The crypto world continues to explode, with many of its leading advocates aiming to disrupt finance or fiat money. But there are other ideas for the technology as well On this episode, we speak about the concept of creator tokens — cryptocurrencies that are in some way tied to a star or creator. we speak with Calaxy Co-Founders NBA star Spencer Dinwiddie and Solo Ceesay about their vision of creating coins that fans can buy to interact with celebrities and athletes. You can listen to the episode here. Transcripts have been lightly edited for clarity.

 

Joe Weisenthal: 
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway:
And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe: 
So Tracy we've been talking a lot about cryptocurrencies on the show lately. But it's still been in this kind of limited abstract sense. And I think actually people are getting excited about different things that could be done with coins and tokens, beyond just say, redefining money.

Tracy:
Yeah. I'm definitely starting to see quite a lot of more creative use cases. There was a Barclay's note the other day that basically talked about using tokenization to fix the repo market and try to make the settlement times more efficient. Uh, so that's fun, but we've seen lots of different potential applications for tokens, including maybe tokenizing future income streams from individuals.

Joe:
Yeah. Tokenizing athletes. And this is also like you've always been obsessed with this topic. And we actually like talked about it recently with music rights. And I think years ago we talked about Bowie Bonds. Like this is  the idea of like owning like the stream to a person's income or being able to like invest in a person or a star has always been something that kind of appeals to you. Right?

Tracy:
Uh, appeals to me, I think intellectually, yes. I think there are a lot of open questions about how exactly it works and whether or not it's good for society, but I think it's sort of anyone who's into or interested in securitization is at some point going to start thinking about whether or not you can apply the process to people and individual streams of income.

I think Matt Levine once described this this — Our Bloomberg columnist colleague — once described this as like the classic sort of college late night dorm intellectual exercise. The kind of thing you talk about maybe after you've had a few drinks or something else, can you actually sell stock in people and how would you do it.

Joe:
Tracy, did you pay attention to the whole like NBA top shot phenomenon a few months ago? No.

Tracy:
No. And this is going to be an episode that comes with my standard sporting caveat, which is I have no idea what's going on in the NBA. I'm not an expert in the space by any stretch of the imagination. So go ahead and tell me what happened.

Joe:
Well your excuse is also that you're in Hong Kong, but a few months ago there was this huge obsession with these digital sort of like blockchain-based  basketball cards and people were paying like tens of thousands of dollars for essentially like a playing card, like of a star dunking or something like that. It was like a video... kind of looked like a gif, but a collectible, one of a kind kind of things. It was this huge thing. It's kind of faded a little bit in the public's imagination. But it was a proof of concept. People were just really excited about the idea of using tokenization, digital collectibles... all kinds of new ways for fans to express their support.

Tracy:
Right. Well, if you think about we've spoken a little bit about NFTs on the show, you think about NFTs, there's a sort of natural application to sports collectibles, which have always been, I mean, sporting fans have always been sort of interested in collecting things surrounding sports, right? Baseball cards kind of spring to mind. Yeah,

Joe:
Exactly. Right. Well, I am very excited about our guests because we have an NBA star on the podcast today. He is the co-founder of the app Calaxy. He is a star player for the Brooklyn Nets. We are going to be speaking with Spencer Dinwiddie as well as Solo Ceesay, also the co-founder and they’re working on projects related to all this blockchain with stars, tokenization, new ways for fans to interact with the game. So I'm very excited about speaking to both Spencer and Solo. So thank you both.

Spencer:
Thank you for having us. We really appreciate it. Its an honor to be here.

Solo:
Thank you.

Joe:
Spencer you've always been into crypto stuff. I know like a lot of athletes are getting into it, but I feel like you've actually been way ahead of the curve on this stuff, like thinking about blockchain and cryptocurrencies. What got you interested in this? 

Spencer:
I was fortunate enough to get in to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in early 2017. A buddy of mine in the finance industry told me about them in 2014 and unfortunately I didn't get in. I wish I had, you know, I might be retired right now, honestly. But I was fortunate to get it in 2017. My experienced of it sparked kind of an education process and I wanted to learn about it. And as my pursuit of knowledge started to open up a new world I started just trying to apply it to what what's familiar in my life, which is the entertainment industry. And you know, fast forward four years and Calaxy is in beta and, you know, Solo is primed to lead us to heights that no consumer product is really seen in the blockchain space.

Tracy:
Maybe this is a good time for you to introduce yourself. Uh, what's the relationship here. And, and how did you get involved in the project? 

