PoolTogether Community Podcast #56 with Crossmint

This is the PoolTogether Community Podcast. PoolTogether is the world's number one no-loss prize savings account. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit. You're listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. This is Millie Monthly, aka Tim, aka Hot Mike, aka I want to thank Russ and Daughters in Brook in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for for fueling me today. I'm about to eat some lunch. So Jen from Crossman, if you could talk a bunch so I can eat on mute while we're talking while while we're doing this. This is really your podcast now because because I got I got a vegan everything bagel with like capers and this is New York City, right? So the bagels are yeah yeah

yeah.

I got I got I got a full sour and a half sour pickle. I got a I got a cup of seltzer. I'm just living that life and I get to talk to Jen from. Crossman, who is a Swiss Army knife if ever there were a Swiss Army knife in the biz. Jen, are you Swiss?

Hmm, that's a good question. I'm kind of close to it, but not really geographically close. I'm actually Danish and, and Welsh.

Were you in the Army? Are you in the Army?

I actually was in the United States Army. Yes.

Nailed it.

Nailed it.

And, and do you own knives?

I, I, yeah, actually, a lot of folks may not know this, but I am a big game hunter. And so yes, I have several.

I mean, we nailed this. This art not only—

I don't even know how you did that.

But you're kind of Swiss. You were in the army.

Yeah.

And that's— you call that a knife? That's not a knife, right? Yeah,

man. Let's just say that there's, there's a variety of knives in my vicinity at all times, pretty much.

Agio. No need for cold storage. No need for fear of wrench attacks.

Nope.

No wrench attacks coming your way. What'd you do in the Army? Can you talk about it even?

Yeah, I can actually. I, uh, I was very— I had a very strange job. Um, a lot of people would not know what it is. I was what we call a 02 Bravo for MOS. And if anybody knows what that is, I will send you a heart emoji. That was a trumpet player. I was a trumpet player for the United States Army.

Oh.

Yeah. Actual, like, real job. Wow. Got deployed to war and everything. It was crazy.

So you just played trumpet in war? Or did you also— No. No, you were also infantry?

What they do is they retrain the Army band as military police and convoy guards and POW handlers. So we were just like the grunts up front, like handling people and doing stuff. And it was just like, okay, that's, that's my job now. We did bring our instruments, oddly enough. That was— that's the weirdest part.

And we did play.

Well, you got to. Yeah, we did play.

Morale, right?

Yeah. Oh yeah, exactly. And we played for the British Army too. There's the Brits and the Australians were over there. And so we played for them. And that was kind of cool because they were either not smart enough or not cool enough or too smart to bring their own instruments out there in the big sandbox. Because sand and precise metal instruments do not mix very well.

So I play trombone and I'm just thinking of the slide and all of the hassle that would create.

Yeah. I mean, I played trumpet with a little valves and that was hard enough.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, the trombone players did not have it well there.

And a lot of people, not to— I don't care, this is my podcast, it's fine. A lot of people don't know that you have to slide your pinky out on the trumpet for For, for like tuning, you know, on certain notes, right?

Yeah, there's a lot more going on. Tough little slides. Yeah, pinky and— pinky and/or— there's actually 2 slides you can use, and it's the, uh, left-handed like ring finger and pinky finger too. And so there's like a lot going on there that you just don't, don't realize. But yeah, it's like micro tuning. It's tough. But yeah, it was a hell of a lot of fun though, for sure. Um, the one thing that a lot of people don't know is also in addition to the Army Band, number one, being deployed in general, and number 2, being retrained to actually be useful in combat, we do take up the role of standing at the front of the column of the military. And so, like in the old times, and like in those old paintings you've seen where, you know, the guy's like there with the flute, and another guy with a drum, and another guy with a flag out front, that's literally what we did. We were at the front of the column, and we led the entire infantry division. It was an entire division behind us. Wow. Into war. It was crazy.

Where were you deployed?

Iraq.

And then how'd you get into crypto?

Well, okay, there was a few years in between then and crypto, but it was— so I actually almost bought $200 of Bitcoin in 2012 and didn't because I couldn't afford it at the time. And we all have our Bitcoin stories. Uh, so that was my first brush with it. And then in about 2017, I tried to get into CryptoKitties and got pissed off at gas fees and how I kept trying to be cheap on gas and it kept failing and I kept losing money. And so I just quit. Um, and then I came back to it after becoming a day trader and then jumping from trading stocks to trade crypto. Trading crypto very quickly got me into NFTs. I actually, uh, discovered Solana NFTs in about September of— I got to get my years right— 2021. And so I dove in and then I discovered this one project that I just absolutely loved. I'm a science fiction author on the side, as if I don't do enough. I just have to keep busy. And I love planets and all the space stuff. And I found this NFT that was about— it was a decentralized metaverse where you owned your own planet and it was 3D VR ready. It was just way ahead of its time. And the founders also were building a mint with credit card product where you didn't even have to— hopefully you guys could still hear me. My computer went on freaking sleep. We can hear you. Okay, good. You didn't even have to have a crypto wallet and you didn't have to have any crypto and there's no KYC. You just put in your credit card and you minted and it went to a custodial wallet that Crossmint provided for you. And being a lazy person that I am, um, I lost my mind. And so that was when Solana was over $200, and I bought— I was one of the very first customers of Crossmint, and I bought several planets over $200 each. And, um, I just fell in love with it. So I started helping in the community. I started like getting into Discord. You know, I'm not a— I'm not like a, you know, fresh out of high school kind of person. Like, I have had a career. I was in tech. I did quality engineering for, you know, several years. I was a tech trainer for Boeing. I wrote Microsoft exams, like those exams you take to get certified. I wrote those exams, some of those exams. And so I, I just dove in and I just was like, oh my God, this is so much fun. I was like fangirling over this shit. And I, um, eventually they were just like, can you, can you just come work with us? And, you know, it was like 5 employees at that time. There's the 2 co-founders, the business guy, And the, and the engineering guy, and then a sales guy and 2 engineers. And I was like, yeah, like, what do you want me to do? And they're like, okay, can you just do sales and just talk to people and just be as excited as you are, you know, in Discord and just trying to get people to come use Crossmint? And this was mainly on Solana at the time. So that's what I did. I'd never done sales before in my life, never did business development. never did any of this stuff, and I just dove in and figured it out. And we're pretty big on Solana now. That was our goal, was to get on Magic Eden, get integrated. So now you can pay with a credit card on Magic Eden and also use cross-chain payments. So you can pay with Ethereum to buy a Solana NFT and vice versa if you'd like to. And you don't even need to have a wallet, and there's no KYC again. So this is groundbreaking stuff we're building that is You know, the next step up from what we've already seen with a lot of providers who are on-ramps, you know, they, they will on-ramp you into crypto using a credit card directly like MoonPay. But there's KYC, and there is also— you still have a crypto wallet, there's still crypto involved in the user experience. And so with Crossmint, we essentially made it so you don't ever have to know anything about crypto or use it at all if you don't want to. And that's, that's really what we're diving into and really trying to make it the differentiator and make it something that we can— I hate using this word, but bridge the gap. But it's more like flattening the learning curve of getting into Web3 so that we end up having more of like a boundary, a line painted on the ground that says you're crossing from Web2 into the world of the blockchain and you just step across it with Crossmint. So that's what we're doing. So that's how I got into it.

