Cagyjan - What You Need To Know About Play-To-Earn Games

Check 1, 2. Check 1, 2, check 1, 2. What is up? What is up? What is up? What is up, Matt? What is up, Joe? Thank you for having me, bro. I appreciate it. Guys, this is your boy, Kaggy. Jan. Let's go. Very, very excited to be in this podcast, ladies and gentlemen. We're gonna juice it out here. And if you guys don't know what the juice is, it's basically coffee, but I call it the juice. So I'm always juiced out of my mind. And that's what we're gonna do in this podcast, hopefully. Let's get it, baby.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Flow chart with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Hey, what's up, everyone?

Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Today we've got an awesome guest. He is one of the top content creators in the play to earn gaming space. He's got over 70,000 YouTube subscribers, over a hundred thousand Twitter followers, and he is dropping all of the intel on what's working right now in play to ear talking to Kagijon. And he's somebody that we've really gotten to know over the last few months. We've collaborated on a few projects, we've done some investments with him, and he really, really knows his stuff in the Play to Earn space. Most of what Joe and I know about the Play to earn gaming space we learned from Kagijan in this episode. We're really gonna deep dive into the opportunities that exist in the play to Earn game, how the tokens work in these various play to earn games, how you can actually make money with these games, which games are the best games, what cool games that are coming out soon, and even how he grew his brand as a content creator. We talk a little bit about how he grew his YouTube channel, how he grew his Twitter channel, and we really dive into some really, really cool stuff. You're gonna really dig this episode with Kagi. And before we jump in, I want to remind you, go follow us on Twitter. I am mattrwolf on Twitter. Joe is Joe Fear on Twitter. And we have our hard fork gaming on Twitter as well. So make sure you're following those and if you aren't already, go join us in Discord. Hustleandflowchart.com Discord is the place. That's where Joe and I hang out with anybody who's paying attention to the podcast and wants to come chat with us. A lot of our guests who have been on the show come and hang out in The Discord. We answer questions, we share projects that we're getting into. It's a really cool place to come hang out with us. You're going to want to be in there. If you want to be in the know. Head over to hustleandflowchart.com discord. Let's go start dropping some alpha with our good buddy Kagi.

Oh, man, we got the Juicer himself. Kagijan.

My son.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, man. What's up, man? What's up, Joe?

Hey, my man.

Long time no see.

I know, I know, right?

Yeah. For the people that don't know this, that are listening, this is the context, is that we've been building some cool stuff behind the scenes and. Yeah, long time no see. Like, five minutes ago we were in a call.

So constant, man. Yeah. So it's cool, man. We've been wanting to bring you on the show for a long time. And it's funny for how much we've been working together, we haven't even been able to dive. We haven't had the time to even talk about our show or what we've been doing, you know?

So I think Kagi just learned that.

We have a podcast, actually.

Yeah, well, basically I learned that it's a successful podcast. Right? Like, I knew you guys had a podcast and now I'm interested now that you guys are successful. Ah, we're friends.

That's what it is.

Before it was iffy, right?

Before it was just like, I don't know about this guy. Now we're friends. Yeah. Hell yeah, we're in.

We've. I don't know if we brought your name up specifically, but the topics of. Of play to earn gaming and just crypto in general, metaverse and guild. Like, we've been talking about it on the latest episodes and people in our community are like, I want more. A lot of them are creators, too. Like, they're creating a bunch of content, YouTube, podcasts, whatever it is, you know, so we're like, holy crap. Kagi picks all or takes all those boxes, man. So I want to break down, like, what makes Kagi man? Because, like, we got a lot to learn about you too. And how the hell did you grow a 70,000 plus YouTube sub following and over a hundred thousand on Twitter? Is this guy, like, just everyone listening? This guy is blowing it up in the play to earn gaming space. I think we were told yesterday you're in the top, like three, you know, like, you're one of the only three in top of this gaming space. And Everybody goes to you, you know, they see you for direction, for help for their projects and they want to partner up. So hey, let's break this down for everybody, man, because it's interesting because you do it differently too.

Let's start where I started, you know, and I'm going to try to make it quick so people don't get bored. Right. So basically I came to this country, United States, 15 years ago. I was really like outgoing when I was a kid, I'm still a kid, I'm super young. But when I was a kid in Dominican Republic, I was really outgoing. But then when I got here I saw this mix of cultures that kind of pushed me into gaming, right? It pushed me into gaming. So I became more like an in house person when reality, I was always more of an outside adventurous, you know, riding your bicycle until late night with your friends in a very dangerous country to a certain extent, now that it's dangerous compared to United States where you know, the crime is not like necessarily that big. But you know that, that kind of street life as a kid, even though I'm not like from like the street streets, it gives you a better perspective into how to read people, how to feel them out if they're good people or bad people. Because that's, those are instincts that you kind of have to learn when you're a kid in a third world country or emerging economy. If you don't learn those instincts, you literally go around a corner and you don't know if that person is a good person, bad person. You kind of feel it out and it's hard to explain, but that will come into play later. But the point is that I got here, didn't have a lot of friends, mix of cultures. So I got into gaming, very tough time in high school, dropped out of high school and then went to college for film school, did my GED and all of that, went into a job at mtv. I was a supervisor at mtv, very young supervisor. I had people under me, like they were like 50 year old editors that were like from LA, right? Like they knew what they were doing and I was trying to, you know, lead and it was very hard to lead because you know, they, they had a little bit of jealousy and it was understandable and I was trying to deal with that. How do I tell them what to do without telling them what to do?

Right.

