In this episode, we discuss cannabis vendors opening up shops in virtual worlds like Cryptovoxels and Decentraland, FTX launching a new gaming unit and hiring Lauren Remington Platt as its head of global luxury partnerships, the Artemis Space Network and Business Apes joining forces to release SpaceBAPES NFTs minted in space, and so much more!

Episode 14 Keywords: cannabis, cannabis vendors, metaverse, Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, FTX gaming unit, Lauren Remington Platt, luxury partnerships, Artemis Space Network, Business Apes, SpaceBAPES, NFTs, space

Welcome to the metaphysics podcast. The Metaverse and web three are bringing about the

biggest revolution since the internet itself. With your hosts Paul the prophet Dawalibi And Jeff the

juice Cohen. We will be bringing you the latest Metaverse, business news and insight into what it

all means. The meta business podcast starts now.

From the boardroom to the metaverse. This is the meta business podcast. I am

Paul Dawalibi. I'm joined today by my friend and co host, Jeff the juice Cohen. For those of you

who are new here, welcome to the official podcast of the metaverse. What we do is we cover all the

biggest Metaverse, topics and news of the week, but we look at all of it through a business and C

suite lens, we dissect, we analyze the business implications of everything happening in this very

exciting space. Jeff, how are you doing this week?

I'm doing great. It's a nother week here. I you told me earlier in the week, we

crossed over 1000 weekly listeners, which is pretty, pretty awesome. You know,

this is only episode 14.

I think that's better growth. Maybe then business of esports, which has been a massive

success.

Way better growth. Are you kidding me? Way better way faster.

Now. I'm just trying to be modest there. You know, we were standing on the shoulders

of giants here. Oh. That's not That's not who I am Paul, you know, I'm always, you know, magnanimous,

humble and magnanimous. But no, seriously, it's I was pretty psyched to hear that number. When you

told me. You know, I had a feeling we were growing pretty well, the rich people reaching out and kind

of like just the feedback we've gotten. But it's cool to see the data and we'll we'll keep it

going. That's what we do this

for. I agree. And and just a reminder for people like, go leave a review on the

podcast. If you enjoyed guys, send us feedback. Make sure you hit the subscribe button like in

your podcast app. So whether it's on Spotify, or Google Play, or Apple podcasts, or wherever you

get it just, you know, any kind of love any kind of sharing. We really appreciate it. The growth is

thanks to you guys. And so thank you. Let's start Jeff with a fun story. I think this is kind of

our, our, you know how we do things here we start with something a bit more lighthearted. Maybe it's

not so light hearted, but it's a fun story. The headline here, I bought weed in the metaverse the

sub headline, it felt a lot like a strip mall. So the author here, the journalist goes through this

sort of process where you know, they talk about retailers from big box stores to luxury brands

that are opening in the metaverse. You know, you have Walmart, you have McDonald's, you have Gucci,

but drugs are also a part of this equation. And also, Forbes has reported that there are cannabis

vendors like higher life CBD candy girl that have opened up shops in some of these meta verses or

online worlds. They name specifically crypto voxels and decentraland. decentraland. Obviously a

world we've talked about many times on this podcast, and Candy Girl claims to be the first

cannabis dispensary in the metaverse it's owned by a Florida based entrepreneur, they purchased a

virtual plot for about $13,000. And advertised in this virtual room are gummies infused with THC. So

basically, you could go into there's a for those of you who are watching this, unfortunately, if

you're listening, you can't see this. But there's an image here of the shop within decentraland

where you can buy and get a free sample of gummies laced with THC, essentially cannabis. I'm curious

what you think of this. Obviously, there's some straddling here of real world and virtual world,

right? Because you have to check out and you receive these in the real world, right? But you

can't, you know, you don't get these in the virtual world. But any thoughts on this

application of Metaverse to maybe buying drugs but more gray market? I know it's legal in many, many

states now and things like that, but like, what do you think of this application?