Great story.

Here we are, I guess. Yeah.

Well, and we have very similar stories and very different stories for sure. But, but I mean, that was my— I come from the world of nonprofit marketing and I always loved tech. And, you know, I had a friend who told me to get into ETH in 2019 and he, you know, paid me some ETH for breakfast, like to reimburse me. So that $20 turned into like $400 worth of breakfast that he paid, reimbursed me for using ETH. And In 2019, 2020. And then like I got laid off during COVID and then I, you know, looked into day trading and it stressed me out. And then Leighton from Pull Together, Leighton saw me at a brewery and was like, hey, you should get back into crypto and told me about airdrops. And then I was like, oh, that's great. But I still haven't gotten— I have like the trading knowledge, like I studied a lot of technical analysis stuff. And so anyway—

It's a lot of fun, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's a lot of fun.

But it also like for me with ADD and like I just don't want to have to sit babysit stuff, you know. And I guess you don't have to. There's ways to trade where you don't do that. And also, you know, I'm just learning. Like, I'm watching these big macro moves like, oh my, OMG, you know, like especially now. So, so, uh, do you think we have another leg down or do you think, do you think bull run now? You

know,

financial events, advice, not financial

advice. Yeah, NFA friends. But I, I, I still like, I love looking at charts. I just have so much fun looking at them because pattern recognition is You know, when I worked in quality, quality engineering, quality assurance, all that stuff in software, a lot of it's pattern recognition, understanding like where, like what the user is going to see based on their behavioral patterns and what is expected, you know, from a business perspective, from an engineering perspective, from the customer's perspective, right? That's the holy triangle of software. And so I just fell in love with all this, you know, technical analysis or TA in stock trading. The problem is there's a lot of manipulation. So like when you're doing, uh, when you're doing, you know, when you're trading stocks, you know, you can just get slapped upside the head when you think you got this great swing going on and then some jerk is manipulating it and they drop like an offering on Friday right after the bell. And then suddenly your position on Monday is like horrible. And so I fell in love with crypto and then got into crypto trading. But then like now I even watch NFT floor prices. And I just absolutely love them. So I was just looking at Solana price today, uh, Solana, Ethereum, Bitcoin, all of them. And it's interesting watching and seeing how they are coupled, like obviously the, uh, greater crypto market at large. And I personally see another downturn. Um, if you look at what's called a bubble chart, for anyone who's not familiar, I recommend looking it up. Bubble chart is exactly what we saw Bitcoin just do. It's a very Uh, it's a— it's like a widespread, uh, well-known chart about, uh, when there's a lot of hype around something and then it gets mass adoption, and then, um, suddenly the early adopters start taking profits. So you see a big dip at the top, and then everybody else is like, holy shit, the price is dropping on this incredible thing! And then they buy back in. So you have a second top that's a little lower than the first, and then it starts to die off as those people start taking profits. And then you see kind of a long tail And then you'll end up usually with a bump at the end, and I think we're at this bump before it goes down into the lowest that it's been. But I don't actually think we're no, we actually were in the lowest. So there's there's according to this chart, if it follows it, this is the bump. It's going to go down a bit, and then we may start to see movement again after that in a better direction. So I've been watching personally, and I see on the daily or not on the daily on the hourly charts, there's kind of what we call a Bart head forming on. on Solana, Bitcoin. And I think it's mainly Solana, but they're all similar. They all follow each other usually. But usually what that means is it goes straight up, which was— that's what Solana just did. It went just straight up in the air, which in any sort of trading, that is unsustainable. People will take profits. It has to come down almost as hard as it went up. And so when you have something that's called Bart, like Bart Simpson, it goes straight up, And then it jags, it jags along for a little bit, up and down, it kind of chops, and then it drops again. And so, um, we may be on that dropping part. Um, again, not financial advice, we can't predict the future, but this is, you know, that's, that's kind of how the patterns go. They tend to do a certain thing. So I see it dropping a bit, and then yeah, we start to go back on the upswing a little bit more.

But you don't think it's going to go lower than— you don't think it's going to go like Bitcoin $12,000, $8,000? Like that?

I do not. I think the bottom's in.

Okay. All right. Well, so then I would say you're technically a bull.

Okay.

Yeah,

I

am now.

Yeah, I liquidated all my NFTs in like freaking, what, June of last year? Pretty much all of them except for the ones that I, I actually believe are builder, you know, NFTs. And, um, stabled up and then bought into, you know, Solana on its way down. And so I'll— like, what I'm doing this week is I'm sort of Micro trading the chop and then just going to see what happens. Just watch. Mainly, if anybody's listening to this and you're interested in trading, the main thing you ever want to look at is not the price action, but you want to look at volume. You want to see how much of it is being traded because that indicates demand. And so that can really start to drive those patterns.