A lot of it was surrounded of me doing the jobs without telling them what to do, just kind of leading, just like this is what we have to do. And I would outperform them and kind of like lead, right that way. But sometimes I had to tell them. And I felt bad. I didn't know how to not feel bad, right. Because I was like, fuck, how do I tell these guys what to do? So in that moment, I started watching Twitch and stuff. I was, I could do this. I mean, I always been an entertainer, outgoing this and that. I'm good looking. Hey, I'm the best looking in crypto. And I literally decided to leave MTV because I was doing crypto. At the same time, I became a millionaire in crypto on paper. And then the market crashed, right. And I lost it all. I had no job. So basically I kept doing Twitch and doing Uber. Also created a few businesses that failed during those times that a clothing brand did an app like Uber, but for cleaning. Basically there's a lot of cleaning services that need to be done. Right. And people are always looking for that person and they have to call a friend or whatever. But in the, in the, you know, there's a lot of buildings in, in the downtown, you know, that somebody needs to clean.

So you're at. Now you're like right in the middle of it. All, Right?

Yeah. So people need those apps. So I try to make one. I made it, I made the concept. And then me and my brother said, hey, we're not really passionate about this, so let's drop it. It had an opportunity to be a big app, but then it's part of that process of figuring out, like, wow, you need to be passionate about what you're doing or you're just going to hate it. Right. Money is cool and everything, but passion needs to be intertwined with that, with whatever you're doing. We failed at that one. I call it a failure because it's a failure. And until 2020, that I started researching about NFT games and here I am. So that's basically my story. Yeah, in a nutshell. I also sold ocean water.

I remember seeing that on Twitter. Just the other day, I saw a big dude holding big old bottles of water up and I'm like, people buy salt water.

That's cool in the Midwest or whatever.

Yeah, that's true. I never thought about it because we live in San Diego, you live in Miami. Like, salt water is abundant for us, for sure.

That's cool.

You'll be surprised. Dude, there's some people here that bought in Tampa. What? Yes, they bought me on ebay in Tampa. But if you really, really think about this, it's all about packaging, right? Like when you buy a pina Colada in Dominican Republic, they give you the pina colada in the actual pineapple, inside the pineapple, so it looks more beautiful. But they could also give it to you in a cup. But they'll, they'll charge you a little bit more just because you're drinking the pina colada. It's all about packaging. And the same thing with the ocean water. It's like they need it. They don't necessarily want to go to the water that day. Or they're old, maybe they're 50 years old and they need it for something and you know, you're packaging it. It's just convenience at the end of the day.

So, dude, how did you package yourself up back in the MTV days to become a supervisor at such a young age? What did you do to get to that level so fast?

Dude, I'm very aggressive in terms of my business practices. Not in a bad way, just kind of like if I don't get what I want, I'm willing to quit, right? I'm willing to quit. And it's like I always go with a bullet and my gun, right? I either shoot that bullet at myself or I shoot it at the other person. Right. When I say it to myself, it's like, I, you got to be willing to pull the trigger. So I went into my boss office, I knocked on his door and told him, look, I need a race. I, I'm the one juicing out the most. I didn't tell him like that, but I'm the, I'm the one putting the most work here. And I'm teaching all these people. Yeah, I was teaching people how to like, the workflow and everything, new, new hires and all of that. I was like, I'm getting underpaid, like, no way. So I was getting paid $20 an hour as an editor. And then I went to my boss and I told him, I want 30, I want $30. And if you don't give me 30, I told them, if you don't give me 30,. Unfortunately, I'm gonna have to leave. And I had no other plan. I was. But I was willing to leave. So I understood my value. I kind of calculated my value and I was like, you know, they're already underpaying me here in Miami at $20 an hour. Because in LA they pay you from 30 to $40 at the minimum just to bring coffee to the lead editor in a film. And I was like, dude, I'm putting all this work and this is a, you know, big ass business because it's Viacom, right, that owns all these networks. I was like, dude, they can pay me this. You know, so just kind of understanding what company you're in. Number two, understanding your value and kind of assessing the value with the market, too. Because I understand that the market at that moment in Miami was at that price. If the market is paying $20 an hour for an editor or junior editor, then that's the market. I can't do anything. I can't fight the market. But at the same time, you kind of look at the other components and you're like, can I get more out of this market? And that's what I did.

See, this is why on Twitter the other day, I said, kagi is my mentor, because I've been totally impressed. Every single second we ever hop on a call, there's some new value, some gym like that you just drop. Because so many people walk around the rest of their life with no sense of their own value, and then they don't know the value of other things, the market, what's around them, because they think they might be hot shit. It's like, well, great. The market doesn't agree with you.

We've seen it on calls, too, right? We've been on these pitch meetings with you. We've been on calls with you. You just go for what you want, right? You're on these calls and you're like, let's just cut to the chase. Let's talk money. Let's get right into it. And it's so cool to see, because everybody respects you so much more for it, right? Like, I think a lot of these. These investors and these developers and these game studios and stuff, they're so used to people just beating around the bush, and Nobo wants to throw out the first number. Nobody wants to be the person to really kick off the nitty gritty of the conversation. And you're just like, let's get straight to it. And everybody's like, hell, yeah, let's get straight to it. And you just see everybody's energy shift. And I think there's so much respect there, and you get what you want out of these conversations. And the majority of these calls we've been on, and it's just so it's really cool to see.

Yeah, man.

No, yeah, absolutely. And working with you guys has been great, to be honest, because we don't. We, you know, we don't know each other and stuff like that. And there's. There's a mix of things, right? So I respect you guys because you guys are older Than me. Right. You guys have way more experience than me in life. So it's like there's like this respect level, like mutual respect. You guys respect me for the amount of time that I've been in the space, but then I respect you guys for. For. For the, you know, wisdom that you guys have as you're being older than me, just doing more stuff than me by. By nature, you know, by. Sure, I guess.

