In this episode, we discuss sneaker NFTs and the move-to-earn gaming craze, The Sandbox looking to raise $400 million at a $4 billion valuation, FlickPlay and The Sandbox moving closer to the metaverse, lower-level crypto gamers fighting back against "digital colonialism," the underwhelming Chipotle restaurant in Roblox, and so much more!

Episode 22 Keywords: sneaker NFTs, move-to-earn gaming, The Sandbox, $4 billion valuations, FlickPlay, metaverse, crypto gamers, "digital colonialism," Chipotle restaurant, Roblox

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 the Prophet 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 the most

pressing, Metaverse, stories and news of the week. When 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

industry. For our regular listeners. Thank you guys for tuning in every week. Thank you for all

the love the five star ratings and reviews. Thank you for sharing the podcast if you have already.

If you haven't, send it to a colleague, send it to a friend. Leave that review, hit subscribe on

whatever podcast platform you find us on where everywhere. It helps others to find the podcast if

you leave a review, if you share it with a friend or a colleague. We really appreciate it. Jeff, how

you doing this week?

Go Well, good. Well, as you know, Paul, I started a new job this week. So you know

new dangers. Obviously. This is obviously my main job here is talking about the metaverse, but a new

day job that was keeping me busy this week.

Congrats the way it is. It is cool. You want to mention you want to shout out the

company.

Shout out. Yes. I've joined a company called homie games, their mobile publisher based

over in France. So pretty excited. I'm going to be running corporate development for them. Yeah,

dude, a bunch of m&a across the mobile gaming space, maybe a little bit in the metaverse, we'll

see we are going to be looking at some web three stuff. So that's that's obviously exciting.

I was gonna say, are you going to be buying play to earn mobile games?

We shall see. I think, you know, it is definitely an area where web three definitely

played around and you know, we'll see I'm not sure how sustainable that that kind of exact structure

is. But definitely looking at blockchain sort of web three stuff. You know, maybe even buy some

land in the metaverse, who knows?

That'll be cool. I will be jealous if you if you become a significant landowner in

the metaverse. Look, we talked about play to earn here. I think we have to start Jeff with a story

of kind of a fun story as we always do. And this is a new term that I've seen at least and I think

it's interesting I you know, I think I probably first thought about a month ago in in the context

of a different company. So this is the SEC call it the second time I've seen this term and I think

it's interesting, it's fun. And the headline here is sneaker NF T's and the move to earn craze so

not play to earn the says move to earn. And the way the article starts I think is sums it up it

says everyone's getting healthy and making money forget play to earn now you can move to earn green

Satoshi tokens GST with a sneaker NFT. So the they're calling this the latest craze as most of

these articles do. But the idea is pretty simple here, the more you move, and the more fitness

goals you achieve, the more you earn of these tokens. And and in this case, the to be able to

play this is attached to ownership of a sneaker NFT. So you need to buy a pair of these training

shoes represented by an NF T powered by Solana. And the catch is the floor price floor price of

one of these sneaker NF T's is already past about $1,000 It says tensile which is about $107 per

coin. So over $1,200 just to play this game, call it a game. And if you if you work out a lot, I

guess you could earn coins. Or you could just flip the NFT for more money. But what do you make of

move to earn here? I guess is the question. Well,

this is what I've been waiting for my whole life. You know, I don't like to work out I

need some motivation. So this could be you know, the answer for me is to to have some financial

motivation. You know, the 1200 is is a big barrier to entry but, you know, sneaker heads are used to

paying that I think that's, you know, there's plenty of sneakers that maybe I know you're a big

sneaker guy, right? Well, your shoes must, must cost more than that.

I mean, is that is that a good equivalent though? Or is it more this is more like

buying a peloton like a physical piece of hardware that you then use to work out on. The difference

being you could potentially recoup the cost of your hardware purchase

peloton paid you to work out this that would be, you know, that would be a hell of a lot

better than then you paying a monthly subscription. I am curious, of course, I know you

brought this up probably as a little bit of a gag story like we normally do. But it's a really

interesting one, the sense of I'm sure there's plenty of people that, you know, have wanted to

get paid to work out. And I wonder how sustainable This is? Like, is it possible for them to build an

ecosystem where, you know, because the interesting thing here is, there's plenty of people who could

argue like, it's almost similar to a gym membership in the sense of, there are people with

a gym membership, putting in money, right into the ecosystem, and then not extracting value from the

ecosystem, that sense of they're not going to the gym. So arguably, you could say that there might

be people who buy the $1,200 shoe, and then don't actually run with it or don't actually work out.

