#1: My Interview for Winters' World with Austin Winters

Cool.

All right, are you all all set? Yeah, all good. Cool. What's up, y'all? Austin Winters here, and today I'm happy to have a guest, Jason Levin, with me. Uh, Jason and I connected through Twitter, and we're working together on his project Wellness Guild. I want to run through a few of Jason's uniqueifiers. So first off, he studied English at Rutgers. You wrote for the New Brunswick paper. You had a little tidbit that I— maybe we can get into later. You said you told the editor about a story of a shoe store, so maybe we can jump into that. I thought that was— that piqued my interest. Um, you are currently attending the Lambda School?

Uh, I graduated early and got a job.

Congratulations. So you went through the Lambda School. We had Grady Wells on earlier who was a Lambda School fellow as well. Um, and then you've started writing for Cabin Dow in November, a wellness tech biweekly, which I would recommend to everyone to go read because it's, it's super consumable stuff and it's really interesting. Like, there's a lot of stuff on there I haven't read in a long time. But, uh, with that said, Jason, welcome to Winter's World, man. I'm happy to have you.

Yeah, good to be here, man. Good. Uh, glad we connected online, and, uh, that's just the beauty of the internet. Put out good vibes and they come right back to you. It's pretty cool.

Absolutely, man. Yeah, we're lucky to live in this day and age. Um, so first I want to start off just kind of like Who, who is Jason? What's your story and what's led you to this Web3 wellness, uh, space?

Yeah, for sure. So I started out at University of Michigan actually and ran into some, uh, personal issues and I had to clean up my act. I was partying hard and had to fix my life. So I did that. I took off some time, traveled the world, and then Yeah, I was working at a yoga studio during that time. I got yoga licensed and then I came back to Rutgers and yeah, I was studying English and then I found Twitter and writing online. So I dropped out and did Lambda School, learned how to code and got a job at American Express where I currently work. And during that time, wellness became a bigger part of my life just because I needed it. And wellness tech saved my life. Like just, I don't know how else to describe it. Like meditation apps have gotten me through some serious anxiety and that's why I'm so passionate about it. And so I started a newsletter just writing about cool stuff. I bought an Oura Ring and I did a data study when I was at Lambda School and I just wrote it out and then I put it on Twitter and people were actually like really positive about it and liked it. So then, I tried it again and just was like, all right, I could DM some people and start interviewing. And so I did that and yeah, then I started putting stuff out and yeah, that's kind of where we're at. And now starting a DAO, which is crazy. And we could get into that more. Yeah, I wanna jump back to the New Brunswick Today. It's a paper in New Brunswick where I went to college. There's this dope sneaker store, like all the hypebeast clothing and just cool shit. It's cool if I curse, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, I curse a lot, so I keep my Twitter mostly no cursing, but yeah, so there's a sneaker store and I was like, I need some cash and I'm a good writer. So I just called the editor and pitched him the story on the sneaker store. It's just like some two brothers who built the shop into a giant business, have like 20,000 followers on Instagram and grew this thing from nothing. And so I interviewed them and that's how I got started with writing interviews, really. Um, so yeah, it's— it pays just to shoot your shot.

Yeah, I'm learning the same thing, man, in the crypto space. It's just get out there, meet people, and everyone's so excited to help each other out and kind of find what interests you have and get you to the next spot. I think that's really cool what you said too about how the whole wellness thing was helping yourself. So like, you were trying to solve your own problems, and it seems like that's the best way to solve other people's problems too. It's like, look, I was facing this, a lot of people face this, I figured this way to cope with it or get through it, let's spread that knowledge, let's spread that wisdom around. So I think that's cool that you're trying to do something with that, with Wellness Guild. Um, and I think it's interesting you chose the term wellness. I think I saw a little in the Discord where you We're kind of going back and forth. Maybe we call it health. To you, what is wellness? Can you kind of give it your own personal definition?

Yeah, so I mean, I'd say wellness is just overall like mental well-being and happiness. And like something that I learned over the last few years is like I don't need to be at a 10 all the time and certainly don't want to be like at a 1 or a 2 out of 10. But like if I'm at like a solid 6 every day, life's good, man. Like, the life is good. That's all I need. And so for me, like I said, I struggled with some mental health stuff previously and anxiety. And so that's always going to be part of my life, but working out and therapy, all that kind of stuff has helped me stay mentally healthy and well. And this app Future, which I would have never heard of Uh, but I interviewed the, the VP of Performance, uh, for my newsletter. And since getting it, um, has been the best decision of my life. I mean, it's $150 a month, so it's kind of expensive, but it's like personal trainer on demand. Like, he makes workouts for me and I've lost like 15 pounds and work out every day. And it's, it's been amazing, man. So, um, I, I don't know, I, I don't even remember what the question was, but no, that's good.

That's cool, the transformation. And that's what's another thing, the beauty of the digital age, it's so easy to meet people who can help you and build symbiotic, uh, relationships. Um, and I think that that kind of leads well to the Wellness Guild, the DAO that you're trying to build. Do you kind of have like a rough vision of what you want this to become? Is it a community of like-minded individuals helping each other? What's kind of your idea for creating this group?