I mean, this is it hits on a lot of things, you know that I think we've talked about

in the past? I've never I'm definitely a lot more bullish on kind of E commerce in the metaverse

that's direct to avatar as in selling virtual goods that people will consume and only care about

in the metaverse does. I think long term. That's where the game is here. Because I just don't see

you know, while it's unique branding, and it's interesting right now when the metaverse is very

fresh, I just don't see that the user experience of doing this is better than just buying something

on Amazon or are in typical ecommerce like I'm not convinced that you need to you that ecommerce

needs to be immersive, unless there's something cool to it. Like this is something that that

worries me a little bit about the early days. The Metaverse, I'm curious your opinion. We've talked

about this a little bit in other podcast, but like, does it just feel like all of this is just

like a digital shopping mall? Like, I hate that we've turned brands have turned the metaverse into

this almost like, dystopian like worse version of a shopping mall where it's like, I'm not sure

like, this is the this is the metaverse, right? This is VR. This is a digital world like we could

be flying around on a dragon holding a flaming sword. And yet we're sitting here buying like

digital weed like I'm just not sure like, why we should be getting excited about this.

To be clear, the weed is real, like you actually get received the gummies in the real

world, right? Like you check out in the metaverse, but you received them in the real world. Your

points a good one, right? Because I think there's no, there's no doubt in my mind that, you know,

direct avatar commerce will have a place right? You're buying something for your digital self,

whether it's a cosmetic or something functional. That will have a place there's no substitute for

that it has to exist in the metaverse for the most part, right. Like it makes most sense there. Were

I think you make a strong point, Jeff is like why do we need just virtual versions of malls,

especially when we're talking about physical products that still need to be shipped to your

home? I think, you know, in the absence of normal e commerce or online commerce, you could make the

case for it, especially for something like weed right? Where you don't necessarily want to go or

maybe you know you're shy about it or you know, don't want your boss to see you or bump into you

at the dispensary. And so like a virtual storefront, provide some level of anonymity or

some level of, you know, cover to do more gray market kind of things. Like I could make that

argue. But fundamentally, to your point that's no different than

the worldwide web like.

Which is a lot easier. And so the only case really I could make an counter argument

I could make would be I think that I think e commerce for a long time has strived to be more

social because the recognition is that shopping can be a social activity, and can spur more

spending, if it's a social activity, right? Like if you go when you used to go to the mall with

your friends, there was a higher chance of buying something if your friends are buying something,

right? There's there's sort of like implicit peer pressure. And there's all these sort of

psychological forces that when shopping is made a social experience. And maybe the metaverse brings

some of that back that E commerce can't really do, right, like E commerce, I can go on Amazon and it

could say, Hey, my friend, really, like nine out of 10 of people on my social network bought this

hat, right? And and it could like they introduce these social kind of components that way, but it's

not the same, right? Whereas in a Metaverse, you could go and participate in the social shopping

with other people. And that

could go as far as you know, there's probably some unique things you could do with

gamifying. The experience I mean, I'm, I'm a big fan of I think, you know, eventually everything

will be gamified. We're already seen that with like stock trading banking, like many aspects of

the economy that were once sort of have been consumerized. Like even b2b software, like your HR

platform. Now, it's like having you play like a little mini quest to like, take the tests.

Everything has been been gamified in this in this world of consumer technology. So I could see that

maybe there's some element of hey, complete this quest, like go into this other store, buy this and

then get that in this store for cheaper. Like maybe there's some unique aspects of that. But

right now, we're not there, right, right now it's just very cut and dry. Like come into this digital

world and buy something. It's not that exciting to me, but I guess you gotta crawl before you can

walk before you can run. So I guess I can.

Yeah, and I think you need like any spit like Metaverse is fundamentally our

evolutions of social networks. You you need a certain critical mass until the the you know, the

utility is obvious. And if you're the only person in that store, because you know, there's just not

enough people online in this metaverse. You're right, a lot of the utility goes away. It's not

nearly as obvious. So I think I think social

shopping, so or sorry, if you didn't finish your I just think

social shopping is the counter argument there. And that is in some ways for a

long time. has been the holy grail for e Commerce on the web two.

