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NET Society is unraveling the latest in digital art, crypto, AI, and tech. Join us for fresh insights and bold perspectives as we tap into wild, thought-provoking conversations. By: Derek Edwards (glitch marfa / collab+currency), Chris Furlong (starholder, LAO + Flamingo DAO), and Aaaron Wright & Priyanka Desai (Tribute Labs)
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;18;15
Aaron
Congrats on finishing the book, Chris. Big news man.
00;00;18;21 - 00;00;33;08
Chris
Thank you. Erin, I shared that. Yeah, it's been a it's been a grind and I'm so happy to be on the other side of it. I'm going to let it sit for, a few days and then actually give it its first proper read through and and see what I got.
00;00;33;10 - 00;00;42;15
Aaron
Yeah, I coauthored a book. It was it was brutal. You got to let that marinate for a while, but it's exciting. What's the what's the big top level topic?
00;00;42;17 - 00;00;57;04
Chris
Emergence. Faith and each other. Faith in technology. Faith in the future. For me, like a surprisingly optimistic book, it's the first novel in which I haven't killed anyone. And so that was a big moment for me.
00;00;57;07 - 00;01;00;03
Aaron
You did not choose violence. Is that what I'm hearing?
00;01;00;05 - 00;01;00;27
Chris
Yeah.
00;01;00;29 - 00;01;02;21
Aaron
Positivity. Oh, wow.
00;01;02;23 - 00;01;09;27
Chris
I'm throwing some, very normie people into some really amazing frontier technology and seeing how they navigate it.
00;01;10;04 - 00;01;26;06
Aaron
Yeah, I mean, I do feel like that wave of optimism in a weird way, it's like optimism with, like, a twist of nervousness. But I think more optimism than the nervousness at this point. It's kind of refreshing. Feels like it's everywhere. You feel that?
00;01;26;08 - 00;01;38;11
Pri
Yeah, I definitely do. And I'm pumped to to check it out. I feel like you kind of lift the book up pretty quickly. I feel like I remember you were like, I'm heads down on this, like six months ago, and now you're you're finished with it, which is amazing. Like. Congrats, Chris.
00;01;38;17 - 00;02;04;29
Chris
Yeah, yeah. No, it took me a long time to, like, nail. I knew where I wanted to be. I didn't have the right story set up. I kind of spent the whole summer trying to get in. Summer is a bad time to do that. And the September I knew where I wanted to go. And then it just been like accelerating, accelerating to the point where after the holiday break, I wrote every single day and I edited for hours every day.
00;02;04;29 - 00;02;07;11
Chris
I just locked in and got her done.
00;02;07;12 - 00;02;20;28
Aaron
So it's the only way to do it. It's almost like running or like going to the gym. You just got to get into a routine with it. It's it's impressive. I'm pumped. I can't wait to. I can't wait to read it. Did you use, like, any AI tools as part of that or.
00;02;21;00 - 00;02;48;04
Chris
Are I use a lot of AI tools? Yeah, I wrote the first half of the book entirely myself, and then I started letting the AI in. Bit by bit, starting story development, copy editing. But once I had enough of my voice in there, I actually it wrote the back half of the book. And so it was a really interesting way to go this time, because I've never done that before.
00;02;48;09 - 00;02;57;14
Chris
And one of the big things I got to do is now, once I give it a proper read, I got to figure out, like, how much the AI voice is in there and do I have to write over it or not?
00;02;57;16 - 00;03;01;11
Pri
Oh that's interesting. My copy of it copy it into your voice.
00;03;01;16 - 00;03;03;16
Aaron
I'm sure you're going to need to write.
00;03;03;18 - 00;03;30;13
Chris
It's not terrible like the AI is nowadays. I actually do a really good job of keeping your own voice in there. But also, there's so much complexity going on in this book that I really like parrot voice back and kind of have this sturdy, workmanlike voice in the book. That was easier, I think, for an AI to approximate, like some of the other stuff I've written in the past is very, very voice heavy and I wouldn't want a machine on there.
00;03;30;14 - 00;03;56;21
Chris
Whereas this one like accessibility and allowing people to get their heads around just the complexity of the world and, and the things that I've got going on in here mattered a lot. And so it's a bit of a horses for courses type thing where it felt okay letting letting the AI do it, because it allowed me to get a level above and kind of like try to distill some very difficult things into more relatable terms.
00;03;56;23 - 00;04;13;18
Pri
That's pretty cool. I also like the idea that you actually wrote it yourself, got the voice, and then were able to roll that. That probably makes the most sense if you want to, like, leverage the tools without losing your voice, because otherwise, if you started from scratch using the AI, I'd be very difficult to incorporate your voice in it.
00;04;13;18 - 00;04;17;03
Pri
I would think so. It makes sense kind of the way that you went about it.
00;04;17;04 - 00;04;37;17
Aaron
I feel like you're you're like grappling with these like, future war questions that are just everywhere. Like this week, just because I've been such a like a cursor junkie, I think I've had four people like ask me how to use it. Literally. I was like having my morning coffee today at the office, and someone else that works here asked me how to do it.
00;04;37;23 - 00;04;52;12
Aaron
It's like everywhere now, and I feel like that same thing's going to happen on the writing side, which is where most human work, you know, modern white collar office work happens, right? So like with, with, documents. So I feel like you're grappling with these questions and ahead of the curve, like always.
00;04;52;15 - 00;05;12;19
Chris
I think we all are. I mean, we were talking about this on our Monday night call, 2025. I do think people came out of the gate storming. You know, there's this really sort of quiet feeling out there and sometimes quiet apathy. But right now, quiet feels like a lot of lock in. A lot of people are really heads down.
00;05;12;23 - 00;05;14;08
Chris
I don't know if you guys are getting that sense.
00;05;14;16 - 00;05;33;03
Aaron
I mean, I've been super heads down. To me. It feels like all these systems, these AI systems, they give you leverage and it makes every moment that you're not doing them, like, feel like you're wasting time and or they're super entertaining, which is weird. It's not what I expected. But it's odd to find work to be a little bit more entertaining.
00;05;33;05 - 00;05;51;06
Aaron
And I it just out competing, you know, more passive or semi-active media like whether that's being on Twitter or whether that's watching a show on Netflix or Amazon Prime or Apple TV or whatever, it just it's super engaging. I find myself getting into these like, flow states and I like, look up and I'm like, wow, where the time go?
00;05;51;09 - 00;06;18;24
Pri
It's interesting because it's like I kind of tweeted something about this and I this is where the idea came from is because I, I find work to be engaging because of it. Part of it, just like I'll see an email, I'm like, oh, like I want to see what my, my little guy, will respond to and how they'll respond or how they'll like, even if it's something as small as an email or if it's like a business plan or whatever, I will just like throw it in first is like the first order, just to kind of get a sense of like where their heads at more just to like, entertain myself to see what
00;06;18;24 - 00;06;39;09
Pri
this l, will push out. I have my own ideas of what I want, but I like, feel like it's kind of like fun. It makes. Makes it like you're literally working and chatting with someone about something and like, you see their idea first and you can kind of go back and forth like, it is like having your own little personal buddy that, you know, has a level of entertainment cause you don't know what they're going to do or say.
00;06;39;17 - 00;06;58;03
Aaron
It's more than that when you use these more. I really think the first gen system is the cursor, because it's not like working with one other person and it's back and forth volley. It's like you've got a group of people working with you, and it can do multiple things at the same time, and that's when it becomes like super, super engrossing.
00;06;58;08 - 00;07;09;11
Aaron
You're just you're just moving so fast. It just feels like effortless. And it's that like feedback loop between like thoughts in your brain and like, like some tangible output. It's just getting smaller and smaller. It's wild.