Yeah, on our leadership call yesterday I said, uh, we're gonna be the launch house of health optimization and nothing fucking less. And, um, yeah, I mean, the idea— so it's like a threefold path. So we're like, the first is IRL retreats, a conference center, hopefully like a DAO-only yoga studio. Uh, that's— that'd be the dream then. Um, and for these retreats and conferences, like, it's just important for all of us to get together, share ideas. And build together because already in the DAO and through the community of friends that I'm making, these people are all going to start their own companies, whether they're companies of one creators or the next generation of the Levels founders is the people who are our age and building right now. And so yeah, that's the first part. The second part is sleep to earn or move to earn, fit to earn, whatever you want to call it. And I think that would be really exciting if done well. It's going to take 6 to 12 months and a couple hundred grand at least to get it done between salary and software and all that kind of stuff. So that's exciting. And then 3 is investing and incubating in new tech. And so whether it's inside the DAO or outside the DAO, we want to be leveraging our network to invest and incubate new tech. So yeah, all that, all that's really exciting. And like I was saying, like, we have so many builders within the DAO, um, we just want to help each other build as well. Um, yeah, so that's kind of the vision for Wellness Guild. More than that as well, honestly, it's just genuine friendships and connections and bonds. Like, I'm going out to dinner tomorrow in New York with a few friends from Twitter, which is Crazy to me. Like when I say that to my non-tech friends, they don't get it. They think it's weird or whatever. And honestly, creators understand creators best is what I'm finding. And a lot of times, like there's only like, there's not as many creators, like when you're in a small town like New Brunswick or whatever, and there's so many different kinds of creators, but the internet lets everybody find each other. You know, there's this idea, I forget who put it out there, but tribe of maniacs, I've certainly found that with health tech and wellness tech and stuff. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, yeah. It was Ben Wilson, How to Take Over the World, that podcast.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. So he was talking about Steve Jobs and how Steve Jobs was friends with all these billionaires and he was friends with them when he was in his 20s before he got rich. And I have a very cool network of friends who are just all building crazy cool shit. Yeah. It doesn't come naturally. It comes from like working and calling people and, and reaching out and just becoming friends and like being a genuinely good human being is like working to, um, help each other. Um, that's what— like, it's crazy, man. Dude, I'm going on a ramble, but no, you're good.

So that's good stuff. It's the composability of creative minds. Like, if someone has this cool idea, they— like, so for me, what you were talking about with Wellness Guild, when I saw your tweet that said move to earn, that was like a Okay, that's cool. We're talking about, you know, public health issues where everyone's talking about the healthcare they're receiving, anything, and it's less about the incentives going into the system. So it's like incentivizing people to treat their body the best they can is good for everyone. Like, that should be— like, there should be incentives put in place there. And so that's what really caught my attention with you, and that's why we started talking. Um, and I've noticed that you do have a cool collection of individuals kind of around you, like, involved in Wellness Guild or just in your Twitter space. Um, move to earn— can you kind of talk more about the, the rough idea there? I know sleep to earn is another one, like lift to earn, exercise to earn. Um, yeah, so what kind of do you envision there?

Yeah, for our specific DAO, I envision, uh, doing sleep to earn first, but I'll talk about move to earn as well. Sleep to earn is just the low-hanging fruit and it hasn't been done before. And weirdly enough, an Oura Ring product manager just hopped in our Discord and started saying what's up and like found the right channel and Yeah, it was weird. But the idea is like when you sleep, you're a better person to everybody. You're a safer driver. Like that's obvious. Like, you know how many fucking truck crashes there are. But so out of the tokens, you know, say we have a million Well tokens or whatever we're calling them, you know, we're saving $700,000 or $600,000 in the treasury. And so out of that, in the treasury, we're going to be paying out for, you know, a good night's sleep. And it's not just about a good night's sleep, but like a sleep routine as well, because there's, people, you know, parents who have kids and you can't always do that. So we're figuring out the actual dynamics of that and then fit to earn. Yeah, there's a good Twitter conversation on that today by Adam Sachs and some other guys, but there's a few people trying it, Genopets, D-Fit. They're a little over their head, but it's a tough one. I think The big question that people were talking about was, will, like, is money a good incentive for working out? Is that going to help people work out or is that just going to reward people who already work out? Like, I mean, unless you're given, like, how much would it take to get somebody who doesn't work out at all to work out? Like, is there a number? Like, what, how much is that? And, or is it just going to help, you know, I already work out every day. Like, sure, I'll take the money. Like, why not? I'll take some tokens. Like, But I think what's also cool is the idea of competitions with that. I know Kadoo is doing it, Comb Hayden and Kadoo, they're doing it in like a betting style where you bet against friends. So I think some element of that is also fun. People have talked about doing that for sleep to earn. I personally don't want to do that, the competition for sleep. Like imagine trying to fall asleep and you're thinking about like, oh, I'm about to lose $50. Like I would never fall asleep. I already have anxiety falling asleep.

You know, um, that would make people just take a lot of Ambien or something like that, you know.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, man. Like, we already, we already got enough shit going on. But, um, yeah, that's kind of the idea of Move to Earn, Sleep to Earn. And it's just such a, such an interesting product because, um, you know, I've— I'm a terrible web developer. I'm a decent data engineer, so I was able to figure out how to, uh, you know, get into the Oura Ring API and build an app that shows me my sleep and whatnot for every day. Um, but take it even further and add a blockchain engineer who has like 3 years, and take a web dev who's actually really good at it, like, and we could go far with this. Um, plus, you know, yeah, it's, it's exciting, man.

Yeah, I think the move-to-earn thing cool is cool, and the incentives that go along with that, like you touched on, maybe money is not the right incentive, but I think with earning a token there can be status, there can be— you can use— do streaks. There's some weird psychological stuff with people who get streaks, like I slept this well for 30 days or whatever it is. And then I think there's a cool group dynamic thing, so like I'm based out of Texas, so like, I know you're up in the Northeast. Like, me and my friends talk a lot about squad wealth. It's like, what are we doing to better each other? How are we helping each other? There's a cool opportunity for squad health. So like, here's my group of friends, we're all pushing each other. Like, say we have a Vegas bachelor party in like July, let's set a goal to all work out every day and like try to get the best body we can, the health we can. There's like cool incentives there, which it might be overly competitive, that can be taken to an unhealthy place for sure. But there are— there's cool things whenever group dynamics come in and competition, I think. But I don't know, what do you think about that idea, dude?