Solo:
Most definitely. So my name is Solo Ceesay. Co-founder here at Calaxy. So Spencer's Spencer is a very interesting guy. He's actually a close friend as you guys all know, he was one of the first people, if not the first, to actually to tokenize himself. My brother actually put us in contact a number of years ago at this point.  You know, mentioning that, whatever it is that Spencer aspired to do with his contract and tokenizing himself and all of those conversations didn't really make much sense, but, it made equally no sense to whatever it is that I did for work.

So I was a securitization investment banker previously and so we started having those conversations about what the future of fan engagement looks like, but also the idea of monetization and democratizing oneself in order to profit in a way that you couldn’t previously. And so that's kind of the impetus of what Calaxy is. We're really excited to take a stab at changing the creator economy and using crypto as a means to get there.

Joe:
So you sort of described the basics of Calaxy. But what is it, what is the model?

Solo:
So Calaxy stands for the creator's galaxy and essentially we are a one-stop shop for a creator to monetize themselves. So if you think about the creator economy currently, there's a number of different social media platforms that exist out there. And, you know, the power of influence in the growing of the creator. Nowadays you can walk on the streets of New York and walk by somebody that has,200,000 followers that's looking to monetize and connect those fans. Those guys are often found on a number of different platforms looking to monetize and have those authentic experiences that their fans are quite honestly looking for. So what we've decided to do is create a platform where all of that could be hosted in one space, giving these people the autonomy to really, you know, dive into monetizing their fan base in a way that makes sense to them. So a celebrity chef may monetize their fan base differently than a star running back differently than the reality TV star. And so Calaxy’s meant to host all of tha in one place. And then we obviously have the crypto and blockchain architecture to be able to benefit from things like NFTs and really helping, you know, introduce that to the masses in a pallet of what,

Tracy:
Sorry, can you talk a little bit more about the differences in how different celebrities would actually monetize their income stream? So how would a chef do it? That's different than what a basketball player would do or a reality TV star?

Solo:
I feel like to dive into it essentially, the way the app works is that each creator has their own cryptocurrency. And so we're creating personalized cryptocurrencies with instant utility. And what we mean by that is in order to buy, Spencer Dinwiddy's token, you would buy that and then you would be able to redeem it for any interaction with Spencer. So be a video call, FaceTime call directly within an app. Whether it is access to exclusive content, you name it, you're able to essentially use that as a form of currency to redeem those interactions.

So it's really monetizing someone's time versus kind of their income streams, right? Like this is distinctly different than securitizing your own NBA contract, for example. That's something that speaks to the masses of influencers, right? Like not everybody is signed to the Brooklyn Nets for a lucrative deal.

We all wish we were, but we're not, but somebody like a celebrity chef might want to offer cooking classes, they might want to offer different products that make sense for their communities. And so in our platform, you're able to turn on and off different things that make sense for your fan bases. And then obviously you're also able to set your pricing, which makes sense. So you're setting your price that when at one point in a more competitive influencer, that's, you know, very similar to you and, you know, in a perfect market and, you know, you might lose your fans to go there, et cetera. We're all about community building and all those things. So quite honestly, it's usually not a zero sum game, but that's how the app works and how the ecosystem functions,

Joe:
Spencer, you've been in the league since 2014. Seven years. From a technology, social media, and obviously anything related to cryptocurrency standpoint that is a lifetime. Can you talk a little bit just about like how the fan-player relationship has been changed by technology over that time?

Spencer:
It's funny. I feel like basketball, entertainment, the technology is kind of like dog years. Everything's just so accelerated. I mean, when I got in the NBA, a lot of teams still had two big men. You know what I mean? It was right before the, kind of Golden State transition to, you know, shooting threes. Now we're talking about NBA Top Shot and there being VR components to the NBA viewing experience. Obviously you've seen through social media where platforms like Instagram became a content distribution platform on a wide scale, not just for individuals and creators, but also for, you know, these brands.

The NBA does a great job of sending out Instagrams of posting and videos and things like that. Uh, promoting games. I mean, Milwaukee Bucks tonight and I'm sure if you go to NBA's time timeline right now, there's going to be highlights and K.D. highlights obviously, having highlights distributed there more freely than some of the other leagues. I think that's something that, you know, NFL kind of missed the boat on at the start. And then also having the Twitter live show that I participated with Taylor Rooks and Channing Frye and and Isaiah Thomas and stuff like that, where you're, where you're getting some of that live streaming and commentating from not just the, the, the telecast crew, but also some more maybe familiar personalities.

Spencer:
Uh, like I said, like a Channing Frye, all these things that I've referenced are just part of that dramatic shift. And I think, you know, as technologies come, that they decrease the barrier between fan and, and player or a fan and product. And I know it sounds terrible to call us products, but, you know, the, the, the content that we produce —  the basketball game we play —  is like weaving a one of a kind art piece every night. And that's what the fans want to be attached to. You know, it's all about kind of decreasing the friction for the fan to be able to interact and consume the content that they love.

