NFT 101: The What & Why of NFTs. Interview with Tim Lea, Walking Between Worlds

Transcript

Nick Abrahams:
Hello, everyone and welcome to today’s session on NFTs, non fungible tokens. Now, unless you’ve been living under a rock over the last 18 months, you will be familiar with the concept of NFTs. We’ve seen really NFTs joining cryptocurrency and the metaverse as, as this enormous movement described by the broader descriptor of Web 3.0. And I’m delighted today have joining me, Tim Lee, who is the CEO of Walking Between Worlds. Tim, Welcome. Thanks very much for joining us.

Tim Lea:
Thanks Nick. Thanks for the invite. I appreciate it. Very keen to share all about NFTs and all the misconceptions.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah. Well, so Tim has been around the NFT world for a good period of time now and is a true expert in the space. And if we just have a look at some of the things that we’ve seen, first of all, it was in the art space and we saw NFT digital artwork selling for $60 or $70 US million. Then we saw it in the sports world and the US basketball [inaudible 00:01:22] the NBA selling top shots, little video NFTs of great basketball shots for millions of dollars. And then relatively recently Penfolds, the wine company, launched a fascinating NFT product with NFTs for a very, very premium wine, which allowed people to actually trade the wine without having to leave the safe storehouse that it’s in. So, there’s a lot happening, both for individuals and what the NFT world might mean for individuals and finding your own creative streak there, but also for enterprise. And so, Tim, maybe we roll it back a little bit, and what is an NFT?

Tim Lea:
Yeah, it’s interesting. An NFT technically, it’s a non fungible token. And without getting too heavy into the technology, it’s a unique identifier of a particular digital file. It’s almost like a digital fingerprint of a digital file. I mean, in technical terms, fungibility is where you’ve actually got something that can be automatically exchanged like one $20 bill is the same as another $20 bill, which can be, oops, I’m so sorry. That’s my phone. Let me switch it off. Sorry guys.

Nick Abrahams:
No worries.

Tim Lea:
Sorry. That’s my bad. Sorry.

Nick Abrahams:
You’re right.

Tim Lea:
Sorry guys. I apologize.

Nick Abrahams:
Why don’t we take it back to, I’ll just ask you what is an NFT and you can-

Tim Lea:
Yeah. Sorry.

Nick Abrahams:
… take it from there. No worries. No worries. And so why don’t we roll it all the way back to the beginning. And Tim, what is an NFT?

Tim Lea:
It’s a great question, Nick. It’s one of those things that has a lot of confusion around it. An NFT is non fungible token, and the easiest way to think of it is like a digital fingerprint of a digital file. So, if you think of your own finger, I mean, there are something like 84 trillion versions of a fingerprint. And when it comes to NFTs, there are the equivalent of all of the grains of sand on the planet in terms of the number that is potentially available. So, it’s really a digital fingerprint. It’s the easiest way of remembering it.

Tim Lea:
I mean, technically fungibility relates to something being easily exchanged. A $20 bill is exchangeable for a $20 bill or four, $5 bills. But a Mana is not as exchangeable as, for example, a DaVinci piece might be. They’re completely different. They are unique pieces. So, a non fungible token is a unique digital identifier for a digital asset, most notably a digital file. And one of the key things to understand is that if you change a full stop, a frame of a video or a pixel on an image, the digital fingerprint will change.

Nick Abrahams:
In terms of how that might work, let’s say for example, I want to send a photograph of my kids to my mother. Let’s say something simple like that. Now I can make infinite copies of that photograph digitally, but will every copy of that photograph have that same token identifier? So, there’ll be sort of, I will be regarded as the one sort of owner of that NFT if I was to make this photograph an NFT. So, it wouldn’t stop it from being copied, but it would show through the blockchain that I was the actual owner of the original NFT of that image.

Tim Lea:
Yes. Correct. It’s very much that the original image would have that digital fingerprints, and that would actually identify that you had produced the actual original photograph. So, then that could be tracked back. Now, the reality is that if you’re sending multiple copies, I mean, it would be an identical reference point because it’s the same file. But you can create limited editions if you’re an artist, for example. So, one can create an NFT relating to a limited edition set of prints. But essentially without getting too knee deep in the weeds, just think of it like an authentication layer. And that’s like your fingerprint defines you, the digital fingerprint defines your ownership in this particular case of the image that you’ve actually made and produced.

Nick Abrahams:
And this is all enabled by blockchain technology?

Tim Lea:
Correct.

Tim Lea:
Okay.
Speaker 1:
Correct. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Nick Abrahams:
And so this marketplace seems to have exploded over the last year. I mean, how big is it now?

Tim Lea:
It’s exploded. I mean, the best way of looking at it is to say that in quarter three last year, the sales of the NFT marketplace overall were $22.1 million. In the same time period this year, they’re $5.9 billion. So, it’s 265 times increase in the volume of trades and sales that have actually gone on. So, if you look at the explosive growth, I mean, it’s one of the largest growing markets on the planet and we’re just at the beginning of where this technology’s actually going to go.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah. 250X, that’s not a bad growth inside.

Tim Lea:
It’s a nice growth. It’s a nice growth. And a lot of that came as you were saying before, like the NBA top shots, in the first month that they produced those, they sold $232 million worth.

Nick Abrahams:
Wow.

Tim Lea:
So, it’s really significant sums that are beginning to come into this space and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah. And I guess, why are people buying them? What do they see in them? It’s a digital asset, so it’s a new asset class, which is fascinating. But say, for example, people buying digital art, I know it’s subject close to your heart. What are people doing with them?

Tim Lea:
I think it’s fair to say there are different motivations for different types of people. There are people who actually enjoy art and are collectors, but then there are those that look at the financial relationships. It’s one of those things that people are looking at the idea, because you can digitally define ownership of that particular work of art. You can actually have an investment thesis in a very similar way that art investment is looked at. So, for example, imagine you owned Mona Lisa, right? It’d be very nice if you own that. And the NFT defined your ownership.

Nick Abrahams:
Right.

Tim Lea:
Okay. Now you could go onto Google, right click and you can save an image of the Mo Lisa, but you can’t sell it because it’s not yours. This technology enables the ownership to be tracked. Now, that’s a really important feature, because if you imagine the Louvre did sell you the Mona Lisa, right? There would be a transaction linked into the technology that would identify this came from the Louvre to Nick Abrahams, right? And so there’s a trackable record that’s actually permanently stored on the blockchains. So, what it means is that record is permanent. It can only be updated, it can never be removed.

Tim Lea:
And so there’s a complete layer of transparency and auditability, which makes this incredibly powerful. So, lots of people may own a digital image of the Mona Lisa, but only you own the one that confirms the ownership. And as a result, the value of the Mona Lisa, for example, I mean, that’s got to be worth half a billion dollars or something similar. You can now define your ownership of that and that could be extended to any digital file.

Nick Abrahams:
Also I’m fascinated with the concept of, I guess, the smart contract that’s built into the NFT, because one of the great tragedies of art has been that most artists, when they sell their paintings, don’t sell them for terribly much. And then over Tim Leae they get sold for a lot more. So, it’s actually the people further down the track who bought the art rather than the artists who are getting compensated. But can you talk a little bit about how smart contracts can enable artists and creators to be rewarded?

Tim Lea:
Sure. Because NFTs are based our cryptocurrencies and based around smart contracts, you can actually program the art. And what I mean by that is, you can actually program into the actual NFT, a royalty to be paid every time the NFT is sold. So, for example, if you think of Vincent van Gogh, for example, or Vincent van Gogh depending on which way you prefer the pronunciation. He died penniless. But if you could track every single transaction of Van Gogh paintings, you attribute 5% of that and 5% of those goes to the family, for example. That would be a substantial amount of money. Now, the idea is, with any digital file, you can program in a royalty stream. And that was one of the things that really appealed to the NBA, that they had all this collateral that they could actually then sell as unique assets, as unique collectibles. And every time a piece is sold, whether it’s sold for a profit or a loss, they get a percentage clip on the ticket in the form of a royalty. And that is really powerful because, certainly within the art space, the ability to actually track pieces and to attribute a royalty going forward is a nightmare the way that it would work at the moment, because there’s not the transparency.

Tim Lea:
If you go to a gallery, you buy a piece, then you sell it subsequently, once it’s gone past the owner from the gallery, you just don’t know where it’s going. And so, as a result, if you can build in a 2.5%, 5% royalty, whatever it might be into the transaction, it means you can follow the provenance and you can follow the money, which then means that you can actually just have that programmed so that your royalties are actually paid automatically.

Nick Abrahams:
So I feel like, based on that, there’s going to be a lot of people listening who are thinking, “Well, I could be a digital artist. I wouldn’t mind the idea of a trailing commission on something that I created over time.” Can we talk just a little bit, we won’t get into the enterprise area for NFTs, but just a little bit about what it means for the individual and for those budding artists who are listening? How do you go about actually creating an NFT and selling an NFT, and so forth?

Tim Lea:
Sure. I mean, if you’re a traditional artist, you have to be able to either create digital pieces or convert your existing art into a digital file. So it’ll be scanning or high quality photography, whatever it might be. And the idea is that you can go onto a number the open marketplaces that exist. Probably the easiest to use is OpenSea, and that accounts for about 92% of the market. And that’s opensea.io.

Nick Abrahams:
Wow.

Tim Lea:
Exactly. And that’s one of the challenges of the market, to be honest. But the idea is, you can literally go onto OpenSea and you could get that photograph of your kids and put it up as an NFT and see if your grandma will pay you $120 million.

Nick Abrahams:
What a good idea. We’ll monetize the family relationship.

Tim Lea:
Exactly. But the idea is that any artist can get involved. Now that’s the easy bit, to be honest.

Nick Abrahams:
Oh right.

Tim Lea:
The hard bit is that because the market has come from the cryptocurrency space, those non-fungible tokens are all based around smart contracts, which is based on what is known as the Ethereum Network, which is the second largest cryptocurrency. So, as a result, the whole culture of the market has come from the cryptocurrency space. And so the people that have been the early adopting buyers have been from the cryptocurrency space, those that have been in the space for probably at least five, six, seven years. I mean, I’ve been involved since 2015, the very beginning of 2015, and lots of my peers who are regular buyers of NFTs. I’ve bought a lot of NFTs myself, but the idea is they understand the technology, they trust the technology. And that’s why the image that you were talking about at the very beginning of this session by Beeple, who’s a very famous digital artist, he actually produced a digital piece every day for 5,000 days, and that piece was called 5,000 Days and that’s the one that sold for 69 million back in March this year.

Tim Lea:
Now, it was a hedge fund out of Singapore that bought that, and this is a guy who’s been in the blockchain space for quite a number of years, made a lot of money on initial coin offerings and through the general rise of cryptocurrency. But what he’s looking at and what others are looking at as an investment thesis is they’re saying, “This is an iconic piece of art and buying it for 69 million now means it’s a high value piece but a very high profile piece.” So what’ll happen is, in the future, as you get institutional funds coming into this market, with the idea of getting behind regulated structures, they’ll be looking towards buying the high quality pieces and they’ll be paying not $69 million, but probably $200 million further down the track because of the cultural significance. And it’s equally, when you look at these things called the crypto punks, which you may or may not have heard of, your audiences may not have heard of those, but these were given away in 2017 for free.

Nick Abrahams:
Right.

Tim Lea:
Now, back in October this year, there was a guy who was offered $9.6 million for his, and he turned it down. He said, “I am not selling this for anything.” And that is because the crypto punks, again, have cultural significance within the early adopting users. Because this was, broad brush, the first major NFT put onto the Ethereum blockchain back in 2017. There were a couple of minor ones before that, but this is the most notable one. And so, as a result, that is being viewed as a blue chip. So, again, hedge funds are buying into these like it’s going out of fashion because, just like the cryptocurrency market, they see this is the beginning of a massive transformation. And where they’re paying $9 million now, in five years time, they’ll probably be selling those for $100 million. No financial advice, obviously, but this is what’s the market.

Tim Lea:
So going back to the original point about an individual artist, you can put art up there, but it’s like anything, you have to make people aware of your art. And so the overall issue is that it’s not about talent at this moment in time. It’s honestly about to 20% talent and 80% marketing.

Nick Abrahams:
Right.

Tim Lea:
And it’s marketing to the crypto Twitter space.

Nick Abrahams:
Right.

Tim Lea:
Because those are the people that are buying as it stands at the moment. Now, this dynamic is going to be changing, especially with the likes of Coinbase, which is a regulated exchange over in the U.S. It announced that they’re launching an NFT marketplace, and within 48 hours of announcing, they had 2.1 million people subscribe.

Nick Abrahams:
Right.

Tim Lea:
So it gives you an indication that this market is just going to go absolutely bananas. So if you’re an individual or an existing additional artist, you’ve got to understand the space. That’s really important. And I would say to anybody, research the market for between 30 and 50 hours, and it sounds like a lot, but once you get into the rabbit hole, time goes really quickly. Research the market to understand the dynamics because it’s all based around cryptocurrencies. It’s all based around crypto Twitter. It’s all based around the dynamic if you’re an artist sharing other people’s work and getting other people to share yours and just understanding that dynamic.

Tim Lea:
And one of the key things about Twitter is there’s a thing now called Twitter Spaces where you can actually have audio channels linked into the Twitter channel. And what it means is that you get a bucket load of people turning up for Twitter Spaces. I’ve run quite a number of Twitter Spaces. I’ve joined others, been asked to participate in that type of thing, and the great thing is that you actually get a real sense of what’s going. Because if you’re an artist, you want to make sure you understand the market so you can maximize your opportunities. If you’re an investor, you need to understand the dynamic of the market so you can understand there’s complete transparency of data and you can actually implement some strategies and strategies relating to your buying if you understand the market. But expect to lose money, if you’re an investor in the early stages. That’s going to be your tuition.

Nick Abrahams:
Right.

Tim Lea:
And that’s why I say, if you want to minimize the tuition fees, do 30 to 50 hours research, play around. Don’t get caught up in the FOMO. Just observe and just see how it operates. It’s a really powerful space if you can get underneath the hood.

Nick Abrahams:
And so we will get to the enterprise usage of NFTs in a moment, but I think now’s a perfect opportunity to segue just into your project which you’ve been working on for some considerable time, Walking Between Worlds. Can you give us a bit of background on what’s happening there?

Tim Lea:
Yeah. Walking Between Worlds, it’s designed to actually help global Indigenous communities capitalize on the NFT space and it’s primarily looking at the idea of energizing, first of all, Indigenous communities here in Australia, and then using that as a playbook to actually energize Indigenous communities globally. And so it’s the idea that we’re building out a platform in time that will actually enable collaborations to happen where digital skills can be shared and collaboration pieces can be done, looking at the idea of online education for digital art skills and basically digital skills, because there’s a massive digital divide between Indigenous communities, generally speaking, and traditional Western communities, looking at creating best in class galleries in the Metaverses, which we’ll talk about a little bit later.

Tim Lea:
But these are three dimensional galleries that are in spaces that are coming up and very much embracing art investors to support emerging talent. And so, as part of that structure, we’ve coordinated a number of Indigenous artists and we’re launching the first collection of NFTs for Indigenous artists on January the 14th. We’ve just announced that very recently. So the first collection is 1,100 pieces.

Nick Abrahams:
Wow.

Tim Lea:
But there will be 10 hero pieces as well, and these hero pieces include animation, include Indigenous poetry, music, and soundscapes to give a real sense of where the art came from. But this is about energizing indigenous communities, because under normal circumstances, when you look at technology, when you see the internet and you see the blockchain in general, they generally tend to start very, very broad, go into vertical markets, and then go to niche markets. So, it’s about we want to empower the indigenous communities globally to actually grab hold of the entities right now. What we’re doing is putting together the oldest culture in the world, which is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island culture, together with the bleeding edge technology. You can imagine there are some interesting challenges that are associated with that, but we’ve got an amazing chair for the project who’s a global expert on indigenous wellbeing and suicide prevention, and she’s a wonderful advocate for the project.

Tim Lea:
She walks absolutely in both worlds. She understands both worlds, and she was on indigenous radio just last week, sorry, the week before last, talking about Walking Between Worlds on national indigenous radio. I was super impressed with her. I was so proud. It was amazing. Yeah, it’s challenging, but it’s empowering. That’s the thing. When you look at the technology, it’s amazing, but it’s what it can do for communities that have been disenfranchised, to be honest. That’s globally. It’s not just here in Australia. Through all the Twitter spaces and all the marketing we’ve done over the past six months, we’ve connected with the Hopi Indians or conduits to the Hopi Indians in Arizona, to the Inuits in Canada, and the Mayans in Guatemala. So, yeah, we’re super excited about where this could go, but, yeah, it’s a great use case for the technology if we can pull it off, or should I say when we pull it off. But, yeah, it’s awesome.

Nick Abrahams:
I think it’s fantastic, and congratulations to you and the team. I know it’s a deep personal commitment that you’ve got to that cause and that project. I think it’s fantastic, and it sounds like it will be tremendously successful. I think one of the interesting things that you also mention is that included in the NFT drop, soundscapes and poetry, and I assume that means spoken word. Maybe just to give people a sense of the NFTs are not just about images and so forth and back. There’s a school of thought that says that as certain streaming services have taken money away from artists, recording artists, that actually NFTs may be a way to restore some money back into the pockets of recording artists. But NFTs could to apply to sound recordings as well. Yeah.

Tim Lea:
It’s to any digital files. It’ll be a sound file, it can be a video file, augmented reality. It extends to any form of digital files. Yeah, I think the music industry’s always going to be an interesting discussion, because the music industry has already transformed into the digital realm already. Certainly, what we’re seeing is that musicians are working closer and closer with artists and other technical parties to actually create new markets. Certainly, with the hero pieces that we’re looking at, those do embed an immersive experience relating to the pieces that are being sold. The whole technology’s going to transform landscapes in ways that we haven’t even thought of yet.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe if we move to the enterprise use case now, I guess one of the early movers in this space has been premium apparel and footwear. we’ve seen Adidas and ASICS and others make available digital footwear. Gucci has a digital sneaker available on Roblox for $19, its cheapest sneaker ever. We’ve then seen it move up into the handbags space, so the Birkin, a virtual Birkin sold the other day for more than what you would pay if you were to able to get a Birkin in a shop. Then we moved into, as I mentioned, fascinating use case with Penfolds allowing bottles of premium wine to be represented and traded as NFTs, and the actual wine stays in a proper up a storage container, because one of the problems, obviously, with trading vintage wines is having to move a bottle around the place is not good, particularly when it’s so susceptible to things such as temperature and so forth. So, yeah, I mean, Tim, what’s your view on which industries are embracing it, and where are the big opportunities?

Tim Lea:
It’s a really good question, Nick. I think the major space that really seems to be growing, and there are two that are running sort of parallel. The fashion industry is absolutely embracing this 100%, and also the gaming industry. In some ways, they can be somewhat related. But if we look at the fashion industry, what has happened over the past two years or so with the pandemic or close to two years, is that the rise of digitization has just exploded. As a result, when you look at flexing that happens in terms of premium brands, it would be the situation that people driving a Lamborghini down the street or wearing Rolex watch, whatever it might be, there’s the flexing that actually happens in that particular way. But if you think of the Lamborghini effect, for example, it might be that maybe 250 people or 500 people might see it. All right? If you’ve got digital flexing, that becomes really powerful, right? Now-

Nick Abrahams:
Digital flexing, I love it.

Tim Lea:
Right? But bear with me, all right?

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah.

Tim Lea:
Because, yeah, we spoke about crypto punks earlier on, okay? Now, if somebody owns a CryptoPunk that is worth, and they have turned down an offer for $9.6 million for a piece of art that is a dysfunctional piece of art, that is pixelated, that from an art point of view, have deep cultural significance, but in terms of the artistic quality, probably the kids that you sent the image to their nana could probably have drawn it better. