#023 - Crypto the Game: Dylan Abruscato on Building the Web3 Survivor - Rise Up After Dark🍻🌗

Good now, revolutionaries, and welcome to Rise Up After Dark. But today it's after noon because we've got a special guest joining us from Pacific time, Mr. Dylan Abruscato, the founder of Crypto the Game. If you've never seen us before, then let me welcome you. This is your place for helpful crypto news commentary, expert guest interviews, and of course answers to your questions. But today we're going to be talking all about Crypto the Game. So without further ado, I want to introduce you to my friend Dylan. He is the founder of Crypto: The Game. It is a viral crypto survival game and reality competition where players like your guy here get to compete for a winner-takes-everything pot of Ether. It's been called the most exciting reality competition on the internet, and I am inclined to agree. Before that, Dylan had a big career doing stuff at HQ Trivia to put them on the map. He was at Uber, he was at Postmates, he was at PartyRound, and has been nominated for A Primetime Emmy, among other awards. Uh, and in 2024, the show was— thank you very much. In 2024, the crypto of the game was acquired by Uniswap. I think that's a good cherry on top and enough for me to say, Dylan, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Wow, thank you so much for having me. This is great.

You, you don't get a live radio intro that often like that?

No, first time.

Really?

Yeah,

well, I'm clipping it so you can put it on your wall.

Um, oh, I loved it.

Did I miss anything?

I think that's it. No.

He's a dad. He's a dad. He's a fellow tall person. Are you in Tall Dow, by the way, Dylan?

I'm not, but, uh, I'm down to join. Uh,

oh my gosh. Oh, I was inducted into Tall Dow last week at East Denver, uh, by a friend of mine. I didn't even know it was a thing. If you're a guy over 6'3 or a woman over 5'10, then you are eligible to be in Tall Dow. And I'm not sure what the perks are yet. Although people have shared a lot of good travel tips in the group chat for like tall people, and somebody's like, you know, trying to organize a tall-only meetup at the next ETH Denver. I don't know. So I'll, I'll get a picture of you and submit you for proof of tall.

Cool. I am, uh, I am over 6'3 for sure.

Um, but that's not what we came here to talk about. I really am here to introduce you and the concept of Crypto: The Game, and more broadly, like this idea that blockchain beyond being just some technical thing, can enhance our experiences with stuff like games, competition, media experiences. I honestly can't think of anybody that's a better expert to talk to about that. So I would love to start there. I know you've given the shtick a lot and I've talked to our audience some about it, but can you tell us what exactly Crypto: The Game is?

Yep. Yeah, I'd say at the highest level, it is a 10-day interactive survival competition. Um, heavily inspired by winner-take-all formats like Survivor, like Squid Game, like Hunger Games. Kind of a tried and true format of, you know, many people play, one person wins. So we cap the number of players at 800 for CTG each season, and there are 10 tribes. And basically every day over the course of 10 days follows the same schedule of an immunity challenge that goes live at noon Eastern. So think Clash Classic arcade games, digital scavenger hunts, crypto puzzles. Whoever wins that challenge essentially earns immunity and is safe from the vote that night. All other tribes need to vote each other out or vote players out from within that tribe. And then slowly over the course of 10 days, the field is whittled down from 800 to usually a few dozen. And then the best part, similar to Survivor, is that everyone that was previously eliminated comes back on and votes for the winner. So you can't just backstab your way to the top and you have to play this almost ruthless but respected game, um, in order to try to win.

Yeah. In the first season, uh, MFL won the hearts and the competition, it seemed like, from, uh, just interacting very wholesomely through poems at the end of each day.

Yeah. So, uh, the winner of season 1 is a guy by the name of MFL. Um, he, uh, lives in rural Japan, um, doesn't speak a word of English and played overnight every night because, um, it is a live reality competition. Um, It's definitely more conducive to American time zones. And I don't know if he is a poet or if he just used Google Translate to communicate with his tribemates and they were poetic in nature. But he somehow like became this cult figure within the game of this like wise poet, you know, playing from Japan. And by like Survivor terminology, played a perfect game where he never received any votes cast against him. Uh, in the first 9 days and then received the majority of the votes on the finale to be crowned the winner.

That's wild. And then last year, uh, I was part of the, the group chat. I thought the endgame was really interesting considering— so last year was the first year that, uh, or last season I should say, it was the first time that your entry was represented by a non-fungible token. There was a non-fungible token attached to your entry. Yeah, players could buy in, but then Uh, they could, after being eliminated, there was the, the voting mechanism, but they could hypothetically buy back in again, um, or they could hypothetically own shares of a token. And I thought it was really unique that token 733 became like owned by a multisig and the focus of this movement, and then won the game. And all these people collectively who voted for that token played a part in the story of donating money to Tornado Cash's legal defense. I thought that was Such a cool thing.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the, the, uh, 2 things I'll say there, the goal of each season, um, is to essentially be like a different social experiment. So, um, the theme for season 2 was, uh, essentially we called it Anon Island and it gave folks the ability to play anonymously. Um, that will not be the case for season 3. That was kind of like a unique to season 2 aspect. Um, and ultimately an anonymous player, you know, player 733 did win, which was very cool to see. see. But also, while the high-level format I described at the top of the show will kind of like stay true each season, I'll say there's a different game show or reality show on-chain twist that we layer on each season. So in season 2, we introduced this kind of Deal or No Deal mechanic that you mentioned, where you mint an NFT which represents your slot in the game. But then as you got closer to the finale, you kind of had the ability to basically cash out for more than you bought in for at various checkpoints throughout the season. But yeah, I always laugh thinking back to one friend who was playing the game last season and just kept buying back in through other people's NFTs and just kept getting eliminated and kept buying back in. So that was pretty funny to see. But for season 3, a lot of that's going to stay the same. But we are going to make the NFTs soulbound once you're fully eliminated. So you can cash out, you can sell, you can transfer, you can do whatever you want as an active player. But once you're fully eliminated and, uh, the NFT goes from an entry NFT to a jury NFT, it will be soulbound to you as the holder.

Okay, that's interesting. And, uh, would prevent the mechanic— I remember last season people were concerned about, uh, people who are buying influence on the jury. Yeah, is there going to be a whale that's going to win? That kind of thing. Very interesting. And season 3 is called Resurrection Island, and I heard you talk about it the other day with Dina about what the twist is. Do you want to elaborate for folks on the meaning behind Resurrection Island? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, if you're a fellow Top Chef watcher like myself, you might be familiar with Last Chance Kitchen, which is what this is very inspired by. But it's basically the ability to potentially earn your spot back in the competition once you get eliminated. That's why I said when your NFT— when you're fully eliminated, your NFT will become soulbound because you could get voted out But not be fully eliminated because of the potential to earn your spot back into CTG this season. So similar to Last Chance Kitchen, there'll be kind of like a separate part of the island that you will go to once you're voted out, and there will be you know similar challenges where you could potentially earn your spot back into the competition.