Tracy:
Well, this is something that I wanted to ask you about, actually. So Joe and I just launched a subscriber only platform at Bloomberg, and I've been sort of struggling to come up with stuff to write for it. So do you find it difficult or do you feel pressure to produce content suitable for Instagram or suitable for selling for extra money to fans in addition to being an athlete? Because it's, I mean, everyone takes it for granted now, but it is kind of a big shift over the past five years or so. 

Spencer:
I think to Solo's point, uh, when he referenced creators.  Each demographic, each subsection of this entertainment industry, has their ways to monetize. A TikTok star's going to do it completely different than a YouTuber is going to do it different than a gamer is going to do it different than a basketball player. Remember like all the content I produce. It has to abide by a certain, I would say unwritten code that the NBA kind of represents, right? Because you never sacrifice your main check to like, go grab some endorsements, right?

Like this, this summer I should sign a contract that's north of let's call it $60 million. If I could pick up another $1 to $2 million in endorsements or whatever it in a year, it still, wouldn't justify, it would take me 30 years, you know, to, to satisfy my abbreviated NBA contract.

So it wouldn't make sense. It'd be nonsensical for me to start posting elaborate or disingenuous or explicit content or just anything that would violate that NBA code. And so all my social media posts have to kind of flow in that line. Now I want it to be authentic. And so if you look at my media. It’s specific, my Instagram is typically me working out as I'm coming back from my ACL. I kind of show my progress. So it was very authentic to my life that I live every day multiple workouts at different times. And maybe, you know, you might see a smoothie or something like that because I try to eat healthy and things of that nature. You know it would be remiss of me to post like alcohol and in large quantities or something like that.

I mean, I like wine, but I don't drink obviously hard liquor, much or things like that. But I just couldn't do that and still expect to maintain the type of conducive image that represents kind of the shield at the same time. So to each person It's such an individual experience that you kind of have to attack it in a manner that's best for your life.

Solo:
Yeah. And I think on that point too, like just to chime in too, we've uniquely identified that in terms of like our broader vision for the Calaxy platform and we spoke about a few times now is that, you know, they all have different revenue streams. So like, you know, things like, you know, paving way, see what future, where you can not offer securitization as a potential liquidity event for, you know, an NBA player or an NFL player, et cetera, like having the rails set to be able to do something like that might make sense.

And then obviously when you think about what's much larger is that, you know, the creator economy, right. Like, you know, like going back to my example before, the need for monetization is quite great in that step, you know, in that creative middle-class like, right. Like, you know, to Spencer's point, you know, he was just talking about signing lucrative NBA contracts, but there are people that got a million followers that, you know, really needs you, you know, monetize because that's their livelihood, right?

Spencer makes money playing basketball, but some of these people don't necessarily make money on a ton of followers on Instagram. And so their price per unit of effort however you want to think about it is probably lower, right? And that's the beauty of our app, setting your pricing, you're able to really take ownership and autonomy and like have autonomy over what your time is worth. 

And that's something that's really important and necessary when you think about how traditional legacy social media platforms exist, where you have to talks or YouTube or bigger, larger organizations are deciding how much these people are worth based off of the follower account and traffic that they bring. You know, the whole idea of decentralization in DeFi. And I'm sure we'll get into a lot of that, you know, later on in the conversation, but you know, the idea of being able to have that autonomy and be able to monetize your time as you see fit is really good. Yeah.

Joe:
I think this is super helpful for me and Tracy, as we think about balancing social media against our $60 million contracts, something that I'm really interested in is like, I'm curious because like Tracy and I,I'm 40, I don't know how old Tracy is, but it's like, we didn't grow up with all this stuff.

Things like tokens and buying cryptocurrencies, like related to a star, it's like still like very like awkward for me. What is your experience with this sort of like current generation of fans and just their level of comfort with say, like the idea of like buying a star token or a creator token in some way, and, and understanding interacting with that, that was

Spencer:
A part of the older generation, but I don't think it's actually that unfamiliar for you guys, you guys traded basketball cards, the baseball cards, things like that, which is a kinda Top Shot. Bowie Bonds came outa long, long time ago. And that's something that obviously my tokenization is, uh, similar to, I think people throw around the word crypto, they're thrown on the word token and people get a little bit gunshy because they feel like, oh, no, it's a whole new world now to a certain extent, it is right. But we're talking about units that can be more effectively moved. Right. What does the blockchain really do? It gives us a trustless trust layer, right? Like I don't have to trust you, Joe. You know what I mean? Like I can just simply trust the ledger.

