little riff here and tell me why NFT business models are broken and what we can do to fix them. 

Liam Herbst 
The biggest thing is that most are far too complex and virtually none can seamlessly scale. So when that happens, when something is too complex, it’s like new people don’t want to join. If I have to spend 10 hours or even 2 hours or even five minutes trying to figure out your ecosystem to want to be a part of it and contributing member, the amount of churn that’s going to happen in that process is massive. Too much friction. Way too much friction. But that’s what collections have had to do to scale beyond their initial, like 3000 holders. If they don’t do that, then they don’t scale. And you have something like CryptoPunks. CryptoPunks is valuable, but not everybody in the world is going to own a CryptoPunks. It’s going to be like 4000 people who own a CryptoPunk. So I think the problem is really, like, that’s from an onboarding standpoint for people who have lots of money. People who have lots of money are not doing that today. Because you either have to invest a shit ton of money to buy a CryptoPunk that you know is going to be valuable over time, or at least presumably will be valuable if the space is valuable. Or you have to spend like 10 hours trying to figure out how a complex ecosystem like Ten KTF or whatever it is, works, which people don’t want to do. Then the other side of it is, like, I actually don’t think that NFTs need more utility. I think they need less utility. They need to act more like consumer products than, like, investment vehicles. The truth is, like, most of these projects are in the gray area of being securities. And I say that like, gently, most are like securities. 

Matt Zahab 
They are securities. 

Liam Herbst 
Yeah, you’re investing in a common entity with the expectation of profits derived from the efforts of others. I don’t know. Sounds like that to me. So I think in order for the space to really grow, you need to have things that you could tell my brother about or your mom or your dad and be like, okay, I kind of get it.  I’m interested in it. I can buy it with a credit card. I can spend 10 20 bucks. Explore this thing to see how it works. And the major problem with these business models is that they are not attracting new money, new liquidity, because the barrier to entry is so high. From a knowledge standpoint, from a financial standpoint, and from a very simple UX standpoint for onboarding. 

Matt Zahab 
It’s nightmare fuel. It truly is. Yeah, that’s one of the things that got to be that needs to be fixed ASAP. But again, it’s just like, it’s tough and like anything else in life, it comes down to incentives, right? And why it took off in 2021 was because everyone was getting rich. So your incentive was obviously financially related, which the two biggest incentives in life are sex and money. It’s just sort of how the world rolls around. Don’t shoot the messenger. It’s just facts. 

Liam Herbst 
The people buying NFTs definitely weren’t getting sex done. 

Matt Zahab 
They only had one angle to capitalize on. But let’s keep buzzing on the whole NFT thing for a minute. I definitely want to get into NFT PERPs and how that’s going to be one of the base things to come over the next couple of years that already sort of has been. But before that, you and I have both had jobs working for and with NFT companies. And there’s one pretty easy way to get a job working for an NFT company. You’re a hell of a lot better at this than I am, but what’s your two cent on how to get an NFT job? And it’s a very simple answer, but you’re a master at it. What is it? 

Liam Herbst 
Yeah, I can give just anecdotal points from my journey is all the jobs that I had except one, were people reaching out to me, and they reached out to me through my Twitter. 

Matt Zahab 
Inbound, baby. 

Liam Herbst 
Inbound. Yeah. So if you post educational content, you make connections with people. You have unique insights that are actually thoughtful and not just like engagement farming for likes. People will recognize that and reach out to you and frankly want your help to be able to fulfill their goals and help their project. So I would say if somebody is serious and wanting to work in the space, the best way to do it is to create content in a niche that you genuinely enjoy, are excited about, focus on sharing unique insights that are educational, and that if somebody looks at it, it’s almost like the new school of resumes. Frankly, it’s like your body of work and thoughts that people can look at to say, oh shit, this person knows what they’re talking about. They have unique insights that can help us in a specific field, whether it’s copywriting, whether it’s an engineer, whether it’s as a designer, etc. There’s many different avenues to go, but I would say, like, pick a niche within NFTs, pick a skill set, share unique content and connect with people who are also posting content, have those similar skill sets and working in the space and eventually get a job. A friend of mine actually, who I connected with in May of last year. He was going through that process. He just dropped out of school, really wanted to work in NFTs. And I told him, if you write an educational informative piece once or twice a week for the next six months, I guarantee you that you will get a six figure job, a six figure or high five figure job in this space within the next year. And he did. 