Okay, and the season technically goes live tomorrow with returning players invited to buy in. Can you talk a little about for somebody who maybe is excited and is like, okay, this sounds kind of fun. I want to play it. What's the journey like from today through the end of the game? How can they participate and what should they expect?

Yeah, so entries go live tomorrow, Thursday, March 6th at 10 AM Eastern on CryptoTheGame.com. You'll be able to mint your NFT if you are on the early access list, which exactly as you were saying includes previous players, partially as a thank you to previous players, mostly as a Sybil-proof technique so that We don't just go live first come, first serve and someone buys 51% of the slots.

Sure.

But yeah, so those will be available to previous players. And then 24 hours later on Friday at 10 AM Eastern, we're going to open up the slots on a first come, first serve basis until we hit that 800-player cap. And that's just the entry period. The game doesn't actually begin and the tribes aren't actually assigned until Monday, March 10th. Um, so the season itself will run from March 10th to March 19th.

And it's pretty nonstop, right?

Yeah, I mean, that, that's what blew me away the most. I kind of assumed, uh, you know, folks would log on around noon, register a score of arcade game, you know, send, send some folks a couple clues for the puzzle, you know, maybe you form an alliance on Twitter or in the DMs, uh, with someone you recognize, and then you come back on that night to vote. But it really did Um, I mean, you've played it, so you tell me, but it kind of ballooned into this 24/7, uh, reality show where you have to be kind of all in to win.

I wouldn't say 24/7, but I would definitely say like morning to, to end of vote. And then people are like, okay, gotta go talk to my family, see you guys later, you know. But people are dodging work. They are, or they've, they've already told people like, listen, I've got to be off. And they're in a Telegram group chat or a Discord server coordinating with Their tribe members or trying to break into another tribe. It's just it's it's a very active time, and there was this um I think this feeling of FOMO that was like not I won't say non-consensual, but it was like consensual de facto that the people who were online were going to be the ones making plans, and if you came back online, you were buried deep and you weren't going to be able to catch up. And so it was very tough. I'm interested to see if people will continue to play it that way because I think there are a lot of returning players. And they're kind of expecting that. But I also think, I don't know, the, the dynamics could change. I, I'm open for anything.

You never know what's gonna happen when we're live.

No. And you said, didn't you say you had a friend who played and he came back one day, or she did, to like 10,000?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was, uh, I was catching up with a friend who played and, uh, went on a run one day last season, came back to 10,000 unread Telegram messages from all the different side chats and cabals and, you know, alliances they were in. And everyone assumed they were like, I don't know, done or not, not in it to win it. But, you know, I don't want to discourage folks from playing because they don't think they have 24/7 to play. Like, I think it's one of those things where it's, it's, it only has to be 24/7 if you want it to be 24/7.

Yeah. And I think you can have fun either way and also be successful either way. Like, last season, there were a lot of people who, who were not particularly active, who I think got a lot farther. Because as we see in some other reality competitions, like they weren't you know, making themselves a target by putting too much, uh, too much out there. There was a little mystery, a little intrigue. Yeah. Um, so tell me more about the culture of the game too, because I think that's another really fascinating part that's helped it become such a, a big deal, not just in like crypto Twitter, but in the world of entertainment and reality. Um, do you know off the top of your head like how many different, I don't know, countries or time zones, or maybe, maybe a better metric would be like different crypto companies or things represented. Can you, can you talk a little about like the demographic of the game and just the, the story that was told beyond the play?

Yeah, yeah, it was, um, it was fully global. I think we had visitors from like 100 and, you know, over 100 countries, uh, during season 2 of folks that wanted to follow along. And something that we've really tried to Crack is this essentially a compelling spectator mode because the game is capped at 800 players and everyone loves a good reality show with drama and twists and turns. I think that it's kind of ballooned to like a spectator show. And so a couple things that we're launching this season, the first is a companion show with Boys Club, which that happened last year as well, but they're running it back. That will go live right after the voting period each night. I— and essentially they'll kind of like cover that day's drama, the twists, the villain arcs, the heroes, what— who got out and why, and have different guests on the show and kind of treat it like a Watch What Happens Live or—

Yeah.

You know, an After the Final Rose type of show. And, you know, Polymarket is gonna be doing like prediction markets for CTG so folks can kind of like track the odds of who's going to win in real time.

Can you talk about that a little real quick? Just pause on it. What is that going to entail? Are they like hosting an official market where like every day they're going to offer like today's, you know, bet of the day or something like that? Or will it just be—

I actually don't know too much about it. I know, you know, Goldie and Armand and a bunch of folks that work at Polymarket are big CTG fans and played it themselves. And I'll tell you what I know about previous Polymarket prediction markets for CTG, which was essentially who's going to win was the main one. But just in speaking to them, what's new is kind of the dynamic of being able to like add players' names to it throughout the season. So the odds will kind of change in real time.

That's very cool. And you've got a lot of other partnerships too that are sort of— are there any that you can— I saw you announced the Farcaster partnership today. Congratulations. That's very cool.

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I can't wait.

Are there any others like returning? Obviously, you know, you've been bought by Uniswap, so like the acquisition makes them a real like full-time, all-the-time partner.

Yeah, yeah. But

any others that you can tell us about now?

Yeah, so the Farcaster one, which we announced today, is really exciting. We're going to be doing a custom immunity challenge kind of like built in and around the Farcaster ecosystem. So if you remember the Lens challenge from last season, folks essentially will have to go down an endless Farcaster rabbit hole in search of immunity, which should be really fun. We announced that OpenSea will be the official marketplace for secondary sales of NFTs this season. So if you do want to cash out, if you do want to buy back in, if you do want to list your entry NFT, you can do so on OpenSea. And then yeah, Uniswap is obviously the big hero partner. I think the goal for this was never for it to feel like a big Uniswap ad at all, but there will be some subtle integrations. It's going to be built on UniChain, which is the new L2. It's going to have Resurrection Island. The theme is kind of tied to unicorn lore a bit. And without revealing too much, because you are a player, I'll say there'll be some Uni-themed challenges.

You don't know that I'm a player yet, Dylan. I haven't bought my piece, man.

Come on. That's true. That's true. I don't know. But it would be exclusive alpha.

Mike is in the comments saying Adidas. Too soon?

Too soon? No, not too soon.

So that was one of the interesting things though, is like you're probably getting a lot of feedback in real time. Like, I would love to know more of the things that you didn't anticipate or expect 'Cause you're, you're like a reality show guy. You know what you're getting into. You've done this pretty professionally designing game experiences in a very deep way for a lot of people. But I know that there were a lot of things that you said, oh, oh, that's going to happen. Uh, can you talk about that at all?