Describe the space we're in. You know, play to earn space. You've been in it since, what, 20, 2012 or 2020. You said 2020?

Yes. Yeah, I could dive into that. Well, basically, there's a barrier of entry, right. In many aspects, not only sometimes monetarily, and that's a good and a bad thing. If you can get around that barrier as an investor and learn what's going on in the space, then basically you're a first mover right now. And the second barrier is the barrier of learning. Right? The willingness to learn how the space is moving and being active in the space. On Twitter, Discords, reading medium articles, getting into podcasts like this, this one that has a lot of Web3 right now, those barriers are good, are good, because where there's a barrier, there's opportunity. And it's almost like I imagine the gold rush at some point, right? Yeah. It's not easy to pick up the gold, right. With your hands. You got to go buy a pickaxe, learn how to pickaxe the gold. If that is how they did it. I'm not really sure. I imagine.

Learn the techniques from the gold coming down the river and understanding how to source it out. I mean, there's a lot of work to it, but there's a lot of upside on the other side, right. Once you learn how to navigate. And yeah, you guys came out the right time because you guys are marketers.

And that's the thing, man. We saw it for. Because we've been dabbling in crypto for a lot of years, but it wasn't until Last year when NFTs were popping off, we had a whole bunch of friends helping launch some of these projects. And, you know, we're just like, okay, this is too crazy not to put our attention on. And then that's where Matt and I were, like, you know, six months ago. Start chopping off everything in our business. We're like, I don't see longevity or we don't see longevity in this thing. Like, just stop doing it. It's not gonna scale. It's not gonna make it in terms of, like, where we're seeing everything go now, or like, let's just. Let's just go here. Yeah. And that's where you guys show. I mean, what, Buffalo Randy, you know, we'll bring him on the podcast one of these days, or y' all will. You'll meet him. He's over there.

But, I mean, Buff is a great guy, man. Like, I can't believe he put up with me and still puts up with me.

He's a good therapist, right? He's a listener.

We need one.

It's perfect. Let's dive into Play to Earn gaming a little bit. What was the first Play to Earn game that you ever played? Was it. Was it Axie? Because I think Axie seems to be the one that people kind of credit is like the first big one that really sort of blew up the space. But how did you get into Play to Earn specifically?

I was in a. In a downtrend in my life, like, mentally. I was like, what am I doing right now? Like, I need to find a way to get into gaming because I'm already doing gaming on YouTube and Twitch and stuff like that. And I want to find a niche. And I knew about crypto already. I've been doing crypto for a while, but, you know, NFTS didn't blow up until 2020. But I was like, let me look into crypto games. Started, like, researching crypto games. And I found this game called Hash Rush, which is an RTS game. And I didn't know what crypto games were. Like, what is crypto games? Right. I wanted to understand what is crypto games? There was only like three or four games at that moment in 2020. Very, very rudimentary games. And I found Hash Rush played it a little bit. There was no earning or anything. And I wasn't looking for earning. There was no earning mechanics that didn't exist in reality. It was just like, you find a digital item within the game, and that digital item, you own it. So that's where it clicked for me. It was like, oh, crap. I played this game. I have now this. This resource or this item skin or whatever. And I had it in my wallet. I was like, yeah, this is what it is. And now I could trade this or send it to somebody or give it to a friend, just like we used to do back then with Pokemon cards right in school, like, just trade Pokemon cards. It's kind of the same thing, but digitally. And you're going to see that with kids having their wallet open on their phones and be like, yo, I'll trade you this man, or give me this Right, right there. So everything just clicked there. And then I found Axie because my brother, he was reading this Medium article from Bankless, and I'm sure some people might know about this in this podcast and they talked about play to earn or earning this token in the game. I looked at the article, I read it, and I was like, yeah, whatever, I'm not going to sit there and earn. I want to have fun. Right? But I still looked into it, didn't like the game, still don't like the game till this day. But I think the vision of the game is what matters. And we'll go into that in a little bit. And I got into it, got into the discord, and the welcoming in that discord was incredible. Right? Like, it was just like one more person. Let's go. Amazing. It was amazing, the welcoming. Any questions? They had it. Any concerns? They had it. Right? And that's where I really learned at that moment. That's where community clicked on me. And it really clicked on me at the moment. It wasn't like later on because I was part of other games like Hash Rush, Lost Relics, right. I was part of those games. And I noticed in the discord that I was asking questions and some of the OGs in those games that were playing for a couple months already wouldn't give me the real answer. You could sense it, that they didn't want to give me the alpha, like, what are the best weapons? What are. And I was like, bro, I know you've been here for a while. Like, how are you going to tell me you don't know? You know, like, don't tell me that. I know. Like, I can see it in your name. You're like, og. And it says it like. Like, no way. You don't know. Just tell me what weapon is good or bad so I can buy it, or, you know, I buy it from you or whatever. And I noticed that. And when I went Axie and I asked, what are the best axies? What should I buy? Why shouldn't I buy? They just gave me all the alpha, even the devs, Right? Oh, this is the best one. So I notice the difference in community and approaches and that clicked on me and that's why I stay with Axie, even though I don't really like the gameplay they have right now. Right. So. But the vision is very important for Axie.

Yeah.

With play to earn gaming. I feel like with a lot of the traditional gamers, the ones that aren't really in the play to earn gaming space, but they're, you know, streaming Twitch videos and making YouTube videos about it. There's been a lot of, a lot of people don't seem see the vision. I think a lot of traditional gamers don't see it with play to earn gaming. And there's a lot of like, for lack of a better word, shit talking around the play to earn gaming space. You know, at one point to get into Axie, right, you had to. An axie might cost $500 and you need three to play. So it's like a fifteen hundred dollar barrier to entry versus you know, a $59 purchase over at GameStop. How would you sort of like respond to some of those objections? Like what, what would you tell people that are like, no, play to earn gaming's a scam because. Because it just costs so much more money, more to get into than the traditional gaming.

