DCL Blogger on NFTs and Decentraland
In this episode of Cryptonews Podcast, our host Matt Zahab interviews DCL Blogger, a popular NFT's YouTuber, investor, and entrepreneur. They talk about his journey into crypto and NFTs, Decentraland, MetaMask, Ethereum alternatives, and much more.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:58 Journey into crypto
3:00 Decentraland
10:30 Discord tips
13:20 Crypto Twitter
17:25 Ethereum Layer 2
20:22 Sponsored by PrimeXBT
21:44 Utility tokens & NFTs
24:45 NFT Marketplaces
27:08 MetaMask
29:50 Ethereum alternatives
31:55 Creating a successful YouTube channel
34:22 CryptoArtPulse.com
37:55 NFT hot takes
41:29 Advice for Decentraland rookies
42:40 Outro
The episode premiered on April 1, 2021.
This episode is brought to you by PrimeXBT.
offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders that demand highly reliable market data and performance.
Traders of all experience levels can easily design and customize layouts and widgets to best fit their trading style. PrimeXBT is always offering innovative products and professional trading conditions to all customers.
PrimeXBT is running an exclusive promotion for listeners of the podcast.
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Episode transcript:
Matt Zahab: 0:08
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cryptonews.com podcast. Today's guest is a YouTuber, and NFT investor. Talk about a frickin dream job. This man is blowing up on Twitter and YouTube. Ever heard of Decentraland? After this podcast, you'll be an expert thanks to him. He's a Decentraland guru and owns more virtual land than you could ever dream of. A true vet in the NFT ecosystem and an overall great guy. I'm very pleased to welcome DCL blogger to the Cryptonews.com podcast. Matty, welcome to the show.
DCL Blogger:
0:43
Thank you for having me. And thanks for the intro. Yeah, being an investor for a long time. So happy to chat about anything.
Matt Zahab:
0:48
Love that. We are extremely, extremely excited to have you on today and I think the best place to start would be let's just go back to square one. I know you used to be a digital marketer way back in the day but please tell me how you got into the crypto and NFT space?
DCL Blogger:
1:04
Yeah I am. So I'm did marketing for most of my career, I guess, for seven to eight years before crypto. And mostly working for myself doing ecommerce stuff, running, you know, ads using Facebook and selling stuff on Shopify, that sort of thing, did that for a good three to five years. And then kind of jumped into cryptocurrencies in 2017 when they were going through their first little mainstream boom. Got in sometime mid 2017 so my portfolio go up and then back down and then sometime in Jan 2018, when my portfolio was coming crashing down, I was looking at other places to diversify into. And I looked at the decentralized logo and I was like, oh, this looks pretty cool. Looks like a landscape again, type thing. I clicked it. And little did I know that that was going to take me through a rabbit hole that would completely change my career, my life. I joined the discord. Discord is kind of like a chat app. And, you know, there was like hundreds of people buying and selling land. And to me it was crazy. I did not know these with NFTs. All I knew that people were selling virtual land on blockchain somehow. And to me, it was like, okay, well, maybe I can diversify some of my crypto holdings to not just be currencies, maybe they can be virtual land you know that sounded very cool to me. So I purchased a couple pieces, I negotiated my way in. I think I bought them for about a few $100 I think the guy was trying to sell them for 600. I negotiated two for $300 each. And then the next day, I ended up selling them for pretty much double the price. And then I realized that this NFT space, or at least virtual land at the time, was a space that I can dedicate full time to and increase my crypto holdings without me putting fear in and that was a lightbulb moment. So for the next two years, I basically traded land, virtual land, like a madman, full time. And then yeah, that's spread across the rest of the NFT space.
Matt Zahab:
3:00
Lovely. I'm just imagining what my grandma would be thinking right now, if she listened to this. I know she will listen to this and you're gonna put her head in an absolute blender. Speaking of a virtual land, it's bananas that you can actually own a piece of virtual land and be extremely profitable, just like you were. I want to jump right into Decentraland It's a game that is absolutely blowing up right now. In fact, it's more than a game. Could you please give a high level overview of Decentraland?
DCL Blogger:
3:32
Yeah, look, Decentraland is pretty complex, the way they've done things. From a structural point of view, there's supposed to be a decentralized universe, where you can own virtual land in this big map with about 90,000 parcels of land in it. You can own land central, you can own land on the outskirts or connected to certain points of interest, maybe like an Art Gallery district or like Vegas district, etc. And then based on the positioning of the land, it has value so you can build whatever you want on your land in 3D, whether that be a bank, people have built like DeFi banks where you can, you know, swap your cryptocurrency tokens using the bank. People have made art galleries in the art space obviously some people out millionaire you know, seven, eight figure art collectors, it makes sense to have a display a virtual Art Gallery. Binance a lot of these HQs, a lot of big companies have a headquarter there, you can hold conferences there. So it is kind of like, I know it kind of comes into the category of gaming because I think that's where NFTs, you know, saw their first footing, but it's much more complex. It's pretty much like an Ethereum layer, or at least a software layer where you can build everything visually. So I kind of think of it as Ethereum but more visual way of it so you can make DeFi banks but in a visual way. So that's kind of what Decentraland is, and you can, the decentralization of it comes from it, you know the $MANA token, you can use it to govern the decisions of Decentraland. So the community votes on what needs to be done, whether you want to increase more land or you want to, you know, get a certain DJ to perform at a club, etc. The cool thing is that Decentraland have 22 million $MANA per year, every year for the next 10 years vested for the community to put proposals forward and use from that pool, which is great, because it's so much funding now that man has had $1, that's literally $22 million that we have in community funding alone, not even the team, the team is their own funding, they run themselves. But I think that's what makes Decentraland special. So yeah, it's a decentralized virtual world where you can own land, or you can own variables, names, everything is going to be an NFT and you can trade participate, go to conferences, and basically like a second life, but on blockchain.
Matt Zahab:
5:48
That's incredibly interesting. One of the big topics in regards to Decentraland is people and organizations, companies, you name it, a lot of them have began to host a virtual events in Decentraland. What's the importance of hosting virtual events in Decentraland?
DCL Blogger:
6:08
I think the accessibility. So in the real world, events are usually held and it's localized, right? Or it's on zoom, or YouTube and people do that. But I think in COVID, there was like this outburst of a necessity to experiment. There was this pressure to experiment in this virtual spaces. So Decentraland went public in February 2020. And then later that year, we kind of got into COVID, pretty much, you know, mid last year, and then suddenly Decentraland was in the middle of this, all these companies needing some sort of solution. So they'll flock there and I think the benefit is, you can do a lot more and it's completely up for experimentation. A lot has not been figured out yet. But for example, like I can hold, and I'm doing this, but I can hold like a shark tank style building where you know, I can get investors to come and even the community can come and become investors, I can get you know, three to four companies to pitch themselves and we can invest in them. Maybe as NFTs, the NFTs can be equity, maybe through, we can tip them using tip jars with cryptocurrencies. You can stream their pitch, you can pitch live to the audience in the virtual land, and so much can be unlocked there. And yeah, it's completely up for experimentation. But the conferences that were held, you know, we would tweet them on Twitter, and then people would jump in and click in and they would all come there and kind of move around, talk to each other, connect, watch the stream on video, maybe teleport to another land and play some, play some pool or teleport back in and keep watching the conference. So yeah, I don't know exactly what the benefit would be. But I think it just unlocks a lot more that can be done.
Matt Zahab:
7:47
That's craziness. You were on an interview, I want to say a year and a half ago on CBC Radio, which is actually the most popular and premier news outlet and radio station in Canada. In that interview, there was a quote by Camilla Russo, who's a well known financial journalist. And she said, and I quote, "for many people, investing real cash into virtual real estate is unimaginable. However, Decentralized investors have lofty ideals of what it will become once Genesis city, which is the main city in Decentraland, develops into a full fledged virtual metropolis". Now just touching on that point, I know you spoke about the ability to actually own a virtual Art Gallery in Decentraland. So when Beeple's piece is big, famous 5000 days piece sold for $69 million last week, two weeks ago. If you wanted to, could you have that piece, own that piece in a piece of land in an art gallery on Decentraland? You throw on your virtual headset, your VR headset, and you could literally have a backdoor pass to this Mystique and unique art gallery in Decentraland. Is that a possibility?
DCL Blogger:
9:02
Absolutely. It is. So touching on that use case. Justin Blau was the DJ that we all know in the crypto space or the NFT space. He came and did a $11.6 million record album drop as NFTs and now that kind of made headlines but before that, I remember he did an art drop on makers place which is an art selling platform and he sold I think 50 NFTs as art pieces. And if you own those pieces, you could take them into Decentraland and those NFTs would become tickets to a club that he has. And in that club is unreleased music. You can go in that club only if you have his art piece as an NFT. So suddenly, all these collectors have this cool experience that they can go into Decentraland and listen to his unreleased music and it was just like the coolest thing and it pushed me to go and consider buying a piece because I just wanted to go in there and figure, like go check this stuff out. So I think like NFTs can go from art to utility in this virtual worlds like you've never before seen. Totally possible to have like some sort of a backdoor VIP pass.
Matt Zahab:
10:08
That's so cool that actually, that blows my mind. One of the best places, just speaking about NFTs and Decentraland, it's really tough to figure out where to learn about all this stuff because it's coming at you so quickly. The crypto verse in general comes at you so quickly and it's so large that it's almost it's difficult to jump into because you don't know where to start. One of the places that has really helped me when I've been really focused on learning is Discord. I know you've been a huge discord fan, I follow you on Twitter for a while I've watched your YouTube videos for a while and you bleed discord, you preach discord. What are some discord, low key, yet high value tips that you could tell me.
DCL Blogger:
10:57
You know, I think the space is so new that you can get a huge competitive edge if you go out there and create your own tools and kind of get on the information quicker. Discord is kind of used to because it allows you to get your head in the front of what's happening. You know, that's where you hear the rumors. And if you're doing this stuff full time, like I am and I got a couple of friends are also kind of in the weeds, we will share and bounce information because we're always hearing some rumor on some discord chat and doing this and that. But in my discord for example, I use it to get the community to let us know what's happening, but I also use it so I can have these sales bots that ping us every time a sale is made in the land space, whether it be Decentraland, Sandbox, whatever, or the art space. And you can get, you can even tailor this so that it gives you, you know, every time an art is sold over to Ethereum from this specific artist, you get pinged on Discord, and you can do all these really cool things that allow you to get information quick, because in my world with NFTs it's all about timing. When an opportunity exists, you make a decision whether you want to buy it or sell it. You know, it's very patient time, you know, that opportunity. It could be $100,000 profit opportunity that that expires within 24 hours because someone else got to it first. So discord is used to kind of get in this chat groups where most people are kind of talking and sharing information. And also if you want to take the next level you can code bots in or get someone to code some bots in that notify you on, you know, news and sales and all that sort of stuff.
Matt Zahab:
12:38
How difficult would that be to someone who doesn't have a tech background?
DCL Blogger:
12:42
I mean, I don't code them myself. I just pay someone 50 bucks, and he installs a bot for me that pings me on Discord. So kind of imagine it like WhatsApp, we're all familiar with WhatsApp. And then there's another there's a separate group for you on your WhatsApp, like a separate chat channel where you just get pinged every time a sale happens, you can probably do this on WhatsApp as well. So you know, I just got that outsourced for about 50 to $100.
Matt Zahab:
13:05
Nice. I'm sure that's paid off like 100 fold by now.
DCL Blogger:
13:08
Yeah.
Matt Zahab:
13:09
That's awesome. Let's stick with this social network topic right now. Let's move on to Twitter. I'm a huge Twitter guy, you're a huge Twitter guy. I know you've really made moves in the last couple months, you've really grown your following and deservedly so. You post some awesome content that's very valuable. It seems like the crypto verse gets all of their information from Twitter. Do you ever see this changing and if it would end will change who's going to be the big dog to come in and take Twitter's reigns.
DCL Blogger:
13:41
You know, the funny thing is, when I first got started in NFTs, I was not on twitter at all. And I remember my wife convinced me saying you know, you should really get on Twitter, that's where all these opinions are shared. And I jumped on Twitter and that's how I realized that all this discussion and stuff happens on Twitter. And I think that's because on Twitter, you don't really, you're not really incentivized on sharing media and videos and images. It's more the algorithm is more based on sharing opinions, and news and all that sort of stuff. So I think it's become a place for information or at least critical information to flourish and find its way into people that need it. I think the interesting thing about Twitter is Jack who is either the co founder or still the founder, I'm not sure
Matt Zahab:
14:23
Yeah, he's the founder.