Matt Zahab 
Good advice. It’s true for anything, folks. It’s crazy how the Crypto world works with Twitter, though. It’s like the dating pool what’s your resume, It’s instagram, right? For the traditional Web2 job pool, it’s LinkedIn. No one gives a shit about resumes anymore. You know what I mean? Like, just trust the job interview, have a decent LinkedIn, make sure you have two good references. The rest takes care of itself. Easy peasy shampoo, squeezy forward over to Crypto. It’s all about your Twitter. If you don’t have a Twitter that’s bumping, you’re hooped. It’s crazy how it works. Also, you and I are biased, but to the listeners, and again, I’m not going to be the head priest of the Twitter religion, but Twitter is so much better than any other social network, it is not even funny. The amount I’ve learned on Twitter is absolutely bonkers. I would literally, and I’ve spent months, if not close to a year of my whole life on Twitter, which is probably sad. That maybe not that long, but definitely months of my life on Twitter. If you can curate a good feed, the amount of info that you can decode is absolutely bonkers. And it is such low opportunity cost and it’s free. I probably pay $500 a month for Twitter legit. You probably pay more than me based off the opportunities it’s gotten you. But like, man, folks, get on Twitter. It’s absolutely the GOAT. Give it a chance. It’s the GOAT. 

Liam Herbst 
Twitter is awesome. 

Matt Zahab 
Shout out, Elon. Shout out, Twitter. Speaking of shoutouts, huge shout out to our sponsor of the show, Liam we got to take a quick break. When we get back, we’re going to talk about NFT PERPs. Good old Perpetual Trading. But first, huge shout out to PrimeXBT. Longtime sponsors of the show and good friends of cryptonews.com. We love the team at PrimeXBT and they love their customers. They offer a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders. It doesn’t matter if you’re a rookie or a vet, you can easily design and customize your layouts and widgets to best fit your trading style. PrimeXBT is also running an exclusive promo for listeners of the Cryptonews Podcast. After making your first deposit, 50% that is 50% of that first deposit will be credited to your account as a bonus that can be used as additional collateral to open positions. The promo code is CRYPTONEWS50. That’s CRYPTONEWS50 all one word to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. And now back to the show with Liam. NFT PERPs aka NFT Perpetual Trading has just popped off. It is an absolute mouthful. I’m going to throw you a little sewer bomb here and I’m going to make you describe what NFT Perpetual Trading is and why it will be the next big thing in NFT trading. 

Liam Herbst 
For sure. I’ll do my best. 

Matt Zahab 
This is a tough one. 

Liam Herbst 
So NFT PERPs are like a derivative market based on actual NFT prices, NFT floor prices. So when you have now with Blur as an example, just a marketplace, you have bid and asks for NFTs within a collection. So if we use Pudgy Penguins as an example, let’s say somebody wants to list their Pudgy Penguins for sale for 4.2 ETH and then somebody is willing to buy it for 4.18. So they have the ask at 4.18 and the listing at 4.2. There is some aspect of like liquidity or fungibility to use Crypto NFT term in that area at the floor price. And when that exists, you can build derivative markets on top of it. The way that perpetuals work is basically it’s a new asset, new series of shares that are being traded that tied to this index of the floor price for that NFT. And the way that they maintain correlation with it, or at least somewhat tied to it, is through something called a funding rate. So let’s say if a bunch of people in the perpetual market are really bullish on Pudgy Penguins and they buy it, everyone’s buying it, let’s say the price goes up to 4.4 ETH, and that’s above the 4.2 ETH floor, then the people who are on the long side of that trade will have to pay a fee, which is called the funding rate, to the people who are short to try to bring the perpetual price back to the index price. So it stays more in equilibrium and the same works vice versa. So that’s kind of how PERPs work. It’s pretty complicated. I hope I did an okay job explaining it. 

Matt Zahab 
You did a great job. The only interjection I would make is the floor price refers to the price of the cheapest NFT in that collection. So that’s in all types of trading you need a baseline. And that is the baseline that Liam is referring to. What PERP trading is going to do for the NFT market? Is it’s like NFT futures. Right. Depending on how you look at it, it can be very good or very bad and it could also crash the market. Which worries me a little. 