So you're not full-on TA? Okay.

No, especially not in crypto and in NFT world. There is so— which is the interesting part. There's a huge psychological aspect to to it that normally drives— that's what drives technical analysis, is the psych— it's psychology. It's, it's graphs that represent the psychology of, of people in their trading and how they view money and how they view risk and, you know, all these things. And so in NFTs and crypto, there's so much more, um, psychology involved. There's so much more, uh, is the community good? Did the founder post a banger tweet today? Uh, you know, is there, uh, you know, some pending move like DeGods are moving from Solana to Ethereum? And then that shot their, you know, floor price through the roof, um, and things like that. So there's, there's just a lot of other factors to take into consideration, especially with, um, with NFTs, um, because they also have super, super, uh, rarefied, um, actual quantities available. Like, you only have, like, say, 10,000 BGods, or, you know, 999 of whatever this other NFT is. And, you know, That price action can change pretty drastically, pretty quickly.

Yeah. I follow Big Cheds on Twitter, who is very much a TA, like Japanese candlestick person who looks at the charts and then also sentiment. And then that's it. Like, that is it. And anything that you need will be reflected in charts, which to me is like very like quantum and mystical even, you know, like that a chart could do that. And I kind of believe it, but then There's also this other thing with trading. I'm so convinced, and I use chess as the analogy here, is that, you know, now humans can't beat AI in chess. We used to be able to beat AI in chess. Now we can't. But now AI can't beat human plus AI, right? AI versus human plus AI. Human plus AI always wins. So now it's like a human-AI combo game. Mm-hmm. And so I would say obviously that's the same with trading, right? Like you just have to, you have to get a robot partner. And so for people who are non-technical, I think that's very, you know, it's, it's not egalitarian, right? So like a non-technical person who doesn't have access to the bots and stuff isn't going to have like the full play. You know, they're not, they're not playing with a full deck. This also happens with poker. Everything that I love, the bots, the bots are taking over. And I don't have a bot partner. I just want a bot partner. I want a little Wally to go with me and help me have a competitive edge.

Right? That's how I feel. You know, like I said, I'm an author. And so all this, like ChatGPT, you know, even for cover art, you know, having Midjourney and all these things, I'm like stoked about it because I, you know, I'm in— this is my personal opinion, but I am here for my robot overlords, please take over, make my life easier, because why do I want to work harder when I can make the robot do the heavy lifting and then I can tweak it to how I want it to be? Like, I don't, I don't see a problem with it. Like, if I have a hard time writing a certain passage, I'll be like, yo, ChatGPT, write this up for me. And I'll be like, hmm, you know, that's, that's pretty good. I'm, you know, I'm inspired. I've got some basic content here. Okay, this will make it easier for me. But it's not cheating. You know, I don't see it as cheating. Just like I also view the memorization of facts, not the memorization of formulas, but the memorization of facts is something that is obsolete. We have Google. There is no need to memorize facts that are not in your everyday life. So it's like, why would you take a test or force people to take a test where we have technology that supplants that need to do that? I, you know, I'm very future forward, very tech forward, so I'm here for it. But yeah, you're right, in the trading, in the trading realm, it's, it's tough. Like, for me, I don't do all the crazy, like, uh, you know, ABCDs and all of the, uh, sometimes I do like the EMAs and things like that, but, uh, a lot of times a lot of those lines are just mystical, and there are very few people, I believe, that actually understand them. A lot of people are just like, oh, I heard this guy you know, Joe Schmo, uh, Trader 69 said, like, if you follow— yeah, this particular formula, then, and you see this candlestick pattern, you know, that's, that's it, that's the one, you buy in hard there. And it's like, okay, no, that's not how it works. So I just watch basic patterns. You know, you find the way you do it, I think, is the best way to do it if you want to get into trading, is you find one pattern that you're really good at seeing and you execute it on, on it very Cautiously, you'll find that it becomes very fun. And then you don't have to win every time. You're never going to time the top. You're never going to time the bottom. You're never going to time your buy or your sell perfectly. But you can get good at it. And you can make a really good living or at least supplement your income if you just say, I want to make a 1% profit on every trade every day. And then you just do that every day. And you'd be amazed at what happens.

I mean, that's 365 APR right there.

Hell yeah, it is.

I mean, you're

not getting something like that.

Warren Buffett is not getting those kind of returns. But I want to go back to something, something you said before. I have so many things I could, but the, the, I think for creators, for creatives, right? Great art is stolen, right? So you're always everything. There's nothing new. Every, everything's an iteration. Everything's inspirational. I love Clarice Lispector, who is a, a Brazilian author, uh, who passed away, but she, she's just like, she has a whole novella about a woman walking into a room and killing a roach. Like, that is the entire story. I didn't even give the thing away to you yet by telling you that. But, uh, it's like the stream of consciousness thing. I would be very surprised to see any sort of AI getting close, but if it did, I'm going to be like, I'm gonna be vamping. I'm gonna be like chopping it up with that AI to get that to inspire my brain to go somewhere else, right? So I, yeah, I think for creatives, there's no such, there's not a threat other than like more ammo with the creative thing. But again, that's human plus AI. I use like synthesizers and I'm, you know, I love the re— the reason I love synthesizers is it creates melodic patterns and rhythms that I'm just not one capable of playing because of the speed of it or, you know, 'cause we go into audio rate. Right. There's, you know, so yeah, it's all ammo. But back to trading real quick. What's your pattern then, Jen? Do you have one or two patterns that you're like, oh yeah, we got a bear flag going, I got that, boom?