DCL Blogger:
14:24
He is, you know, into bitcoin. He's recently sold his tweet, which was through a Decentralized protocol called sent, valuables by sent who I used earlier to sell my tweet for $400 and I know the people behind them and it was really cool to see Jack use it, but it looks like he's experimenting on what can be done with implementing web three NFTs or crypto maybe, with Twitter, and if that happens until it becomes this place where you can not only share an opinion, but you can also share, connect your digital wallet and people can bid on that and you can display it and it becomes this place where information and values shared. I think Twitter is led by some very smart people and people that are in the know. And it's already got the platform and the social people are here and it's been I mean, it's lasted a very long time and held its relevance. I don't know if anyone can compete with it to be honest. I don't even know what what someone competing with it will look like you can compete with these media, like Snapchat, you know you can make tik tok you can make Snapchat you can make all these things that take that spin off different types of media content being shared, but opinions and news and all that sort of really heavy stuff being shared, I think that's more like the medium to older generation that want to participate in that. So once they're on certain platforms, they're there right? They're comfortable. That's where to get the news source from so I'm not sure man, I really don't know what a competitor for Twitter will look like. All I know is that Twitter right now. If you're not on it, then I have no clue how you're getting your NFT information. Because it's all on Twitter right now.
Matt Zahab:
15:58
So true. That was a lovely answer. Jack if you're listening to this give this man a seat on the board. Holy, that's a billion dollar idea you just slapped on the table for them. Sticking with Twitter, give me give me your some of your some of your favorite follows. People that every morning, you wake up and you're like, Oh, I can't wait to see what he or she says today.
DCL Blogger:
16:20
I actually don't have any. I just know that there are people in my space that talk about stuff. So for example, I'm in some WhatsApp groups that have like most of the investors and founders and artists in the space, in the NFT space. We have a little like whatsapp group that we will share information from. So that's something I get up and read very often. But then on Twitter, it's an open playing field, like you can have a new artist come in and show their art pieces. There's no real strong influencers that do content on the daily or even news channels that do content on the daily for NFTs. Or they may try and do them but from like, what I want to know is a lot more deeper right? So for me, Twitter's more like what's going on, like what's trending, what new experiment has been done? And there's no, I can't really tell you if there's a specific set of people, there really isn't this just kind of opening up the homepage and seeing what sales have made if there's any records or if there's something new that's happened,
Matt Zahab:
17:18
And getting your news from Cryptonews.com of course?
DCL Blogger:
17:22
Of course, of course.
Matt Zahab:
17:23
Had to throw that in there. You've been on fire recently yet, you've had a couple tweets that have gone pretty viral. One of them was a little thread that stated your predictions over the next six months. One of the first points that I have to touch on is gas fees will be a thing of the past and you mentioned layer two on the Ethereum blockchain. Tell me more about that.
DCL Blogger:
17:50
Yeah, I just know the aggressiveness of this layer two projects. Matic that I know really well, I'm in touch with Sandeep, I just know how well they do on just going out there and getting companies to come in and launch on the layer two. And I also know that they're gonna be integrated across Decentraland, I think they're integrating on open sea, I think they're integrating across like, you know, these major platforms that desperately need them. I'm also going to be looking at Immutable X, which are also going to be a layer two solution that we'll be plugging into a few like they there'll be also plugging into Ethereum and also, being a solution for...The thing is, like right now, it's go time, right? All these, this influx of people are coming to the NFT space, influx of money is coming to the NFT space, everyone wants to do something. And these platforms are desperate to reduce frictions on every level. So I think like their number one priority right now for some of these platforms is to get on a layer two, especially something like Rarible where it was a great platform for anyone to come and make art, but that whole demographic is getting getting pushed back and a lot more hesitant now when it costs $100 to make a piece of art as an artist, that's a lot of money. So I think the desperation coupled with projects like Matic produce, like immutable x neo protocol, you know, these three or four or five that are going out there and aggressively onboarding. I think these are going to come to a clash and really start to you know, it takes like three to four months to integrate these I think so I would say you know, in six months or six months plus we should start to see a lot of these switches to layer twos. And also these other blockchains that are also going to start having an NFT presence. So for example there's polka dot, there's flow. Flow's, it's pretty much zero cost to operate on flow, there's wax. A lot of these guys are going to start to see a lot more heavy usage of NFTs and I think yeah, gas fees, investor. For example, Bondly sold, I think 3 million or $5 million worth of Logan Paul's NFTs and that was on the Bondly platform. So I think when the mainstream gets here, they're not really going to care whether it's on Ethereum or another blockchain. So yeah, I think gas fees right now, just because NFTs have blown up since September, and it's only been three months. I think now's the time to innovate and solve those tech problems, which I think will happen in next six months.