00;07;09;18 - 00;07;21;20
Pri
Yeah, I did specifically on the cursor and software engineering side. I mean, I've been seeing more on my timeline though this is sort of manifested over the last like year, year and a half about like software engineering, just.
00;07;21;23 - 00;07;25;03
Aaron
Went war mode, right? Yeah. There were times I had.
00;07;25;05 - 00;07;28;05
Pri
Marc Benioff saying that he's not going to hire any more software engineers.
00;07;28;06 - 00;07;30;05
Aaron
Wait, I missed that. He said that for real?
00;07;30;05 - 00;07;52;24
Pri
Yeah, I'm like, I think I sent you that. But like, yeah, it was basically just like, could coders be obsolete in 18 months? And there was like a couple tweets around that and all the big tech executives are basically noting that they are either putting a freeze on hiring or, you know, they're training up their team. I think the goal is to get like 100% of code produced by AI, by a lot of these companies.
00;07;52;24 - 00;08;10;13
Pri
I think I saw somewhere that I believe it was Google. I forgot what mega company it was, but I think like 15 or 20% of their code was AI generated. So they said in the last earnings call meeting their goal is just to like produce more. But it does make you think, like, what does software engineering actually end up looking like?
00;08;10;13 - 00;08;18;20
Pri
It's just going to be like a person maybe even talking into or, you know, type prompting into, something like cursor.
00;08;18;22 - 00;08;40;19
Aaron
I, I don't I think there's still going to be tons of software engineers. Like, it's like we built automated farming machines, right? Like tractors and, a whole bunch of different things in, previous century. Right. It's not like farming went away, but it definitely changed and became more productive. And there's probably net less farmers than there. There are in the US economy at least.
00;08;40;19 - 00;08;59;26
Aaron
Then there was, you know, a hundred years ago. So I don't think it goes away. I think it's like leverage. Right. So they could run engineer who's pretty good. And those are easy systems. Now can do the work of ten. And in two years can I do the work of 20 or 30 or 100. Right. So I just think it's kind of like the great reckoning when it comes to software engineering.
00;08;59;27 - 00;09;07;24
Aaron
And it just eliminates a lot of leverage that they had, which I think is just going to be culturally difficult for many software engineering teams.
00;09;07;27 - 00;09;37;09
Chris
Let's just start with all those companies you you named. We can flashback ten, 15 years ago where they were so developer centric in their culture and working at one of these places was a status, and it was an affirmation of a lifestyle or a way of being. And they really catered and coddled to that sense of ego and it's just sad, ironic, you know, pick whatever adjective works for you, that all that was a bunch of bullshit.
00;09;37;09 - 00;10;03;15
Chris
And now that they can throw them out with the bathwater, they're racing to do it. And so, I mean, it's not surprising. I mean, you know, Zuck has done a complete 180 on his image and his political views, you know, as the administration changes. And so, you know, we have organizations led by people who, you know, mercilessly optimize for the success of the org and the success themselves, just switching on a dime in order to keep serving that priority.
00;10;03;15 - 00;10;23;17
Chris
And we'll have to see what happens to the developers and software engineer. It's probably a split the difference type scenario in which, yeah, there will still be plenty of them working. There won't be as many. The ones who are working really better hope that the the complexity of the job scales up and that they can scale up with it.
00;10;23;19 - 00;10;25;12
Chris
Otherwise what's the point of having them?
00;10;25;19 - 00;10;49;18
Aaron
So I was thinking about this because I ran like back of the envelope numbers. I think like meta has something like from the tens of thousands of engineers, like about 50,000 engineers and had to put, put back up. But let's say just hypothetically, each engineer who's fully tilted on the AI, you know, does the work of ten. You could actually imagine meta being like 5000 engineers and still outputting the same amount.
00;10;49;20 - 00;11;10;12
Aaron
But let's say like you actually had like 50,000 engineers that are working at ten x the efficiency. It's like the work of 500,000 engineers. I just don't think that any organization can kind of handle that scale, like all the ancillary things that go to market. Right? Like marketing, like like all this other stuff. I just, I just don't think these organizations are kind of ready for it.
00;11;10;14 - 00;11;21;12
Aaron
So my guess is that they'll prepare, pare down and then like scale back up in some way. And I personally think, like Zuck is not just glowed up. I think he's like on an Imperial mission right now.
00;11;21;13 - 00;11;24;03
Chris
Are you ready to call him Octavius?
00;11;24;05 - 00;11;41;17
Aaron
I think everybody's looking at Zuck and they close eye stuff. I think he's going to make a really big crypto play. I think that he hasn't forgotten about Libra. Like, I think that he knows that payments is the big killer for kind of knocking off both Amazon and Apple. And I think we're going to see like a meta stablecoin.
00;11;41;23 - 00;11;52;10
Aaron
Like for real in the next couple of years. I think we're going to see some stablecoin legislation get pushed through at some point next year. And then you're going to see like a meta stablecoin like Libra 2.0.
00;11;52;12 - 00;11;53;08
Chris
I could see it.
00;11;53;10 - 00;12;12;27
Pri
Yeah, I could see that too. I mean, and I could also see you on doing something similar with Twitter, because I feel like he's always had WeChat like ambitions. I mean, I think X was meant to be like a similar. Everything happened so I could see both of them pushing in that stablecoin direction. I still don't maybe this is like maybe like what is why have their own stablecoin?
00;12;12;27 - 00;12;20;16
Pri
Like why not just take Usdc or whatever like largely circulated stablecoin and like just take a fee off of that. Why?
00;12;20;17 - 00;12;47;20
Aaron
So Libra I think that one, it gives you like a little bit more control. And two, they can then they can pretty much play off of the circle tether business model, which becomes really, really big when you think about the 2 to 3 billion users that meta has at this point to even with like a 5% conversion rate, you're talking about like 500 to $700 million a year and pretty much pretty low friction capital if they apply that model.
00;12;47;27 - 00;13;09;10
Aaron
And I don't think that's enough to move the needle for for meta. But what I really think is what can drive it for them is the fact that meta users now deposit capital into like a meta account, and that makes the entire network a lot more sticky. And then they can add things like single click, you know, check out and without having to worry about like Apple.
00;13;09;10 - 00;13;21;26
Aaron
Right. And they could begin to do like fun marketing and retargeting stuff that you probably would be a million times better than me. That thinking through Chris, just in terms of like brand loyalty and, you know, Incentivization and all that, all that stuff.
00;13;21;28 - 00;13;28;15
Chris
I'd love to not think about retargeting, please. That was a former life I'm not eager to return to. I'm sorry.
00;13;28;15 - 00;13;30;27
Aaron
I will never say it again. Here, but.
00;13;30;27 - 00;13;55;02
Chris
But you make a good point that you know this. This is all back to insurance. Warren Buffett, right? Get the money. Hold it. Skim cream off the float. I mean that that's the big appeal of the stablecoin stuff. I also don't think, you know, a blockchain approach for them makes sense as actually a support mechanism for their llama, open source them and their AI aspirations.
00;13;55;09 - 00;13;55;27
Pri
Oh.
00;13;56;00 - 00;13;56;14
Chris
Right.
00;13;56;16 - 00;13;57;22
Pri
That's a really good point.
00;13;57;24 - 00;14;23;21
Chris
Yeah. You know, if crypto exci is going to be the the thing and, you know, you've got this LM out there and you have this massive user base, then, you know, a chain is the bridge between the two of them, or it's a substrate in which they can both interact with programable money. And I think that's a big part of this, you know, going back to your stablecoin point is like you need all of these incentives are working in concert with each other.