Yeah, yeah, I actually, I really like, I like flags. I like channels. So up channels and down channels are all very obvious for me. I called the down, I called the up channel on Solana last night. I knew there was going to be a dip today, and I just, I just was too lazy to get out my Ledger and transfer some SOL over to sell it. And I should have because now we're lower than we were. Um, and it's not like, oh, I know it. It's just if the current volume continues and, you know, nothing— there's no crazy like announcement or press release, you know, on the part of like, uh, Solana itself— then I knew that it was going to dip. Like, it was just one of those things. That's how these patterns work. And so yeah, I like, I like bear flags, bull flags, up channels, down channels. There's one that I really like called the 3-bar play and the 4-bar play. Um, those ones are Really fun because they indicate something just taking off or something just diving to the depths of hell. And it's just so fun to get in there and just play that game. Usually it's like a candle that's either green and it's about 3 to 4 times the height of any other candle in the last 24 hours. That's usually how I do it. So it just goes straight up or straight down, could be the other way. And then you got another one that stays within the range of that candle that doesn't go below 50%. And usually if it starts at 50% of that candle and tops up at the exact same height or at the exact bottom. And then you have another one that starts at that middle point and then drops way below again, or way above, or goes way above. Um, that's a 3-bar play, and I just, I love that one. I don't know why those ones tend to be really fun roller coasters, because then you end up having a lot of, uh, a lot of shock waves that follow after it, um, because they're usually very surprising, uh, moves. And so they tend to be a fun one to ride out.

What timeframe are you normally looking

at? For the 3-bar play, the 15-minute.

Dang, you're on 15-minute. Oh my gosh. I rarely go like below an hour when I look at charts. I like to stay at the high timeframe, like daily, monthly, weekly, daily, weekly, monthly.

Yeah. So you're more like a swing trader then? Yeah, I'm definitely— when I, when I trade, I like to do day trades. Either that or I do extremely long, just I hold, you know, diamond hand shit, which is what I did for the last year for, you know, a lot of my assets. So just whatever. I was like, you know what? I know it's going to come back. I'm not going to let go of it. It's fine.

So the other similar part of our story is our experience with Crossman because I had a friend, Graph, La Crypto Graph, who is an artist with the Wasis who released a zombie brain NFT thing on Solana, and I wanted to support Graph on the release. And I had a Wasi give me some Solana as like a tip for a Wasi song. And they were trying to like Solana pill me, right? I don't know what color pill that is, but whatever.

Purple and teal, I guess.

A purpley-tealy pill me. And so I went in and I like bought a brain and that was dumb because like apparently brains you get for free. So you didn't even need to buy that. And then But that mean that meant I didn't have enough Solana for the zombie. I actually wanted the zombie NFT, and so I saw this buy with credit card button.

Yeah,

on Magic Eden. And then I saw a buy with Ethereum, and I'm like, "Was ist das?" Like, are you kidding me? Like, and so I click the button, and and then I I learn about Crossmint. So I was able to take the ETH. In my wallet and, and just buy the thing. And I didn't even have to think about it. Now, I, I felt like I was gonna get, I was gonna get wrecked, right? But it was a low, it was like a, I just know, hey, if I'm not like being very careful, people are gonna take cuts everywhere. And I'm, I'm really probably getting it this for half of what I could have got it for or something. Mm-hmm. Um, or, or vice versa. I, I thought I was like, maybe I'm getting ripped off, but this is like a $10 purchase, so it's fine. Um, and, and I, I click the button, I get the thing. It didn't get fully transferred into my Phantom wallet. And so it was in purgatory with Crossmint, which I also thought was really cool. I was like, oh, sweet. Like I actually just can just now move it. And so I reached out to you because I was like, this is Crossmint's the future. Like, can you do this with other stuff? Like, can I just have a button that like, like, can we do that now? And just like guarantee you, hey, you're not going to get like fully ripped off. And like, this is a great service. Yeah. And so this is like the business of like normies, my technically proficient friends who aren't in crypto. One of the biggest things is like, this is too hard still. I don't want to think about this still. Don't make me do this still. Also, they think, also they saw FTX and that doesn't help, but you know. Yeah. So anyway, that's how I got to Crossmint and we got to talking. So I would love to hear any updates. What's new with Crossmint? What else is happening? How are you doing after Solana tanking? What's going on?