Liam Herbst 
Yeah, there’s a lot of concerns with it. I mean, the way that the index is calculated is based off like recent sale history. So you can’t get like a wick down of the because NFTs are pretty liquid. So it’s trying to eliminate a little bit of that volatility risk and people getting liquidated on crazy wicks one way or another. But there are concerns, like frankly, if the indexes can be accurate, if the actual PERP markets will stay accurate. Because oftentimes an NFTs there’s an incentive to actually hold the NFT even if you know the price of that specific asset is going to go down. An example would be the Board Ape other side LANDrop. So around this time last year, Board Ape was giving an AirDrop or Yuga Labs, was giving an AirDrop to all the Board Ape holders for other deeds. And that asset was worth about 10 Ethereum and the Mutant Apes use that example is worth about 40. So if you know that you can hold this Mutant Ape, it’s like the price of the other deed that new airdropped asset is baked in. So the PERP market could be at like let’s say 33 ETH or so low. It doesn’t even make sense. The whole thing exactly could collapse because the order book becomes so out of balance. So there’s issues like that, can they attract liquidity? We’ll see. I think I’m optimistic that they can solve those problems and somebody will be able to design a model that works and we can chat about what I think that would mean for NFTs if they do. 

Matt Zahab 
Yeah, let’s jump into that. Before we do though, let’s just buzz on the topic of Virtual Land for a sec. I think you and I sit in the same yacht here and I’ve been fortunate enough to work for some amazing teams that have created Metaverses, if you will. During COVID this sounded like a great idea because people were spending a stupid amount of time on online poker rooms on every single social media app on Discords, Reddit, you name it. People wanted ways to chat with friends and feel alive and mini Metaverses gave us that sort of escape. Fast forward to today when COVID is nonexistent and the world has resumed. The show has gone on like always. It’s not looking like the best idea anymore and I think you and I are in the same yacht there. What’s your take on the whole Metaverse thing and how Virtual Land is sort of a hoax? 

Liam Herbst 
I’m excited about Metaverse like environments, I’m excited about other side, I’m excited about these 3D engaging potentially like VR worlds that people will spend time in and hang out in. I think that it will be actually a much better experience than just sitting in front of a 14 inch screen all day like I do. With that said head, I think that Metaverse Land is like completely should not be a thing. At least I can understand why as an example, we use other deeds. They have resources on the land. People are playing a game. If the game economy is valuable, I get why the piece of land and resources are valuable. What I don’t believe in is like, proximity, having value in the Metaverse. I really liken Metaverse land plots and locations similar to internet web pages. So if I asked you, I want to get an internet page that is closest to the center of the internet or like the highest traction place on the internet. It doesn’t really add up. Like, sure you could try to buy advertisements or boost your SEO or whatever it is, but there’s no such thing as proximity, in my opinion at least from one page to the next on the internet. People don’t walk in between web pages on the internet. They teleport, they jump between them. And I think that will also be true in Metaverse land. So I’m pretty bearish on center island land or like prime Metaverse real estate. With that said, I think specific environments, rooms, games and all that can have a ton of value, especially if people play within them, build on top of them. I get that. I totally get why avatars in the Metaverse and accessories will have value. People want to collect them. This is proven with things like CS Go and people paying for Fortnite skins, etc. But yeah, proximity in the Metaverse, I’m pretty bearish on. 

Matt Zahab 
Yeah, no, I feel you there. What about Pepe? I feel like we ought to talk about Pepe. That’s a little primer for the folks at home. Pepe over the last I mean, this episode is going to air early mid May. But Pepe is the meme coin that is absolutely blowing up and has made hundreds of thousands very rich and hundreds of thousands very poor. It is the new Dogecoin, if you will. It has absolutely zero utility. It is strictly a meme coin. And it’s unfortunate because this I mean, of course do I wish I got on and made a bag? Yeah. But everyone who is late to the party, which is almost everyone, is going to lose a shit ton of money. And it also has such disdain on the Crypto community as a whole. It’s terrible. Walk me through the history of Pepe, the power of memes and your two cent on Pepe coin. 

Liam Herbst 
Yeah, I’m pretty mad at myself about Pepe, I’m not going to lie, because I really believe in power of tokenizing memes and people sharing ideas. I really view, in a way like NFTs, like digital, only NFTs especially in many ways. It’s almost like abstracting the meme brand value away from if we use an example, a physical luxury bag, a Gucci bag, the bag materials and that, like, if it didn’t have the logo on it would maybe be worth like, 25% of what the bag is worth after you slap the logo on it. Yeah, NFTs are the representation of that 75% just, like, abstracted from the physical item. And I think that applies to more fields than what we give credit to. And like, memes, like Pepe are one. I totally get it. Yeah, I was mad at myself because I wrote about Pepe, how I think Pepe NFTs and all of that are undervalued. People are sleeping on them. And then the Pepe coin launches, and I’m like, I don’t want to get into shitcoin season. I don’t know how much the market’s so bad. Like, what can happen? And I kept fading, and it kept going up and up, and I was like, Holy shit. Because there have been other Pepe coins. There is a bunch that happened. This one was just the one. So it got to the point where I should have just Aped. And that’s my biggest weakness as a trader, is I don’t just Ape enough. I’ve mid curve stuff too often. I mid curve this one, but no, again, I get it. And the thing that I really like that Pepe showcased to the world is that, you know, liquid coins and these meme coins. When you build an ecosystem that can rapidly scale the number of people that hold it, crazy things can happen. Pepe has probably 100,000 holders by now. It’s 100,000 advocates, people who are shilling their coin, talking about how great it is dominating NFT Twitter, whereas a PFP project will only have like, 4000. So it’s 25 times more people. And that’s why this stuff can go so crazy. So I think a huge benefit of liquid coins over these scarce NFT ecosystems. 

Matt Zahab 
It’s truly insane how just coins can go parabolic like that. Something not on the show notes that I have here. I want to go off topic. You just talked about trading. I love asking good traders what their workflows are and how they teach themselves. I know the one commonality amongst all traders that is not extremely obvious, like, obviously being disciplined and putting in the hours and doing your research and luckiness, lucky, is keeping a journal. Do you have a trading journal? Like, are you like, Liam, you idiot, you fucked this up. Do you do any of that stuff? 

Liam Herbst 
I do. Yeah, I do. I’ve been actually placing more of an emphasis on that recently. I mean, when I was in the bull market, you kind of just like. Threw stuff in and doesn’t even matter. Yeah. So I’ve been getting much more intentional. I’ve been very conservative over the last 13 14 months, which has done me really well. But now I’m at a place where I just believe my knowledge and skill set is leveled up, where I can be more aggressive, and I’m missing plays where I think it’s like a 50% play, and I’m like, okay, I’ll take it, but it’s like a ten hundred x outcome. So I need to break that in my mind. And I’ve been writing a little bit about that, but yeah, I’d say one macro potache that I have is I think these NFT markets and markets that are very highly retail driven, it’s all dopamine driven. Especially now in this bear market. You see, the people who are left trading are like professional traders and degenerate gamblers. Or both. And what happens is the reason why I think these meme coins popped off so much is because everybody for months had just been getting punished on their NFTs and there was no high to get. It’s like junkies who are just feeding for a new thing to Ape into and meme coins for that spicy new thing where it’s like a new slot machine that they can pull the lever on and potentially get 100x return that they used to get on NFTs and they’re not getting anymore. So that’s one of my main focuses. People have talked about how it’s narratives and catalysts that are emerging where attention is slowing. But really I try to think about it from where people are getting that dopamine high from and how I can be early to it and then sell when everybody’s euphoric. And that simple framework, I think, is going to help me a lot. 

Matt Zahab 
Well said. Yeah, that was straight gold right there. It’s like anything else in life. Like, nine times out of ten, the qual outweighs the quant. We’re creatures of habit and we’re emotional creatures. And it’s usually not the brain or the heart that ends up making the decisions. It’s your stomach. It’s your gut. And that’s when your gut tells you your gut is usually like, shit, I need to get into this. I feel like FOMO doesn’t come from your heart or your brain. I feel like it comes from your tummy. Your stomach’s like, yo, wakey wakey time to get into this. And like you said, what’s the classic quote like when your Uber driver asks you about a Crypto coin that’s when you know it’s time to get out. That’s 100% the top. Crazy. Dude, we’ve been buzzing here. We’re getting all tight for time. Couple more and we’ll wrap up. Let’s dive into the importance of L2s built on ETH, Polygon absolutely killing it with NFT partnerships, Polygon and Polygon Labs, their sort of marketing and incubation arm of Polygon is absolutely crushing it and have their toes into every good possible bucket of water that you want. I’d love if you could just take a little riff on the importance of L2s and how Polygon is absolutely crushing it with NFT partnerships. 