I couldn't agree more, honestly. Like, I, um, you know, I don't know, man. I was an English major, and like, there's a different vibe between English majors and like tech bros. And I, I mean, I'd always have that tech bro in me. Like, I was a business at Michigan and switched to English when I came here, and so I don't know, joining Twitter and like seeing like Austin Schlesinger and I are tight now and like he's helping out with Wellness Scale, but seeing him bench like a certain amount when he posted a video, I was like, all right, bro, like I gotta go harder. Like some of my friends here like don't work out too much, but like I also live in like a cool-ass apartment that has a gym. So everybody down there is like putting in work. So yeah, whether it's squad or just like your internet friends who you're friends with, or even like influencers who are Um, like, I know, uh, Sean Puri and Sam Parr talk about it a lot. Um, but just inspire people to get healthier and like in good form of competition. I think there's— right, yeah, yeah, friendly competition is, is fun. Like, I, um, yeah, I love that shit.

So yeah, I think that's good.

Yeah.

And like you said, it doesn't have to be like your local squad, it can be your, your digital squad, which is cooler because like you can't really get as excited about that in person, but if you have like, here are these metrics on the Wellness Guild thing, like who's doing well, who's working, who's putting in the work, that can inspire you. I think the competition kind of is inspiring.

Dude, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, it's, it's so much fun. Um, and I know like the streak thing, there's something so powerful about it. I know Seinfeld talked about it a lot when he was writing jokes. He would just write a little check on his calendar every day he got one, and like you just try not to miss it. And like, I hit— I've worked out every day since December 3rd.

And that's great.

Yeah, man, it's killer. And before that, I worked out probably 2-3 times a week, and now I'm just on a streak. And I, um, and the Future app just helps so much, you know. Um, I'm not— this is not an ad, this is not— they're not paying me to fucking say this, but it just— it helps, man.

Yeah, that's cool. And then I also, in your, like, on your post, like, I think whenever you're trying to produce a podcast or like write articles, do you have like a way that I have to push this out? I know you're biweekly, so once every 2 weeks. Do you think that like discipline kind of helps you build your, uh, yeah.

So it started out as biweekly, it's been once every 2 weeks, and now it's switched to 2 times a week biweekly.

Nice.

So nice little play on words, but yes, that's great. Yeah, it's a discipline, man. Like, I, I'm a big believer in like the crossover effect, I think it's called, or something like that, where like Putting in work in the gym helps you be a better meditator, helps me be a better dog dad. It helps me be better at writing, and putting in work writing helps me be better at other things. Yeah, so I think that discipline of writing every day or very, very often or almost every day is super helpful. For a while, when I was in the English major life, I was trying to write fiction and that kind of stuff. I was like, what am I going to do with this? I had some cool ideas, some really funny ideas actually. But one of them was like a— ah, shit. It was an obituary writer who killed people to keep himself having jobs to write. All right. Hopefully we could just cut that out, right? Yeah.

Yep, absolutely. But back to what we were saying. So your idea about the obituary writer who has to kill people, see, that's a cool idea on incentives. His incentive, he needs people to keep dying to keep employed. That's good.

Yeah, and it's this whole inner conflict. Was he killing for fun at the end of it? What was it? And yeah, I don't know. That's good. Yeah, that was fun. I enjoy writing fiction, but now I don't really see a reason for it. Maybe one day again, but not anytime soon, really. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think that's what's cool about the whole DAO structure too, is that really you can take it wherever you want it to go or wherever the community community wants it to go, I guess, is a better way to say that. Like, so if they deem that— because I mean, I would say creative outlet contributes to wellness. If you're a creative person, like we were talking about earlier, and you're not creating content, you're not doing so well, you know. That's when mental health hits or physical health hits. And, um, I mean, nutrition. So I read, I read one of your articles about the ketone drink. That was fascinating to me. Like, I've done ketogenic diets. I really enjoy it, not necessarily for like physical health, but more like for mental health. I love operating off of ketones. How did you come across— I think it was, uh, Michael Brand.

Yeah, so that guy, Twitter, man, like I just shot him a DM. And like what's crazy is like, I, I mean, I was at Rutgers, that's not— there's not a lot of street cred, like whatever. This guy is a Stanford CS grad, like founder of a company, was a professor somewhere, and just responds to my DM. And now we like DM all the time. But, um, yeah, it's crazy. Uh, ketones, like, I mean, I feel better when I drink it personally. Like, I, I know, and it also has to do, like, if I'm not eating as much carbs, which I haven't been, like, I feel better. So the combination of the two and then a little coffee with the ketones feels good too. Um, it's, it's, it's nice, man. It doesn't have as strong of a downside as coffee either, uh, which is, you know, important for for anxiety and that kind of stuff.

Right, right. Yeah, I think, yeah, a lot of anxious people, I think the first thing you do if you get an anxiety disorder is like cut out the stimulants. Don't, don't do that. Try not to drink as much, you know, try to cut out all that stuff. So the ketone stuff, I mean, it's a cleaner burning fuel than glycogen. I just think that's a cool idea. And I mean, your whole story, it really goes to the testament of like, just shoot your shot. Someone's doing something interesting that gets you excited. Reach out, be like, hey, I like what you're doing, can I help out? Can I do— I mean, you kind of did that for me with the Wellness Guild. Like, I want to be a part of this, it's a cool project, let me do something, you know?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, man. It's— I mean, I don't want to say it's always been my philosophy, but I was like, when I was like 16, 17, I was always the type of dude who went for girls out of my league and like just shot my shot. And like, you know, 5 times out of 10, 7 times out of 10, it didn't work. But there are a few times where it fucking worked. And I don't know, I don't know if that instills some shit in me, but like I just got off the phone with this dude, Nader, I don't know how to say his name, Nader Dabi. He's got like 100,000 followers. He's one of the leading Web3 experts and he's gonna be an advisor of Wellness DAO now. Oh, awesome. Wellness Guild, which is so hype. This dude is like a Solidity genius. He runs a DAO. You know, I just, I shot him an email and like, it's crazy, man. I don't know, I don't know. It's, uh, I try explaining this to people who aren't on Twitter, who don't use it well. Like, my little brother, he's 17 or 18, and, um, he's on Twitter like a lot, but he's just looking at NBA scores and shit, right? I'm like, there's so much more if you just hit up people and, and reach out.