Yeah, no, I'm, you know, I'm really excited to hear your story because that's exactly what we want people to do. Because like, um, the whole thing with crypto is that we are all the nerds that are the early adopters. We are, you know, we're the people that figure shit out before the rest of the world, um, knows exactly how to use it in a way that's the easiest and the most profitable, right? We're the ones who are slogging through the mud, actually learning how crypto and NFT are going, you know, they're going to change our lives. We don't know yet. And, you know, like, like you said, it's still too hard. Normies have no freaking clue how to use it. Why do you— why to use it? I mean, it doesn't compare to the rest of their lives if you think about it. It's like their lives consist of a car, an iPhone, DoorDash, Netflix, all these things that have been figured out already. All this stuff that started out as a nerdy idea and then it evolved to something that was then acceptable by the general public. And so that's what we're here to do. That's what Crossman's here to do, is we're here to do 2 things really, and that is to evolve the tech and get it to a point where it will be acceptable by the general public, which I dare say right now, as long as the use cases are obvious. For example, we've done drops with Crown Royal just recently, some airlines, the NFL, Armin van Buuren. several big names that have huge Web2 audiences. Those people use Crossmint, and so they're already starting to find their own use cases for it where the tech might still be a little too techie, a little too nerdy, not quite what the general public needs, but it does provide a service that in parallel with the actual Web2 persona or the thing that they already know, It makes it so that it's a palatable experience. So they're like, okay, we will use Crossmint then, even though it's a little bit harder than just using my Visa or just tapping with my phone or whatever. And so that's what we're here to do, evolve the tech. And then the other thing is obviously to onboard people to NFTs, onto just this ecosystem, to see that it's not just monkey pictures killing the Amazon rainforest. That's literally not. That may have some part in the whole story of NFTs, but that's not what it is. What it is, is it's, you know, it's an egalitarian way of, you know, decentralizing and, and actually owning your assets in general, whether it's, you know, financial assets or whether it is, um, something that represents the deed to something, um, something that represents your membership in an exclusive community. That's, that's what NFTs and crypto are for. And there's going to be many, many, many more use cases that we that we'll see that we haven't even thought of yet or we can't quite think of yet because the pieces that'll lead us there haven't been invented yet. And so that's what we got in store. So what Crossman's got coming up in the future is we are expanding to more chains. So we are currently on Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, pretty much anything that's on EVM we can support if anybody wants, like asks for it, but our 3 main ones that we can support out of the box with our self-service stuff is those 3. So Solana, Ethereum, Polygon. We're looking at expanding to like Finance, Flow, Immutable X, like a lot of these ones that have very specific markets. Like Immutable X is for gaming. Gaming is really digging into that one. And so that's something that we're looking at. Avalanche already we have support for. And Avalanche is another big one because there's Web2 companies looking at sort of competing with Polygon by going to Avalanche. And so that's an interesting thing there. And so yeah, expanding our credit card and cross-chain payments there. And then of course, we have our custodial wallets, which means that we hold the keys, which makes it easier for people to not bother. They don't want to bother with these long passphrases and the crazy keys and stuff and they gotta, they gotta hold on to it. That's scary to the average person. Like, people are already scared because they have to lock their front door with a physical key. Like, imagine having like, you know, some money and assets and like your house deed or something, you know, as an NFT, you know, wherever we end up in the future. Imagine having to like lock that down on like a ledger and then like a billfold for your— like, this is not gonna happen, people. And so, um, trying to figure out a way we can give ownership of the wallets and things. We do not want to hold this stuff. We don't want to hold We don't want to be responsible for everyone's stuff. We want people to experience decentralization and truly own their things. So that's something we're digging into as well. And then we also— our wallets are offering them and working with several clients to offer what we call a white label product. So our wallets are going to be integrated into things such as there's a game already on Steam that is going to be adding Crossmint Wallet. Uh, which means that they're going to be, uh, creating NFTs within the game. And so you'll be able to own in-game assets in a crypto wallet, and then you'll be able to like trade them, sell them, do whatever you want with them. So the ideal situation for the gamer, right? So like if you think about going on to World of Warcraft and, you know, grinding for 5, 6 years and getting this sick piece of armor that, you know, is world-renowned for being, you know, one of the best things ever and is like worth 10 grand or something. Um, you could— if you could have that as an NFT, then, you know, it doesn't matter if your account gets suspended or something, you know, for whatever reason. You own it and you can do something with it. So that decentralization process, um, slowly creeping into the world of Web2, I'm really excited about. And the only thing that I can find negative is that with the advent of all of these different, um, companies like Starbucks and whatnot jumping into Web2 or jumping into Web3, Um, their loyalty programs, because they'll be decentralized, you know, essentially represented by NFTs and whatnot. And so customers will be able to buy and sell them and trade them. Um, that's just my— that's just, you know, how I think of it right now. Uh, I think that loyalty programs may stop being— they may be less lucrative. Let's just put it that way. I think Starbucks is already taking steps to make it so that their NFTs are going to be a little less, you know, if you're— you know how you get stars for buying a cup of coffee or whatever? Um, they may, they may do that. So that's, that's an unfortunate part, but at the same time, you know, it's one of those shockwaves of new technology that's, that we've got to come to expect.

So what I would love to see with Starbucks, because who, okay, a latte is a latte. It's great, whatever. Uh, but like, what if your rewards could be pull together tickets and you could, my name is Millie Monthly now, Jen, because I'm cast, I'm manifesting Pooled together having a million-dollar prize drawing a month. So imagine, imagine having instead of a latte, tickets in that drawing, you know, like that would be, that'd be so sweet. That's like, that's, but, but again—

Oh man, I'd be down, man. I'd be buying Starbucks every goddamn day. Let me tell you what. Sorry if it's not personal podcast,

but— No, but, but, but for sure. And also like it's table stakes at that point where it's like, Oh, you're in crypto. You got to have $10 and pool together because like you could win a million a month, like, or, or, or once we get Millie Monthly, I'm going to change my name to Billy Yearly. So a billion a year. Come on, come on.

Love it. You

know, so manifesting, it's the secret. But yeah, that, that. So, but I want to know, how are you getting into the rooms of Crown Royal or, you know, like these other big brand names? I'm like with Polygon. Polygon's like, hey, we landed Starbucks. So I'm like DMing them like, how do we Talk to Starbucks.

Yeah, so this is one of those things that you you find out when you get into a startup or even actually just watch Shark Tank. That's the way that you get into the room with these these other companies. You get investors because we are we are a VC funded company and you know we are a startup and you know we're not funded by like NFTs or anything like that. So it's it's one of those things where your investors are going to have contacts and they want to see you succeed. So that's why you choose your investors very wisely. You don't say, I want as much money as possible. You say, I want this person, this person, this person, this firm, this firm, uh, and then this like top leading like financial investment firm because they invested in Coinbase, uh, you know, all these different places, you know. And that's who we got, by the way, is the very top ones. We are very excited and very thrilled to do that. But those people, they have these contacts, these industry contacts, because they have already been successful. They are completely submerged and immersed and just part of the startup, the business community. And like, these people know each other, you know, like head of business development at, you know, Taco Bell or something. You could just, like, one of your investors probably knows them and is probably going out and play a game of golf with them this weekend. And so that's how you do it, is you pick your investors wisely, and then you have, you know, just like, okay, who do we want to start targeting? And you, you know, for us it was an industry thing. We were just like, okay, so there's, uh, we sort of broke it into industry segments based on the moves that they're making and how, um, you know, how far and how deep into these industries that, uh, that, uh, crypto and NFTs are starting to, um, pervade. And, uh, so yeah, that's, that's what we did. We, um, ended up talking with somebody at Diageo, I think. Actually, no, it was VaynerMedia. Somebody at VaynerMedia is, uh, helping us out. And they ended up— I think this is how it went, I may be wrong, but there's a connection there. Because we had this whole thing with Crown Royal was Diageo, Crown Royal, VaynerMedia, Salesforce, and another company or two that I apologize, can't remember their name. But anyway, there was just a big old web of connections there. And so we ended up doing it during Thanksgiving. We did a drop with Crown Royal during Thanksgiving NFL game. And so there was a— I'm actually going to be dropping a video. I almost have it ready. Like I said, I'm PR over here at CrossFit. I've been making a lot of videos.