Like how do you sort of sell.

People on the idea of getting into play to earn gaming when all these objections are out there?

Well, yeah, for Axie in particular, it's a collectible game, right? You buy your Pokemon cards. Essentially, Pokemon is pay to win, right? It's the same thing. It's literally exactly the same thing. So AXI in that sense is the same thing. You buy your axes because you love them, you like the stats and you buy them. Now something very important to note is that they only sold 4,000 axes at the beginning. And right now we have 10 million axes and all those axes derived from those 4,000 axes that were sold at the beginning. So the devs are not selling axes, right? You're not buying it from the devs, you're buying it from the players, players that have put axes together. Because every single axe has a DNA and basically there is a mechanic there that's very important to note. It's not just like breed axes, make babies and sell them. It's like you got to know what you're doing. And so there's a certain amount of level of commitment to even breeding, to being part of the community. So it has a value, right, as a collectible. But I do agree, I do agree to a certain extent, like some of these games, they have this barrier, but a lot of that is being mitigated by guilds like the ones that we're building, that we're lending those assets and allowing players to kind of participate in that economy.

It's like Uber, right? It's the same thing. And you might say, but why does it have value? Well, People are willing to participate. It's that simple. Now there are going to be other models where it's like free to play and then there's this token or this assets within the game that you can find by playing the game, by completing quests, by completing achievements, and then those assets kind of can be sold and then an economy starts flourishing out of a free to play game. And those, you know, there are, there are going to be those games. But Axie in reality started as a collectible. As a collectible game. So you buy in a collectible. Right. I have an AXI that I bought for $10,000. Now it's worth 250,000 in the market. And I bought it because it's a collectible that I wanted to own. That's it. It's really what it comes down to. And I agree. Whoever doesn't want to participate in that economy doesn't participate. It's really that simple.

Yeah. I also feel like what we're seeing right now in Play to Earn Gaming is kind of like V1 of play to Earn Gaming. Right. It's like the rough draft of Play to Earn Gaming. Like a lot of these gaming companies are trying to figure it out and with each new game that comes out, they've learned the lessons of the games that came before it. You have the games like Thetan arena and then they kind of figured out a different model than what the Axie model was. And then you've got Pagaxi, which is a game that we talk about a lot lately within Hard Fork, which is like an even different model where people are earning even more. And it seems like with each new game that comes out, they're kind of iterating based on the mistakes of the previous game.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There's a lot of learning for these games. They're bouncing ideas off each other actively, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And that's part of the game too. As a developer, you are like, should I release this update or should I wait for this game to release first? Right. Should I wait for them to make a mistake first? And I think Axie has played that a little bit too. AXI didn't release updates for the last six months. Right. And part of it is like, yeah, okay, we know what we want to do, but we don't want to deploy this so that everybody kind of sees the failure or the success of us before. So they have the time to bleed people out. Right. In that sense.

Well, they're the first to the market basically. Right?

Yeah. And they have billions of Dollars in their treasury. Right. They're worth billions. Right. Really there's literally ETH and axs, which is the main token for Axie Infinity, the investment token. Basically, you're basically owning a piece of the game through the AXS token. Basically they have millions and millions of dollars just sitting there. And those millions of dollars are going back to the people that have the token. Right. There's a distribution system where if you have the axs, you stake it and you earn from that treasury. Now that money that is in that treasury comes from the marketplace fees. So very interesting concepts. And you've seen those concepts being implemented in many other games after axie.

Oh yeah.

But they were the first ones to do it.

And that's the beautiful thing with games and where it's different than just a PfP NFT project or something. There's this in game economy, there's immediate utility. And like you're describing here, there's so many ways to earn off of that or get involved in it. Can you break down like at a basic level, like what, what does like a play to earn economy kind of look like? Because there's a couple tokens, there's, you know, a variety of ways. You mentioned the treasury. I think that would be a good like overview for everybody here.

Yeah, absolutely. Right now the token systems that we're seeing in play to earn gaming is there's one, an inflationary token that would be basically the currency, Right. This currency is usually mined within the game. Basically you go to work or you go to play by playing the game. If you win something, you achieve something, you earn this token. That token has value because that token is needed to do certain things within the game. Like in axie, you need the token that you earn within the game to actually breed axies. So it has a value to those people that want to breed. There's people that only focus on breeding. They don't want to play the game. But for them to get the token, they either play the game or they buy it from the players that play the game. So that's where the economy there for that token comes into play. And of course there's always risk of that token not having enough utility, enough things to do with the token, that at some point people are like, I don't want to breed anymore. And maybe the people farming that token might say, I don't want to play anymore. And then kind of the token goes to crap. So it's not an investment token, it's a utility token that you got to be very aware of like, if you're buying it, you're using it, and then when you use that token, it burns. So there's a burning mechanism. So the idea for that token to stay consistent in their price or in a price range is that the burning has to be at the same rate, or almost at the same rate, or at some of the times even higher than the amount of token that are being emitted by the players. If you have more players just farming the token and not enough players using the token to burn it, then basically what you get is a massive inflation and then the token crashes, right? So the idea is that the games, little by little they implement utility for that token, inflationary token. And then the other token would be the governance token, which is basically a token that gives you ownership of the entire ecosystem of that game. In the case of Axis, there's a few things. Number one would be that everything that gets sold in the marketplace, there's a fee in it, right? So there's a 4.25% fee. That 4.25% fee goes into a bucket, basically a treasury. And then by owning the AXS token, you basically stake your token. It's an incentive for you not to sell a token. And out of that bucket or that treasury, a percentage of that treasury goes back to the people, people that stake the token. So that's that, that's number one. That's one of those utilities. Another utility of that governance token is the governance, right? So you get to vote into the future of this game. So the devs or somebody or anybody in the game that owns a token could say, hey, I'm going to do a proposal. The proposal goes this way. We want the axes to do certain things within the game, blah, blah, blah. And then the whole community that owns that token kind of votes whether that is something that the developers should engage in, right? The developers are also going to get paid from the treasury. So basically it's decentralizing a game, right? And the decisions of a game now those decisions have to be done progressively. It cannot be done at a split of a second. Like right now, the governance is not into play. It should come into play very soon. The reason why is because you got millions of people owning this token and millions of ideas. So you have to almost guide them into learning how to govern and how to propose. You don't want somebody proposing some crap like, oh, let's introduce a horse in Axie that doesn't make sense, right? Why?