For sure. Yeah. I think like, uh, part of it being a live show is that every season and every day there's basically like unpredictable moments that you have to like react to in real time. So— Sure. Season 1, day 1, I got a call from Brian and Ty who were, who are my CTG co-founders. And they were basically like, hey, we can't, like, we are basically like the Pac-Man challenge that we were planning on launching with on day 1 wasn't ready in time. And they were like, can we push this back? And I was like, no, like the season started, like we can't, we need a challenge basically. So like in real time and on the spot, we came up with an IRL scavenger hunt. challenge in which we hid immunity inside Chris Dixon's book, which had just come out in McNally Jackson in Williamsburg, and basically just built that like day of because there was zero product and edge lift. So everyone just kind of got a clue and had to, you know, had a text field for the answer, but it kind of allowed Brian and Ty that extra 24 hours to finish what they were building on the arcade game. while everyone else kind of ran around the world looking for this thing.

What was the phone call like to that bookstore?

I think, you know, I, I thought they were going to be a lot more confused than we were because, um, you know, at first Ty just kind of placed it, uh, in the book and, and like slowly walked away. But then, uh, we all had the realization that it was like pretty unfair for folks, um, outside of, outside of Brooklyn. Uh, so the— I basically had to call the, the bookstore, tell them about it, and also get them in on it so that if someone solved the puzzle and happened to call all the bookstores instead of going in person, they were able to, like, read them the answer over the phone. And surprisingly, they were like, you know, whenever a book comes out, there's always, like, some creative launch strategy. So, like, we were used to, like, publishers and marketers, like, trying to do stuff like this. So they were, I don't know, they were really cool. We lucked out. So shout out to McNally Jackson in Williamsburg for helping us. And yeah, and another example, you know, we had no plans of doing, like, a tribe shuffle during the first season. You were supposed to basically just be your tribe and ride it out till the merge. But I got a call one night from a friend who was playing, and he was just like way too, way too cocky and confident and was like, you know, we— I got this thing on lock, I'm running my alliance, we are winning every challenge. And I just kind of thought to myself, like, what would Jeff Probst do? And so I basically said drop your buffs and built that the night before as well and shuffled the tribe. So, you know, things happen in real time that we never expect. And the beauty of this game is that we kind of just get to roll with the punches.

I'm gonna get you a Uniswap encrypted game color WWJPD bracelet for your next decent gift. Okay, you mentioned Brian and Ty, and I really— one of the tragedies of, I think we see your face a lot, we don't see them as much. And I got to connect with them after I found out they were working on the game too and building this awesome experience. And I have been so impressed. With the work all 3 of you do.

Yeah.

And I'm just curious how you met each other, how you know each other, um, because you guys seem like a dream team.

Yeah, yeah. That was actually the answer to the, uh, Chris Dixon puzzle, was dream team spelled with Y's, because Dylan is D-Y-L-A-N, Ty T-Y, Brian with a Y. So we spelled the dream team with Y's. That's a little inside, inside info. But, um, yeah, they're, they're the best in the world at what they do. I truly believe that. And was kind of fortunate enough to just happen to be their coworkers at the fintech startup called PartyRound that you mentioned at the top of the show. Ty was on my team on marketing, basically, even though he is just as talented of a designer and engineer as he is a marketer. And we were kind of tasked with doing mischief-style drops with the goal of basically just going viral on tech Twitter. So you may have seen a couple PartyRound drops from a couple years ago. But, and Brian was on like the true backend engineering team. And I can give you the whole origin story of how I came up with CTG and talk about the HQ days, but— Yeah.

I mean, we'd like that too.

Okay, cool. But yeah, the TL;DR for real quick, just on Brian and Ty, is that we were working at PartyRound. It was acquihired by a neobank called Ro. And, you know, this is just an idea that's kind of been coming up in my mind between every startup since HQ. And luckily, they're fellow Survivor fans, and I kind of just said, hey, I have this idea. It's a live interactive Survivor show. At the time, there was no crypto component. None of us had ever worked in crypto. And I don't know, I'm so lucky that they agreed to do it for like a handshake equity split and a rev share. Yeah.

So that was, that was going to be kind of the question. I've heard you talk about this before and you talk about it in other formats, your, your idea of how this evolved. But I would really like you to highlight, especially as somebody who, like, you were in tech, you were in startups, so I'm sure you were maybe familiar with crypto, but for somebody who is not actively working in it, who's now building crypto, the game, uh, can you talk a little about that journey? Because we have, we really have a lot of people. Just a quick thing about our audience is, is a lot of them are at all levels of our experience. We got people like Mike. who work at Coinbase. And then we've got people, you know, who are like crypto curious or crypto skeptical, who are, you know, teachers or real estate developers or retired or young and about to go to college, and they're learning about this for the first time. And I think it's always very inspiring when we have somebody who was not like, you know, born and raised in, you know, Chris Dixon's house or something like that come on the show and talk about how they came to this, especially somebody who's as relatable as you, who's not like a You know, sit behind my computer or like bajillionaire kind of guy. Can you, can you talk about that?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think, um, so, so taking 100 steps back, uh, I started my career, um, in, in live TV. Uh, I, um, I was an NBC page out of college and worked at SNL, which was like, we could spend a whole nother hour talking about, uh, SNL and what it's like working there, but really was just like obsessed with the idea of being a live TV, um, producer. And so I kind of only stumbled upon tech by way of HQ Trivia and the kind of like the grand vision of the future of live TV and a live interactive TV network. So in my mind, in the same way that we took a live or a game show format and made it live and mobile and interactive, like the same could have and should have been said for a Survivor format. So that's kind of how the initial idea came to be. But to answer your question about crypto rails. We use PayPal at HQ to pay our winners, and there were just so many pain points there. There were transaction, basically withdrawal minimums, transaction delays. Folks were like, we as a company were losing money on every single withdrawal that was under a certain amount. And so fast forward to now as we're ideating this game, I thought to myself after reading up on crypto rails, basically Why would anyone who's building the future of game shows or the future of reality competitions that pay their winners on the internet use something other than crypto rails? So from a paying your winner standpoint, it just made too much sense. And there are other reasons why we chose to build this thing on crypto rails. And I think the fact that we hadn't raised any venture dollars and we're self-funding this thing, and I kind of knew that in order for it to go viral, it had to have a big prize pool. And in order for it to have a big prize pool, we had a have a lot of people pay a lot of money as part of the entry fees that would kind of bootstrap the pot. And I knew that, like, I wouldn't convince, you know, hundreds of Web2 friends to spend the equivalent of a couple hundred dollars on a novel internet game show.