I can trust the Ethereum blockchain or the Hedera Hashgraph. I take out the counterparty risk in that sense, right? Because the ledger is the baseline and something that I know to be true. Because it's been, it's had verified for index for however many number of years, et cetera, et cetera. So it's more so utilizing, the trust layer the speed right. To, to handle these kinds of escrow system transactions, these smart contracts. So I don't look at it from a standpoint of, you know, necessarily reinventing the wheel. And that's why I said I was trying to apply the technology to the entertainment industry in ways that I've thought it's solve issues and solve problems, right? Like Bowie bonds was something that was effective, but a little bit outdated. Right. We look at kind of, even the owners have talked about, they want liquidity in teams.

They want 51% financial obligation, but they want a hundred percent control. Well, how are you going to get that? It has to be from the fans. No other billionaires are going to say, “Hey, I give you my money, but I don't want a board seat.” I don't want executive decision-making. I don't want to look into the financials. I don't want, that's not going to happen. Right? Like, but fans will buy in because of their emotional experience. It's the same type of thing with contracts and other illiquid assets, such as intellectual property or time, for example, things that are hard to extract value from, we want to kind of put it on this blockchain.

So you take out the fear of not trusting this person. And then you  set the playing field level and you say, hey, if you want to interact, or you want to buy a piece of a team, or you want to buy a piece of a contract or whatever it is, and you understand some of these things are, uh, securities and some are non-security. So I'm not saying Calaxy has all of this. Right. But just in terms of is application, that's the way we viewed it in the way that we kind of go about applying technology and scaling a cast into the future. And obviously on many of these ideas that taxi doesn't do, if somebody systems in podcast, take it, run with it. And I hope you make billions of dollars with it.

Tracy:
So I, so I want to press you on this point, and I'm going to start with a kind of weird anecdote, but seven or eight years ago, I was living in New York and I was going to a gym. I think it was like a New York sports club gym or something like that. And there was a manager there who had an idea, which was basically to start something very similar to like Patreon or Cameo now, and to have fans pay in order to get specialized content from their favorite athletes, their favorite stars. And this was seven or eight years ago. He told me that idea. And I was like, Oh, that sounds really interesting.

And he was sort of asking for media and legal and financial advice and stuff like that. I have no idea if he ever got it off the ground, but clearly he was directionally right. Because we have all these platforms. Now, I guess my question is what differentiates Calaxy from the other things that are out there. And you've given, you've given the, the sort of the case for crypto here, but there are other platforms doing this that do not use the technology and seem to be achieving this.

Spencer:
Yeah. So I'll take the first piece in terms of broad vision, and then I'll dedicate it to Solo for the comprehensiveness of Calaxy, you know, on that note, when you talk about, uh, looking into the future of him, seven, eight years ago, talked about the Cameos and things of that nature. It still came down to decreasing friction, right? Because people want to be tied to what's innately special. I use this analogy a lot. When, when discussing this kind of broader topic. If you took the Brooklyn Nets logo and you dropped it in the middle of Time Square or wherever, people probably stopped. People would take pictures. It would be somewhat of an event. It would kind of be a little like, Oh, what's going on here, but it wouldn't stop traffic. Right?

If LeBron James right now said “Hey, I'll be at Time Square at, you know, 12:00 PM tomorrow,” everybody is showing up to Times Square COVID or not, it doesn't matter. Like they're showing up, they're going to be there where they have to take their picture from  10 yards away, or they actually get to meet them and have a conversation, whatever it is everybody's showing up.

And so it speaks to, what's actually special like a long time ago, people thought of this more in the college way, right. Where there's all this, uh, school pride and program tradition. And they thought it kind of applied to the, to the professional realm, but it doesn't. There's a reason why McDonald's goes to a LeBron or KD or whatever, and asked them to endorse their food. You know what I mean? Because people want that access to that person, like the arches are nice, but I'd much rather talk to JT. You know what I mean?

So, that's where it's going, is not going to stop. And so on that note of, I'll shift it to Solo why like Calaxy helps that.

Solo:
Yeah. To piggyback off that I think in general, the answer has a lot to do with the idea of just customizability for each person's intended audience. Right? So like, you think about Cameo, right? I love Spencer to death, but like he may not be the type of person that makes a killing off that platform. He's not a content producer he's not going to have, exclusives, documentary series or documentaries, like some athletes do, but like, for him personally, that's not how he spends his free time.

So in order to monetize that, or like the reward of being on a platform like that, that becomes a lot of work, Like when you were saying at the beginning you want to minimize the friction. We keep coming to the same idea. Take that example and apply it to an Instagram model or to apply it to a YouTube or right.