So it's decentralized, but at the same time it's like there still needs to be mechanisms to filter out and time it out and all that. Prioritize.

Exactly. So there's a lot of learning. So you got to almost guide your community into getting educated into how to make proposals, how to vote and not vote out of emotions necessarily. Kind of like more objective.

Right.

When they're voting, be like, does that make sense for the game? So it just becomes a smarter community. It's literally a digital nation is what it is.

That's a hell of an explanation.

Yeah, that was perfect. That's better than either of us would have ever been able to explain it to anybody. But you mentioned the vision of the game being very, very important to you. What do you look for in the vision? The overall long term picture of the game. What sort of things are you seeking out when getting involved in a game?

Yeah, we could go back to Axie and Axie from the beginning. One of the things they always had in mind is like we're going to build a vertical world, not a horizontal world. Horizontal meaning that basically you have this asset that can be played across many games. And there are games doing horizontal metaverses, basically like Sandbox, where there's integration with other projects and stuff like that. But AXIE wants to do a vertical basically within their own IP intellectual property, which is the axies. They want to create more experiences for those assets that you own. So if you own a collectible, you basically can use it in other games that either the team is building or the community is building. And there is a community program going on right now, Community builders. Basically.

The community is building games and experiences. I'm pretty sure the community is going to vote whether those games get implemented within the AXIE ecosystem. And that's where the governance again will come into play again. So the community votes and says, okay, we want Axies, that we want a Mario Kart type Axie game. Right. So now you have your axes, your asset and you go play this card game that has nothing to do with the first game that the developer team built. So what we're seeing is something like Nintendo, you're buying something like the Nintendo brands, right? So if you see Mario, how many Mario games are there? There's literally like 20, 30, 40, like.

Smash brothers now where you could take Mario and fight with them.

Yeah, yeah, but the problem with that is that you grind Smash Brothers, you grind a Mario Party or whatever, but you can't take that character to the other games. So you know, it's a world, it's a Mario world. But in reality Every single game is a world in itself and it has a. It's a closed world in itself. Right? So that's basically the difference between the Axie world and basically something like Mario World or any other IP that Nintendo has. Now, at a bigger picture, the team, the Sky Mavis team, which is a team behind Axie Infinity, they also built this blockchain called Running Blockchain. So, yeah, the Running Blockchain is basically the infrastructure of all the games that will come from the SkyMavis team and the games that they will incubate. Right. Like, they will bring other studios to that blockchain. Right now, the market cap of that blockchain is so low compared to other blockchains that are attempting to do the same. But if there's any other proof of something working is actually right. Like, they literally have the biggest volume in that blockchain is undervalued. Like, it's literally under blockchains. I still don't have any games, which is crazy to me.

So basically, it's like a blockchain that's going to cater to games and, like, it's being led by the biggest one in the whole fricking industry. So it's like, hey, let's just build on top of this bad boy. And because you have the smartest minds, you have the attention already there.

Yeah, they have the attention, like you said. Exactly. That's one of the biggest things actually has gone mainstream. They've been in literally mainstream media. They've been everywhere. They have the contacts, they have the power, they have the money, they have everything. And their blockchain, where Axie is actually running on top of, is actually super undervalued compared to everything else out there, like Immutable X, like Gala Games. Although Gala Games does have a lot of IP under them. They don't have the infrastructure. They just have a lot of partnerships. And that's one of the things that Axie, or not actually, the running blockchain is missing partnerships. But for them, it's super simple to get partnerships. The reason why they don't have partnerships is because they want to always align partnerships that make sense. Partnerships there is everywhere. But they want to partner. They want strong partnerships, very strong partnerships. They want to step in the right direction always. So they take their time. And, you know, I wouldn't be surprised. I see Axie and the Running Blockchain partner with big, big brands that you, you know, you might be like, what just happened? I mean, one of the founders tweeted the other day, like, yo, he tweeted like a McDonald's kind of. Yeah. You know, probably trolling a little bit and stuff like that. But that is the vision. That is a perspective of where Axes and the running blockchain could be in the future. They literally have that power to reach those people.

I don't see this out of the question. I mean, Nintendo and all the various video games on the traditional platforms have all gotten there. And I mean, why not Axie.

Yeah. And why not big brands? Like, if we're thinking of just Metaverse in general, look at Sandbox and what they're doing with all these big brands with celebrities. I mean, Snoop Dogg and his latest album, literally Adidas. He freaking talked about the Sandbox. Yeah. Adidas is huge.