00;14;23;21 - 00;14;35;14
Chris
And if you have a stablecoin and just a stablecoin sitting on wherever, that's not as powerful as like it's the coin of the realm on your chain that, you know, it's, you know, this entire stack.
00;14;35;17 - 00;14;56;17
Pri
That's a really good point. I feel like with that, with that logic, because you can there's so many like mega companies that have so many different type of interrelated products that probably all could be tethered together by a token and some sort of chain. You could probably apply that to a lot of like the large tech companies like I would, I would think like even Salesforce, for example, would probably benefit from from that.
00;14;56;20 - 00;15;07;16
Chris
Oh my God, I would absolutely love to do a Salesforce integration with the constraints of solidity. Like just I'm really not on retire just for that one myself.
00;15;07;18 - 00;15;12;28
Aaron
I guess that's what the, the jettisoned Facebook engineers are going to have to work on at some point.
00;15;13;01 - 00;15;21;09
Chris
Yes, CRM integrations in solidity for a Salesforce bot to, oh my god, kill us.
00;15;21;12 - 00;15;23;14
Pri
Yeah, but like on Friday.
00;15;23;16 - 00;15;28;03
Aaron
I won't even want to do it. It will get upset. It'll be like, yeah, thanks.
00;15;28;06 - 00;15;43;27
Chris
Hey, before we get too, too deep into this, we do have some official business to take care of. I think, first of all, we need to issue a statement for dumping our cabal allocation that, you know, that society is a very influential podcast yet, but then we should probably intro the show.
00;15;44;01 - 00;15;45;07
Pri
I was just going to do that.
00;15;45;07 - 00;15;47;03
Aaron
What what allocation do we get? Chris.
00;15;47;04 - 00;15;49;13
Pri
Yeah, I'm so glad.
00;15;49;15 - 00;15;58;28
Chris
Oh, and I think people need to start allocating to us because we're clearly very influential. We're ready to dump it immediately and then publicly apologize.
00;15;59;00 - 00;16;04;07
Aaron
Oh yeah, I'm like the opposite. I just never I just hold everything. I'm like the Hodl king.
00;16;04;11 - 00;16;09;27
Chris
Well, see, there you go. Projects. That's why you shouldn't give bank list coins and you should give that to society. Coins. It's instead.
00;16;09;29 - 00;16;11;16
Pri
Yeah, Hodl till we die.
00;16;11;19 - 00;16;15;09
Chris
But we haven't done the intro. And so I can't even say that with air cover. I take it.
00;16;15;09 - 00;16;39;13
Pri
Off I know, I know, I know. Let's all kick it off. Hey everyone, welcome to Net Society. Today we have me, Chris and Aaron. You know, as you guys I think have sorted by now, we're a podcast all about exploring the new world of digital art, crypto, AI, tech and more. We're bringing deep insights, fresh perspectives, hard hitting themes, and, a lot of this is stuff that we've explored in the DAOs.
00;16;39;13 - 00;16;58;10
Pri
And so we like to to share it all with you. Just a quick disclaimer here as well. This is obviously our personal views and not of our employer, but, you know, welcome to the pod. I guess one thing I kind of wanted to, or at least acknowledge is that there is a crypto bar tonight and obviously this weekend, by the time this drops, we're going.
00;16;58;10 - 00;17;02;28
Aaron
To have tonight. It's a Friday night. I think it's Friday night. Affair is a black tie.
00;17;03;04 - 00;17;06;23
Pri
I mean it's a ball. Yeah, it has to be. That'd be weird if it wasn't.
00;17;06;27 - 00;17;11;07
Aaron
I mean it is a crypto Valparaiso. I don't think all the rules are applying here.
00;17;11;09 - 00;17;15;19
Chris
Well, I can see that we're all going. Obviously.
00;17;15;21 - 00;17;18;13
Aaron
I don't know if I'd want to go to a crypto ball. Honestly.
00;17;18;14 - 00;17;20;23
Chris
No, it's Cringiest Maximus.
00;17;21;00 - 00;17;24;18
Pri
And why? Why call it a ball? But yeah. Anyways, it's.
00;17;24;21 - 00;17;27;28
Aaron
I guess you could wear fancy clothes. Is that the idea?
00;17;28;01 - 00;17;37;26
Pri
Yeah. You can also be an event like, I mean but whatever. I mean there's it's good marketing I guess it's a ball. I don't know where it is. I think it's actually like in a museum in DC or something, but kind of.
00;17;37;28 - 00;17;44;13
Chris
A tiny bit of research. It's at the Mullins Auditorium, and, Snoop Dogg is performing.
00;17;44;16 - 00;17;46;19
Pri
So what? I actually didn't know that.
00;17;46;23 - 00;17;47;13
Aaron
Oh, no.
00;17;47;15 - 00;18;02;27
Chris
A guy who will do anything for money. Yes, is showing up. I think maybe it's a little more interesting that even Snoop is is kowtowing to Trump. Perhaps you know, Snoop's a busy man. He'll he'll cash a check. And, crypto's certainly willing to write them. Wow.
00;18;03;26 - 00;18;15;23
Aaron
I just want to paint the pictures of Snoop's performing in front of a whole bunch of tuxedoed and and well-heeled people in something called the Crypto Bowl. This is going to be amazing. 2025 starting off with the bank.
00;18;15;25 - 00;18;24;13
Pri
Yeah. Wow. I really wonder how that goes. I hope people who go tell us it was kind of pricey to go, I think as well. But anyway, so.
00;18;24;16 - 00;18;28;00
Aaron
Do you want to go to the crypto Ball parade? Are you are you like a little sad that you're not.
00;18;28;04 - 00;18;33;05
Pri
Like for like anthropological purposes? Yeah. I mean I.
00;18;33;07 - 00;18;36;05
Chris
You would write an ethno graph on the crypto vol.
00;18;36;07 - 00;18;54;18
Pri
Yeah. Like I would kind of give some real time tweets and, you know, feed the machine with my thoughts from that. But yeah, so was I invite if I were invited. Yeah, I would obviously go. Unfortunately I didn't get the invite of paying whatever amount the invite cost.
00;18;54;20 - 00;19;02;15
Chris
Field notes on the sell out wing of Crypto Embracing America, Inc. and the Orange Man both for you to say I'm here for it.
00;19;02;18 - 00;19;21;13
Aaron
I think that they go in tandem. Chris, I don't know if it's really a sell out. I'm sure folks did catch this, but the times is now reporting that there may be a Bitcoin reserve, so maybe probably market was right. Again, the probability of that is much higher than what folks and said that the industry and other observers thought.
00;19;21;20 - 00;19;24;25
Aaron
So Bitcoin reserve we may be coming free.
00;19;25;02 - 00;19;33;09
Chris
How do you feel about all this? How do you feel about a cryptos embrace or America Inc's embrace of crypto vice versa? Where do you stand on this one?
00;19;33;14 - 00;20;05;03
Pri
It's a good question. I mean, I, I, you know, I the reason that I came into all of this and, you know, interested in this particular corner of internet is, is the aspects of decentralization and sovereignty around money and, and. Yeah, a little bit more, I would say ideological and, and maybe like what I found motivating here that said, like when I entered the space, I there was like a point where this, this felt like the likely outcome where crypto and bitcoin could, could very well be adopted as a reserve currency.
00;20;05;03 - 00;20;20;12
Pri
And it would it would be, you know, a paradigm shifting kind of thing. Whatever. All those kind of snazzy words. And so it felt inevitable. And now that we're here, it does feel like a little bit, I don't know, sometimes I go back and forth, I'm like, yeah, this I knew this was going to happen, but I don't know.