Like there are people who are on YouTube who are not famous, but they're famous to somebody. Right. And so like, when you think about that idea, right, there are definitely is a need for a platform that can meet the needs of them. And they all exist in some way, shape or form. There are a lot of unique interests things about Calaxy that you can't find elsewhere.

In order to monetize your fan base in a holistic manner, you have to be on all these different things and they might not even fit or suit you. Right. depending on who you are as a person, if you're a YouTuber and you got 75,000 followers, like I'm sure of those 75,000, there's a thousand people who think you're the greatest person in the world, but like, are you going to make a killing on Cameo? Probably not.

And so, like, I think when you think about like our platform, you create the sort of ecosystem, not to mention the idea of the added benefit of integration of blockchain technology. When you think about NFTs and you think about the idea of ultimately tokenizing a person and having them listed on an exchange one day, like that future and that architecture is so innately important. And like, D

Joe:
Can you just talk briefly about your technology choice? What platforms blockchains did you use and what's the, uh, what was the thinking behind it?

Spencer:
So when we're building this platform and understanding that, we’re kind of future-proofing it in a sense, that's why we use blockchain. I mean, you spoke about the Cameos, OnlyFans, Patreons, et cetera. We want an ecosystem environment where not only are you showcasing NFTs, but also you're going to have kind of fluidity of  these targets in terms of the secondary market structure, you know, and, and to do that efficiently and effectively blockchain was, was going to be something that would greatly help us. That being said, you know, we started targeting Layer-1s and looking at which ones had the most robust infrastructure to support that. You know, obviously Ethereum comes up first because it's by far the biggest smart contract Layer 1. Bitcoin doesn't have smart contracts obviously

But we knew that CryptoKitties once kind of threw out the network and fees were very high. So, you know, that wasn't going to be appealing because if we we’re bringing on people, such as myself or we just got a TikToker, uh, excuse me. I don't know if TikTokers the right nomenclature, but somebody that is famous on TikTok has about 8 million followers.

We just signed him up. If we bring all those followers, we didn't want to throw the he app nor the Ethereum network. We didn't want fees to skyrocket and become unusable. So, you know, we figured that probably wasn't going to work in its current state. So looking at other Layer 1s, whether it be Tezos, Algorand... Flow wasn't quite out of beta yet. So we didn't choose them, although I'm an invested there.

And we settled on Hashgraph. The reason for that is they have, you know, a council with Fortune 500 companies, and then we had to pitch them to get a grant. There's incredible reputation, risk management to be aligned with. People like Google and LG and IBM and DLA Piper and Deutsche Telekom, uh, to name a few, on top of that, they're, they're kind of considered a next generation blockchain.

They technically aren't blockchain. It’s a hashgraph. The only one that comes to a complete finality, asynchronous, Byzantine fault tolerant. Also it's the highest level of security. It was created by a guy that used to be a part of the Department of Defense. You know, you look at the other projects, their network’s just outrageously robust.

And so when choosing a layer one, like why not align yourself with some of the top companies in the world? Like it's an honor when the Hedera Hashgraph puts out their partner's lists to see Google, IBM, Calaxy. You know what I mean? Like it's pretty killer. And granted our balance sheet doesn't necessarily look like theirs as of now, but to be in that same breadth at this early stage, you know, is, is both humbling and inspiring. So, you know, for them to get their stamp of approval and all that stuff, uh, it seemed like a no brainer for us.

Tracy:
So I know you're still in beta, but what have you learned from applying blockchain technology so far? Because one of the criticisms of blockchain is this idea that it's sort of a solution in need of a problem, and that real-world applications actually either don't exist or there aren't that many of them. So I'm just curious, like, as you roll this out, what have you discovered about the benefits or drawbacks of blockchain?

Solo:
Yeah, I mean, I think from my side of things, what we discovered, I guess like from our side of things is that there is a big need to actually understand the technology, right? Like we're not the only ones and no Spencer be, you know, one of the, you know, trailblazers in the entertainment industry to really be one of the early adopters of it. Like, you know, a lot of people followed suit. Right. You know, we, uh, you know, we were actually, you know, really close to the most recent Bachelor and yet he, uh, you know, it was very much so involved in, you know, learning more about the technology himself.

And so like in this process of onboarding different creators and things like that the blockchain thing, wasn't something they shied away from. Quite honestly, it was something that they leaned into because they saw the future, they saw a lot of the benefits and, you know, I think one thing that we wanted to be absolutely deliberate on and, you know, very clear, was creating a product that was palette something that made sense and something that wasn't going to confuse, you know, the average person, you know, in middle America or right.

Like when it comes to creating something that you know is highly functioning. But at the same time, you know, something that's like easy to use when you think about like, kind of Apple and like creating a project, you know, a product that's, you know, supremely capable of at the same time, you don't even know how it works, it just works. And so when we think about, you know, our product and stuff, you know, we found that, you know, a lot of people have been really excited.