Yeah, no, that's good. But what I was gonna say is it's interesting that the brands, the

brands are early here, right? Like usually I find the brands follow the customers here. It really

kind of feels like there are more big name brands investing in the metaverse than there are actual,

like everyday customers or people just going and hanging out in these Metaverse is like I don't

know off the top of my head the exact stats for decentraland that sandbox but like it's single

digit million at best in terms of daily active users maybe even lower correct me if I'm if you if

you know otherwise. So like, We're seeing massive mega brands, investing creating storefronts for

really a minuscule, minuscule addressable market at this moment. It it's definitely rare. Like I

feel like with the the World Wide Web, I keep calling it the World Wide Web for something I have

no idea why. The internet, it felt like there was a mass of people on it. And then the brands came

being like, hey, there's a lot of people there. We need to be there. Yeah, it feels opposite, where

maybe people have learned the lessons of that. But that's the brands are so early, which is just wild

to me.

I just think they all learn their lesson, right? Like it, it doesn't. It takes a few

sort of knocks where you're, you're late to YouTube or you're late to Tik Tok, or you're late

to Instagram or you're a little bit late to this next, the next big platform, and you realize your

competitor has eaten your lunch there for brands to sort of get smart and savvy and realize

anything new they need to be on. Right? There's this like sense of FOMO you don't know where new

platforms are going. You need to have a presence no matter what. And I think my conclusion here is

it's brands have learned the hard way that being late even slightly late to a new platform, a new

movement and a new trend in technology can cost big dollars in the long run, right. But any the

lighter you are the more expensive it is to crack that nut later on. Absolutely. Let's talk about a

company that is definitely leading the way here, because I think there's two stories this week

about them that are interesting, and I think shows real leadership when it comes to the metaverse

when it comes to crypto when it comes to gaming and all these things intersecting. And so the two

stories here, Jeff the first the headline is crypto exchange FTX is launching a gaming unit to

drive token adoption. It says the exchange aims to be a crypto as a service platform for game

publishers. They're launching a new team focused on driving cryptocurrency and NFT adoption in the

gaming world. It'll raise the focus the offering will be a crypto as a service platform through

which game publishers can launch tokens and provide support for endgame NF T's. So they want

to be kind of the enabling platform, the enabling technology for all these game publishers to start

integrating blockchain based products into the into their games and into their gaming platforms.

Park this for a second because there's there was another FTX story which I think was worth

mentioning. And this one different but related obviously, the headline here FTX teams takes aim

at the $300 billion luxury goods market and hires a beauty entrepreneur to head the push. So they

hired FTX hired Lauren Remington Platt to work on partnerships with luxuries with partnerships with

luxury and fashion brands. FTX has rapidly expanded it says over the last 12 months entering

areas such as sports and gaming. But basically what they want to do is, is target fashion and

luxury brands and partner with them to to reach I guess these luxury buyers to reach the the kinds

of you know the audience that cares about those brands. And again, I think being the enabling kind

of blockchain and crypto technology underlying everything these brands want to do in the space. I

think that that's the common theme here. Right? They've identified sort of two very lucrative

spaces gaming and luxury and and have said, we want to attack both of them.

And they say it's it really I think, interesting and how I see the two things is I

think it's really smart that they're going with this like verticalization specialization strategy.

Because I think that's just the way kind of these platforms end up end up working. I mean, you see

these deep niches where platforms gain specialization. And that's really when you can

attract users because if you just go super broad and you say, Hey, we're the best crypto exchange,

you don't really attract the depth of users the depth of experience to get the two sides of that,

that market so I think it's smart to one vertical eyes and then go really deep. and focus on these

important verticals. And I think the fact that they're picking gaming and fashion is incredibly

wise. I mean, it's probably the two that I would point out first, in terms of gaming, probably the

number one in my mind, just because it's a really smart you use case for blockchain technology.

There's a lot of interest in already. The flip side of that is there, there has been some

backlash, but I think that is probably transitory. And we've, we've talked about that a lot. You can

get into it if you want. But I think their adoption of blockchain technology and gaming is

probably an inevitability at this point. And then fashion, we've talked about fashion in the

metaverse a ton. I mean, it's if we believe that everyone's gonna be living in these digital worlds

and care about their digital selves as much, if not more than they do about their physical selves.