00;20;20;12 - 00;20;45;03
Pri
It feels like it's getting further away from like, what I found to be really compelling about this space, at least from that perspective. That said, the technology has evolved and like, I'm, you know, excited for this new group of people that's able to bring these like, values and, and whatever their beliefs out there and, you know, as much needed overhaul of just general financial institutions.
00;20;45;03 - 00;21;06;00
Pri
And we're having a move away from the expert class. So I'm not surprised, but I hope we're able to still keep some of that, like decentralized ethos and all of that. Like the number go up stuff is obviously really awesome. But like, you know, I hope you think that does like the aspects of why this is interesting. And like the original Bitcoin whitepaper, like doesn't get lost in the the source either.
00;21;06;02 - 00;21;26;12
Chris
Yeah, that's that's a really good point. Like I think about it, this way, there's a big difference in scenes between a group of people who find their way to something and a group of people who are told to do something right, like those are very different types of personalities. They're very different types of people. You know, this happens everywhere.
00;21;26;15 - 00;21;48;22
Chris
It happens all over the place. Things grow up, they start being seen, they become mainstream. And you get that tension between, you know, that change in the garden. There's two different groups of people at the same time, like that's reality. And a lot of their people, a lot of the people who found their way to crypto and loved it, then wanted to make a living doing it.
00;21;48;22 - 00;22;09;13
Chris
And that that creates a whole bunch of interests which, you know, lead to mainstreaming. And so if you believed in crypto early, you wanted to see it become dominant. This this is, you know, the inevitable course you must take. I mean, I suppose we could all wish that we're all indie dreamers and it just happened. But that's not the way the world works.
00;22;09;15 - 00;22;32;09
Pri
Yeah. And if you want and if you want to fulfill the original, like, mission of it, it's kind of this is kind of the original mission of it in some ways. I mean, like having a sovereign behind it so much was not really like what I thought maybe everyone would kind of back that it maybe it becomes decentralized because other sovereigns decide to jump in, but right now it kind of feels like you're only really hearing about the U.S and like Bhutan.
00;22;32;11 - 00;22;34;06
Pri
So it feels like still in that early phase.
00;22;34;06 - 00;22;52;05
Aaron
Yeah, but the game theory around this means everybody's going to have to move pretty quickly. Like Chris, I think I think what you just said there, it's like that amazing what geeks, mobs and sociopaths article just playing out around crypto a little bit. But I do think it's kind of like a pill once you take your worldview is changed.
00;22;52;05 - 00;23;12;22
Aaron
I do think once this gets absorbed into the government, like at the end of the day, and it probably takes still like ten, 20, 30 years, maybe longer for it to happen, but it doesn't become like America by the end. It's America now. Like, this stuff is so foundational. It just changes the whole game for everybody. I understand why it's like a little disconcerting to kind of see mainstream adoption.
00;23;12;29 - 00;23;30;09
Aaron
There's like a natural instinct to, like, not see like the bad new love in the club, like, continue to succeed. But, I think there's a lot of, like, decades of, of growth and an interest in maturation that happens. And the challenge is going to be to make sure that the sociopath, some kind of take over always is.
00;23;30;11 - 00;23;30;16
Chris
Yeah.
00;23;30;16 - 00;23;50;20
Aaron
I mean, we saw that last time with like, you know, SBF, right? I mean, I don't want to I don't know what how people like a psychologist would classify somebody like that. But I think you saw somebody that didn't necessarily have the industry, the industry's best interests in mind and more focused on his own best interests or the best interests of some, like amorphous ideology.
00;23;50;22 - 00;24;13;15
Chris
By the way, I'm going to, like, hop off on a tangent for Zach here. Because you mentioned you know, bands growing up or teens growing up. I always just, listen to the challenger soundtrack or the score to it, right? Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross Holy shit, that's a banger. It's such a good soundtrack. And it made me think back to like, I first came across Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails when I was 15.
00;24;13;17 - 00;24;37;03
Chris
I went to the first Lollapalooza. They were on midday, Blazing Sun Stadium, you know, or outdoor Shed type show. And it's a couple guys in leather pants, like, draped in video tape, like cassette tape, beating the shit out of each other. And you're like, what the hell is this? Like, how are you going so hard at, like 230 in the afternoon, but it was really interesting.
00;24;37;03 - 00;24;59;10
Chris
You know, he could have grown old very disgracefully. You know, he could have been a caricature of himself. Just tried to be like this hard industrial thing forever. But, you know, he reinvented himself doing these scores, doing the soundtrack work. But like, he's making some of the best music of his career in a very relevant way. But part of that was taking a step back.
00;24;59;10 - 00;25;08;06
Chris
And part of that was, you know, changing who he was and adapting to the times. But anyway, I'm only halfway through the The Challenges soundtrack, but absolutely fantastic.
00;25;08;09 - 00;25;10;13
Pri
That was such a good movie, by the way.
00;25;10;15 - 00;25;28;05
Chris
I tried Tanya was watching it. I, I popped in for bits and pieces of it. I just couldn't do the rivalry. Tennis. Couple of schmucks, one upping each other over a girl. But I'm glad you enjoyed it. And maybe I just wasn't in the right headspace for it at the moment, but yeah.
00;25;28;05 - 00;25;45;21
Pri
Fair enough, fair enough. Yeah, it was a little bit of that for sure, but it was just like the relationship between friends, you know, that I found kind of interesting and like, I don't know, the ending was really interesting. I kind of was a thought provoking movie, but, you know, anyways, we don't need to talk about the merits of of challenger, but the score was the score was really, really good.
00;25;45;21 - 00;25;47;09
Pri
I thought to why not?
00;25;47;09 - 00;25;55;08
Chris
Why not turn this through a movie podcast? Maybe I needed to walk into it from the very beginning and you couldn't just pop in passing through a room and pick it up?
00;25;55;10 - 00;26;05;04
Pri
Yeah, totally. By the way, last night I saw I saw like half of Don't Die and I started industry last night. So hats off to you for finally making that happen. Isn't there.
00;26;05;04 - 00;26;05;16
Aaron
Like some.
00;26;05;21 - 00;26;06;22
Pri
On industry, some.
00;26;06;22 - 00;26;11;06
Aaron
Don't die conference or something. But what's going on? What's the story there.
00;26;11;09 - 00;26;29;03
Pri
Yeah, there's like a don't die one day conference in New York in February. I think they're just going to talk about not dying and blueprint and like the whole plan Brian Johnson's coming. And I think there's a bunch of side events like, you know the longevity core. People love that stuff. So it makes sense that that there's an eye relevant for it.
00;26;29;06 - 00;26;34;26
Pri
I kind of want to go again, anthropological little research, but the tickets are kind of expensive.
00;26;34;28 - 00;26;39;06
Chris
Anthropological research not not self-motivated research to not die.
00;26;39;09 - 00;26;43;17
Aaron
That's that's crazy way of saying that she wants to go to the,
00;26;43;19 - 00;26;47;20
Chris
Well, that society now also takes free tickets to, events. People.
00;26;47;22 - 00;26;50;02
Pri
Yeah. Here's what I will write about your event.
00;26;50;08 - 00;26;53;28
Chris
If you don't want tree to die, send her to the show, because it's.
00;26;54;00 - 00;27;10;27
Pri
Yeah, that's actually a good call. Yeah, I guess so. Okay, so just back to the original thing, though, just where administration is changing. I also also like Natalie. I think the price of crypto jumped up quite a bit today. I think just in the lead up I assume is just in the lead up to the inauguration and this idea of potentially a Bitcoin reserve.