You know, not only for solving the real world issue about there needs to be some sort of one ecosystem to develop, you know, a fan base or community. But then also, you know, creating the opportunity and the path to be able to kind of help educate and, you know, teach and bring crypto, you know, very similarly to the, you know, to our par you know, to, uh, you know, to the flow project.

And, you know, Roham he's an advisor to our project, the CEO of Dapper Labs, you know, and their whole ethos about kind of bringing crypto to the masses through games, you know, very similarly, we're trying to do a very similar thing here with creator economies and social media. And so from our side of things, we've learned a lot and we've been able to iterate and continue to grow and build a product that's not truly in organically felt like it's been built by the creators, you know, sensory and influencer himself.

He goes in Brooklyn Nets, like behind this, we had a lot of great information that a couple of dudes in Silicon Valley with a similar idea may not have had just by the fact that like, you know, our network, our friends and family, like the creators that we've onboarded so far, our personal relationships. And, um, you know, it's starting to get a lot of inbounds obviously, but, you know, kind of the initial cohort that we started with, helped us.

Joe:
So the last year has obviously been incredible for all things, crypto, obviously the big coins had an incredible year and a Top Shot became a phenomenon. Spencer, you know, we were talking at the beginning. You're, you're very early on all of that stuff. I'm curious, like what have you seen in the locker room and so forth among other players. do they ask you for help to navigate all this stuff?

Spencer:
I think for me personally, I'm not going to lie. It's much better being asked questions than being laughed at. I was laughed at in 2017. I was definitely in 2018 for sure. Laughed at 2019, for sure. But in all seriousness, I think overall, since I've been in the league, I think people have spoken about the shift that's happened since I would say probably 2010, but the education process of the athlete as a whole. I think guys are much more involved in their finances. I think we have a lot of great guys  that are looking to form generational wealth in whatever avenue that is, whether it's real estate, traditional, you know, stocks and equities, or now an emerging technology. And I know VC was kind of the wave of right before blockchain and that really kind of took over. So it's been fun to get asked those questions. I actually shy away from offering explicit advice. 

Joe:
I’ll just say, as financial journalists, this is one area that maybe we could actually genuine relate to you. Tracy and I have a lot of experience of being asked financial questions from friends and family, on what to buy. To which we have absolutely no good advice. We’re just like, you know, buy an index fund or something.

Spencer:
I tell them I personally am invested in Bitcoin. I tell them that my platform is built on HashGraph. Two of my main partners are  Flow and ChainLink. And other than that, I would encourage you to do as much research as you possibly can. That's the biggest start I can give you. And that's just from a transparent place and something that you could read online. So obviously I'm going to be invested with my partners. And saying I'm going to support Bitcoin is no secret at all.

So that's what I'll give you. If you want to talk about the big picture and where I think distributed ledger technology can kind of take markets in a comprehensive fashion, I’d definitely love to do that and I can talk your ear off all day. But what explicit investment advice? Uh, I definitely shy away from that, because I don't want to be the guy that says, you know, do this and you know, you lose some money and now you're mad at me.

Joe:
Yeah. That's good advice. That's exactly what I think. Anytime someone asks me a question, I just don't want to cost anyone their money.

Tracy:
No. And then you're not welcome back for Thanksgiving dinner. There was something I wanted to ask you that Joe and I sort of alluded to in the intro and it was, I this idea of, I guess, the moral dimensions of selling some sort of financial interests that is tied to people. Obviously when you say a sentence like that, it tends to make people squeamish. And I remember after the 2008 financial crisis, when there was so much criticism of the process of in itself, every once in a while, there would be like an idea that would pop up about securitizing people's future income streams.

Like maybe you sell a student's future income and they use that money to actually go to college or something like that. But every time the idea came up, people would sort of instinctively feel uncomfortable with it. It feels like things are changing a little bit people this, I guess our familiarity with content creation now maybe has sort of changed that equation. But I'm just curious how you're thinking about the moral dimension of all of this.

Spencer:
Yeah, I mean, on that note, I think, you, you touched on some of good, uh, content creation is much more prevalent, but the two factors that I think make this an actual functioning ecosystem...You need somebody that has, you know, semi-public to public cashflows so that it's not a situation where they can really hide and divert money and try to screw their investors because you know, more normal situations that wouldn't be too difficult to try to try to do. But, you know, obviously I'm an NBA and my contract is public and I can't. And then other than that, I would say, you have to have the incentives be aligned. You know, it can't be a situation where I sell my entire contract, and then if I play really bad, you know, nothing matters until I can fake an injury and just sit down or whatever it is.