Matt Zahab:
20:25
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DCL Blogger:
22:27
Yeah, I think firstly, on the first part of that sentence, I think it just makes sense to issue a cryptocurrency for any project that's successful in the space because it unlocks liquidity for the founders, it unlocks the community to also be vested financially in pretty much the success of the business. So as NFT products come out, they become popular they become used, it just makes sense for them to issue a cryptocurrency token and I'm seeing that being done. Or at least in the talks of like some companies I have equity in and I know that they are going to go down the route of issuing an ERC 20 on some of these are pretty cool platforms. So I think um, yeah, that's where I got that thought from. The second part of that thought, yeah, I think we're gonna start going from NFT to utility. In the case of dapper labs, or NBA top shot, I know that the collectible part was only the first phase. I do know that they've got some games where you will be able to use these NFTs to maybe play like some sort of a fantasy sports game, maybe some like basketball game, and then suddenly, these NFTs which were collectibles before now have value as players, right? So then you're going to understand that wait a second, we're not just buying collectibles here, we're buying these, you know, players in these platforms. And I'm also working on some projects that should bridge the gap. And I also know that, for example, for the first two to three years, I think NFTs were just more for those that were collecting and using them as virtual and here and there. But I know that when the DeFi crowd sprung up, and they started to really experiment with Ethereum, and building all these DeFi protocols, I know that they're also watching the NFT space now. So they're plugging in NFTs into their platforms where you can, so for example, Bondly, they've got like an NFT that you can buy, which is a game NFT you can use it in their game, but also Bondly has its own decks, right? It's got its own decentralized exchange and if you own that NFT and stake it, then you get zero fees. So it's like this play on what you can actually do with NFT's across the board. Again, tickets to a club, staking to get zero fees, you can even sell them as insurance policies. So I think this will start to really take off as people kind of transition from the mindset of collectibles to utility.
Matt Zahab:
24:45
We've talked a lot about NFTs. What are the best marketplaces to either buy NFTs, mint NFTs, just best marketplaces in general. Tell me about it.
DCL Blogger:
24:56
I think again we're so new right here that even
Matt Zahab:
24:58
Oh those are definitely the big boys, the though there are some great marketplaces, there's just so much room for them to become much, much better. I think Rarible and open sea are definitely like definitely the very popular ones, I see them doing the most volume and so therefore I'd say they're the best in the sense of they've already got a trusted and trialed sort of, you know, marketplace. Open Sea has been around for a very long time, three years now, it's been around for and people have been running pre sales, they're like, projects back in the day, you should just run their presale on open sea. So they've got a few, you can even do one really cool thing with open seas, you can also do locked private sales. So for example, if I want to list my land and sell it to someone that I've already made a private deal with, I can list it on open sea and lock the buyer address to a certain Ethereum address. So only that person can purchase it. So, you know, Open Sea I think is good, you can also maybe make your own art, I know they've got this kind of concept creme de la creme in that space. I myself have just started of lazy gas minting where it costs you zero gas to mint. There's some trade offs there but you know, there's you can experiment there as an artist or as someone that just wants to make some NFTs. Rarible as well as pretty good. It's being used quite predominantly. I mean, Mark Cuban did some stuff on Rarible. We had multiple personalities just throw some stuff in Rarible and experiment with it. I think those two will be prominent, you still have mintbase, you got mintable, you got, you know, a few other . But these are kind of the gl bal marketplace. Then you got s ecific ones like the Decentral nd marketplace, which is for vi tual land and wearables in the Decentraland economy. hen you've got the Axie infi ity marketplace, which is specif c to that project. But if we're alking about like the eBay or t e gum trees, then we're tal ing about, you know, open sea arible mintable, mintbase. And I hope I haven't missed an good ones. But yeah, rarible a d open sea, I think are the m st prominent. dabbling into the NFT space and one tool, or I guess piece of software rather than I would be absolutely lost without is metamask. I just have it on my Chrome browser. And it's a godsend, it is the best thing that's ever happened to, in my opinion to the NFT space. Without it, I think it would be toast in some sense, it just makes life 100 times easier. Could you please explain what metamask is for our guests and how important that is and how it bridged the gap into NFTs?