Fashion will be a thing in the metaverse, it's just that's how people express themselves with

things they wear the you know, the way they carry themselves. So make sense that the vertical sizing

makes sense that these are the verticals are focusing on. Just want to throw that out there

before you can ask whatever you're going to ask.

No, no, I definitely think there's like this component. There's this because I think

you make the case for why this makes a ton of sense from a b2b perspective, right. FTX builds

deep expertise in sort of these two verticals, and can attack those markets with, you know, specific

technology and specific solutions that work for those players. Right. I also think there's like a

underlying b2c story here, though, where I'm curious if they looked at data that said, you

know, where, what is the most target rich environment for new FTX? Customers, right, who is

most likely to be a new FTX customer? And what are their interests? What do they like? Right? And And

I'm curious if maybe the conclusion of that was, they're probably gamers, or they're really into

fashion, or they're really into luxury brands? And and they said, well, great in terms of customer

acquisition, let's target like, let's figure out how we can reach those audiences. And I'm curious

if there's a longer term strategy here, that's that's all about, you know, attacking those

audiences from a b2c perspective, also, having built expertise around them?

I think they're definitely I mean, we've talked a lot in the past about, you know,

kind of the overlap between crypto and sports, crypto, and gaming, crypto and esports. You know,

so I don't think that's new, there's certainly data out there that shows a lot of that overlap. I

think it's the same thing with fashion. So, you know, there's, there's kind of no doubt there. And

then as I think of the b2b, b2c side, from the b2b side, you know, you have this nice flywheel where

if you're, if you have a great deep, offering specialized offering for b2b businesses that build

on your platform, naturally, you're going to attract the b2c side, because that's where the

best games will be the best fashion. You know, so it's like any other two sided marketplace, the the

gamers are the people who are gonna buy your fashion brands want to be where the best games and

the best brands are. And obviously, the best brands and the best games want to be where the

players are. So it's like any other kind of network effect flywheel driven type business

between these two

groups, Jeff, like where are you most excited, though, right, because the the the

gaming group within FTX says very clearly, they want to go after game publishers with a solution

that allows game publishers right to integrate these technologies, these features, tokens, etc,

into their games. On the luxury side, and the fashion brand side, it says, you know, the plot,

the woman who they've put in charge here, it says will hunt out major luxury brands that have not

yet gotten into cryptocurrency. And they say the major luxury brands in the market estimated to be

worth 300 billion.

If you pull up the picture of Sam, and my style is a lot more like like, Sam, I think so.

You can imagine I'm probably more on the gaming side than luxury fashion. But obviously I'm joking

about that. But I don't necessarily think they're mutually exclusive. Right? I think with gaming

people we've seen in cosmetics is a $30 billion, you know, a year industry in gaming, right? Like

people are constantly buying items that they think make them look cool and gaming. So I would I would

not even though I think when they talk about fashion, they're talking about a little bit of a

targeted customer. I think the gaming vertical will, of course include fashion, if that makes

sense.

No question. I mean, the numbers are interesting, right? Because you could argue

that maybe luxury and fashion, the market opportunity seems larger at first, but I think you

just have you're gonna they're gonna have a lot less friction on the gaming side, right? I think

especially after what we saw happen with Ubisoft, you're gonna have a lot of game publishers who are

going to probably be pretty gun shy, especially bigger ones. about trying to roll their own. And

FTX may be sort of the perfect partner for them, right? FTX may be the, it's like, and it takes all

the risk off of the plate of the publisher. Now they have someone to blame if things go wrong,

right like that I see the value and how I how compelling that sales pitch could be from FTX to

the game publishers. And I suspect that's going to be a pretty low friction sale. Everyone wants to

try this stuff, everyone's interested in this potential, if FTX can come through with sort of

something turn key, no risk, right, like they've built the tech, it fits in nicely integrates

nicely. I think that this could

take off quite quickly. One thing I'm curious about, and you may not know the answer,

but it will be very awesome to hear, you know, from someone at ft x, like, what, what is the