And, you know, and just put that on myself with investors in kind of a, you know, let's say advantageous position. It, it has to be a situation where, you know, the incentives are aligned, you make it, so there there's hopefully some, some promising returns for the investors of course, but also, you know, it encourages that I think to, to continue to, uh, play well and win games and do right in, in, and all that stuff. So,

Solo:
I think from my side of things too, like as a securitization banker in a previous life. When you think about the recession of 2008 versus now I think there's a lot of different points, places that you could point to, where you think that there are inequities in terms of the education level that people might have investing in these sorts of things.

Obviously this is something that, you know, we've touched upon. You know, immediately, in day one, is this something that Calaxy is really looking to commercialize as a business? Not exactly. And, you know, it's definitely a part of our bigger macro picture that Spencer, you know, has put together his thoughts and stuff. But when you think about you know, just general education, right? Like the barriers to entry to training are, could it be lower, right? Like people are getting, you know, five, $10 to open up brokerage accounts and start trading on different platforms. And, you know, there are a lot of people when you think about like GameStop and, you know, AMC and different things that you saw this year, and, you know, the idea of, you know, people wanting to take on their own personal finances, you know, 20, 30 years ago, but it wasn't the case that the average Joe was trading.

But you know, that's not the case now and that's distinctly different. And so not to your point, you know, talking about, you know, securitization and how it's had this stigma around it. You know, there are a lot of different areas within the financial industry that, you know, obviously require a little bit more education around the ways in which that you can use this, you know, access for, you know, quite a great wealth creation and building over time. But, you know, when you think about the idea of securitizing, a person you, that ultimately, you know, is the, is, is the way in which that you think about the future, right?

Like if you're not LeBron James or you're somebody with a very, you know, large empire, there should be different means and alternatives for financing outside of just, you know, going to a bank for a traditional loan, especially, you know, as Spencer mentioned, if you have public cash flows. I can't remember. There are people that take out egregious loans to be able to, you know, cash advance their lives, right? Like, they'll take out loans at crazy, you know, 15, 18, 20%, you know, when there could be a lot more efficient ways to, to, to finance your life, especially if you don't have the, uh, you know, the validity behind it.

Joe:
Spencer, you mind if I just ask you a few general, not specific blockchain related questions, like a lightning round of other questions. How would you summarize why it feels like NBA has just done such a better job? So many people I know are so into the NBA, they like talk about the NBA. They like talk about the players of the NBA, like yourself in a way that I don't see with other leagues. What do you think that the NBA has figured out?

Spencer:
I think the NBA has embraced emerging technologies. And this is a complete non-blockchain type thing I'm talking about, like streaming of YouTube highlights, making it easily accessible. They didn't try to block like the copyright's usage. So you see all these comedians and things hopping on your highlights and distributing this content and the person's content. And so you try to defend, right. Especially in you know foreign countries, it's hard to watch the games a lot. I think another component of basketball that, that makes it very attractive to fans, you can see our face. We seem like human beings. This is, uh, no shot to football or anything like that, but obviously they have to wear a helmet but, you know, you don't necessarily know the person behind the mask unless he was a quarterback like quarterbacks.

They got their helmets all the time. So, you know, but other than that, basketball players are recognizable, not just from a standpoint of seeing our face, but also obviously stature, you see the Six’ 8” person walking down the street and his face looks familiar, probably think he's a, you know, a Brooklyn Nets player. So things of that nature allow a lot of familiarity in fans minds, allowing players to be more vocal about, you know, issues, whether it be, uh, you know, social or economics or, whatever it is. So that kind of broad range where you have outspoken people, you see their face and they're recognizable allowing your content to be repurposed and used for fun for business, for whatever it is. It just creates a, uh, kind of wildfire type of a distribution.

Joe:
So what do you do, you mentioned if someone sees you walking around Brooklyn, they probably might guess you're a basketball player. What's your, what's your off court life in Brooklyn? Like, what do you like to do?

Spencer:
I mean, before I started playing well… I'm a sweats hoodiestuff like that every day. So I'm a very chill person. I wear Vans every day. Before I started playing well, you know, people might like catch a glance and then if I make eye contact, you're like, are you, I mean, I don't know, maybe you are, and you kind of keep walking stuff like that.

Now, obviously having, having played better, things like that, you know, I'm more immediately recognizable, but, you know, in that respect,  I take it in stride and I actually enjoy it just from the standpoint of. I understand what it's like to be on the other side of that. And I understand the fans create this ecosystem. I think that's one of the biggest benefits of building a app and going through the tokenization and exploring your team industry and learning how the NBA was built on a non-office system.