00;27;11;02 - 00;27;23;05
Pri
And I know you're dropping a paper in some research. Do you want to give everyone a preview? I know it's going to go live later today, and I'm sure people will see it by Monday when this goes. But I'd be curious if you want to maybe like, walk us through the thoughts around that paper.
00;27;23;05 - 00;27;39;12
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, I've been just going through this thought exercise. I think we talked about this a couple weeks back where I one of the predictions I had, although it wasn't as convicted around it was around the Bitcoin reserve. I just think it's one of these trillion dollar type questions. And so there's a lot of like second and third order effects.
00;27;39;12 - 00;27;56;28
Aaron
I think a lot of the Bitcoiners have done the first order effect, which is just kind of like a Bitcoin bookcase, but I think it's going to have natural spillovers into Iceland. You know, I think once people purchase Bitcoin or have like a bitcoin position and naturally leads to this second question, which is what else is out there?
00;27;57;00 - 00;28;19;25
Aaron
And really like Ethereum is in the best position. I know some folks will go further out in the, on the risk curve and probably think about things like Solana, but from a more traditional, investor allocators perspective, I think they're going to have a hard time purchasing what's in effect, like a large meme coin casino. So I think it's going to disproportionately benefit Ethereum.
00;28;19;25 - 00;28;47;04
Aaron
And I think any benefit to Ethereum naturally flows over into the NFT market. I went through this hard exercise and just try to develop like, like a rough relationship based on historical, information just about Bitcoin and eath and this broad argument. And if you kind of play it all out, I think you're going to see a halo effect to the Ethereum ecosystem from Bitcoin being reserve asset and then naturally to the NFT ecosystem.
00;28;47;09 - 00;29;08;17
Aaron
And the alpha predator of the NFT ecosystem is the crypto punk. And I know it's outlandish, and I'm not saying that I necessarily 100% agree that this is going to happen, but I think you could easily see, you know, 5 to $10 million cryptopunks, you know, by the end of the decade. And it's, again, not investment advice. But I think it could it could happen.
00;29;08;19 - 00;29;13;08
Aaron
And I don't think I would have thought that a year ago, which is kind of wild. So hodl your punks.
00;29;13;11 - 00;29;20;19
Pri
Yeah. Punks are considered the the digital asset to have in the ether ecosystem.
00;29;20;21 - 00;29;39;25
Aaron
There's so much stuff that's fascinating about punks. One is there's only 10,000 to is there's going to be lots and lots of tokens, right? Whether it's AI tokens, crypto tokens, there's going to be trains and trains of tokens. And we saw this with DNS. Just the more tokens you have, you know, the the most cherished, the more domains we had, the most recognizable domains became the most valuable.
00;29;39;25 - 00;29;57;15
Aaron
And I think it's kind of similar with NFTs and tokens. The more the more tokens you have. The ones that are most recognizable and more recognizable begin to stand out. And I think that's going to happen around cryptopunks. And number two, just the Hodl ratio around Cryptopunks is beautiful. The only other asset that really has that Hodl ratio is Bitcoin.
00;29;57;16 - 00;30;02;28
Aaron
They're both roughly at like a 70% Hodl ratio. Just makes punks look really strong Aaron.
00;30;03;01 - 00;30;28;22
Chris
There are there's probably been a billion Bibles printed I don't know a handful of Gutenberg Bibles. We will have trillions and trillions of tokens issued. There's only be 10,000 punks and so on. A long enough timeline, I can see this. I need you to fine tune the material conditions in which this happens. You know, let's just say over the length of this podcast, let's assume we were on this podcast seven years.
00;30;28;22 - 00;30;50;14
Aaron
I mean, I think what would happen is you see Bitcoin become more and more of a cherished asset. The tricky thing about Bitcoin becoming a reserve asset is how do you, if you are sovereign, acquire the Bitcoin. If it was gold, you could do a whole bunch of different things. You could enter into private transactions, you know, open up a mine and you kind of have to report it like on a quarterly basis, like a little footnote here and there.
00;30;50;17 - 00;31;18;26
Aaron
It's really, really hard to accumulate a big position on any blockchain, and with any digital asset and not kind of have the swarm of, blockchain analytic sentinels, like, begin to spot it as you're kind of forced to kind of move fast and aggressively if you want to win that game. And then that should trigger trigger like a cascade effect, where other people that may be on the sidelines are going to hop in so that you can prevent from running, or else you're just going to pay, like really, really impaired prices.
00;31;18;26 - 00;31;39;05
Aaron
So I think some of this stuff can happen really quickly. We've seen this just historically that like the as the price of Bitcoin moves up, so do other correlated digital assets. And Ethereum is highly correlated to Bitcoin. And you know Bitcoin runs really tend to kind of push push up Ethereum and other assets as people move out on the risk curve.
00;31;39;08 - 00;31;58;26
Aaron
And it tends to flow from Bitcoin to Ethereum to other higher risk assets. So I think the same thing happens here. So let's say that there is like 500,000 Bitcoin. It becomes not unreasonable to start seeing, you know, 10 to $25,000 for ether, especially if it kind of holds roughly with the historical ratios in which they've they've kind of traded.
00;31;59;00 - 00;32;17;13
Aaron
And then at that point, you know, a lot of folks are going to feel pretty flush. And that tends to kind of kick off like, an NFT cycle. And it has not just like one time ago, many folks entered the space in 2020 or 20 21 or 2022. But this the same thing happened in the ICO token boom era.
00;32;17;15 - 00;32;36;01
Aaron
And even like some of that early, really, really early, like, NFT stuff that was in and around the coin and counterparty. That was at the end of another cycle. So there's like a bit of a pattern that that could emerge. So if you assume that that's going to hold again, that's an assumption, you're going to start to see punks get reprice to.
00;32;36;03 - 00;32;40;29
Aaron
And so the circle of crypto continues. Do that in some more context Chris.
00;32;41;02 - 00;33;05;29
Chris
It did. Thank you for that. Really helpful. And so a bit of a wild card in all this. I'm a little sus on a Bitcoin reserve and I just go to the actual cost of accumulating this, you know, the challenges of doing it in an open market like you're describing and just looking at the current administration or the incoming administration, I guess it'll be current by the time this episode drops.
00;33;05;29 - 00;33;32;11
Chris
And just thinking about upsetting norms, you know, not really caring about that and, you know, motivated self-interest, I could actually see something like a ripple, a Tron, you know, just some absolute wild card of a coin actually forming the bulk of whatever this strategic reserve is in an act of king making. Oh, wow. That solves a lot of the how do we get more bitcoin problem.
00;33;32;13 - 00;33;51;24
Aaron
Interesting. I mean, it is it is taking a step up. And if you're somebody that endlessly scrolls crypto Twitter, there is like a bit of irony that one of the best performing assets was XRP over the past year. I don't think I saw any crypto kalo make known to that, but that is that would be a wild, wild card, Chris.
00;33;51;24 - 00;34;05;13
Aaron
That ripple and and Chris and the rest of the team, they're they're the winners here. I thought I thought I saw Trump yesterday like, lambast ripple for donating to his competitor's administration or campaign.
00;34;05;13 - 00;34;08;24
Chris
Well, maybe it's not ripple that maybe become something else.
00;34;08;26 - 00;34;09;22
Aaron
Would you say like for.
00;34;09;24 - 00;34;10;10
Pri
Cosmo.
00;34;10;10 - 00;34;16;17
Aaron
Something with a low environmental footprint that could scale globally across the planet? Maybe.
00;34;16;19 - 00;34;34;22
Chris
You know, I'd actually say something, that requires burning a lot of gas, for mining that you could perform in America. Let's go. Probably has a better profile than some heavy duty Canadian shit that, you know, believes in unicorns and, permissionless transact.