So they would not be extracting value out, but they wouldn't be putting value in. So arguably,

maybe the ecosystem is more sustainable than something like xe, which we've consistently talked

about with played around, everyone's trying to extract value. And when everyone's trying to

extract value, that obviously, ecosystem doesn't work, because some people have to be putting value

in. But in the case of when it's something you don't want to do, maybe there are people that

actually buy it, but don't use it. So maybe maybe it actually is possible that it's sustainable.

I mean, it's still, it's literally still kind of an inverse Ponzi scheme, right,

like, it's still, you're still relying on some people putting money in and getting less than they

put in out. And you're right, and maybe working out is the kind of the holy grail of that, right?

Because to your point, gym memberships often go unused. I'd be interesting to see their stats,

right? Like, and I don't know what these green Satoshi tokens are trading at. And I don't know

how much specifically, you know, there's a graphic here, for those listening. I guess the the

sneakers are, have sort of four categories of NF T's, whether you're a walker, a jogger, a runner,

trainer, whatever. But like, how much would you have to work out? And does this end up being

relegated to literally, again, third world countries were developing countries where, you

know, now they're walking miles to, you know, earn a living?

How do you be interesting, if you combine it with some gamification, maybe you have

something like a Pokemon Go type metagame. And then you combine that with the fitness aspect, and

like, I know, you can probably come up with some creative ways to make people exercise without

realizing it. And then if they make some money like and have fun doing it, it's kind of a win win

win. The only question is, again, who puts the money in and doesn't extract the value?

Yeah, fit the fitness is an interesting one. And I'll just read this quote

very quickly, and then we'll move on. He says, we're proud to reveal the potential of what

individuals can achieve with their fitness goals, using crypto as an incentive. I just think if you

need to be paid to get in shape. And look, I don't like working out either. But if being paid is the

barrier for you, probably not that motivated to get in shape to begin with. I understand the

gamification of fitness because you're trying to make it fun. But earning crypto isn't inherently

fun. And I'm not sure just paying people is enough of a long term motivator to get to keep them

working out. I don't know it. It all comes down to how these economics work, right? If you're if

you're having to work out five days a week just for pennies. It'll it'll be a nonstarter, I think

in North America. All right, let's move on. Let's talk about sandbox the sandbox. In the news, the

article here from Bloomberg, that sandbox is aiming to raise $400 million dollars at a $4

billion valuation. The it's a everyone knows it's a subsidiary of Animoca brands. They're looking to

raise 400 million $4 billion valuation. This is coming from sources. Again, people familiar with

the matter, quote, unquote, it may not be the final correct figure. But if it does go through at

this number, the article says it would make for around four times the size of its series B in

November. So November would only be what like five months ago. And that round that series B was led

by Softbank Vision Fund two, and they raised 93 million there. So sandbox potentially, you know,

raising a big, big round. I just want to put this story before I turn it over to you, Jeff against

this other article, where they were mentioning that sandbox and flick play are announcing a

partnership that allow players to use a blockchain asset on both platforms so freely move a good

between both worlds. Flick play it is, you know, they say they they describe it as an app where

players can unlock digital collectibles by using an interactive map of their actual surroundings,

and then use their phone's camera to overlay the collectibles onto the real world and interact with

the objects to make videos and other content. So maybe not a true Metaverse, but sort of an AR ish

Metaverse

on go, but with Blockchain.

But the first time I think I've really seen an article where we're seeing

interoperability between meta versus, you know, put in quotations here. So what do you make of the

raise? And what do you make of this sort of first step towards interoperability?

Yeah, I'll start with the the raise, and then we'll get to the interoperability piece.