Um, yeah, it's like what they wanted LinkedIn to be, I think, at least in the crypto space it feels that way, you know? Like, it's just cool projects, and it's, it's the really the excitement. Everyone gets so excited. Like, so like The wellness space in crypto, you, you know a lot more about that than I do, but it doesn't seem like super established. Like, obviously DeFi, the financial space, crypto, very well established at this point. Like, where long term do you see the wellness space in crypto going? Do you think it's going to be comprised of DAOs, certain tokens that do certain things with wearables? Like, do you think Garmin will get into this? Aura? Uh, where do you see the future heading?

So I see the future is what I'm building, and okay. Like the DAOs, whether it's my DAO that I'm building or other DAOs, I'm sure there'll be more that pop up focused on wellness, fitness, health, like there's bound to be, but we're trying to be the number one DAO for this type of person, the biohacker, the attacker, the high-performing person who gives their all at the gym and then gives their all at work and then does the same thing. And like, whether it's yoga, whatever, Yeah, and I think Oura Ring will be good. I think Levels might do a play, um, like low glucose to earn. Um, I think that's an option because those are two of the only ones that are like verifiable. You can't really do it with what you eat and diet. You can't really do it with lifting. Um, I mean, I was talking about this with some dude from Twitter actually yesterday, like a smart gym would be so hype.

Like, that would be sick.

You know, like a Smith machine, and then every time it goes down it counts the rep or something. Yeah, like that, that'd be cool as hell.

But, uh, that would be cool, like a in-person lift to earn and maybe generate electricity or something. You can think of a lot of cool things to do with that. I mean, I'm glad you said the low glucose thing too, because like it's hard to incorporate nutrition like you said into it to earn. Like, you know, like maybe you take your, your blood ketone levels if it's a ketosis to earn. I don't, I don't know, that's a Yeah, I mean, fraud can be an issue too.

Yeah, I know, uh, ketone levels are going to be able to be tracked with like a wearable soon.

Somebody's working on it.

Yeah, I saw Michael Brandt actually tweeted about that, um, which is, which is pretty hype. Um, yeah, it's, it's weird, man. Like, I, uh, I didn't get the whole keto thing for a long time, but it feels better.

It does.

Yeah. Yeah, how's the Austin life though? I'm curious. It's so—

so I'm actually in Dallas, uh, my name is Austin, but I'm in Dallas. Um, yeah, yeah, I mean, so Austin's booming like crazy with the tech and the crypto stuff. Obviously Dallas is more kind of on the financial side of things, so I work at the Federal Reserve in Dallas. Um, and it— yeah, Texas is just out of control right now with population growth, but it's cool because there's ideas coming in. But I really— what you said, like, most of the connections I've made for crypto, DAO, Web3, some in person, Texas Blockchain Council, but mostly on Twitter. You know, it's just little— there'll be an avatar of a penguin. This dude tweets a cool idea, it's like, what's up, dude? I really like what you said. Can you tell me more about this? Or where'd you learn about that? It's just, it's open-minded people who get excited and creative about things. Um, and I think that seems like how that your DAO is coming together, like to pull together all these computer science people Do you have like more biz ops or soft-skilled people too, like on the DAO?

Yeah, so I mean, Austin Schlesinger, he's strategy at Deloitte. Adam Sachs is growth at Google. So they're both on the leadership team and helping out with that. And then I also, we need some work on the health side of things. We just brought on an advisor, Dr. Sean Allen, who is on the health performance team at Lululemon and just a genius when it comes to that shit. So that's really exciting. I definitely want to bring on maybe some people from Levels or some other places as well. So we're still trying to figure that out. It's exciting though, man, because I was talking to— sorry, I was talking to a yoga teacher and health— I don't want to say guru, but health coach type person, like very LA. Yeah. And she's wondering how she could get involved. I'm like, yeah, it's exciting. A, once we have retreats, you can come on retreats. I'm not a scientist. I don't know what's verifiably true. I rely on the scientists like Biology and Peter Attia and stuff to decide that. But as a DAO, I'm going to have to be responsible as well as my peers on putting out good information. And so if somebody wants to come in all of a sudden and, you know, put out their information, like, we have to make sure that's part of the brand and true stuff and scientifically verifiable. And so that's why we brought on Dr. Sean Allen, and that's why we're going to hopefully bring on some more advisors or just DAO ops people in that space. Most of us are, are business people and computer people, and yeah, we need, we need some of those geniuses.

Yeah, yeah, that's it. I mean, the crypto space in general, like even the other DAOs that I'm involved in, it seems like the computer science guys get there first, and I think that's kind of obvious because they know the coding, the engineering, the blockchain stuff to go into it. And then there's like a visionary type, which would be someone like you, just has this idea, who's like All right, let's get people hyped about this. Let's get people on board. And then what's so cool is that whenever people see it on Twitter, like, so I'm in CityDAO, which is another DAO, and it's like, hey, we have this legal issue, let's hire this person to do this, like, legal thing. Some dude goes, oh, I'm a lawyer out of New York, I got it. You know, it's just this cool— everyone's got their strength, everyone's excited about it, they want to see the value of the DAO increase, so there's incentives there for them to contribute. Um, even if it's not for a bounty or whatever it is. And so the composability and just kind of the synergy that comes out of that is super fun to watch. I think as Wellness Guild grows, as more people join, you'll get more and more cool, interesting people to do certain things that you need done, which is super fun to watch.