Sure.

Whereas, like, crypto Twitter just seemed very ripe for something like that.

Yeah, they were like, oh great, no problem, take my money.

Yeah, no. And then also, like, crypto Twitter is so tribal in nature. that in like the earliest iteration of CTG, once we decided to build it on crypto Twitter, I kind of envisioned there'd be like a Solana tribe, an ETH maxi tribe, a Bitcoin tribe, and like folks would kind of form their alliances and factions based on like the chains that they support. Didn't end up playing out that way, but those were kind of like my 3 big theses for why we should build this thing on crypto rails.

Yeah, our co-host Will, he tells a story about how at the height of the last crypto cycle, He bought some JPEG NFT collection that was really hot, bought this particularly rare cartoon bull, I think it was.

Yeah.

It was like, I don't know, it was like 4 or 5 ETH or something like that. And he was just sure. And now it's a very expensive JPEG that's worth absolutely nothing in his closet. So in that world, nobody will think twice about spending 0.1 ETH to play an actually awesome— the chances you would win Crypto: The Game are honestly probably a lot better than the chances you would buy 0.1 ETH of anything else on a gamble on Twitter and make any money from it. You know, I tell people it's a, um, especially people who are like primed to be interested in crypto as investors, that like you, you're forgetting about your social capital, you're forgetting about your knowledge capital. Yeah. This is an opportunity to participate in a new type of social experiment that I, I very much believe will be the kind of thing we do for entertainment and reality competitions much more, not just on the internet, but in our real lives as well.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's pretty clear that I'm a big reality show fan and kind of game show fan. And I kind of had this light bulb moment, light bulb moment while working at HQ, which is like, why would I watch other people play Jeopardy when like I could play this thing live on my phone each night and win money? And I think back to MFL, who won season 1, and it's like someone like that didn't speak English, lived in Japan, like never could have been cast on Survivor, you know, let alone win. Whereas like this new corner of the internet is somehow enabling anyone, wherever you are, wherever you live, to be a contestant on a reality show, which is a pretty cool thing.

If you're just joining me, my guest is Mr. Dylan Abruscato, the founder of Crypto: The Game. We've talked about the origin story, we've talked about how you can play Season 3, which is launching tomorrow, but I do want to hear more about your predictions for how blockchain or even just the internet will change the way we play games or do entertainment in the future. Do you have any other predictions or thoughts about that?

Well, I think it's just kind of exactly what I was talking about, where it's like the— at least for reality shows and game shows and things like that, it just kind of creates a very level playing field and almost democratizes the experience. I feel like whenever I talk about CTG and try to position it as a show or reality competition to get people to understand what it is, and folks are always like, oh, how do I submit my application? Or what do I need to do to apply? And it's like, I still think we have a long way to go before we can kind of convince people that's like, oh no, you just need— you don't even need anything. I guess you need a wallet, a crypto wallet to play this thing and an X account. But But yeah, anyone, wherever you are, wherever you live, can, can be a contestant on this thing. And I'm hoping that, you know, in the same vision that we had at HQ where, you know, there could be a Shark Tank format or a dating competition or a talent competition or a Shark Tank format or a Survivor show or an Amazing Race format, it's like there's no reason why all of those traditional TV formats can also be on-chain shows, basically. Yeah. So I would love to see that future.

Did you ever see Proof of Love, the Mad Realities DAO experiment?

Oh, yeah, of course.

That was a— that was the first time I had seen anybody bring these kinds of mechanics to a reality-style competition. And I was like, I had been talking about it forever, especially the idea of like, you know, entry as non-fungible tokens, or people who are token holders getting a say in what happens on the show. And I thought they were they were really the first. Like they they crawled so you guys could run. I feel like and I'm so excited that people will see what you've done, especially because you get so much coverage in you know traditional media. You got nominated for an Emmy for goodness sake. And not Mike Noddy.

No CTG was on the Emmy ballot, which is so cool. Oh whoa! See how much? That was for something else.

What was it for? I'm a plebeian.

No, it's for HQ. Okay. But, um, but yeah, I don't know. Hopefully this year, uh, CTG gets nominated.

Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Last year.

And, and Alex, uh, my, my other co-host, he popped in the chat and he said, wait a second, uh, how do we not know about that? Uh, meaning he did not know that you were formerly staffed at SNL. You were, uh, were you a producer there? Is that right?

A page. Yeah. Oh yeah. Very—

help me understand. I'm an actor, uh,

okay,

by trade, but I really don't know as much about production side. Except, you know, a handful of titles that work with actors, you know, ADs, etc. What does a page do? And can you tell us about your time at SNL just briefly?

Sure. Yeah. I'd love to hear about it. I don't know if you've seen 30 Rock or if you know the character Kenneth the Page.

No. And the joke on our show is that for a guy who's an actor and who works at an internet tech startup, I know almost nothing about pop culture. So you have to tell me.

Yeah. For those listening that might know Kenan and Kel, it's like a very fictionalized version of what the SNL page does. But the page program is basically like an entry-level rotational program for folks that want to get into production and media and marketing out of college. So I grew up in New York and was fortunate enough to intern at NBC while in school. Kind of heard about the page program from that internship, applied, went through the like insane, like basically audition process to be a page because half of your responsibilities is to give the NBC studio tours. And that's like, that's a whole, whole nother conversation. But the other half is that you apply and interview for different assignments within 30 Rock and within NBC. So I'd say about half the pages that join the program are interested in getting into news and There are nightly news assignments and Today Show assignments and CNBC and MSNBC and kind of all those different shows and networks. Right. And then the other half are basically obsessed with late night TV. And there was, you know, The Tonight Show with Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers and SNL being kind of like the hero show of 30 Rock. And so I applied and interviewed for the SNL assignment. Again, was fortunate enough to get it. And I was basically the desk page for season 38. Which I don't— you probably don't know it if you don't know pop culture, but— I

know we're on season 50 now, so—

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I'm showing my age. 12 years ago. And I thought it was the best season because it was like the end of Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis and Fred Armisen and Kristen Wiig and kind of like the generation that I grew up watching, but also the beginning of like Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong and Tim Robinson, who's now incredibly famous, was a cast member that season on SNL. And I basically was just like the assistant for the cast and for the musical guest and the host each week, just kind of like running their errands and printing out rundowns. And

may I get you some water, Mr. Seger? And just happy to be here, easy to work with.

Exactly.

That's so cool, though. Do you have any memorable stories that you could, you know, anonymize and tell us about who Was delightful or who was not so delightful?