value proposition that they're offering to these game studios, because we've seen clearly a lot of

different kind of L ones out to crypto companies like polygon Gala, you know, there's probably 10,

others that have Gamestop even have launched these kinds of NFT platforms, and they're all targeting

the gaming market. So they're all raising large venture funds, and they're gonna fund fund and

seed developers. But I'm curious, like, what different unique value propositions maybe one has

versus the other because there's a lot of competition, and there's a lot of investment

dollars flowing into, like, what is. And this is something we've talked about a lot like, there are

not that many experienced crypto gaming developers out there, like, it's just a very small subset. So

there's a lot of capital chasing not a lot of experienced good teams, like how do you set

yourself apart? I'm curious if you have any opinion, or, you know, I don't know if it said

anything in the article. But what was your sex?

I think Sam's part of say that who's the CEO and founder of FTX I think part of

his genius has always been just top tier product and technology, right? Like where he he really has

always excelled. And FYI, the reason why FTX is, you know, valued at $32 billion today, and why it

has you know, backing from literally some of the biggest investors on the planet, right? We're

talking Tiger global Softbank, Temasek, right, like these are sovereign wealth funds, not not

even in the lab, even, you know, venture investors at this point. The reason is, I think best in

class technology and product which you can ignore. The reason I think, like, game developers are

pretty accustomed to plugging in other other technologies that they don't develop in house,

right? Like, every game publisher uses a game engine that's probably not developed in house,

right, maybe it's unreal, or unity or, you know, Cry Engine or whatever engine they're using

lumberyard. Most game developers start with a piece of technology, a core piece of technology

that's not developed in house, then you want to add multiplayer there are, you know, companies

that provide that technology you want to add in game voice? If it's not part of unreal, which you

know, today it is, but you used to be able to sort of buy technology from other vendors that you

could plug into your game. And so you could focus on, you know, the core of your game, whether it

was the art or the story or whatever else. Again, I love the approach here from FTX. Because the

value proposition is best in class tech, best in class product. And we take all this headache off

of you, right? You don't need developers building anything on blockchain and success, I think will

come based on how easily that can be integrated into FTX existing stack and into the like, into

the games themselves. So if it's a no, my suspect, the reason why we haven't seen much traction here

is it's just not that simple yet, right? No one has really made it incredibly simple for game

developers to you know, check a box, and now and all the in game items are tokenized. And they're

NF T's Right? Like or something like like, I'm giving you a very simple example. But I don't

think anyone has really made it totally turnkey for the game developers and I think for them to

adopt it. Without having to bring in specialized expertise. It has to be it'll be interesting to

watch like I I'm curious if like the big FTX competitors will do something similar will go this

take this very vertical approach. You know, will we see Coinbase or crypto.com? Or like whoever

else in the space trying to about even a polygon potentially trying to launch similar product

stacks targeted at similar audiences, but I do I don't think it's a winner take all market I do

think who get like whoever gets there first, though, will reap the biggest rewards there

definitely is an advantage. That FTX getting their first. Alright, let's um, let's talk about this

one a little bit. Finish on a little bit of a lighthearted story here. And the headline here,

Jeff is business apes. I almost laugh it just the headline, business apes and Artemis Space Network

takes vapes and FTS to space. For the launch of new meta fund. This is maybe the most

it's headline was generated by a bot. Like someone read a million crypto articles and

then a bot spit this out. You can't convince me this isn't the onion.

It says business apes and the Artemis space network partner up to release space

vapes. Nf T's minted from space, which provides new investment stream for space tech companies. It

says Artemis space that we're in because they've shared their own expertise to create space space

through the partnership 10,000, Genesis beeps and FTS will be sent to the International Space

Station, they will all receive blockchain credentials and certifications, officially making

them crypto knots, then through a live stream event, owners of these tokens will be able to

evolve them into fully operational space Papes NF T's Furthermore, every owner of these tokens will

participate in governing new meta fund investments geared towards space tech companies. So a little

convoluted here, I must say, I don't know if you feel the same way to end it. It feels a little bit

like a very creative way of doing a Kickstarter for a space tech venture fund. But categorize this

correctly. So that's what I was thinking. It's like, if you get no equity in the

venture, right? You just get these things.