Yeah, man, it's why I fell in love with DAOs in the first place. And I joined Cabin DAO because, uh, my mentee— mentor, I guess, or the leader of the media team, Roxine Key, she put out tweets that said, if you want to write about Web3 and get paid hit me up. So I did, and I joined the DAO, and she gave me my first assignment, and I just assigned myself to like 5 projects. I was like, all right, I'm gonna do it, like, why not? And, uh, you know, within a month or whatever, I made like a grand just writing articles. Like, I, I've been writing Wellness Tech biweekly for free, so like, yeah, I'm down to get paid to write. Like, I'm already doing it, like, I love this shit. So, um, that was exciting. And so that's the goal with Wellness Guild, is to give that opportunity to people who are writers, who are video creators. Think about how many fitness TikTok creators there are, YouTube creators, all that stuff. We want to give those creators, podcasters, whatever, the opportunity to get paid for their work. Because I've heard the topic debated like creator universal income or something of the sort, but do the work and you'll get paid. It's a very simple capitalist approach.

Yeah.

Um, you know, for— because DAOs are strange, man, because there's part of it that's like socialist and like communist, but another part that's obviously very capitalist, um, which is where I lean a lot more. But, um, yeah, it's fun balancing this stuff. It's, it's like a, a giant, uh, combo of everything.

Yeah, no, I think that that speaks broadly to crypto, you know. It's like this really— it's, it's definitely very market-driven, kind of Austrian economics, libertarian, like the market decides the token price. But there's this wealth redistribution aspect to it that would be kind of more socialist. And like, I saw a stat, it was like 4% of Americans have quit their jobs recently, and a lot of them was due to crypto. And several of them were making under $50 grand a year. So like that boom in 2019 into 2020, or I guess 2020 into 2021, really let a lot of people retire, I guess temporarily, and pursue passions that they actually want to do rather than just doing a robotic job that's repetitive not good for your mental health, not fulfilling for humans. So I think crypto kind of enables people to find a market for what they're good at and make money doing it, which is the, the goal for everyone. That's the American dream.

Of course, of course. So, so, Federal Reserve guy, what's the deal with inflation? What's going on, man?

Yeah, yeah, man.

I'm gonna fix that shit, bro.

So I obviously cannot speak for the Federal Reserve, I'm just gonna put that out there, but, um, Uh, yeah, no, no financial advice. My opinions are my own. But yeah, I mean, I, I think it's great that cryptocurrency is offering competition in the currency market, if that makes sense. So it's making the Fed have to compete with other monetary policies, right? So like, monetary policy was always either a king or a nation-state that would set the monetary policy, or maybe a group of bankers, which is the Fed. Um, So it's cool to have like ETH now burning some of their supply, and they're gonna do staking so some of the gas fees go back to people. Bitcoin, obviously the OG with the 21 million, like, that's just— it's exciting and cool. And I think a lot of people, maybe in the older generations, maybe at the Fed, maybe in the traditional finance system, see it all as negative and it's bad and it's scary and stay away. But crypto— I've never met someone in crypto that I've been like, I hate this guy. Like, everyone's been pretty cool and nice and friendly. Obviously there are bad actors, there are frauds like who are just trying to steal your tokens. But I mean, I think that crypto is going to do big things in the future and I don't think the Fed has a way of stopping it.

Yeah, yeah, I tend to agree with that. And I feel like the only people that I don't like in crypto are the Bitcoin maximalists.

100%.

Yeah, I don't know, man. I just, I don't get it.

Yeah, that's, I talked about that with Grady a few episodes too. It's like you're so forward thinking that you get into crypto and then you just stop at Bitcoin. You're like, this is it, I'm done. Nothing else can innovate. Smart contracts, who needs those?

It's like, what are you doing? Yeah, dude, I've listened to Robert Breedlove talk. That man is smart as hell, but why aren't— why? I mean, he must have so much Bitcoin that it should— I mean, not a Ponzi scheme or whatever, but it grows as he talks about it. So it's a little confusing when it comes to that stuff, but—

Yeah, it's the incentives. And I think we're starting to see a lot of Ethereum maximalization too, where I think Ethereum's more useful than Bitcoin. Like, I, I would prefer Ethereum, but a lot of people just have to have their bags stuffed with Ethereum. They're like, this is it, you know, it's gonna go to $100 million something. Like, it's just crazy.

Yeah, yeah, big facts.

But yeah, I mean, the DAO stuff is what's exciting to me. Like, the— and it's the utilities of NFTs. So like, I don't know if you're thinking about doing NFTs for Wellness Guild or anything, but like, NFTs that are just JPEGs don't get me super excited. But like, CityDAO, you're a citizen if you own their NFT. That's a useful NFT. You have some ownership, you have some rights with it. Are you thinking about doing anything? I know you're going to do a token.

Yeah, so we're thinking about doing NFT passes to retreats in the conference.

Okay.

As well. Um, so that's definitely a possibility. And something really cool that Cabin DAO did is, um, they basically hotel keys with your NFT programmed in it that swipe open the door. Wow. That's, that's the goal. Like, if we have a a big retreat or a big conference, um, and, you know, there are doors where we could program it, or if we own a property in the future, that's— that'd be amazing. Um, that's definitely— yeah, yeah, that'd be really cool as well. Um, I, I don't think we're— we're never gonna put out NFT collectibles. That's not gonna be part of us. Um, no PFPs, none of that shit. Um, but yeah, I'm a big fan of NFTs as for use. Like, I owned the CityDAO, uh, NFT, um, and sold it a few months ago. And, um, I'm part of Apex Optimizers, okay, um, which, you know, you get discounts to a bunch of wellness tech and fitness tech brands as well. So yeah, I just— I mean, I like the ones that have use for sure.