DCL Blogger:
27:28
Yeah, metamask is a digital wallet, which stores your NFTs or well actually your NFTs are kind of stored on blockchain, but metamask allows you to communicate with the blockchain. So, we can just kind of say it's somewhat stores your assets or your value, whether it be cryptocurrencies or NFTs. I think for some people, they use you know, Coinbase or their own local exchange to store their cryptocurrencies. Here in the NFT space in the, in the DeFi space, we stole those cryptocurrencies and the NFTs and tokens of any any type that are Ethereum based, so this is specific for Ethereum, via metamask. So when we have assets in metamasks, and we go to Decentraland, then suddenly Decentraland picks up that I own this land, and it gives me operator building permissions on those lands. So, think of it as, it's really cool, because it's a plugin that sits on your Chrome browser, and then you can go to Decentraland, or whether you go to Decentraland, or open sea or anything that enables or connects to your wallet, you can do all kinds of things. So I can take a token. Like I said before, I think I mentioned this, where Justin Blau has a club in Decentraland, where the NFT is like an art piece on makers place. But if you take it to decentraland, that NFT becomes a ticket to a club that he has unreleased music to in Decentralized. So again, both of these platforms Decentraland and makersplace, they get that information, or that NFT that you own through the digital wallet metamask and which allows them to develop or code in different use cases for. In one is display makersplace because it's an art piece and the other is a ticket, that token acts as a ticket to a club. So yeah, metamask has made it easy for us to buy sell stake, do all sorts of things in these decentralized or web three enabled websites. And I think that's really really cool because suddenly you can take your identity, your value your money across platforms, no matter what platform whether gaming art or anything really.
Matt Zahab:
29:26
I thought was very well said. I'm also a huge fan of the logo. I love the orange Fox on the on the top right of my screen. Everyone spends all day on the internet and a lot of people use Chrome and seeing that orange Fox always puts a smile on my face. I think I'm even gonna buy a couple shirts, maybe a hoodie, maybe a hat, who knows? But it's a great logo and they did a very good job in that. Speaking of metamask and an Ethereum. I very quickly want to touch on Ethereum. It has such an important role in the NFT space and blockchain and crypto in general. I know you spoke very quickly about the gassing fees, but any other alternatives to Ethereum in the short term that we could see popping off. I know binance hass really made moves. But anything else that you can touch on in regards to that?
DCL Blogger:
30:14
I think everyone's going to try it. So for example, those that are very heavily funded, and this is how it kind of works is they suddenly have these big bounties that they can put forward, or like run hackathons and stuff, right? So obviously polkadot is doing really, really well. I think EOS is going to do really, really well. All of these platforms are now billion dollar value evaluations that have a ton of money to spend to run hackathons and kind of fund this innovation with NFTs and DeFi all this other cool stuff. So I think there's going to be some major major plays on polka dot and these other ones, nothing really comes to mind, I think as they come to fruition, and as we see these platforms, really, these these projects will be platform. They don't really care what blockchains are going to launch on. I think they'll catch fire but, and also the fact that you can kind of take your token whether you buy it on Ethereum you can kind of take it cross chain, right? You can wrap it so that it's compatible with another blockchain and take it to there. And you can wrap it and take it or you can unwrap it and take it back to Ethereum so I think the token can be, or people will find a way to take that token across blockchains. But yeah, I think polka dot will be a major player because they've just, I just noticed there's bondly that's using polka dot, there's like a couple of really big projects that will be probably using polka dot and yeah binance has its own thing BSC and again, binance is such so heavily funded, that they can run massive, massive hackathons and build you know, they can make incubators that can really pushed the innovation in any direction they wanted with their community, which is already in the hundreds of 1000s.
Matt Zahab:
31:54
The bread and butter of DCL blogger is your YouTube channel, as well as your Twitter but more so the YouTube channel. One of the things that sort of blew up on Twitter this week was a the annual study that comes out, it's about students from grade one to grade six in the USA, and it's the classic what is your dream job? Now, back 40-50 years ago, you would have professional athlete you would have astronaut, Doctor, teacher. The new number one is YouTuber, which is crazy. You have youtuber you have film producer. You are youtuber and a very good one you've really blown up. You, I believe have surpassed 25,000 subscribers as well. What advice would you give to a young YouTuber? And more specifically, how do you blow up as a YouTuber in the crypto space?