00;34;35;00 - 00;34;54;29
Aaron
I think it's all that. Right? Because you're going to want. I think you're probably right. Like it could be a basket, but, I think that they all kind of have their role, and I think that's what's interesting and exciting about, all this stuff. But to me, it's more of those like second, third order effects, which people should really begin to start thinking through like, am I fully convinced, Chris, that it's going to happen?
00;34;54;29 - 00;35;06;27
Aaron
Like, I'm not, but it's more likely that it's going to happen every day that goes by, if you ask me, by 2030, is it going to happen? Like, yes. Is it gonna happen in 2025? Like, I can't I don't know the answer to that.
00;35;06;29 - 00;35;17;15
Pri
Yeah, I agree with that. I'd second that. I think it is inevitable. Like that was always going to be like something that happened. It's just more of the timing. I do wonder how like the general public would receive it, or if they even really would care.
00;35;17;15 - 00;35;44;19
Aaron
But I think it's good because I think America is in the position to move faster than its foreign sovereign counterparts such that it actually, I hear you, Chris, like it. It would rock the boat. But I think like an aggressive move here does a couple things. One is it continues to unseat the power of finance from New York and Wall Street to the West Coast, which I do think is something that's an objective here too, is I think it it does impact Brexit.
00;35;44;21 - 00;36;06;05
Aaron
Countries that tend to have like very large gold reserves. It just begins to devalue it. And I think three, it does kind of enhance financial efficiency, which is one of the big quivers of why the US economy is so powerful. Right? We just have such a great economy and great markets and and efficient markets, two fairly efficient markets.
00;36;06;08 - 00;36;08;04
Aaron
I do think it serves a lot of objectives.
00;36;08;09 - 00;36;35;03
Pri
Yeah, I know you're right. And I was actually thinking of another objective, as you were saying, is what if this is all like a just a almost like a psyop to normalize the general public in order to introduce stablecoins as, like the biggest unlock for the use case for like just people to leverage crypto. Like there might be a few will buy bitcoin, but I feel like everyone at some point will have to get comfortable with crypto because of stablecoins.
00;36;35;06 - 00;37;02;28
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, if you take more of a macro view, right, like if we had widespread programable money, which is the core proposition of the space, like you're talking about a pretty significant bump to a country's GDP growth. And it just kind of just starting there. Right? You just gained a ton of efficiency, and you kind of force a lot of other systems to begin to upgrade and modernize, which leads to more efficiency.
00;37;02;28 - 00;37;18;16
Aaron
Right? So I think you see like significant macro GDP growth, just by making this move. So kind of, you know, putting aside like the salable posting parts of it, like, it kind of pays for itself in the long run.
00;37;18;18 - 00;37;23;14
Chris
I'm going to come at this from a different angle, which is shirk our debt obligations.
00;37;23;17 - 00;37;24;29
Aaron
Yeah, I think.
00;37;24;29 - 00;37;26;05
Pri
That's what that's the second.
00;37;26;05 - 00;37;34;08
Aaron
That's a similar argument. Yeah. I mean that's it's a fair one. But I don't know. That's like feels a little bit too cute for like a better way to describe it.
00;37;34;13 - 00;37;53;18
Pri
I don't even know if I think it's too I mean I think it could actually work. Maybe the I, you know, it's a little bit naive, but, you have a lot of people on the Hill and others like formal former like, you know, Paul Ryan, others I feel like I listen to like a full podcast on like, I don't know, maybe it was actually barnacles or something with him talking about how this could actually get us out of the debt obligation.
00;37;53;19 - 00;38;03;28
Pri
I actually do think that that narrative is circling in those as like, an offshoot of why stablecoins would be helpful to have or even having a Bitcoin reserve credit.
00;38;03;28 - 00;38;22;24
Aaron
You really think that we do that to it's like a debt jubilee. Like which I think many. Yeah yeah yeah, yeah. I mean maybe that's the benefit. I mean that Jubilees have happened in the America's history, right. Like right at the beginning, world history kind of happened in the Jacksonian era, which I guess is maybe an analogy here or some rough analogy.
00;38;22;24 - 00;38;27;18
Aaron
So maybe Bitcoin Reserve is the next permutation of it.
00;38;27;20 - 00;38;53;23
Chris
I haven't looked at this hard enough to understand the mechanics of it. Conceptually, though, switching your money rails over, you know, a multi-decade sort of transition period is a clever way, and it's it's far less, I don't know, impactful perhaps, than some other, you know, devaluing your currency or, you know, a lot of this, like inflating away the debt by issuing more money.
00;38;53;24 - 00;39;19;27
Chris
Those impact people very, very harshly, you know, on a pocketbook level. And, you know, perhaps that, this is a different way of going about it is just saying, look, we're we're slowly upgrading money and all these bonds that exist out there, they're locked in contract law. The contract law can't be touched per the US Constitution, but we're just going to make it all kind of irrelevant and we'll keep paying off that.
00;39;19;27 - 00;39;23;12
Chris
But all the real action is going to happen on this new set of money rails.
00;39;23;14 - 00;39;28;11
Aaron
Yeah. And spread across two projects, right, that have their roots in the US and Europe.
00;39;28;14 - 00;39;31;15
Chris
Could be could be what else we got on the docket today.
00;39;31;21 - 00;39;34;05
Aaron
What's going on in the NFT land? I don't.
00;39;34;05 - 00;39;56;13
Chris
Know anything. Half an NFT land, but a little quiet. I, we saw a bunch of, you know, fun, promising releases in December. I don't feel like anything's really come to market. And so I guess that pushes us into the land of instruments and, you know, NFT blue chip, I don't know, you know, hodling accumulation dealing and all that fun stuff.
00;39;56;13 - 00;40;08;11
Chris
I do know that, you know, there's been some some trophy pieces on the move. We saw a lost Robbie change hands. We've seen some zombie stuff go around. I don't know, you guys. Tell me what's happening out there.
00;40;08;17 - 00;40;31;02
Pri
It does feel like there is stuff that is happening. I feel like you were mentioning that the marketplace news and like all the private sales, the happenings, I would kind of what you're leading to and I assume also I feel like we're seeing a little bit more of lending to right now, but it does feel like on the timeline, people are pretty focused on some of these, like more blue chip private sales, which is, you know, makes sense that that would eventually happen.
00;40;31;09 - 00;40;45;19
Pri
There's also like the rumors of the new the Cryptopunks sale, which I think I don't even know where that came from. But like, no one knew everything. That one truly felt like someone just made it up. But I also wouldn't be surprised if maybe there is like a joke people have made bids to you got to buy cryptopunks.
00;40;45;22 - 00;40;56;12
Pri
But it definitely feels like this feeling of optimizing the current market and getting what maybe you haven't been able to previously get right now.
00;40;56;14 - 00;41;19;14
Chris
It's funny, sometimes CT does just act like a high school. And you know that punk's rumor. Sometimes I high school gossip. All right, well, sometimes it's painfully obvious that we're still all just in high school chatting around a lunchroom. And the way that punk's rumor spread definitely had had those, trajectory all over it. It did, but it.
00;41;19;14 - 00;41;31;27
Aaron
Did raise a good question, though. What would the Cryptopunks IP be worth like? I feel like some of the prices that were being rumored about just felt really low. Like that'd be one of the steals of the century in my mind.
00;41;32;05 - 00;41;50;17
Pri
Well, this is what I was confused about. Was it like the punk's IP someone is buying and like you would still hold the underlying like punks asset like the collection? Or is someone buying the IP with the punks like I that that's the piece where, like in this whole rumor, it got a little bit lost to me as far as, like what was actually being bought and sold.
00;41;50;20 - 00;42;13;09
Chris
If I were the buyer and I feel okay, like extrapolating out here because we were all once a buyer of this ballpark quantity of punks, back in Jan 21, you know, I think Flamingo picked up a couple hundred and then, you know, we did a second sale, a second acquisition of, like, private capital. Ended up getting distributed to members.
00;42;13;09 - 00;42;33;06
Chris
So we bought, like 350 plus punks in a very short period of time. I view it this way. I think Yuga has like, 420 ish punks on their books. Floor, vault. Just assume they're all flaws for the sake of, you know, expedience. I think it came out to about 53 million when I ran the math on on it.
00;42;33;09 - 00;42;59;20
Chris
I would say for a bulk deal of that, that size, you probably want a 20% discount. So let's just say you're getting it. You're offering 40 million bucks and you go would only really consider this, you know, if they were prioritizing cash on the balance sheet to, you know, achieve their corporate goals. But if I were in that situation, if I were that buyer, if I had $40 million plus, you know, to to swap into punks, I'd want the IP for free.
00;42;59;20 - 00;43;19;24
Chris
As a kicker, I actually don't really. I subscribe to the narrative that the IP in and of itself doesn't have a ton of inherent value attempts to monetize it have fared poorly. Do you remember when John, in that sign with CAA and everyone was like, oh, we'll have punk cartoons and cereal boxes, you know?
00;43;19;24 - 00;43;37;05
Aaron
Yeah, but I do think it gives you one thing, though, Chris, which is it gives you like, pulpit to talk to the crypto punks community and to kind of get distribution of that, which I do think has some value. So I don't know if you can directly monetize it, but I do think that there is value to it.
00;43;37;08 - 00;43;49;21
Pri
It's kind of a funny like game theory thing too, where it's like you monetize it, everyone would hate you. So you're kind of just like sitting there and being like, yeah, you guys can use my IP, or you're just a purveyor of that, like, oh, you guys want to have a bunch of cool?
00;43;49;23 - 00;44;09;14
Aaron
I don't actually know if that's true. I think if you put it into like a foundation or some kind of not for profit structure or even like a not for profit down, and it was more community run, I think that you wouldn't be hated for it. I think that that's actually what most punk holders probably want. They want to just know it's going to be in safe, long term hands.
00;44;09;14 - 00;44;24;13
Aaron
And I think if you can do that with like race, humility and ethics, then and I'm not suggesting that the current owner in any way doesn't, doesn't have that. But I think if you just did that, I think that that would work really well and kind of carry out the spirit of that community, or at least to help steward it.
00;44;24;19 - 00;44;33;11
Chris
A worst case scenario, you're just recreating downs with something people actually care about. Yeah, I don't, and so that that's the danger of it.
00;44;33;13 - 00;44;49;01
Aaron
Yeah, I think yeah. I don't think you I think the foundation just it's more like, like a, it's not doing anything. It's really just sitting there and being a place to go for crypto. Cryptopunks folks like you can archive things.
00;44;49;03 - 00;45;14;24
Chris
Going back to your king maker analogy, right. Like a king's job traditionally is two things to dispense justice and make war. Punks obviously aren't going to war with anyone. And so yes, like I guess holding the IP would you would to put you in a position of like being the warden in the north or like, you know, the, the arbiter of justice when someone can't sort out whatever beefs they have in punk land in their group chats, or.
00;45;14;24 - 00;45;38;06
Aaron
Even more measured, just like, hey, like you keep a record of all the, use cases of punks, right? For archival purposes, you answer questions about about punks. If it gets picked up by a collector or by a museum or some other institution, you know, with, people, like, pull together punks just to, like, kind of celebrate them.
00;45;38;11 - 00;45;52;26
Aaron
You do some, like, really basic community building type efforts. I think all that stuff is value additive and not value extractive and kind of keeps you just kind of pushing and pushing, this amazing community along.
00;45;52;28 - 00;45;57;20
Chris
Yeah. No, the library of punks, I guess that's, a more hopeful and optimistic.
00;45;57;20 - 00;45;58;26
Aaron
Yeah. And their casting.
00;45;58;26 - 00;46;00;02
Chris
Of whoever would hold that.
00;46;00;02 - 00;46;00;27
Aaron
Idea, my.
00;46;01;00 - 00;46;01;23
Pri
The punk ball.
00;46;01;27 - 00;46;03;11
Aaron
The vision of. That's what I was.
00;46;03;13 - 00;46;07;17
Pri
And that's what I would give, my IP permission to. That's what a punk body is.
00;46;07;17 - 00;46;10;05
Aaron
Super fun. Yeah, that's a ball I'd want to go to.
00;46;10;07 - 00;46;12;00
Pri
At, like, people studios or something.
00;46;12;00 - 00;46;20;16
Aaron
Yes, please. So we have America now. We've got, the punk ball. We're we're we're painting the vision of the future.
00;46;20;18 - 00;46;21;05
Pri
I'm here for.
00;46;21;05 - 00;46;23;08
Chris
It. Let's go, gang.
00;46;23;10 - 00;46;35;20
Pri
Let's go. I guess on that note, do we want to wrap in wrap up on anything? I'm, like, thinking right now, so, like, there's, like, a lot that happened this week. I'm looking at my original little list.
00;46;35;23 - 00;46;37;25
Chris
Yeah. For you got any other boxes to check?
00;46;37;25 - 00;46;39;22
Pri
I'm wondering. I'm wondering.
00;46;39;25 - 00;47;01;28
Chris
Well, while you're pondering that second screen productivity, I think we mentioned, you know, we started out with, the changing future work, but I do think that's going to become a trend piece out in mainstream media later on this year when it starts to catch on that, you know, a lot of people got their laptops up. Are Gen I being away while watching Netflix?
00;47;01;28 - 00;47;25;02
Chris
I'll turn the football game on. I do all my, you know, all my, you know, music and songwriting while watching sports. But people, you know, like Aaron who actually like to program and code and and create things, you know, actually make more productive stuff while chillin on the couch. I think that's going to become the next thing you know, the media likes to write about.
00;47;25;04 - 00;47;27;29
Chris
In terms of like changing how we work and how we produce.
00;47;28;02 - 00;47;45;12
Pri
Yeah. I think actually that is a good point. Did we talk about this on the prior call? But you're right, it is. I find my my like my after, you know, obviously we work in person. But like when I'm like working I'm in between watching like not a super high fidelity show where I have 100% of my attention.
00;47;45;14 - 00;48;10;01
Pri
I'll kind of just like bleed into something in the background. And I'm like, well, my it's funny because I, it's almost I have like triple screen where it's like the TV, my actual work, like my split screen into work. And then the other half is like my ChatGPT plug in box, and I'm kind of like toggling between those two and then like looking at the TV, it's actually kind of dark, but it does feel like that is sort of future of work.
00;48;10;01 - 00;48;20;18
Pri
A little bit like would thing with something like cursor like you do need 100% productivity or sorry, not productivity, sorry concentration. Or can you just do it without.
00;48;20;21 - 00;48;21;02
Chris
It really.
00;48;21;02 - 00;48;37;01
Aaron
Depends. Like I, I actually run it a lot in the background because there's a certain things that you can just you're like a conductor, right? So if you've got some like more routine tasks that you want to like clean up, like just going back to your box, like maybe you wanted to just tighten up some language, like over flowery language.
00;48;37;03 - 00;48;58;07
Aaron
You could probably like bang some of that stuff out. Then you'll read it in a more concentrated, heavy editing type way, you know, some other point in the day. So I think it's kind of you're going to have mixed use cases. I do think, though, the one thing just because you mentioned, you know, Chris, that I wanted to touch on, I did note that some of the pseudo songs have crossed a couple million streams.