Liam Herbst 
Polygon’s killing it. Yeah, Polygon invested a lot of money and resources into getting some great partnerships, and they get a reap dividends when people begin to onboard. I mean, me mostly I’m just bullish on low cost, easily accessible blockchains. The projects who I think have had the biggest impact in the space over the last six months are like Reddit, NFTs, Starbucks NFTs, Trump NFTs. And a lot of they they’re not the highest volume. They don’t but the thing that they have done is figured out a way to have normal people be interested in NFTs, and that is what is needed in order for the space to grow. That’s what my focus is in the project that I’m working on. And a lot of it’s simple stuff. It’s like, people don’t want to spend $5,000. They don’t want to learn how to get a MetaMask wallet. They don’t want to have to pay $80 in gas to transact an NFT when everybody’s aping a mean coin. I really think the NFT experiences that will succeed will be akin to people buying level ups in a mobile game, to buying a skin on Fortnite, to buying Bitmoji sweater on Snapchat, that kind of stuff. And that is not possible on Ethereum right now. Definitely not possible. Like Bitcoin ordinals that kind of stuff. Because gas fees are so expensive, you need to get a MetaMask wallet. It’s just really not feasible. And the thing that I’m excited about with Polygon especially, is Polygon has some big projects, some promising projects where people can buy with credit card. They’re low cost NFTs transaction fees are low or even covered by the person issuing them. And it allows people, like, again, like my brother who’s not into Crypto, to buy an NFT if he wants to and hold it and enjoy it.  

Matt Zahab 
So true there. Last one here. Blur absolutely blew up. I can’t remember the last the only two things that I remember in 2023 Crypto market is Blur and Pepe. That’s literally it. I could be wrong. I don’t think any other huge news has been out. Maybe I’m wrong, but to my knowledge, those are the two main headlines of 2023. Blur was absolute bananas. Created a massive pump and dump in the NFT market. Fat AirDrop to a bunch of people. I know you and I didn’t get in on that AirDrop, but LOL anyways. But yes, walk me through Blur how to create a massive pump and dump at the NFT market. And I know that you have a pretty good inclination that most traders are down horrendously as well.  

Liam Herbst 
Yeah. So I worked at Blur last summer as they were going through their go to market strategy and they absolutely killed it. They did so exceptionally well. And the team is amazing. The product is amazing. I’m not shocked. I’m surprised at how much market share they’re taking from OpenSea and how much the NFT market is, attention is on them. Again, we’re at a stage when price are down, so it’s really those pro traders and gamblers left. And Blurs a way better product for them than OpenSea for recently, how it kind of like inflated NFT prices and or changed the market a little bit. I don’t want to say that inflated NFT prices, but how the ecosystem potentially encouraged certain types of trading activity that had an impact on the NFT market is when people are earning money to place lists. So first it was the bidding and listing points, when people could earn money for bidding on NFTs and listing them. And what happened was everybody was just, like, overbidding each other to try to earn those points. And it got to a point where you had bots that were coming in and hundreds and hundreds of bids, literally, like, within 1% of the floor, which was a crazy amount of liquidity relative to the overall market cap of these collections. Nothing you could ever imagine seeing on a sex or anything like that. And what happened is that prices got up so much and then some people realized, like, oh, shit, I’m never going to be able to sell 50 or 100 of these NFTs that I hold at once like I can today. And that began happening and then as that happened, you got a bunch of people who didn’t want to own NFTs, who are selling them to then people who are also bidding and didn’t want them, and it caused this cascade down. So basically, when people are getting incentivized to take an action, it can lead to it has led them to be willing to accept NFT losses in order to earn those Blur points through using the platform. And that, I think, is attributed a little bit to NFTs declining in price. Yeah, so it’s interesting to see. And then if you’re a collector and you don’t want to farm the points, you sit on the sidelines because I’m just going to wait to see this play out and see what happens. So it’s an interesting dynamic that’s happened. I think Blur brought an amazing product into the space. Their goal as a company is to capture market share they’re absolutely doing that. And the new product that they have is lending, which is encouraging people to buy NFTs, take out leverage, which is a little bit, you know, risky in itself.  