Nike Adidas is. It is crazy. I mean, it's not like actually doesn't have that access, which is a crazy thing. They have that access, and they have more access than anybody else. It's literally timing. When do we want to do it and why do we want to do it? Those are questions that you got to ask because there's so many partners, right? And it makes sense. It makes sense to take it slow, but that is where the money's at to be made. It's like, you know that they have the part. They have the access to those partnerships. You know that they're taking their time and, you know, it's undervalued compared to everything else in the market based on the fact that they have the number one game running on the blockchain. They're literally second to Ethereum in transactions, NFT transactions. It's like.

It's like, crazy.

That's crazy.

That is.

That's crazy. They're literally second. And at some point last year, they were actually number one, right? So for one day, one day, they did more transactions than Ethereum. It's like, are you. Are you. Are you kidding me? Like. Like nobody else is bringing that amount of transactions. So the fundamentals are there. And it's like, dude, what are we doing? What are people doing? And that is why I have personally threw in 600k into running blockchain. I'm a little ride. And then probably stake it in the future because.

Yeah, you believe in it, man. Yeah. And go to his Twitter. He's the CEO of Ronin.

You can farm Ronin, too. I've been farming Ronin ever since you were making videos about it. And I was like, oh, this. I mean, go. And I don't really want to explain how to farm Ronin. There's plenty of YouTube videos out there, that's a little too in the weeds. But you can actually go and sort of invest some money and then just kind of earn Ronin by having your money just sitting there.

Yeah, you could do that. But something to be very careful is there's something called impermanent loss. So just research that before you go into farming. Right now, personally, I am not farming. I'm just holding my run until staking, single side staking comes out. Right. Where are you staking? A validator node. Node. Basically. The nodes basically keep the blockchain secured. So you basically by staking, you're helping the blockchain be secure. So if you guys want to learn a little bit more about them, do your research. But I am confident that Ron is financial advice. Like, I'm not even like, I'm so confident. No, I'm really. I really am. It's just like, bro, like, actually, it's at a level that it's literally. There's no going back from there. They could literally sit on their money right now and see everybody else bleed out through a bear market and they could be still building. That's the thing. They have billions.

That's it, man. And most of these games, like, we know if you're not raising enough money right now or have it in your treasury, it's like, you might not make it through a bear market if everything goes down. It's like, how long do you. What's your Runway look like? Is it a year? Is it two years?

I think actually has a 15 year Runway right now at the rate that they're using their money. So, yeah, they'll be all right. Fifteen years. They'll be cool. They'll be cool.

And if anybody looks it up on YouTube, they're most likely gonna come across Kagi teaching them how to set up Ronin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We'll link it up, we'll figure it out.

I remember I was searching how to. Cause you said something on Twitter about, like, you should be farming Ronin. So I go on YouTube, I'm like, how do I farm Ronin? And like, the first four videos are all Kaggy.

Hey, I wanna. I wanna. This is like, perfect transition. Cause I wanna chat about you as a creator on that side of things and what you do on YouTube and Twitter primarily. Cause you blow it up, man. And you have all these people coming to you. You have a hell of a following. I know you're not the biggest, but you have. I would say you're the most influential as far as I know. And I mean, we're told on all these meetings now, it's like you're in, you're either the number one or you're like in the top three in this play to earn space. And it's only growing like leaps and bounds every day.

Yeah, well, in terms of influence, I would say I'm the number one in influence. Like perception, right? Perception of the market, how they see me. I could take that credit, right? Then the numbers is something else, right? Because I know some YouTubers out there that have more numbers than me, me. But in the NFT gaming market, they don't have the pool that I have in the back end, right. They don't have the contacts, they don't have the relationships that I have with, with games and stuff like that. So, you know, YouTube's is a number game, numbers game. And how much content you put out every day? I have slowed down in the couple last couple months and it's because I've been juicing out content for so long that I had to like, re. Strategize and see what's next. But I'm, I'm gonna keep juicing content. I'm, I'm a revamp the content and keep, keep putting content out there on a daily basis. Right.

Do you know what attracts people to your videos? Do you have any idea of like, what's different about your videos from the other creators that yours do that much better than everybody else's?

I think it's one is the energy. I try to bring a lot of, a lot of energy into the videos. Sometimes for some people, they might not like it. Look, okay, so content creators, let's put into perspective there's some content creators that are a little bit more chill, more laid back, and there's people I like to go to sleep to those content creators. I'm not a content creator. You go to sleep too, right? Like, you literally, you watch because you're looking for something interesting and then you find this energy and you like it. Right. Some people might find it annoying, some people might find it super exciting and that's that. Right. Every single content creator has a specialty in the way they approach, you know, they're delivering a video. But my delivery is, you know, I have this accent. I don't care, I don't give a fuck. I say how I think. Like, for example, we were working with fractal the other day and, you know, I didn't get paid for that video, but we were working with them. And the fact that I did a video and in the video I said, I think this NFT is a little overpriced without caring about the fact that I'm working with them and maybe I should please the client. Right? I'm sorry, that's what I think that's what you're getting from me.

Right?

So you're gonna get a lot of straight up things, a lot of energy and a lot of not too deep analysis in a lot of this games and stuff. Because at the end of the day, people want information quick and they want to get excited about the information. Now it is up to them to be like, okay, now I'm excited. I like what I'm seeing. Let me go read a white paper that is 20 pages. Right? People should be doing that. Right. I just get them excited enough to get that kick and say, let me check this out.

Right?

Yeah. No, I think you nailed it. I think you just, you are who you are and if people don't like you, you're not going to change your content to try to please the people that may not like what you're putting out. You just.

You do you.

And I think that's. That's it. That's what it comes down to.