Correct. And you it says you will participate in governing the new meta fund

investments.

Interest do, I sort of I hated this 99% of the way. But then when they started talking

about sending the NF T's and disk space, and live streaming it, I was thinking to myself, damn, this

is gonna work, like these things are gonna be worth a lot of money for time. So yeah, I mean, I

don't know, I don't know how much you want to get into this art series sort of triggers me a little

bit like, this is just insane. Um, but having said that, I think it's, it's one of the things that

people will buy, because it's cool. And it's a story. And it's, if you're one of these people

that has a ton of money, and that's what you got to care about. This is very much something that

you can go to a cocktail party and tell people and people will think you're cool, because you have

that kind of money that you just threw away and a picture that flew to space. So those are a world

but you know,

one issue I had mostly the scientists, me anything I download or upload over

Wi Fi, or find like a even a cellular network, for the most part, anything that's a wireless signal

has a good chance of making it to space, right, there's quite a bit of leakage of, of, you know,

radio frequency signals from the devices we use every day, chances are some of my data has made it

to space. So maybe it's not totally novel.

It's not that unique. It's, you know, this is like all of your NFT space, right? You're

saying that's a line of attack, you're going what's the problem here?

We might they might have? I can't say for sure. Right? Because I didn't send them to

space. But they might have. I do think though, there is a little bit of a sort of a two minute

conversation to be had here, which is how much of the traditional venture capital market do you

think we may see disrupted by this sort of? I won't call it a scheme, but by this sort of

technique, right fundraising process, we're now where, you know, crowdfunding, we're providing

something of value in an NF t. So you know, whether we agree or not that it has, you know,

actual value other than the value that people other people ascribe to it. That's debatable, but

like, how much of traditional venture capital fundraising Do you think gets disrupted by things

like

this? I don't know. It's hard to say. I mean, we've definitely seen I think we can both

agree in gaming we have seen a lot of the model get turned on its head where these new companies

or these these blockchain gaming companies, web three gaming companies are able to mint tokens and

basically sell in game items before the game is even built. That is totally unique. It's not

equity, it's ownership of an item than a game that doesn't exist yet. That is great for the

developers, fraught with peril in terms of scams and basically over promising under delivering like

it is, it is. I don't want to use the bubble word, but there will be plenty of projects that burst

and go to zero. But it has largely turned the investing, gaming investing VC world on its head,

you know, where before you had to go to a VC convinced them your game was a good idea, get the

money, build the game. And then once you build the game, you have to spend the money to acquire the

players. Now the players come to you and give you money to go build the team before you even have

the product. So I think that's great for empowering developers. It's it's a much more

efficient way to raise capital as as those game developers, but it is it is fraught with peril. In

terms of other areas of the spate you know, I think it's a little unique gaming, but people will

get creative. It's a great way to sell equity without actually selling equity. So why not? Yeah,

I mean, it's interesting, because you're not really an owner of the fund. Having

said that, like, if you're Joe Schmo on the street, you can you potentially have a chance of

buying one of these NF T's and participating in some way in this fund. If you're Joe Schmo on the

street, and you want to go get into sequoias latest fun, like forget about it, right? This is

never going to happen. There is a feels like there could be a little bit of a democratization of you

know, venture. I'm not sure it's smart to have 10,000 random people also directing the

investments. But as someone who's managed the venture fund that feels a little bit like a

nightmare. You know, trying to decide trying to make decisions like that, but I do think it's an

interesting story. And I don't know I'd love I'd love to own one of these space bound. Space space

beeps

I think we should announce that right here. You're gonna buy it. I'm done. I will.

Definitely gonna buy best alongside you. $100

now definitely, definitely cool and one to watch. Jeff that that gets us to the end of

this week's podcast. Time flies as always, just a reminder, you guys, make sure to subscribe to the

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go check out that as well. Jeff, thank you as always, to our listeners. Thank you guys for

tuning in. And as always, we will see you next week.

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