Yeah, I don't even need to anonymize. I mean, almost everyone was delightful. I, um, uh, Kate McKinnon, I think it was her first or second season. She grew up on Long Island. I grew up on Long Island. So she was like, you know, treated me like a friend, which was so refreshing to see. Um, I would say that, um, one episode Tom Hanks was there and he was hanging out and he's a big baseball fan, uh, or he was wearing a New York Giants hat. And the New York Giants baseball logo looks a lot like the New York Mets baseball logo. This is before the Giants moved to San Francisco. Basically, that's a tangent. But I said to him, like, cool, like, love your Giants hat. And he was like, wow, everyone assumes it's a Mets hat. Like, you must know ball. And like, we just spent like 5 to 10 minutes just like talking about the Mets and the Giants and like this season. And he was just like so excited. so friendly and approachable. So that was really cool. I don't know. There was a young teen pop star who hosted one episode, and he, you know, he was going through his own thing, and I feel bad now, but he definitely wasn't the most enjoyable person to run errands for. But pretty much everyone that was there, the host and Yeah, it's just such a magical place.

Oh my God, that's cool. That's very cool. Um, and I forgot, you, you are, uh, you are kind of a ball fan, really, truly, aren't you? And you— I think it's your pinned tweet references, uh, uh, one of your favorite collectibles. You're, you're kind of a collectible guy.

Oh, beyond collectible. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, like obsessive collector of things. Um, so I'd say like started with baseball cards and, you know, baseball autographs and stuff like that. Now as an adult, I feel like I venture more into like art and, uh, things I can do with my wife. Um, but, uh, yeah.

Well, this is, this is a good show for that. So, so you're gonna have to tell us like your favorite, your favorite, you know, your top 5 in terms of things you've— you forget about whether it's, you know, we're huge nerds here and I'm the least nerdy of all and I still collect stuff. But if Alex and Will were here, we would have, you know, they would run you dry. Yeah, Alex might— his— he's a crypto investor, but his most valuable investment is probably the wild collection of Magic: The Gathering cards.

Cool.

That he has. It's like a Fort Knox collection. And Will,

uh,

is a Pokémon guy among other things, and, and is, you know, ready to drop $10,000 on the right piece of cardboard at the right time, you know, and we'll keep it forever.

One of us.

Yeah, it's total nerds. And everyone in the audience, you know, we, we all have something— sports cards or, uh, you know, Hot Wheels. I mean, so you name it, you're among friends here.

Cool. So I would say my— the number one piece in my collection, which is worth $0, um, But I, um, I, uh, in 2014, um, Topps ran a photography contest on its Instagram, um, that was basically like, uh, take a photo of, uh, you at a baseball game, use #ToppsLive for the chance to be featured in 2015 Topps Opening Day. Um, I was at a Mets game, uh, like the American flag was out in the outfield for the anthem. I took a picture of it. Um, you know, I thought it was a great photo. I put it on Instagram, hashtag Topps Live, um, and they DM'd me, uh, like a few months later that I was going to be in 2015 Topps Opening Day. So, um, if you're, you know, if you're any, any type of card collector, like, the coolest experience my entire life was opening a pack of cards and, you know, pulling a card with my name on it. Um, and so I, um, basically for the last 10 years have been submitting it to PSA to get slabbed and graded. And for the first 9 years, I've gotten it back and it'll just— it would just say like New York Mets because that was on the checklist. So I just went on like— I embarked on like a personal journey to try to convince them that the person whose name is on the card should actually be on the, um, basically on the PSA slab. So eventually I got, um, the card back with the slab. Um, and then, uh, I don't know if anyone here collects like autographs or um, has submitted signatures into PSA. Yes. Okay, so that's my Gem Mint 10 with my name on the slab, uh, as the, as the header image there. Um, but, uh, then I, um, I submitted— I signed, uh, a version of the card and sent it in to get the autograph graded. Um, and, uh, it came back that like basically like I wasn't in the like PSA DNA like autograph registry. Oh, really? And they like only reserve that for like notable and influential people. And I guess like I somehow— I basically responded with some version of your radio intro and, uh, Yeah, yeah, yeah. somehow convinced them that I was influential enough to be included in the PSA DNA autograph registry. So I sent in like a bunch of signature samples, um, and now— and then I signed a bunch of cards, sent them in, and just— they're upstairs— but just a few weeks ago I got back, um, my slabbed cards. Um, that—

your signed slab cards?

Yep.

That's like a heist, man.

Yeah. The funniest thing is that, um, and, and this is such a rant, I'm only telling you the story because you said you guys are collectors. No one else would get it. Um, but, uh, the funniest thing is like the PSA Set Registry. If you like look up a specific card, you can see like how many They call it the population, like how many cards have been submitted. And my particular card has like 50 submissions and like, it's all me. I'm just like, I was just trying to get a 10. I just like wasted so much money.

I thought you were gonna tell me that 50 submissions and you were like, wow, people really want to get my card graded. But no, it's just you.

Yeah. So that is the, that is the, my favorite piece in my collection for sure.

Oh my God, that's fantastic.

Um, yeah, Alex and Will are gonna be playing on my Mod Retro Chromatic. I don't know if you're a Game Boy fan or if you have a Chromatic. Oh

my God,

I'm currently playing, uh, 2001 All-Star Baseball on my Chromatic.

I, uh, I'm embarrassed to say, uh, that about, I guess, 5 years ago, I, I had a garage sale where I sold a ton of stuff. I, I went through a pretty minimalist phase that I still kind of live in despite all the clutter behind me. Um, but I, I sold a ton of games. I sold, uh, my Game Boy. I saw— I— but I love— there's nothing I love more than like a really good retro game.

Yeah. Oh, you got to get a Chromatic. They're still there at GameStop now.

Are they really?

Yeah, it comes, uh, I think it's like— I think it's $199, but it comes with a remastered version of Tetris, um, and it's compatible with all the games. Like, I think I bought that, um, All-Star Baseball game on eBay for like a couple bucks. But, um, it's, um, it's, it's, it's amazing.