Matt Zahab 
Spooky shit, man. 

Liam Herbst 
It is a little bit spooky, especially with not having basically any risk parameters. So we’ll see what happens with that. But at least it’s not encouraging people to sell. So it’s kind of like, which one. Now the ecosystem is here. Which one do you want? So we’ll see how it all plays out. But yeah, Blur team has crushed it. 

Matt Zahab 
Yeah. Shout out, Blur team. I’ll make sure this is noted and on file. I am not a fan of taking out leverage against NFTs. I mean, that is just absolutely bonkers. That is like literally spooky town population view. If you’re getting into this, obviously this is a not financial advice podcast. Neither of us are financial advisors, but going to go out and say it. You’re an absolute dut duh duh. You’re going to do that? Don’t do it. Do not do it. Yeah, you’re playing with fire. 

Liam Herbst 
I mean, if you look at the chart over a three six month period really like three month period since February. Most stuff is down a lot, like most PFPs are down a lot and you’re going to take out a loan that has let’s say like a 60, 80%, sometimes more LTV, which you can get up to 95%, which is crazy. So the odds of getting wrecked is very high. So I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that for virtually anybody, but for the people who are trading and really know what they’re doing, it’s a fun new tool they can use. 

Matt Zahab 
It is very interesting. Liam what a treat, man. One last personal question, then we’ll wrap up. We have a segment on the show called the hot take factory where you and I jump in, put our shit kick in, knee high, boots on, get a little down and dirty, give me a couple Liam Herbst hot takes that really only you believe in, whereas most other people do not. Doesn’t have to be Crypto related. It can be if you’d like the spicier the better. Health, wealth, happiness, politics, nutrition, food, space, AI, you name it. But give me one or two Liam hot takes before you leave us.  

Liam Herbst 
Cool. I mean, we’ve talked about this throughout the show. We talked about dopamine. I think all experiences in life are relative to some degree. I read a book called Dopamine Nation which really changed my perspective on everything. And the core idea is that every single high that your body feels, your body wants to stay in equilibrium. It’s like every single point of pleasure that you feel, your body brings a point of pain. Anytime you feel a point of pain, your body will bring some pleasure to bring you back into equilibrium so it can’t all be hives. And I think finding peace in the shitty times and in pain is really such an important part of life as my brother did during I think during that marathon. He was definitely, probably in a lot of pain for that four hour period. 

Matt Zahab 
100%. Love that. Liam, what a treat, man. Obviously open invite for round two anytime you’d like and huge shout out to you for coming on. This has been a truly great time and had a lot of fun and best of luck with your startup that is in Stealth Mode. I’m sure you and the team will absolutely blow that out of the park. Before you go, you got to plug your Twitter, which again is one of my favorite follows. What is your twitter before you go? 

Liam Herbst 
My twitter is my full name @liamherbst_ yeah I would love to connect. I mean, I respond to every DM if you watch this show. Had any thoughts, agree, disagree with anything, shoot me a DM, engage with some of my posts. Always keen to meet people in the space and connect. 

Matt Zahab 
Love it, liam, thanks again, bro. Appreciate it and looking forward to round two. 

Liam Herbst 
Thank you so much, man. I’ll see you soon. 

Matt Zahab 
Folks what an episode with Liam Herbst, a true NFT guru dropping knowledge left, right and center. We love to see it. We went over a bunch of good stuff NFT business models being broken, long term bull cases NFT PERPs the importance of L2s, history of Pepe, Blur. You name it, we covered it. Again, big thanks to Liam for coming on. This was a great episode. Listeners, love you guys. Thank you so much for supporting, as always. If you enjoyed this one, and I hope you did, please do subscribe. It would truly mean the world to my team and I. Speaking to the team. Love you guys. You guys are all the GOATs. Could not be here without you. Huge shout out. Huge love. Justas, my sound editor. You’re the man. Appreciate you until the listeners love you guys. Keep on growing those bags and keep on staying healthy, wealthy and happy. Bye for now and we’ll talk soon.