I mean, there wasn't a ton in the report, I was hoping I scrolled through it a few times, it was

hoping to find some numbers around like revenue, growth player base or anything like that. Because

we have seen reports, I think we talked about one last week where it was like the player base for a

lot of these games, including the sandbox, you know, it's just been woefully low, like a few

100,000, you know, monthly active players, which just simply shouldn't equate to a $4 billion

valuation. Unfortunately, there wasn't too much information in this report, or in the Bloomberg

piece, either. So we could get like a multiple. So we'll just talk a little bit, I guess from the

base on that we do have the fact that the valuation is up for ex CEO since November, which I

find pretty surprising because November was actually sort of the peak in the market like

Right, right around when actually a lot of the NASDAQ names started rolling over and the high

growth names rolled over. And if you just look at like Roblox has public market valuations since

then take to pretty much any tech name slash gaming name. And even crypto, I would imagine is

down, you know, between 25 and 70%, depending on what what asset you're talking about over that

time period. So for sandbox to be up for X over that same period, kind of surprising. Given that

it's not like they've had, you know, we see them in the news a lot, but it doesn't feel like they

have a breakaway hit. It's certainly not something where, you know, when I go talk to my friends that

are in working in the gaming industry, they're not like, hey, like, did you play the sandbox last

night? It's just not really in the mainstream Zeitgeist. You know, we saw epic that around flat

year over year. So Forex is really big. That's my initial thought. What do you think?

It's true, and that, you know, I hadn't even thought of putting it up against epic

that raised a, you know, a large round larger than this, they raised 2 billion at a flat valuation.

Right. And, and I would argue they've probably made more headway than Sandbox has. The article

does mention that CoinDesk reported, and we reported on this as well, on April 6, that x

infinity decentraland. And the sandbox, all reported decreasing levels of user activity. So

the user numbers are going in the wrong direction, and counter to what the valuations doing. I don't

know if this is I'm trying to think like, I'm trying to have sort of tinfoil hat theories here.

How you manage that, right? How you have user numbers going down? Jen general sort of hype

level, at least sort of coming back to normal, and yet this size of evaluation increase in this size

of arrays. Now, you know, they mentioned the article that it was hosted the world's first

Metaverse music video, you know, I don't know if they're just hanging their hat on, like these

kinds of firsts. And the investors just aren't that sophisticated. Having said that, it's

Softbank Vision Fund has a bit of a reputation of like, massive valuations that maybe are very

optimistic.

It's true. I wonder what point we'll get it we'll get through in the hype cycle at the

metaverse where we stopped seeing like the world's first Metaverse something where it seems like

we've seen the world's first Metaverse fashion show the world's first Metaverse real estate, the

world's first what was the one last week where it was like the 99% of Metaverse fashion or

Metaverse, Avatar, celebrity avatar marks, the avatars just make stuff up. And it's like what is

this market? Say I wonder when we'll get to that point, but that's such as design.

I mean, but assuming all the players here are rational, right, including the

investors, and the rumors are true, because we don't know Right? Like this could end up being

around at a $2 billion valuation, you know, someone misread a number or someone has, you know,

the rumors wrong, whatever the reason, so, I don't want to come down too hard to hear. But assuming

everyone is acting rationally, including the investors you have to suspect they've got

something up their sleeve right and my guests is when we hear about it, it's going to be a game.

Because I think that's what most of these Metaverse, platforms are all sort of, you know,

sandbox becoming a lot more like a Roblox or a fortnight kind of platform. I would bet good

money. I haven't seen a pitch deck from sandbox, so I don't know. But

is that enough? Or is that like what you that? Like it almost? That almost feels like a

requirement? Not like, Okay, now you figure it out? It's like, well, of course, they need to make

a game like otherwise what is? Yeah, but

now now the $4 billion valuation in the context of, you know, epic at 30 and Roblox at

30. And, you know, now four starts to feel sort of okay. Right. Like, again, it's all about framing.

Yeah. Right. So it's like for about, you know, like, well, is Assassin's Creed worth 4

billion, though? Like the game? Yeah, 10 million people every year play it? Like, that's 100 times

as many people's play the sandbox. Members, like, why is that? Like, why? Like, why is sandbox worth

4 billion?

I mean, it's all good points. Hard to it's hard to counter them just trying to I'm

trying to defend here, the potential rumor and how they have a rational investor sort of gets

comfortable with that number.