And that's something. It's a str. Let me tell you something. It's a. Okay. It's not a strat. It's a strategy. Kind of. Kind of. Because I always knew that I never wanted to be changed. I studied other content creators by default. It wasn't like, let me go study them. I was watching Twitch for so long. I saw Ninja. I saw all these big content creators grow, grow, grow, grow. But they grew so big. And some of them grew big because they changed how they approach their content to please as many people as they want. So a little like when Ninja started, one of the things that really, really resonated with people is the fact that he didn't care. But then Fortnite came around, and then partnerships like Adidas with Ninja and other partnerships kind of like made him rethink his strategy to grow. And now he's been on videos where he's like, like, I don't. I can't even say anything anymore. I say something and people flip it around and the people try to cancel me or whatever. And, you know, he, he's at a risk of losing a partnership with Adidas. It could happen. Just like Tiger woods one time lost his partnership with Nike, I think it was, or whatever. And super dumb, because who cares if he has multiple girlfriends? Like, that's not. That's his life. Are you kidding me?

Talking golf Here.

Yeah, yeah. Whether morally it's okay or not. Okay, that. Okay, cool. But at the end of the day, Nike represents sports, and he's performing in the sports, so why would you drop him? Like, so those are the big risk of growing with the tailored personality. So my strategy was I'm not gonna tailor myself. I'm just gonna go with who I am. Because if I get to that point that big, I don't want to be in that position where if I say something, people are not expecting it, and then I get canceled for it. So. So that's something that I really thought about very early on.

So, dude, it's. And you live it. It in these meetings, too, and all that, and you stand by that, you know? And I think that's what matters the most. It's like, that's genuinely who you are. And I think, like, for people listening, like, just think about how that is for yourself, too, because there's a lot of shit that you probably aren't standing for, especially when there's, like, big money getting waived or a big opportunity. It's like. That's why I think is you've moved so many doors open. You've kicked them open, man. You know, just because it's you and you don't give a fuck. You're like, okay, I'm gonna go to the top. I don't care. Let's get a meeting, you know, let's figure this out.

Yeah. Yeah. And you can see it in people like Jack Dorsey, for example, bro. You see Jack Dorsey, his images. At the beginning when he started Twitter, he would dress with a suit and tie. And then he progressively said, this, man, like, that's not who I am. That's not who I am. He now he puts on a little shirt. He looks hippie as hell and whatever, right? And he started doing that a couple years ago, right? He stopped using the. The suit and tie and whatever. And he wanted to be hip, but he was using that suit and tie at that moment, back in. When Twitter started, because that was a standard. But that didn't work for him. He didn't feel comfortable. So it's kind of the same thing, you know, you gotta grow with who you are, whether you are a passive person, whether you are more. A little bit more aggressive in the way you are, more upfront. It doesn't really matter who you are. Just be you. Like, really be you, right? Whoever you are. If you're chill, you're chill. If you're kind of annoying like me or whatever, like, then you. That's it. It is what it is. You own it, you know.

Hell yeah.

Dude.

Dude. The last piece is Twitter. I wanted to cover Twitter because I don't know how many people are actually on Twitter watching or listening to us. But we've been. That's our favorite platform now. Everything we move. We used to be on Facebook, big time. Instagram, you know, the usuals. You have Twitter over here and yes, it's our space, but I'm seeing what you're doing over there and being you. Like just last night you were sending me a couple, you know, posts, like differences. Your post and then an ad. Yeah. Cause we're talking about doing some, you know, some ads and stuff using that. And I'm like, yeah, the other one's clearly an ad and it's not going to go, you know, and then you have yours. That's just like, it's you being you. So like in your Twitter game, like the videos on there just. They pop off, man. So I don't know, there are like some strategies, some quick ones that you can give us here for Twitter, obviously be you, you know, is kind of.

Like, yeah, that's definitely one of them. Yeah. I mean, basically people are having caught up to using Twitter clips. They don't see Twitter as a, as a video platform. I see it as a video platform. I always saw it as a video plat. I've been doing Twitter videos since 2020, just little clips. And I understood you got to use the tools to your advantage that the platform is giving you. The less people are using those tools, the better for you because you exploit those tools to your advantage. And usually platforms, what they do tools like that that are not being used enough, they push those that are using it because that's why they put it out there. Right. Even, even for this podcast, it would be interesting to put a live on Twitter spaces, right? Like that's something that you guys should probably like stream it or even pre record it and then put it live. But pre recorded, right? Something, you know, to just kind of get around the tools. Yeah, there's tools that you got to use. And for the clips, basically I go, no, no more than 30 seconds. But now I'm using another strategy, which is nobody's uploading. If there's people uploading clips, they're uploading clips for 30 seconds, 1 minute, 20 seconds or whatever. I'm like, what if I become a Twitter YouTuber, right? So I put 10 minute videos.

Yeah, yeah. The one you sent me last night was like, I think four or five minutes or something like that.

I was like, exactly. So I was like, maybe that works. Maybe that's what Twitter wants. If they're allowing me to put more minutes in a video, then maybe I should start uploading my full videos on Twitter and become a Twitter tuber.

Tweet. Tuber.

Tweet. YouTuber.

Yeah, dude. I mean, there's something there because we were looking at the, the video count, man, and we're just like looking at some of these.

We're like, you got freaking 25, 000.

On this view, you know, on this one. And it's like, it's consistent, it's growing. We're like, holy, this isn't even YouTube.

Yeah. The thing is that a lot of people don't like it. Don't like the video or retweet it, but they watch it.

Yeah, they watch.