It's so freaking awesome. You're so awesome.

It's fun. It's fun.

We need to add like applause here and I need to have like a great answer button for your last answer. I wanted to press a button that said, good answer, good answer. Anyways, keep going.

Good answer. Thank you. But yeah, we just, you know, it's just, it's just who you know in this business. It really is. And that's, that's the whole reason startups get investors. Is for the money, yes, but it's also to secure those people and those connections. And understanding that is like, it's really the difference. And that's, and I'm sorry that it's such a, it's a very specific answer that may be out of reach for a lot of folks. But what I can say is that a surrogate for having like, oh, I have a startup and I'm getting investors, is to actually get on LinkedIn and start making posts and start tagging some companies or, you know, people. And I'm not talking about tagging like Amazon and Starbucks. I'm talking about start tagging companies that, you know, may have connections to these other companies. Start talking about what they're doing, what they're building, you know.

Are you one of these LinkedIn influencers?

No, actually, I just watch them all. I just sit back and observe.

I love it.

I'm just like, oh, okay. All right. That's how they do it.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, I ain't got time for that. No,

no, no, I got that. And also LinkedIn is like very not Web3, but I mean, if you're trying to reach normies, LinkedIn is the most normie place on the planet. So that's how you do it, right?

Yeah, exactly. And so that's, that's something I've seen too, is a lot of times getting connected, making connections. Honestly, don't be afraid to just say, hey, I'm going to create a connection with this person, like this business development manager over at, um, you know, Uber or whatever. And I'm going to say, look, hey, I just saw you. I have this idea. You know, you know, you've heard all this craze about NFTs. Here's my idea for how I think we could possibly, you know, I have an idea for how we could possibly like work with Uber to, you know, do this or whatever. You never know. There's going to be people out there that accept those requests and they're gonna be like, holy shit, I was just thinking about this today. Let's talk. Do not be afraid to reach out. That's what I have to say about that.

There was something with LinkedIn where you could connect it to your Gmail and then invite every contact. So I think like I accidentally mass invited Like everyone that has ever been on an email with me. And so like, people are like, hey, hey, Tim, are you, how are you connected with this person? Can you connect me? I'm like, I'm so sorry. I accidentally hit invite everybody and people just accepted it. So I have a bunch of randos. Let me go back into the Discord chat because we got N Cookie with, with some questions here that I think are really good. One of them, and this is the Swiss Army knife thing, and this is a common, like I have, I've, I'm diagnosed with ADD. It's, it's a real, real thing. power and it's a curse and, you know, gotta, gotta manage it. But how do you, as a Swiss Army knife, have time for the scissors and the nail file and the knife and the toothpick? Like, how do you use all the tools or, or do you, or like, how do you, yeah. How do you prioritize that, that Swiss Army knife-ness?

Yeah. Well, I mean, really good question. Honestly, it's not been until I got into Web3 really that I was able to fully unleash all of the tools and, and realize that I could use them all. And you're going to hate this, but I pretty much quit playing video games. And so I know that sucks. So that's pretty much what I do now is in the evenings, I'll just do something else. Like I said, I'm a writer on the side, science fiction writer. So I have very strict hours for work. And unless there's going to be— because Web3 is such a global phenomenon, I will sometimes have a Twitter Space or something at 4:00 in the morning or something like that. So that happens. And a lot of times when I was doing sales, I would talk to customers at all hours because they would be all over the world. So essentially, I set very strict boundaries. And it's one of those things that's hard for me because I'm a very ADD person. I've only really realized it recently. And, you know, I've realized I've been coping with it for all my life by forcing myself towards one specific goal and then executing on that so well that everybody gives me compliments. And then I would like thrive on that. And that's how I would go to the next thing. And so it has to be this thing where I'm just, I'm doing something that I know is going to be so freaking cool that people are going to notice. And so, you know, that's, that's just my personal motivation and how I do things. So like I said, setting boundaries, understanding what drives you, and then what is your, what is going to be the most value for you and not the most value for other people slash what you think other people want you to do. So the things that you want to do, you're going to be most invested in. You're going to do them better. You're going to do them more efficiently. You're going to do them well. And so that's, that's really what it is. Set boundaries. Find the things that you like to do and you can do really, really well, uh, when you have obviously the opportunity to do so. Um, so in a startup, uh, especially in Web3, jobs other than engineer are very fluid. So I've done so many different things. I've worn so many different hats here at CrossFit. And one of the things that I do to help keep all of this stuff straight is I actually run our internal wiki and our external FAQ on our website. And so by doing that, I have all of this information I'm constantly looking at and it's keeping everything fresh in my mind. And then I'm writing like new ones when we have new features that come out and things like that. So it just, it's this thing where I'm providing value to the company, but I'm also bringing the value back to myself so that I can come on places like Like, this community podcast is an amazing place where I've had such a blast talking so far. I'm just really enjoying being here. I can come here and I can have that information ready at my fingertips.

Is that you saying that you have to go soon?

No.

Okay, good, because I have so many more questions for you. What game did you give up? What, what game did you give up?

It's probably games, but what was the main one? The most painful thing ever is Rocket League. I gave up Rocket League.

I hate that game because I'm not— but I could see, like, if you— if I was good at that game, I would love that game. And I actually have a Meta Quest, uh,

2

thing, and there's a— there's a mech version now. It's like you're a mech, uh, Rocket League in Meta Quest. That's like— I played it last night. It's so fun. But anyways, you don't need it. You don't need to know about that. No, you don't need to know about that because I don't want to ruin your system.

Hey, it doesn't mean that I don't play them ever. It's just that I used to to like get off work and I would play games until bed. And that was like my thing. Like, I'm relaxing, I'm done. Um, I used to play League of Legends. I actually worked at Riot Games for a while. And so that was like my, my thing is I would play that. I also love, um, uh, turn-based strategy games. So every single Civilization game I've played, uh, I love, um, Endless Space 2 is another one of my favorites. So I either do like turn-based strategy Or extreme, like, adrenaline games. Those are like my only 2 that I play, like, essentially.