00;48;58;07 - 00;49;16;00
Aaron
It's like the they keep on edging up a little bit. So it's starting to raise the question to me, like, what's the first? I generated music that has like 100 million streams because I think it's not that far off it probably the back half of this year, we'll probably see that, which is kind of wild.
00;49;16;02 - 00;49;49;29
Chris
I can see it. I think it happens by like creating a genre in and of itself, you know, like I music acquiring a bit of a more distinct sound. You get that sub community scenes, you get a couple sort of niche breakouts from there, and then it does you get that huge, massive crossover and maybe that crossover actually ends up coming out of, a soundtrack, something with a much bigger, you know, distribution platform actually use uses soon or uses AI music to do its own soundtrack and score.
00;49;49;29 - 00;49;58;13
Chris
And one of the songs they write there is used in a pivotal scene. It crosses over and that's a road to acceptability. Who knows?
00;49;58;13 - 00;50;24;25
Aaron
Yeah, I think it to me it's like, who knows? I just I'm just looking at some of those numbers. Sure, there's some bots that accelerated that, but if if you do see like one of those works, break. I don't know how many streams I feel like you got like a net new category and maybe it's a new shape like you're describing or I don't know, but it starts to become more notable, like, I'd imagine if I was a creator on Spotify and I got, you know, 100 million streams, I'd be like, damn right.
00;50;24;28 - 00;50;41;03
Aaron
Like, I got something here, which is kind of what I feel like happened with influencers, right? Like some of them saw that, like early success, most people didn't pay attention to it. It kept on growing at like a pretty healthy clip. And now I have to see Mr. Beast Face when I open up Amazon Prime Video or whatever.
00;50;41;06 - 00;50;42;27
Aaron
Not what I expected a couple years ago.
00;50;43;00 - 00;51;01;04
Pri
That is true, although I don't think that did particularly well. But I was actually just thinking about it. I wonder if they'll be like more media I see, like podcasts or TV shows that are like catering to the second screen phenomena. Like you could literally have a TV showing like, yeah, this is perfect for a second screening. I mean, you kind of have them with like ambient TV.
00;51;01;04 - 00;51;19;05
Pri
And we've talked about this, I think before where like Netflix and others are like dumbing down storylines. If people could follow or multitasking. But you could like, imagine a full production studio, just like fully testing that while people are working or doing something else to see if it hits, because that's how people want to enjoy media. Now.
00;51;19;07 - 00;51;25;24
Chris
I'll tell you, it's already here. It's called America's Pastime baseball, which is actually perfect.
00;51;25;27 - 00;51;29;02
Pri
Yeah, but baseball catches a big.
00;51;29;05 - 00;51;43;03
Chris
But no, I hear you. I hear your point. I mean, Emily in Paris was probably the lightest show that ever did huge numbers, and it almost feels like that was built for people who were only paying attention 20% of the time.
00;51;43;05 - 00;52;15;10
Pri
Yeah, basically. And it was also so ridiculous that, like the me, that's the other thing. It's like TV shows have to be so ridiculous and absurd and like, the imagery has to be so memorable that it becomes viral. So the more people watch it, like the, the era of TV catering for stills or quick video, you know, type of ten second videos that it can be reshared and specific context is it's kind of where I feel like a lot of these shows aimed to go, as opposed to catering to the story or, or the esthetic.
00;52;15;12 - 00;52;25;03
Chris
I mean, counterpoint. I did just slog through 5.5 hours of American Primeval this week, and there is nothing catering about that show. That is just.
00;52;25;03 - 00;52;25;21
Aaron
What is that.
00;52;25;27 - 00;52;28;10
Chris
Brutality stacked on brutality? Yeah.
00;52;28;12 - 00;52;29;01
Pri
I'm watching.
00;52;29;01 - 00;52;30;21
Aaron
What is this? What is the show.
00;52;30;23 - 00;53;02;00
Chris
American Primeval? It's on Netflix. It's a six episode thing. It's basically a story about like the settling of the American West, but specifically captures this moment in time in Utah, where, Mormon settlers were more or less going to war with the U.S government and wagon trains, heading out west, get caught in the crossfire as well as, you know, the the tensions between, Native American tribes and the white man.
00;53;02;06 - 00;53;08;23
Chris
And, you know, then there were a whole jockeying between each other. It's it's really a five person, a five group war.
00;53;08;24 - 00;53;16;27
Aaron
It's the capstone for the, Oregon Trail generation. It all goes back to that. This this is the, our cultural artifact that we're creating.
00;53;16;29 - 00;53;22;15
Chris
Well, if this is it, they're not sugarcoating it, and, it's got a real edge on it.
00;53;22;17 - 00;53;23;18
Aaron
There we go.
00;53;23;20 - 00;53;32;03
Pri
I love it. Well, on that note, I can't wait to crush a lot of television this weekend. Thanks for all the wrecks suck.
00;53;32;09 - 00;53;43;05
Aaron
What's. It's good to see media back a little bit. I honestly felt like a year ago, I probably wouldn't have even wanted to watch anything. I feel like there was a bit of a lull. Cultures coming back. Crypto is coming back.
00;53;43;10 - 00;53;45;25
Chris
But yeah, the writers strike arrow in the head to be a bit of a gap.
00;53;45;25 - 00;53;55;10
Aaron
Yeah, yeah, completely. Yeah, completely. But it's good to kind of see solid media come back. It's going to be exciting, I think, to see, NFTs come back. I'm here for it.
00;53;55;13 - 00;54;00;07
Chris
You're already back. They never left. But a few a few exciting new drops would be appreciated.
00;54;00;07 - 00;54;02;28
Aaron
Yeah. Let's. Well, that well, that into existence.
00;54;03;00 - 00;54;35;10
Pri
Click that on the Just Hollywood thing. And obviously the fires in L.A. are like just insane. And from what I hear, it's worse than even people are portraying. Just devastating and horrible. And hopefully we can get figure it out. But what's been I was listening to something this morning just about like Hollywood. And it's kind of there's this whole notion of like rebuilding Hollywood, like a lot of these people who are kind of ready to leave Hollywood, or they're on the edge of know maybe they couldn't make it or not is interested or they, they don't really, like, know if they want to be part of it.
00;54;35;11 - 00;54;55;02
Pri
There's like this exodus of a lot of like, people have been in Hollywood for a long time, or people who are kind of ready to go anyway, like leave. And so I think there's going to be like a different quote, different Hollywood. This is what this like podcast I was listening to was saying. And there's already like all these like headwinds to Hollywood in general, some of them being tech with AI.
00;54;55;02 - 00;55;20;22
Pri
But a lot of it is just like streaming and film finance and all of that. And so you add this like fire. It didn't even really occur to me until I like, listen to that. I was like, wow, this is like kind of another setback for Hollywood. You know, I wonder what happens to that entire industry. I know, like there's some like Karen Bass and others are trying to do these, like tax credits to get people to come back and film there and, and want to do more there.
00;55;20;22 - 00;55;28;21
Pri
But it's maybe that's something to talk about. But I do feel like Hollywood is it was already undergoing a transformation, and now it feels like it might even be accelerating.
00;55;28;28 - 00;55;32;15
Chris
Maybe there there is some motivation to reinvent there.
00;55;32;17 - 00;55;36;07
Pri
Yeah, well, that's all for this week. Talk soon.
00;55;36;09 - 00;55;44;02
Chris
I hope. All right.
00;55;44;04 - 00;55;55;12
Chris
You.