Well, let me win Crypto: The Game first and then I'll think about it. Yeah, it's only 0.18. Um, okay, so if you're just joining us, we're hanging out with Dylan Abruscato. He's the founder of Crypto: The Game, and in a minute we're going to ask him for some final thoughts. But first, I want to know if you have a question for Dylan, because This is your show too. And if you're enjoying the show, you haven't seen it before, you're just catching us for the first time, or maybe you're watching the recording, then I want to invite you to check out the Rise Up Morning Show. We are live Monday through Thursday at 7 AM Central Standard Time. Dylan's still sleeping in sunny California, but the good news is you can catch us wherever you are, whenever you listen. We're on Facebook, we're on YouTube, we're on LinkedIn, we're on Twitter, and all of our content Is free for you to experience anytime. So go back and check out this episode, share us with your friends. If you've got a crypto question, you've got a, a comment, you need somebody to help, then the other resource you need to know is the Rise Up Discord server. If you want to learn about crypto, the easiest way to do it is really to get in a room of people who've got a little more experience than you and aren't going to treat you like you're wrong for asking a question. Everybody's got questions. There's no such thing as a dumb question. But it can be hard to know where to start learning about crypto. It feels like drinking from a fire hose. Our solution is the Rise Up Discord server. It's got forums that are just like chatting with your old friends. It's a global community of learners at all levels of experience. All that's missing is you. But of course, we've got Facebook, we've got Twitter, we've got the traditional socials if you'd rather reach us there. And you can find those once more at theriseupmorningshow.com. And you can connect with Dylan over on Twitter @DylanAbruscato. And if you're like watching the TikTok stream and you're like, whoa, Evan, I can't read that text, or I can't spell it, just, you know, send me a message and we'll get you in touch with Dylan, or follow him here, and I'm sure he will love it when you blow up his inbox during Crypto's game next week.

I'll follow back.

Mike said he was talking about, um, how cool it was that there was such a culture and community around the game. You mentioned the Boys Club official podcast, which I, I played every day all day hard, and I still was like going to Apple Podcasts and just like refreshing, or going to Twitter and refreshing. And, uh, I loved it, and I loved hearing everybody's like side chatter. I made some videos about it here on TikTok. I saw Sophie— I think, I think Sophie's Tea is just the way she says her name— did a really great recap video every day. Um, so I'm, I'm kind of excited to see what people do now, especially with Polymarket. Um, are there other ways that people who want to spectate should keep up with the game? Of course they should follow CryptoTheGame_ on Twitter, but what else would you recommend for folks who maybe want to learn more before they dive in?

Yeah, I mean, uh, not that much time because it starts tomorrow, but, uh, I, I would say, um, it's honestly something we're still trying to crack is this engaging spectator mode for folks that want to watch. Um, I think what shows like Survivor obviously have as an advantage here is the fact that it's not 100% live for both the players and the spectators. So, you know, there are months and months and months after Survivor finishes, you know, filming and before it airs where they can edit it and folks can go home and everyone kind of watch it together and enjoy the spectator aspect of it. But because it is live, Evan, if you were playing, you know, if and when you play the season, if you were to log out and if the spectator mode was as good as I think we all want it to be, that could potentially influence the game because you'd simultaneously be watching the game that you're playing. So yeah, that's something we're still trying to figure out. But you can track the live odds on Polymarket. You can listen to the Boys Club companion show that'll go live after the voting periods every night. You can follow myself and/or the game on X and on Farcaster. You can join the Crypto the Game channel on Farcaster because so many players are constantly posting in there. But other than that, I mean, you tell me. It's like the— this is a game that I always wanted to play online with my friends. And I think that's why I'm hoping that that has come through as a player. But because of that, unfortunately, I've never been able to play it. And I actually don't know what it's like on the inside. So— Sure. Yeah,

I think there are opportunities for— to increase. Like, you remember how— do you know The Hunger Games?

Yeah, of course.

So I think there could be interesting opportunities to make it more interactive. Tori was saying, you know, how interactive is it? I feel like it's, it's observational, but you might be able to deepen the engagement by, I don't know, sending a— choosing a fan favorite,

or

yeah, like tips, or, you know, vote for your favorite here. Maybe you're a spectator who's observing and you want to help your person on the inside, or

yeah,

like, uh, Big Brother does America's Favorite kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. We did talk about like a fan favorite vote. Um, I don't know, you know, it was pretty low on the priority list for this season.

Sure.

But, um, I would— I would— it is incredibly engaging and interactive for the players, but I do agree that there needs to be some sort of like outsider interactivity, um, for it to truly reach the masses.

Well, in all those places, I will say too, Dylan and Crypto the Game are very responsive as accounts. So if you, you know, tag them or comment, then I'm sure that the engagement you see. And you see a lot of players will post about Crypto: The Game, you know, um, they'll tag Crypto: The Game. So it's pretty easy to find coverage, and it's a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun kind of putting together the rabbit trail, or even following like, uh, the Dune analytics dashboard. Was it Brian who did that? Um, it was, you know, and other players did them too, but there are a lot of different ways to interact. And if you want to play— oh, sorry, go ahead.

Oh no, no, like a lot of players organically spun up their own analytics pages and and things like that and shared them out. So whether it's like NFT collections for players and fans of the games or dashboards or, you know, frames on top of frames and things like that, I always try to share whatever the players are creating themselves. Even your TikToks, all these TikToks, I was always sharing those as well. So just trying to basically like boost the ecosystem.

Yeah, you were a great cheerleader for it. And I think people appreciated the engagement and it made them want to, you know, do more and more. And I certainly will, uh, I'm planning to play and I'm planning to cover it again. Uh, I'm, you

know, I was gonna say you should start, you should cover, you should, uh, talk about your experience on the show and like, uh, I don't know if you survived the next morning, you can—

I would do it. I was doing it on the show last time and, uh, I would usually do like a recap video for my day with just some thoughts, um, because there are a lot of people who follow here, um, and trying to get them involved. I, I, at one point in time last season, I was involved in a really wild— the bloodbath of the Yellow Tribe. I started out on the Yellow Tribe, and there were a lot of us who were really active, engaged. And pretty early on, though I wasn't somebody to suggest this, um, I got on board with the idea of voting off anonymous or inactive players. I think they're a pretty easy target to start for people who tend to be active. Yeah. But those of us who were active and, uh, trying to solve challenges and stuff. I think we, we put huge targets on our back. And like, um, I don't know, I got voted off with a bunch of other players on like night 3 or 4, I don't recall. But it was like all the people who'd been really active and helpful in our tribe were on the chopping block that night. And, um, I remember talking about it on the show the next day, just being like, oh my God, it was, you know, it was so wild. It was so wild.

Red Wedding. Uh,

yeah, Red Wedding style.

Exactly. Well, what you could do is you could recruit the Rise Up Show, uh, army basically, um, and, uh, be the leader of the cabal. And, uh,

listen guys, that's what I'm saying. We— if we all get in and we form an alliance, that would be an easy way to go to the— and you said that tokens are soulbound, but the thing I tried to do last time before I heard about the 733 thing, and I kind of left it up anyway, but I was like, listen, there's no real strong narrative or player emerging. I bought a token and put it into a smart contract on Party Um, and was like, everyone can buy a share of this token and then you're incentivized to vote for it. And not anybody's gonna win, you know, 80 ETH, but we'll all win more than we paid to get in. And it'll be a great story to say that all these people did this thing together. But then honestly, the, the Tornado Cash thing to me was, I think, uh, more resonant.