And just a bunch of different things you understand, at the end of the day, fans make this thing work. If fans spend their money, we all have jobs. If they don't, then we dump. What I'm saying is that kind of drives that simple, like from an economics perspective, no billionaires buying an NBA team. If it wasn't a revenue generating entity at the end of the day, that's what it is. One of the stock goes up, or you actually are cashflow positive. One of them has to happen for an it for a beginner to want to dive into this business. And so, you know, I, I try to be as, uh, uh, cordial as inviting and as appreciative to the fans because they allow me to live the life that I live, you know, and as long as they approached me with, uh, common courtesy and respect, you know, then why would I approach them? Like, there are any less of that same human being, we're all humans. Okay, great.

Joe:
Great answer. And final question. We're recording this June 7th, as you mentioned, your team, uh, the nets that are playing the bucks tonight in the playoffs, you're injured right now. So you're not participating. What is that like, sort of like, as you like, watch those games from the sideline. I mean, I'm sure it's like brutal not being on the court and supporting your team, but how do you, how do you deal with that?

Spencer:
It's tough. I've had two main injuries in my life. When you're on the side, it's kind of an introspective experience. I would say it was weird watching this season, just from the standpoint of you saw the bubble, then you saw this season where we played in arenas with no fans, but I'll tell you what, with these fans back the energy and the playoff atmosphere, uh, the urge to play has gone through the roof. It's at 10 times what it was during the regular season. Just keeping up with the guys. Now, it's, now it's at a level that's like, I need to get back out there. It's a need at this point. 

Joe:
Well, that was, that was fantastic. Spencer, Solo, thank you both so much for taking the time fascinating project and, uh, appreciate you coming on Odd Lots.

Spencer:
Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Tracy:
Thanks so much guys,

Joe:
Tracy, that was a really fun episode. I feel like that's actually like a whole different dimension of the crypto conversation that I think is actually really important and kind of totally unexplored. Totally, totally something we've underexplored

Tracy:
I guess the thing that stood out to me was just how much, the fields of sports have sort of changed in this idea that athletes need to be content producers, or if they can be content producers, then they have potentially another stream that they can monetize, I guess, I guess to some extent that was always the case in professional sports. People would always have some sort of sponsored sponsorship deal on the side, but it just feels like we're in a whole new, at a whole new level in many respects.

Joe:
Yeah. Guess what I mean by like, uh, I mean, I, I completely agree with you the way to contextualize that is probably more within the realm of new ways that celebrities and athletes are monetizing their fame than crypto. I guess like, what I was thinking is like, when I think about like crypto, I think about like these hardcore sort of like distributed tech systems that are designed to be censorship resistant and designed to be sort of like powerful computer science ideas. But the idea that like another application is it's just fun to like buy a token that's sort of related to a celebrity you like is actually like a pretty huge use case for all this stuff that probably doesn't get talked about enough in that context.

Tracy:
Yeah. And actually people like to talk about tokenization. Well, we just did those people talk about tokenization as this brand new thing all the time, but actually, like, I don't know. I guess baseball cards were the original tokens, or maybe at least ADR is where the original tokens for stocks. Like there are examples of tokens out there that have been successfully deployed and they weren't like an earth-shattering financial systems threatening thing. It

Joe:
Is funny, like, I guess, cause I'm like old and like, it's hard for me to like wrap my head around like NFTs, but like, what is the difference really between an NFT and have like a basketball card? Like it's really not that different. Like it's like when I was young, like, I couldn't understand basketball cards or baseball cards, but this was a piece of cardboard.

Tracy :
Yeah. The other thing I liked about that conversation though, it was actually the discussion of applying the technology to a specific use case. Cause I feel like we don't hear enough about that. So this idea that they couldn't do Bitcoin for obvious reasons. They looked at Ethereum, but they were worried about the costs in the system getting clogged up. And so they settled on an alternate technology. I think it speaks to probably that point that you made in your gigantic 5,000 word posts about this idea that you can't look at crypto as a monolith because different technologies, different cryptocurrencies slash tokens have different use cases.

Joe:
Yeah. It is interesting too. Like I remember the Crypto Kitties phenomenon in 2017 and that just like brought the entire network to a halt. And so you do see like this use as like, well, let's just use a different chain. That's maybe more optimized for some other use case. So I don't know, it'd be fascinating to see where it goes. And I feel like, especially, it seems to have a particularly like really good intuition about where this is all going and he sort of demonstrated that over the last several years.

Tracy:
Well, he's definitely a perfectly placed for

Joe:
That sort of, of, I like that on that one point, we have something in common with him, which is we do not want to give financial advice to our friends and family.

Tracy:
Yes. I think that's the only thing we have in common and probably all right. Shall we leave it there?

Joe:
Let's leave it there.