And Cookie says Stellaris.

Stellaris is good. I, I just, for some reason, the way they do their maps drove me batshit. But that's just because I'm so used to Civilization, and then Endless Space is so much like a Civilization clone in space. It just, it made sense to me naturally. But yeah, the way they like do their maps and you port from like one Sector or one region to another. I just, oh God, I don't know why. Maybe you can tell me how I can actually, don't tell me because I don't wanna freaking get into it. I love space games. So,

and then, and then how do you go start to finish from a novel? Like on your, your science fiction?

Oh, how do you, how do you?

Yeah. Like how do you, how do you complete novels?

You know, when I wrote my first novel, it was actually in 2019. I had a near-death experience where I had something completely randomly mechanically wrong with my body just happen. Um, like one in a million sort of thing. And I realized I'd be really pissed off because I've always wanted to be a writer, and I have a whole other story around that about why I didn't write for about 10 years of my life and, and stuff like that. But I realized I'd be so pissed off if I didn't write a book before I died. And so I said, okay, I'm gonna learn how to write. I'm actually gonna sit down because I've been like piddling out some words for like several years trying to write a book. I had like 30,000 words, 40,000 words down in a book and it was terrible. Um, so I just sat down, I studied, you know, I was off work for 3 months while I was recovering from this thing that happened. And I studied and I studied. I found videos, um, for anybody interested in writing fiction, go look up Brandon Sanderson's 318R class on YouTube. He teaches it for free every 4 years. He re-records it. And that's one of the very best classes you can take to learn the, like, minimum viable basics of writing science fiction and fantasy. And, um, that's 318R by Brandon Sanderson. I highly recommend it. It's free, and he teaches it at BYU and puts it up every 4 years. And so I just study. I read books, and then I just started writing. I, I, um, had an outline. I'm an outline writer, but I do what we call a floating outline, where I will write a section and then things— because I'll get so excited about what I'm writing, stuff will just come out. And in that, that I will then have to change up kind of the direction of where I'm going in the story. And so,

so you're a pantser?

No, I'm actually not. I love the micro pants, but not the macro pants.

You like, you like the short shorts? You're the short shorts?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm the hot pants. I'm a hot pantser. Oh

my

God, I'm gonna trademark that one. But yeah, so that's, that's essentially what I did. And so I actually, I was so burned up about not having a book done and almost, you know, almost leaving this world and not having something done that I started getting up 3 hours before work every day and writing. I would write from 6 AM to 9 AM, and I would do that every day. And I finished it in 9 months, 170,000-word epic fantasy. It's not science fiction, but I'd had this epic fantasy story in my mind for a long time. And so I finished it. And I remember that when I wrote the end, there was this strange upwelling of just emotions that I have no idea where it came from. It was something from my unconscious, from my subconscious, from whatever place. And I just started crying. And it was just this crazy moment. I still remember it was, it was, it was like the unlocking of a superpower and also like like showing me that I could do it, damn it. And so I wrote another book after that, and then I've written a couple of short stories. Last year, my— actually, my mentor passed away in January, which is really hard for me. My writing mentor, uh, I hadn't realized how close he had been to me. Dave Farland, if you're familiar with him, uh, he wrote the, uh, Runelords series, and he became a teacher. And, um, so when he passed away, I— it was hard for me to write anything. And, um, but I started writing short stories to submit to something called the Writers of the Future contest. And that was a contest he used to essentially be the head judge for. And I said, damn it, this is what I need to do. I need to write this and I need to have it. I need to win this contest because this is something that, you know, I think he would have been proud of. And I wanted to do it anyway because if you win that contest, you essentially have a career started for you. You know, your writing career will be started. And so my very first entries, I won what's called a silver honorable mention, which is almost a winner. And pretty much people will write for like 5, 10 years and never get one of those. So I was just like really, really excited and encouraged. And right now I'm kind of excited because I'm waiting for the results of this last quarter. I think I wrote my very best story I've ever written in my life, and I am really hoping this will be the win. But so essentially, I guess the way that I found myself writing is just a near-death experience and then just really, really hardcore being very bullheaded and And just stubborn about getting it done. I don't get up at 6 in the morning to write anymore. I'm more of like a 2 AM to 10 AM kind of person for sleeping. So what I do is I write at night. And after work, I will chill for a little bit, maybe make some dinner and watch an episode of TV. And then I will mentally switch over. And then I will think about how good it felt to write the end that one time. And then that is almost enough for me. Like, that's almost all I need to just sit down and start banging out some words again. I'm currently working on a nonfiction book, actually, about my experience in Web3 and sort of onboarding some normies onto NFTs through the book is what I want to do.

Okay, so as far as publishing goes, then you're like, let's submit to contests or prizes, like that sort of thing. And that basically, like, then people want you and we'll do— okay, got it. Excited about the nonfiction exploration. That's really cool. We have more questions from the chat here. One of them, I'm going to slip in my own question, is where are you looking at NFT charts? Like, is there a charting thing? And then secondly, what are your thoughts on the NFT lending borrowing space?

Okay, so first question, where am I looking at NFT charts? So I actually just look at Solana, Solana NFTs. So that's not going to be helpful. But it's called soulsniper.xyz. I'll put a link in chat. It is, uh, literally it looks like TradingView for NFTs, and it's just, it's super cool because you can, um, you know, chart by, you know, you can do your, your daily chart or your hourly chart or your 15-minute, and it's, um, it shows like live sales, uh, it shows, yeah, it shows floor prices, whatever you want. You can have a watch All this stuff. And so it's just really fun going, and that's actually how I get my overview. I don't know if there's one for Ethereum. I'm sure there is. There has to be because it's such an obvious thing. Um, but yeah, you can just get an overview of kind of the market and who's doing what. You can see, you know, what's hot, what's moving, that kind of stuff. And then,

and then, yeah, yeah, lending, borrowing, NFTs. Yeah, collateralization. Yeah.

I actually think that it is a very tenuous enterprise at best. I think that attributing equity— I actually just tweeted about this yesterday— attributing equity to such a volatile asset that is based mainly on community speculation is something that is a little bit irresponsible. But then again, we're all sort of irresponsible by being in the space in the first place, I would say, just a little bit, because we are By being in the decentralized space like this, we are effectively standing up to the existing centralized institutions. So we are defying, for example, here in the United States, the Treasury, and we're defying all these central banks and things like that. So I think it's a great exploration and a great experiment into what could be the evolution of financial services and finance as a whole. I would not use it. I have thought about using it though, because I have a couple of DGods and I have a Ute. And if you're familiar with those, they've shot back up in price, which is nice. And I'm actually building a cabin out in the country. I'm buying some acreage and building like an Airbnb hunting Airbnb essentially is what it's going to be. And writing, I'm going to have a writing, a little writing retreat there too. I'm going to try to do that every year. And I thought about it, I was like, man, if I had, if I need a little extra money to like, you know, buy nice furniture or whatever for it, I wonder if I could like take out a loan, you know, on my, one of my NFTs that I have. Like, you know, I could. And I, so I thought about it and it's still there in the back of my mind. Um, but yeah, I think it's something that is definitely experimental right now. I think just definitely be careful Uh, because these are, as we all know, these are not, uh, like backed by anything other than pretty much the community and the prices of, of, of crypto, which can be extremely volatile. So that's, that's my general idea. I'm not really an expert in that field, but I have worked in fintech for a number of years, and that's, that's what I feel about it. But at the same time, there's, you know, I have kind of a— I'm definitely more conservative when it comes to money in general I tend towards watching and waiting and observing and seeing what happens first. And so that's where I'm at.

And then what about peer-to-peer lending?

Yeah. I don't mind.

Just in general.

Yeah. If 2 people come to an agreement, that's the law between them. And I firmly believe that nobody should get in the way of that kind of thing. So that is something that I think is totally fine. Because they both are accepting the risk and the consequences. And so that's fine.

Yeah. I'm just really fascinated with like credit scores and peer-to-peer lending, NFT. Like I'm a student of Richard's, of Arlie Rihanno in the chat. And so it's been really, I just grew up thinking debt was a bad thing and then, you know, just get rid of it, get rid of it. And then, then I'm like, wait, people use debt to build wealth. What is going on? And so I'm reading Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Right now. And, uh, actually, I need to get it back from the library. Come on, library. Uh, it's on hold. So anyway, but, uh, but listen, Jen, you're the most interesting podcast guest in the world.

Oh my gosh, thank you.

So this has been awesome. You have given me ideas for ways to improve the show by having a good answer button, and we need more applause buttons because you've given such banger answers. And it's also just so cool To talk about CrossFit, to talk about NFTs. You're a wealth of knowledge and life experience. And so thank you. You get the last word though. So what else do we need? Did you want to say, do you have anything? What's your parting thoughts for us here, the PoolTogether community?

Okay. You know what? I had so much fun on this. Number one, I hope you invite me back. I hope I can be a repeat. Oh yeah.

I already heard round 2 coming up. Yeah.

Yeah. This was a lot of fun. This was, this was actually a really chill experience in here. I really enjoyed this, but I would say right now, I feel like those of us in NFTs are doing a lot of what we call in the author world navel-gazing. We are all sitting there looking at ourselves in the mirror and describing our clothes and how we're not as pretty as the girl next door, and that's how you know she's gonna end up being pretty to somebody else, and blah, blah, blah. And we're all looking at ourselves and we're looking at what we're doing, and we are not looking at what could be. Yeah. A lot of us are looking at it like, oh my God, when's the next NFT drop? Can I get whitelist? Oh my God, like, what's this influencer saying? You know, this is just— this is a passing thing. All of this that's happening right now is just one step on a long staircase towards mass adoption and changing the way that we live forever, just like the internet did, just like Amazon did. Um, right now we're essentially at the stage where If we were Amazon, we would be like, and if we tried to put what we do in Amazon terms, we would be giving people a website where they had to go through an inventory one by one of everything that they want. And they would have to choose the truck, choose the fuel, choose the warehouse that it comes from. And then they would have to make sure that they had a lock That they put on the door and all this stuff. Anyway, you get it, right? So that's where we're at right now. If you think about how great Amazon is at doing what it does, making it easy to buy something, have it show up, we need to start looking towards the future and start identifying those things that NFTs are going to solve that we don't know are problems yet. What is it about our lives that could be better in general? What is it about NFTs that's really great? And then start trying to make connections. And so I would say for anyone who's an investor here, that's an investor in NFTs, and I say that very loosely, anybody who buys NFTs and is interested in them, I would definitely say one thing you should be looking at is not how cool the utility is and the shitcoin that's attached to it and all this stuff. What I would say is look for these teams of builders that have a real vision that is actually something beyond A remix of the same crap we've been seeing for the past 5 years in NFTs. That's not what we need. What we need is that tiny spark of something new, something different, something that's a little bit edgy, that's out there on the border of what's been done, right there on the frontier. Somebody's got to be like me. Somebody's got to be that trumpet player that's the schmuck up at the front of the column marching into unknown territory. And so I would say, Keep an eye on those companies and those projects and those teams that are building new things. And that's, you know, obviously do your trading and get your whitelist, but that's going to be where the future is with those people.

Jen, it is a gift to know you. Thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you for CrossFit. Keep fighting the good fight. Are you going to East Denver? Are you going to be at East Denver?

I probably will not be, no.

Okay, well, we need to sync up where we can see each other IRL at some conference or something.

Absolutely, for sure. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. All right, man, it was great to meet you and to talk to you and everybody here. If you guys have any questions for me, please feel free to hit me up either here on Discord or on Twitter. I'm @jennfir, J-E-N-N-F-I-R, on Twitter. And, um, I'm happy to talk anytime.

That's it. Thanks so much.

Thanks, guys.

Cool, Jen. All right. You're the best. Thanks for listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit, and we'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. So visit the PoolTogether Discord and let us know.