Yeah. Have you— this is kind of an outside question, but have you ever considered the use— usefulness of the move-to-earn sleep-to-earn tech to corporations? I mean, like, so like a company obviously loses a lot of productivity if people aren't getting enough sleep. They lose out on time off if people have medical issues because they're not taking care of themselves. Health— they spend a shit ton on health insurance every year. Um, and I know like the Fed has incentives, like you, if you say you worked out, we'll give you $100 back, or, you know, stuff like that. There's cool applications there with that tech, I think.

Yeah, so there's two things that come to mind. The first is I know there's some companies that pay if you wear an Oura Ring and you get a good night's sleep, or you get a certain amount of good night's sleeps or whatever, and they pay. And then the second thing that comes to mind is basically the composability of Ethereum and the idea that, say, we're just composing off of, say, Oura Ring's API, and how much value does that create? Say the sleep-to-earn movement grows huge and people become big fans of it, and we're using Oura Ring's API and only Oura Ring, Like, how many new Oura Ring users are there, right? Say we, say we do the same, same thing with glucose. Like, how many new Levels users are there? And so that's why, like, Wellness Guild is already getting requests for sponsorship stuff. And, um, it's exciting, like, not just for partnerships and retreats, having like an Eight Sleep room or a Levels room or whatever, or, or a whole conference dedicated to that stuff, um, and sponsorships and stuff. But yeah, there's, there's just so many So many options, um, and, uh, there's just so many new companies being born all the time. Like, dude, I— somebody hopped in our Discord who's working on a smart toilet, uh, which I didn't think existed, but it tracks like if you have diseases or like can predict if you have a disease. And, um, I was like, wow, the, the world is beautiful but weird.

So that is wild. I guess, yeah, you read the stool and see what's up. That's— we're really meshing the whole technology thing with our life. That's, that's so fascinating. I never thought about that either.

I've been saying this to my friends and they just don't get it, but like, I'm a cyborg already. Like, yeah, I, my ring tracks my sleep, my watch has everything, I'm on my phone. Like, you know, I'm a cyborg. Like, we're the singularity. It's, it's, we're— that's an era. We live in the singularity.

Like, it's— we're in the metaverse.

Yeah, yeah, the metaverse. There's multiple metaverses. We're definitely in one. Like Um, we've, we've been in it like for most of our lives. Like, at least I know I have, like, since—

that's— yes.

Yeah.

So I just got an Oculus, and some of my friends like, I'm never gonna do that metaverse stuff. I was like, dude, you stare at your phone 8 hours a day, you're in it. You're already in the metaverse, dude.

Yeah. How's the Oculus?

Oh, it's cool, man. It's, it's pretty cool technology. Uh, yeah, I mean, I've punched the wall a few times, which isn't great, but, um, it's cool. I could see that having fitness applications too. Like, you could do a live yoga class or boxing class, something, you know, that, that you could track it that way too. Like the, the investment of the tech with us, that's— you seem to get that data on the blockchain.

And then I, I'm excited, like the idea of VR meditation. I have like mixed ideas on it. Like on one hand, that could be really cool, or if you have anxiety to get like dropped in like a very calming setting, or like for, I don't know, prison inmates. I know they were doing VR for something. You know, just, just for the experience. But at the same time, it's like, do we really want our brains getting used to like that dopamine level and pixels when we could just go on a walk, you know?

Right, right. No, I think I saw your Twitter thread about that, like just the amount of screen time we're getting and who knows what that's doing to our eyes and our brain and all of that stuff.

Yeah, yeah. That's why I genuinely, I do think the screen time apps of the world, the Opals and Rises and all that kind of stuff, are are really important, um, and they're gonna keep, keep being important. Um, so yeah, I, I'm, I'm excited for that stuff to keep on coming.

Yeah, I think we need a healthy relationship with it because like we said at the beginning, you know, that brought us together. It's brought you to several interesting people. It's brought me to several interesting people. Like, the internet can do great things. The technology can do great things, but it can be a lot. And I think someone— I was watching a biologist, he said that our eyes are the exposed part of our brain. Which I never thought about it that way, but your eyes are technically your brain. So stressing those out with a light that's on your face for hours a day probably isn't, isn't great.

Yeah, man, that— I mean, I only read on the Kindle. That's, that's what I'm trying to do for my eyes. But the rest of the time is straight screen.

Yeah, that's— I try to do Audible so I don't have to listen, but then I have AirPods in my face or in my head all the time, so who knows what that's doing either, you know?

Yeah. Do you know Sid from CityDAO?

Uh, I'm familiar. Yeah, I'm familiar with that name, but I don't know the person personally.

Okay, cool. I had my first phone call with him last week and— oh cool, yeah, we have mutual friends. Cool guy, uh, in VC. You'd probably like him.

Awesome. What was y'all's discussion about? Or if you don't mind?

All sorts of stuff. Move to earn. He's really big into play to earn.

Um, okay.

All that kind of stuff, uh, which I, I don't know much about, honestly. Um, and then he works in VC, so we were just chatting, chatting about that stuff too. Very cool questions.

Very cool. And I do think that what you were talking about, kind of the companies reaching out to you for sponsorships, is cool. Because if you amass a community who's interested in certain topics, it's so easy for those companies to be like, okay, instead of spending on marketing, let's just offer this group of 10,000 people a discount we'll get some sort of a conversion rate on that and we'll make money. Like, I joined LinksDAO, which is a golfer's DAO. I suck at golf, but I was like, this is interesting, let's see how— where this goes. Now I have like discounts to all these different golf shops that I'll probably never use, but, but other people would like. And it's like an easy way to get tapped into an excited, passionate community for these companies.