I guess if I could maybe throw my tinfoil hat or not even, like try to figure out

maybe what their thinking is that are some of these investors saying, Hey, this is going to be a

winner take most space, it's going to require a lot of capital A lot of money. So we just need to

pick a horse and invest a ton. Because whoever has the most capital, the earliest and kind of like,

almost like what we worked in, right, it was like, Hey, we're gonna go be the crazy people. We're

going to own the space. And that obviously, you kind of alluded to that with Softbank earlier.

Maybe that's the strategy here where it's like, okay, we picked our horse. Let's really go all in

because we know that one of these is going to become the metaverse and what's back, want to just

push our chips?

That's not, I mean, I can tell you, among much larger VCs than I was I ever was like,

if you go to the sequoias of the world, or the engery sins, or the soft banks, that is very much

the philosophy, right that, that their money is fuel to not pick not just pick a winner, but to

create to make the winner, right. Yeah, exactly. And so this could be Softbank making the winner.

Right. And that's an interesting thought. Because you're right, they may be looking at it as a

winner take most market. I hadn't thought of that angle. But absolutely, I think it makes a lot of

sense.

So they may be saying, hey, like we don't, we don't necessarily we're not investing

because of what it is today. This is almost just the vehicle that we're then going to make our play

with. And you know, for 400 million, we could buy a substantial chunk of this. Versus if we want to

do that with epic Well, you can't because it's Tim Sweeney if we want to do Roblox while they're

public, so you know, that you can't just go buy 40% of it. But with this, you know, maybe they can

get a 20 30% position and kind of push all their chips and say, This is our plan, we're gonna,

we're gonna make this the winner. I agree. I

think that's probably the most likely now that I'm hearing it. I think the other

interesting thing we could probably spend a lot of time on we're not going to we're gonna move on

here, but like Animoca has been killing it just from a like, how much attention the pieces that

they own now or attracting dollars that the pieces they own are tracking like the number of companies

under that umbrella. And the amount of dollars I don't know what the total amount of dollars raised

under that umbrella has been but it's it's huge. Like it's gotta be it's gotta be a really big

number at this point.

They're the 10 cent of web three, man I'm sure I'm stealing that from someone but I just

kind of can't do it. So what they are they're the 10 Senate

let's let's talk about you know, the the flip side of this I think we'll end here

with to two quicker stories here about people upset about Metaverse experiences, I think we will

always want to try and show you know both sides barely hear the hype and and, you know, the the

pushback. And this first one is I'd like the headline crypto gaming landlords in quotations

upset they can't keep exploiting all the players quitting. So that sub headline exploited players

are rebelling against diminishing returns in the Pokemon like NFT game xe infinity. So you know,

we've talked about x infinity, we talked about the $600 million heist, which we now have found out by

the way, we should we should comment on this. It was committed by North Korea. They're the ones who

stole the 600 million for Maxine funding, which I think makes sense hence. But what's happening now

is, it says here as Vice reports, the result is a highly financialized community fueled by the

promise of future riches, and predicated on a constant influx of new players. Many of those new

players can't afford to buy axes directly. So existing owners loan them out for a cut of future

earnings. The xe community charitably calls the boss's managers, the workers, scholars, and the

overall arrangement of Guild we have I think, meant talked about guilds briefly at least. But,

you know, as the payouts get less and less in the context of this heist, are you surprised to see

headlines like this? That, you know, people are quitting the game? Because of the, you know,

unrealized promises or whatever whatever the reason may be?

No, it's definitely not surprising. I mean, I think this is something we've been we've

been pretty spot on the ball about this, you know, since we kind of started talking about Axi, it's

like when you make the point of the game earning and not enjoyment and fun, as soon as you remove

the earning and take away that digital job aspect, people will leave. And when you have an economy

that's structured on the price of a token, and the price of a token being predicated on more people

coming in and buying it, and joining the game, as people leave the economy, it becomes a negative

self fulfilling prophecy, like a cycle of despair. And it just gets worse. So not surprised that

people are leaving the game. As people leave the game, it gets worse for the people that are

already there that remained so more people are going to leave. And yeah, there's these quote

unquote, guilds are or whatever they call it. The managers of these guilds are the ones left holding

the bag when the quote unquote scholars leave.