DCL Blogger:
32:48
I think the only thing is to be very, very, very consistent. I remember when I started my YouTubing and my Twitter. First of all, I think on my YouTube, I only have 10,000. On Twitter, I have 30,000, which is good. But on YouTube, like I had very little followers for a long time. But it was a specific market that I was serving, and I was making content for Decentraland and DCL people and I was making YouTube videos for them. That's how they initially found me. And then the cool thing is that the more followers you get, the more exponential your growth is. So you may be growing at a rate of one to two subscribers a day when you have when you first start. But then the more followers you get, you start to grow at a rate of 100 followers a day, then once you get into the 10s of 1000s of YouTube followers, then you start to grow at a rate of 500 to 1000 a day maybe. And that's why the big YouTube channels become even more bigger, quicker, because of the exponential part of the growth. So all you need to do is be consistent until you hit that exponential curve. And then yeah, it just takes over. So to be honest, you got to be really passionate about what you are YouTubing about and then just be consistent. And quantity in my opinion is key, quality as well, quality of information, but quantity in the sense of being consistent with you know, busting out four or five videos a week, consistently for.... that's a common theme you know, if you look at any successful YouTuber, they've been consistent for at least the first two to three years of their career and have a ton of videos to show for.
Matt Zahab:
34:16
That's true. God, I got to get the ball rolling and let that snowball effect really work its magic. Right? I know you have your hand in multiple different NFT and web related cookie jars, a lot of projects on the go as we speak. One that I absolutely love is cryptoartpulse.com. Can you telll me a little bit more about that. And a little follow up to that. Tell us about the other projects you have on the go as well?
DCL Blogger:
34:44
Yeah, look, I like to just experiment with the space. And I realized that if I'm going to invest heavily in certain areas, the space is so young that I have to create my own kind of data tracking or websites or my own news channels. I got to pay people to give me some news and go out there and be my eyes you know, like, you have to really, from my level of investing, I have to be ahead of the curve. I personally feel I have to do all this stuff. So I make cryptoartpulse.com, which is this website that tracks in a feed format, every art sale that happens across the major platforms. And so for me, every day I wake up, I search certain artists that I've invested in, and I see if any any certain collectors have come in and purchased art, new collectors, joining or, you know, they've done, if they're selling consistently, if that volume is coming in every single day, they're staying relevant. And I can really see the back end data of when certain news pieces are released. So for example, the recent piece of news, I think last week, it was announced that Pac would be the next artist to be sold as an NFT on Sotheby's. So after that news came out, a lot of his pieces went from like 5k to 15k, pretty much overnight, and I could see all the sales happening on cryptoartpulse.com. So I could see all that volume happening. So for me, it creates a bit of a competitive edge. So I think data websites are going to be really integral to investors, especially people that have like a long term strategy to this stuff. And yeah, I'm working on some other projects, or some other websites that will probably track the data for Decentraland, and virtual land, and all this sort of stuff. And I'm also experimenting with stuff I am working on this project, which I'm not gonna release the name of yet. But it's this really cool NFT project where if you own an NFT, it's basically like a virtual card or a membership card that you can take to Decentraland and it's like this special gun in a game, maybe it's a special car in a different game, you can take it to Sandbox or somnium space, and it's like a different experience. If you take it to certain lands, maybe it's like a VIP, you know, spot in a sports game or something, maybe you could take it to my website and connect your metamask and suddenly, it unlocks, you know, 15 video courses that you can only have if you have the NFT. Maybe you can take it to another like cryptoartpulse.com. and you can cash it in for a two hour ad placement. So it's like a play on NFTs as a token that sits on blockchain can be a lot more in terms of utility. So that's a project I'll be working on to kind of change the kind of perception that NFTs are just collectibles to NFTs can also be utility and accelerate that space. So yeah, just working on some projects that I'm passionate about and try to accelerate industries that, yeah, happy to see flourish.
Matt Zahab:
37:31
Really cool. I'd love to invest in a couple of those and I will definitely be bookmarking cryptoartpulse.com, and again, that's crypto art ART pulse P U L S E.com. cryptoartpulse.com. Just a couple more questions. Matty, I do really appreciate this. One question that we're gonna ask all our guests here is any NFT your crypto hot takes for the next six to 12 months? Not something that everyone's thinking about? I'm talking some way out of rightfield way out of left field.