That happens. That happens a lot, man. Like, that's something that has to do also with my personality, that maybe people don't feel like I don't want to associate with this crazy guy, but I watch the video, right? Like, I don't want to be seen. Like, I like his stuff. Or maybe because they think I have like a big ass ego. They're like, I don't want to give him the ego of liking the video. So sometimes you see views of like 5,000 to 10,000 views, 2,000 views, 3,000 views, but you see a, like a, like count of like 20 or 30, and it's like, come on, are you kidding me? Like, are you kidding me? Like, you gotta either be hate or something. You know, something's wrong. So something's wrong. Something's wrong. So I seen that before and I think there's definitely a psychology there as to why people are not liking or retweeting the videos. But they're watching them, right?

Yeah, man.

So even people that like the videos, like, they have told me like, yo, I watch your videos on Twitter. You're fucking crazy. And I'm like, I never seen it, like, from you, like, in my mind. Right?

Yeah, yeah, you're paying attention. I know you're.

Oh, yeah, man. Well, I think the last thing I want to ask you. And let's give some alpha to the people that have hung out this far into the episode. What are some of the games that aren't out yet that you're most excited about?

Yeah, definitely. Illuvium AAA game. I like the founder, Kieran. We had a talk with him yesterday. I think Joe was there as well. You could buy the token called Ilv read the white paper. I highly encourage you guys to read the white paper. The ILV token is a governance token. Then you got Embersword, which is more like a traditional game with some aspects of the blockchain. You can own land within that big world and you actually earn revenue from everything that gets sold in the marketplace by owning land. But it's also free to play, so you don't need land to play. The land is more for the investors, for the people that want to have guilds, for the people that want to have organizations within that game and run like gaming organizations within that game. So the incentive to hold the land, it's like, okay, all the skins and all the assets that get sold in the marketplace, part of that revenue, it gets split between the team and the people that own land, proportionally to how many lands you have and how big your lands are. So that's another game. You got Gilded Guardians as well. Mobile game. Probably one of those games that is going to blow up. The Token would be GoG. So Guild of Guardians, GoG token. There's so many, man. I would have to pull up a list. Synergy Land. I'm very, very excited for this AAA team. Team. Let's check them out on Twitter. We are invested in that. I am very invested in Synergy Land. Hopefully we go to the moon, but even if we don't go to the moon, I'm gonna play the game because that is the reason why I invested in the game. I was very excited you guys were with me there when we kind of like approached the team and try to invest in the game and stuff like that. And it's just going to be a juicer for me. It's going to be a juicer. And I see myself playing the game. It's an action RPG like Diablo, and it's free to play as well. Well, it's free to play. So what we're investing is skins and stuff like that for the people that are listening.

And there's people in our community that actually jumped in on that when they were selling the skins, I think, a couple weeks ago. And there's more drops coming. You know, they got a lot planned. So to you guys listening, got it from this guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Man, this is. This is rad, man. You gave us a ton. Appreciate it, brother. And I'm sure we'll do it again, you know?

Absolutely.

We're learning so much every single day as like a collective group. It's so damn special in this space. Space is just. It's fun, man. It's all collaborative, and there's so much to learn, and it's an open door for everybody. I feel like there's a space for. For everyone here, so jump on in if you're curious and. And, you know, catch us in the discord and stuff. That's Matt and I, and, you know, well, maybe we'll bring Kagi in there one day.

No, I know you're all maxed out, dude.

Yeah, I'm maxed out. I actually have to pay this. No, no, I have the subscription, but I'm definitely over a hundred.

Call it the. The socials, your handles, and all that stuff. So it makes it easy.

Yeah. For Twitter, Kagijan. So C, a G, Y, J, a N. And a number one at the end. For Twitter, kagijan1. Not the actual one as written, the actual number. And then for YouTube, it's just Kagijan. YouTube.com kagijan and that's pretty much my two socials, because I, you know, it's better to focus energy on what works. Those are the two that work.

Appreciate you, my son. I'm gonna roll with that.

No, you know, the funny thing is that when you said that, like, it actually makes a lot of sense. Like, there's no better mentorship, in my opinion. I think for a father to get it from a son, like, it's just like automatic mentorship. You, you know, like, you have to. You get mentored through your kids. I mean, I don't have kids, but I can imagine. I was a really bad kid when I was. When, you know, and my parents had to deal with me. And I'm sure they learned a lot.

I'm sure they did, man. I'm paying attention. All right, brother. Take. Take care. Well, I'm sure we'll be talking later.

On, so thank you for having me. Yeah, for sure.

Hey, again, I hope you enjoyed that episode.

I know we had a great time recording it. Now, I want to remind you before we wrap this thing up that there are some places that we'd love it if you would follow us. We're sharing all sorts of cool ideas and intel into various projects that we're getting involved in and what we're watching right now and various cool Things in the Web 3 marketing, podcasting, creator space, all the various topics that you've heard us be into over the years. We share all that kind of good stuff in our Twitter accounts and inside of our discord. So if you're not following us in those places, you're missing out. Make sure you follow us on Twitter. I am Matt Rwolf on Twitter. Joe is Joe Fear on Twitter. And then we also have Hardfork gaming on Twitter. And if you're not in our Discord, that's where all the magic happens. That's where all the communication goes. That's where we're chatting in real time with people and sharing what we're up to and what projects we're getting into and answering questions. And, oh, it's all happening over in the Discord. So go to hustleandflowchart.com discord and join us over there. And we promise to make it worth your while with all sorts of cool stuff. I don't know how to end this thing. There's just a lot of cool stuff in there that you're really going to dig. So go to hustleandflowchart.com discord and if you really, really, really want to do us a favor because you love the content we're putting out and you like what we're doing here, share this episode around. That's the absolute best thing you can do. We love the reviews over on itunes. We love it when you click subscribe. We love all that good stuff. But the best thing that you could do to support us and to support the show is to share it with a friend or tell others about this episode. And we would appreciate that so much. All right, thanks so much for tuning in. We'll see you guys in the next one one.