Yeah, for sure. And on that same note, airdrops, man. Like, that's the— that's new advertising, you know? Maybe not necessarily advertising because you can't airdrop as many people like if they don't use it. Well, I guess we saw those vampire attacks with LooksRare. Yeah, that, um, so yeah, it's— I don't know if it's a new form of advertising or what, but it's, it's got to be more effective than Facebook ads, you know?

Yeah. And you've got the— did you get the ENS drop? You've got a.eth name?

No. Ah, I made the ENS like 2 weeks late.

Dang, dude. So that was my first like real airdrop experience, and that was That was fascinating to me. How did you get a decent amount, dude? A decent amount because I had two different wallets and I had several different names on each wallet. So it was like, it was a function of how much you use is how much you get, which is, is a cool concept. Um, but yeah, the Grady talks about it, he's like Cash App kind of did that in the Web2 model. Like Cash App did the Web2 stuff of airdrops, which was drop your cash tag, you know. And everyone's Instagram story and tweet just shows up with Cash App. Um, yeah, airdrops are a cool market guerrilla marketing tactic.

Yeah, it's kind of brilliant. We're going to be airdropping for Wellness Guild for sure because we had— dude, I was expecting like 10 people to comment on that tweet.

Really?

400 people commented.

Like, you had some big names if I'm not—

yeah, dude, Greg Eisenberg commented on there. Cat Cole. Um, bored Elon Musk, who he had followed me for a while and we like chatted but he never commented on my stuff. I'm like, I was like, all right, word, bro. And yeah, that was awesome. And kind of like, dude, I was supposed to publish an article on Thursday and I just was busy with responding to all that stuff and then just dealing with everything in a good way. So yeah, I interviewed Nader. Damn, how do you say his name? Nader. I interviewed him earlier. I guess 2 hours ago, and I asked him, like, he's got 100,000 followers, like, does that ever get stressful? Like, how do you deal with that? Because I was really curious, like, my brain was going fuzzy from like 400 comments. What happens when you get like 5,000 or, or whatever? And he was, he was just like, ah, I don't know, I deal with it okay. Like, I, um, you know, I try to respond to everybody I can, but I've realized like I can't. And, uh, yeah, you know, I do my best to put out good content and that's it.

And yeah. I think that's a good problem to have, you know. Yeah, that would be nice, uh, to have that. But I think with time, I think that's just like a slow keep putting stuff out. If people like your stuff, it'll, it'll naturally grow. And I think it's exponential too. You hit an inflection point, it just—

yeah, man, I, I just started reading The Power Law, and, um, it's all about VC and, you know, and, and, uh, big tails or whatever, fat tails. Yeah. And I've always understood it with money, uh, that makes sense. And then followers, it's the same thing, you know, uh, compounds over time. Once you have 100,000 followers, it's a lot faster to get to 200,000 or 150,000 or 300,000 or whatever. The first 50,000, the first 100,000 is the hardest. You know, I'm not in this thing for the followers, but damn, it opens up some reach and some opportunities and money, man. I'm not gonna lie. Like, absolutely, it's life-changing. It truly is. I know, yeah, it's crazy what— like, bored Elon Musk, who is an anonymous person, now does venture capital and investing and is building a company. And he's just like previously a game designer, um, which is just so cool to think about that this, like, because he has a million followers, he could do whatever he wants. And, uh, you know, we always knew that with celebrities, but now we're seeing it with like, you know, micro internet niche celebrities or whatever.

Yes. And like a nonce, like you said, like people you don't know their real name, and it's like, yeah, uh, yeah, it's cool.

What's your thoughts on, uh, there's part of me that wants to do this as a side project, like a non-only podcast switches to nones talking to other nones, like product manager talking to whoever. I think it'd be so funny.

That would be really interesting. I think the anonymous stuff in crypto is fascinating in general, where it's like you take the ego out of things, but then there's also less accountability. So there's a positive side and there's a negative side to it. I think of like Ohm Zeus, people like that in the DeFi 2.0 space. You're putting a lot of trust on someone who's not willing to share their name. I think it's great that they're not being egotistical, getting like all the, you know, the fame and the, you know, all that stuff. But there's definitely an upside and downside. But a podcast, that would be really cool because then, I mean, it takes the human out of it, which is I think a negative, but it puts the light on the ideas, which is really what everyone cares about.

Do you think you have to modulate voices as well or not?

Interesting. Maybe. I mean, because I think a lot of these people in a certain like niche group might be able to recognize each other. I don't know. I mean, but on like Discord, Discord calls with the nones, they don't, they don't change their voice, I don't think.

That's fair, that's fair. I, dude, I think Satoshi Nakamoto, while we're on that non-subject, yeah, I, I genuinely think he is like Mark Zuckerberg or Balaji, like one of the two.

Really?

Like, I don't know, man. It's got to be somebody who's already famous and successful because—

so they don't care about the fame, is that what you're saying? So they would stay anon because then they—

either that or just like somebody with that level of intelligence and skill would have already made a lot of money. Like, yeah, they would— they wouldn't be some like random bo, like, yeah. So I think they would have already been known and they just didn't want to tie themselves to it, uh, for legal reasons, or they knew that they'd get hacked or hunted, you know.

Yeah. Oh, for sure. If you own that much— I mean, do you think, do you think the intention of, uh, the founder, so Satoshi, was to— I mean If you don't have a founder connected to it, who does the government or the powers that be or whoever you think target? You know, like, so Silk Road, that guy got lampooned and he got, you know, like, bro, yeah, hard. And so like, they were able to shut that down. Maybe it was like a Snowden type of deal where it's like, you know, you, you just go covert so that they don't know who to, who to go after.

Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's that plus like I was reading this book and it was talking about how Aesop's fables, it's all animals and it's all easily remembered. In the same way, it's Satoshi. It's not an animal, but it's more than a person. The same thing with OmDAO or Olympus or whatever, why it was so successful. Zeus is more than a person. He's an idol of sorts or a god. I think people do that really well. And the narrative strategy of that is really interesting. Yeah, it's—

Yeah, it's almost religious. Like, the story of Bitcoin is the coolest story ever, you know? And like we said, I'm more into Ethereum than Bitcoin personally because I think it's more useful, but that— it is like a religious story. It's a mythical story that brought it in the ashes of the '08 crisis. TradFi is just completely down, this new thing emerges, and no one knows who put it together, you know? Like, that's That's pretty cool.

Yeah, yeah, it's, um, it's pretty beautiful. Did you read that book American Kingpin? About— oh dude, incredible. Like, oh, it's— it— I mean, it's a little heart-wrenching because this kid, like, he wasn't— it's, it's confusing, man. Like, it's confusing how I feel about him because he was brilliant, like a libertarian, just kind of believed like, like the government shouldn't be allowed to say if drugs are legal or not. He's not saying like we should sell drugs, but like they shouldn't be able to say it. And, um, you know, that was his whole idea. But at the same time, he just got dark real fast.

So yeah, I need to check that out. That sounds like a fascinating story.

Yeah, it's a solid book, man.

That's cool. Um, so other DAOs that you're interested in, or Web3? Like, um, I don't know, the structures of DAOs are fascinating to me because they're, they're decentralized, but I think there's a negativity behind decentralization and the fact that it's hard to unite someone over across one vision. Um, where centralized companies with a founder, it's easier. So for Wellness Guild, how do you think you're going to keep people centered on where, where the people are trying to go? Is it, you know, pumping out content? How do you kind of deal with that?

So, uh, it's gonna be a combination of things. So Threads— Austin is like the king of Threads. He goes viral every fucking time. He kills it. And so hopefully he'll be, he'll be helping us there. And then Because all of our media team writes our own newsletters, like we don't want to compete with our own newsletters and we don't want to just be copying and pasting. So what we're going to do is come up with long-form content together. And you know how like A116Z put out the canon of DAOs, like we're going to do like the wellness tech Bible or the fitness tech MBA kind of thing where it's, you know, all of us put our brainpower and research together. Into something that hopefully we're going to give it out for free, but it could be a product one day or a book or something. Um, yeah, that, that's kind of where, where my thoughts are.

Okay.

Also, yeah, and then when it comes to other NFTs projects and stuff like that, Cabin DAO is, um, they're thinking long term, man, like 100-year future.

Wow.

And then the way I've been flipping NFTs a little bit, not, not too crazy, but I have like a secret, secret way to do it. If you've ever heard of Metaverse HQ I've heard that. It's like some Discord club. It costs like $10,000 to get in. But what I do is just, uh, I don't pay for that shit, but I just look at who bought it and then see their last 7 days of purchases and then just buy that shit.

Smart. You just use Etherscan. That's so smart.

Yeah, you could just do it on OpenSea. Like, why would you ever pay for that on a public blockchain?

Yeah, yeah, that's— that just shows that people don't fully understand the technology. They're working on.

Yeah, that's—

and I was going to say, ENS, whenever they did their airdrop to decentralized governance, they had a constitution that they had people sign, which was interesting. And then you can also delegate tokens to representatives. Like, the governance of DAOs is pretty cool, but I think that's a longer-term thing maybe.

Oh, agreed. So something that I just saw yesterday, Chase Chapman tweeted about, and, um, something that we're probably gonna establish in Wellness Guild and hopefully Cap'n DAO as well, is localization of voting. So rather than having the entire DAO vote on the budgets, why don't we have the media team vote on the media budget, or, you know, something like that. Or, uh, I mean, it seems kind of obvious in retrospect, but because DAOs are so fluid and people are jumping around between other teams, it can get a little confusing. Um, yeah, so we're gonna play around with that. At first it's gonna be completely just everybody votes, but, you know, maybe 6 months, a year down the line, we'll figure that out.

That's really cool.

Very cool.

So I mean, plug some stuff. Plug yourself, Jason.

Um, yeah, where can people find you? Twitter @iamjasonlevin. And then, um, I write a newsletter called Wellness Tech biweekly. And then I also write my ideas at jasonlevin.substack.com. And most of that is just like tech bro humor, goofing around, kind of, kind of fun ideas. Um, and Honestly, it's, uh, not my favorite shit, but it's, um, I, I enjoy writing it the most because I have fun. Um, and then Wellness Guild is at wellness_guild. Um, yeah, I don't know if there's anything else. I'm— yeah, that's, that's about it.

That's good. And I, I want to give my endorsement. Like, you had one thing about units, um, that was a hilarious article. Like, I really enjoyed reading that. That was fascinating. So Enjoy Jason's reading. He's a good writer— or writing. He's a good writer. Um, it's cool stuff. Um, and then, dude, I'm excited to see where Wellness Guild goes. I'm— thank you for making me a part of this journey, and, uh, I'm excited to see where everything ends up.

Yeah, I appreciate it, man, and thank you for, for reaching out. And, uh, this podcast is gonna be the first podcast for Wellness Guild as well, so awesome. Gonna hopefully— hopefully if that's cool, just copy and paste the content.

Absolutely.

All right, dope. So we're gonna put that out, and then we've got, um, yeah, Nader DeBeats podcast coming up, and, and hopefully some more down the road. So sweet.

Thanks so much, Jason Levin.

Yeah, thank you.