DCL Blogger:
37:59
Huh. Good question. I think if the NFT space is here to stay, I think some artists and projects and brands will become the unicorns of the future, right? They're being built, or at least they're being in discussion to be built as we speak. So for me, if there's going to be these games are going to become the massive NFT games, they're either going to, they either already exist and you have to kind of get in early. Like for example Axie infinity or blancos block party and all that sort of stuff. I think there's going to be a huge shift to gaming within a year. Just because from the conversations I've had, I already know that traditional gaming platforms like fortnight and Riot Games they're into, they understand NFTs they understand blockchain now, and they understand the user economy it unlocks, so I think they'll be using it. But I know how the investment strategy for games are, especially new ones, and is to invest in the very early boji releases, right? So if you invest, so for example, in Decentraland, I have very unique names. I have Satoshi Nakamoto. I have Neo, I have like some really cool original names. I also have some very early variables. So in Decentraland, some of the variables in the skins that came out the first ever ones were these set of about seven different masks that
Matt Zahab:
39:13
Very well. Sad. One last question, before we go. you could have got, I think there's like 20 to 50 of each mask that they were kind of experimenting with, they were testing the users back then they just held like this test where you can go in and do this puzzle and claim a mask to do it. But I do know that if decentraland blows up everyone, that this mask will be held as an OG asset. So for games that go on to do big things, they're always going to be like this original set of releases, for example, Pokemon cards, right? What's the most valuable one? It's the original set. So the original set of 150. So for me, I'm going to be looking at which games are going to be the most popular and I'm going to be looking at using an investing in the early pieces and hopefully, maybe even hiring out an Esports team to compete and utilize these assets, because I don't like them just to be taken out of circulation, I like to be using them to make the game popular. So that's one thing I'll be looking at very deeply. I also think some artists will go on to be the face of this industry. So if we're talking in the art space, I think ferocious is going to be the face of like merchandise and stuff. Merchandise and crypto and NFT. I think Adidas and stuff will come to, you know, ferocious' way and and do collabs with him. And that will do its own thing. I think people will be, you know, it will always be an iconic, the guy that took it mainstream kind of person and the perception, the first thing that people heard was from people hitting the headlines. So I think you'll stay relevant. So certain artists, it will blow up certain industries, I think will blow up. I think the metaverse projects will start to really find their footing, for example, Decentraland. It took, you know, it takes a long time to build these out maybe a couple of years to stabilize them from a structural point of view to make them security safe, because they built on Ethereum to make the world have enough interactive content so that it's a fun space to hang out. I think a lot of that is going to come to this exponential phase at the end of the year in the next 12 months. So um, that's one of the reasons why I'm so heavily invested in these virtual worlds. Yeah, I think a lot of this stuff is going to come to a big boom, at some stage. What's your biggest piece of advice to a Decentraland rookie who's just getting started?
DCL Blogger:
41:35
I would say to study the markets. It depends what you want to do in Decentraland, do you want to invest? Do you want to just participate in the events, you know, you can go to conferences and hear about some of the projects that are coming out. So if you want to go to conferences and see the events and all that stuff happening, you can go to events.decentraland.org. and you can keep mark of what's going on and you can jump into some of these. I know a lot of people that started investing in Decentraland, they started with going to events, and just seeing how the social culture is and who these people are and communicating with them and then they start to see opportunities, right? They start to learn about the variables, they start to learn about names, they start to learn about which lands which events happened where and which lands are kind of popping. And you know that coupled with talking to people in discord in Decentraland discord, also coupled with following the sale. So you can go to nonfungible.com and see all the land sales that are taking place in real time on a feed. When you do that you absorb the information to for one, two weeks, three weeks, things will start to make a lot more sense. And then you can jump in.
Matt Zahab:
42:38
Amazing. Matty, this has been an absolute treat. I'm very grateful for you jumping on and telling us more about crypto Decentraland NFTs and just shedding some really good light on all of this. Before you go where can our listeners find you on the internet?
DCL Blogger:
42:55
Awesome man, it's been a pleasure to be here. I would say on Twitter. I know that most people probably don't have a Twitter account, I would highly advise to get one, just do it for a week. Do it for a week. Go to Twitter, you can follow me on dclblogger.com sorry, DCL blogger on Twitter. I just I make threads there on NFTs I share all my content pretty much on Twitter, like I don't even blog posts these days because they're just you know, these Twitter posts of mine sometimes get like 1000s of engagement and information spreads a lot more quicker. So Twitter, YouTube, DCL blogger, you can follow me there, I make YouTube content break things down a little bit more deeper than Twitter. So I try and do these consistently three to five posts a week, if not more. But yeah, those would be two places that I would go to if I was new and wanted to just keep on keep in the know.
Matt Zahab:
43:45
Matty, it's been a it's been a pleasure. Really appreciate your time and wish you all the best. I'm sure we will have you on again. Folks, if you enjoyed this podcast, it would mean the world if you could give us a follow or subscribe to us on Apple podcasts or Spotify podcasts. You can find us at cryptonews.com that is cryptonews.com and we are the cryptonews podcast. Have a wonderful day and we'll see you next episode. All the best