It's like, you hear them talking. It sounds like a, you know, early 20th century

labor dispute, right? Like, I had a fish farm and a plant farm. I'm reading this quote directly from

the article and 10 scholars, they have almost all quit my axes are worth 10% of what they cost me to

breed. I learned a lot in xe but like, like, are we gonna start seeing scholars unionizing? Are we

like, rules against, you know, landlords, exploiting their workers, the whole thing has felt

like kind of the worst part of any kind of capitalist endeavor basically, like literally,

they pick the worst parts of it all. You have this sort of indentured servitude, with scholars

working to pay off the, you know, their loans. It's just starts to sound very dystopian. And, and

I always, I think I've always said, x infinity in my mind will always be relegated to developing

countries. But even there, it seems to be falling apart. The other the other sort of conversation I

want to have in this article was, and the headline here was I visited Chipotle in the metaverse to

try and understand why restaurant chains are flocking to it. And the experience left me both

baffled and hungry. So this was in Roblox and, you know, someone visiting the chipotle activation in

Roblox and their conclusion was, although it's amusing, I don't foresee Metaverse restaurants as

a lasting feature. Now, compared to the last article, Jeff, this one I think is way more

disingenuous in the sense that again, I think we talked about this in the context of the fashion

show, right? Metaverse Fashion Week. It's someone going into Roblox on their like eight year old

MacBook. Because, you know, their editor told them to do a story on this. They're not gamers really.

And so the experience feels confusing.

Do you see agree with you, but I do like the I like that in the sense because in order

for us to get to the metaverse, like, those are the kinds of people you need to bring in. So I

like reading their experience because I always picture it's like, Okay, what if my uncle wanted

to join the metaverse or like my my mom like, this would be there. Right? It wouldn't be you know,

you and Jimmy are people who are like hardcore gamers and have 14 gaming PCs and know exactly

what they're doing. It would be you know, people that don't the thing that I thought was funny that

headline said that he was he was hungry. He or she was hungry after you know going in. So maybe that

was the whole point. I bet they were hungry and had a had a had Chipotle in the brain. I wouldn't

be surprised if he went through that. So maybe that was the whole point of this. You know,

and it was kind of cute, right? Because it is coming from someone who's clearly

not that tech savvy. And, but I was amazed a that Roblox was felt more accessible, right as a

metaverse. There was no conversation of like, Chris Don't wallets or things like that to be able

to get in and actually interact and do something that had value to them. And clearly the chipotle

messaging hit home to your point. But I think we're still far away. We're not far we're still

not there in terms of onboarding the masses, right? None of the platforms are whether it's

Roblox, or fortnight, or at a level of complexity, higher a sandbox decentraland Whatever. No one's

really there yet, is the conclusion I draw. But this, to me is the proof, especially when you put

these stories back to back that the gaming platforms are much more likely to win than the

crypto first platforms or the play to earn first platforms, right, whether it's actually your

sandbox or decentraland versus a Roblox over a fortnight. I think this person had a genuinely

good experience because it was Roblox and if it had been sandbox or decentraland, I think their

experience would have been considerably worse. I don't know. Before we wrap up, do you have a

comment on that or?

No, I think I think I agree with all that. It's we're still not there in terms of

bringing people in. But robotics is easier. And I do agree without the crypto it kind of when you're

bringing people into the metaverse, it's already somewhat confusing enough to the masses, adding

too much crypto and decentralization can can just add to the confusion.

I agree, Jeff, let's That wraps up this week's podcast guys another episode flies by

really appreciate all of you listening. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. So if you're getting

this on Spotify, on Apple podcasts on Google Stitcher, wherever you're getting this, hit the

subscribe button. Make sure you get notified when all the episodes drop. It's one a week and share

it please send it to your friends or colleagues, anyone you're working with who may be interested

in web three, and the metaverse and is looking at it from a business standpoint, we really

appreciate it, Jeff, thank you. As always, don't forget guys, the future is fun. We'll see you next

week.

Thanks for joining us here on meta business. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast

everywhere you get your podcasts, leave a five star review and tell your friends, family and

colleagues all about us. Also, make sure to follow meta TV on all socials to get more of the best

Metaverse content anywhere. Tune in every week for another episode of meta business