You know, there's every season there's a, a, a group of folks that suggest some sort of like pot-splitting, um, strategy. And—

Are you a purist? 'Cause you've, you've, whenever you bring it up in the episode, you've kind of said, you kind of had a tone in your voice that made me think I think you're, you're not into it.

Well, I mean, the game is definitely designed so that one person would win, but the beauty of the game is that the players crown the winner. So like, sure, I can have some opinions about like what I envisioned when, when thinking of this thing, but, um, the, the nature of the game is that the, the players and the community crown the winner. So like, I'm just saying that, that it's, it's never worked before. Um, but who knows?

Who knows? Yeah, I— Dylan, one of my favorite things about you and listening to interviews with you Is you have a very— for being kind of a soft-spoken person, you have a very expressive voice. And I always get the sense that you would actually be really fun to be in a group chat in a game like this with, because I feel like you'd be like, I don't know, you'd have the best witty or cutting remarks, and they would always be like a little bit subtle. Do you have a, do you have a, a show that you like to follow and talk about now that isn't Crypto: The Game with your family and friends?

Um, I feel like, uh, White Lotus is kind of top of mind, uh, I'm trying to watch all like the Oscar, uh, all the Oscar nominees currently. Um, yeah, yeah, I, I just watched all of Slow Horses on, on Apple, which was really fun. Um, but, uh, yeah, nothing, nothing immediately comes to mind. I'm not in like a, you know, a Big Brother group chat or anything like that.

Yeah, yeah. Um, and you're still applying to Plan Survivor, right?

Every year. Yeah, I sent my audition tape in a few weeks ago and have not, have not yet, uh, ever received a callback. But,

oh, Jeff, if you're out there,

man,

we need Dylan on the island. I want to see it. I feel like you would be fantastic. I really do.

I'm either gonna— I'm gonna get a call. I'm either gonna have like an interview to be a contestant, or it's gonna be a cease and desist because, um, we built an interactive Survivor show. So

hey, either way, that's a victory, right? WW, uh, JPD. Uh, Dylan, tell us one more time how people who want to play can get on, on the season?

Yeah, so tomorrow, Thursday morning, we are opening up entries to those that had played previously and are on the early access list. So I guess technically, if you didn't play, you could maybe buy their, their NFT on secondary if someone's trying to make a quick buck. But if you didn't play on Friday morning at 10 AM Eastern time, NFTs will go live on CryptoTheGame.com and our mint mintable on a first-come, first-served basis until we hit that 800-player cap. And then after that—

That's ETH on mainnet, ETH on Base, ETH anywhere?

So it's ETH on UniChain, that is where the NFT will live, but we do use a platform and provider called Relay that magically handles all the bridging on the back end. So as long as you have 0.1 ETH on mainnet, on Base, on any L2 basically, with one tap of a button, like you would never know that you were bridging to UniChain in the background.

Which you talk about like sponsorships that are really native and feel good. That's a great commercial for UniChain and for Relay.

Honestly, I love Relay. They're not an official sponsor, but, you know, I have friends who know very little about crypto and as soon as anyone mentions L2s or bridging, I like, you know, they immediately gloss over. But the fact that they just kind of have to have 0.1 ETH, everyone understands that and they can tap a button and whatever Relay does in the background magically Handles all the bridging. We love that. We love Relay.

Cool.

Yeah,

so 0.1 ETH, CryptoTheGame.com. And is there anything else you'd like to say to our audience or that I didn't ask you about that you wanted to share?

No, honestly, Evan, thank you so much for playing. Thanks for having me. Thanks for sharing your experience. You mentioned Sophie's TikToks, but yours were just as compelling and fun to watch from my, from my point of view. And if anyone's listening and has more questions, as Evan mentioned, I'm Uh, on Twitter 24/7, and, uh, we'll, we'll respond to all of your DMs, um, and make sure all you guys get on.

Awesome. Thank you, Dylan, for your time. Thank you for all the alpha. And, uh, I will certainly see you on the island. I think I'm gonna stay here to answer, uh, one or two lingering questions for folks. But my friend, I hope you have a great day.

Cool.

Get some good sleep and, uh,

see

you there.

Bye.

Bye for now. Ladies and gentlemen, how about that? Dylan Abruscato, founder of Crypto: The Game. What a guy. I would love to spend a little more time with you if you do have lingering questions. If you're curious about that or anything else, this is Rise Up After Dark, but afternoon since we're a little early. And if you're watching in the future on the After Dark recording, then hello. I hope you're doing well and that the future is as beautiful as I imagine it can be. Oh my gosh, what a great show. Thank you, everybody. Tori, Mike, Tech CEO, great to see you. Whoa, damn, it's so great to see you. I should have taken a nap, he said. Yeah, me too. I just got back from New Orleans and, uh, I'm still catching up on sleep. From, uh, Memphis to East Denver to New Orleans for Mardi Gras to Crypto the Game. Oh my gosh, it's like, what am I— what am I doing?

This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts,

you know. It's, uh

Not ideal.

Quite, quite the tour. Quite the tour. I'm so glad to be back with you, Tech. Alex said that you guys had a great conversation on your show, uh, a week ago. He said it was really good to get to talk to you and that you, uh, you, you guys had some sort of misunderstanding because you were talking in the comments. But then he said, well, I got to come up and I had a really great back and forth. And it was the first time I've really gotten to talk to him. And it was just, it was just awesome. So thank you for that, for being the host with the most and a great steward of everybody's time. How was Mardi Gras? Let me tell you what, Mardi Gras, oh, it was fun. I really recommend it. I didn't, I didn't know, even though I've seen Kimberly's pictures and heard her stories, I didn't realize it was such a family-friendly thing. You know, obviously the whole city of New Orleans is having a good time. But starting in the morning all the way through the evening, there would be people coming to these parade routes and they would be having a little cookout or throwing a football in the street. You know, there'd be a police officer walking by waving at everybody. Some, you know, band would walk by, musicians, people in costumes. Everybody was eating king cake. And, um, a really— another really impressive thing that I had heard about but had not seen Was how at the end of the night, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of waste, there's a lot of trash. Um, and these parades, they go right down these boulevard streets. So as they throw beads and stuff and people inevitably drop things, there's just, there's a lot of refuse and litter. At the end of the night, all the people on what they call the neutral ground, the middle of the boulevard, they just rake this trash into the streets. And then these big backhoes and dump trucks and spray trucks and street cleaners, and all these people with like leaf blowers and stuff just come along and they pick up all the trash. And I assume they take it to a landfill or recycling center or something, but like from when it ends at night to when you come out the next morning, it's like a whole new street. It was, it was pretty wild. And, and I will say too, the other cool thing was to watch Some of the crews will do like toilet paper as a throw, and everybody does beads. So it was kind of neat to see when I got there Friday what the trees over the streets looked like, kind of empty and swaying in the breeze, and then what they looked like on Monday morning or Tuesday morning when we left. You know, there's toilet paper in the trees, there's beads in the trees. It was just, uh, it was like their version of a Christmas tree, kind of, sort of. Ah. You did, man. That's pretty cool. Yeah, and it was amazing. They— you mentioned Tech CEO said here on TikTok it was good to see the vibe back after the tragedy when, when he went for his birthday. They— for people who don't know, um, there was a pretty significant— I don't know if you'd call it an attack, uh, somebody drove up on a sidewalk and, and a number of people were injured or killed. And after that, like this week, they had these barricades in place kind of staggered every 20 feet or so on the street. So that nobody could just, you know, drive like that. And they did have a bigger police presence, but it certainly didn't feel unsafe, and the spirit of the city seemed really resilient. And of course, like I said, I had just a wonderful time. Let me see if I can get you a little picture here so you can see, and maybe I'll post these. I posted one or two in the Discord, but maybe I'll post some on Twitter or something like that too for the folks who are watching the show. Let's see. Let's see. Oh, and if you're on— if you're on YouTube, I'll, I'll hold it up and show you. This is my— this is our float. Where's our float? Is this our float? No. Yeah, yeah, it is. This is, this is our float. It's not a very good picture of it. Oh, I did find a baby in the king cake though. That was pretty fun. I found 2. I ate so much king cake that I found 2 babies. Can you believe that? It was a lot of king cake. Uh, this is, uh, let me see if I can get a good picture. 1, 2, 3. I took this picture on the float because as we were rolling everywhere, our float was so tall that some of the flowers on it would sometimes touch the power lines. And it doesn't look like it from that picture, but really my finger is about, you know, 6 inches from a power line. It was just wild. I was like, oh my God, this seems unsafe. And here's me and Kimberly on the float. That's the front looking up at the parade. We had, we had some pretty, pretty fun stuff going on. Maybe, maybe next Halloween or next week or I don't know, something like that. I will, uh, I'll get in my costume and let everybody have a good look at, uh, Mardi Gras Evan. It was very fun. Ah, hey Fluky. A couple of people said I did a double take to see you live right now because I just wasn't sure what time it was. Yes, today we had a special episode to have Dylan Abruscato on the show. If you're just joining us, you can catch the recording on YouTube. I'm going to restream it later at our usual Rise Up After Dark time. We're not having a live episode of Rise Up After Dark tonight. We are just doing Uh, the recording. I got a little, a little hair there. What's that? What's that? Uh, we're just doing the recording, so you'll get to catch that. And of course, uh, if you've got a crypto question, if you've got something you need from us, don't hesitate to leave a comment. I haven't been very active on TikTok lately, but I'm in the Rise Up Discord, and, uh, I'll be chronically online starting next Monday because I'm gonna play Crypto: The Game. What do you guys think about that? Are you gonna play Crypto: The Game? Anybody, uh, anybody planning on buying in? I would love to know. I do like Dylan's suggestion. Maybe we have a Rise Up community piece and we form a cabal and, uh, keep each other in. Mike, you already know I'm in the cabal with you, man. Is it a horror game? No, it's a survival game reality competition, a lot like Survivor, where many players— last season it was 800, I think they're capping it at 800 again— are split into tribes, but play an individual game to be the last person standing to win one pot of money. It's a 10-day game. You compete in challenges on the internet that range from scavenger hunts to, uh, you know, uh, competitive arcade-style games. And then at the end of each day, you vote people out of your tribe. You collaborate with your other tribe's people and you choose who to vote off. This season, they're introducing a twist they call Resurrection Island, where somebody voted off will have the chance to compete with other people voted off and earn their way back into the game to win. I think we need a Discord thread for it too. I certainly will start one. Um, and I get it, Tori, it's, uh, it would not be in my budget if I hadn't already had crypto on-chain that was waiting for just such a purpose. It is 0.1 ETH, which at this time is about $220. So it's, it's a significant amount of money for a lot of people. The cool thing, of course, is that if you buy a piece and you make it through the game longer, presumably, um, you know, it will be more valuable. Although once you're eliminated, like Dylan said, it's a soulbound thing. That's interesting, meaning you cannot transfer it. I'm just excited about it because I think it really shows off the potential of NFTs and other kinds of crypto technology to do stuff beyond just like, if I buy this, will it go up in value? I think it's really cool that people who love reality shows could get to buy in or could get to participate on a jury or could have a way to represent their stake in a game on the internet where it's hard to verify things are true. I think there's just so many things. Last season, somebody made a token that they airdropped to all the members of different tribes. I thought that was really cool. You know, like the yellow tribe had a token, which is essentially a meme token. Um, the Blue Tribe, the Aqua Tribe, etc. It was, it was very cool. And I agree, Misty, I do. I think it's good to have something fun, something that people already do, that they enjoy, that they find value in, that they can do better because there's crypto involved on the internet. I, I'm just so excited about it. And, uh, now that they've been acquired by Uniswap, I think that's Just gonna boost the profile of the game. I think more people than ever are going to want to play, and I'm hopeful that more people who are not even crypto people will play because I do think it's a pretty fun way to get into using crypto to do different stuff. And if you didn't hear this, one of the cool things about it was, um, Dylan was inspired, he and his team, to use crypto because In their past experience at trivia, at HQ Trivia, they, um, they had a lot of problems paying winners, whether that was delays, fees, authorizations, holds, you know, the stuff we all experience. And he said it was just so much easier to use crypto to pay people who won an online prize of money. And that's where part of the idea to make his idea to play a Survivor game online. uh, came to life. Pretty cool. Crypto Battles and Fantasy Crypto. It is a lot like, like Crypto Battles, honestly, truly. Uh, it's head-to-head and one-to-many all at once, and I will be posting about it. I will be tweeting about it, making a video about it, and hopefully I'll see some of you in the game. So we'll have fun and good luck. One more time, it's Crypto the Game. The guest today was our friend Dylan Abruscato, the founder of Crypto: The Game, and you can follow him on X, on Warpcast. He's got the same handle, @DylanAbruscato, but he's very responsive, he's very cool. And you can check out that PSA custom card that he managed to get included in their— I can't believe that. What a wild story. Alex and Will are gonna flip when they hear that. And of course, I will be back tomorrow morning With Alex and Will, and you can catch us live then at 7 a.m. Central Standard Time. So my friends, thank you very much for joining me again. I hope you all have a wonderful day or a wonderful afternoon or a wonderful evening. Whatever it is, wherever you are, it's always time to rise up, and that feels good. And I realize I did not play the theme song, so that's how I'm going to take us out, my friends. Until next time, everybody. Rise up! Rise up! See you next time.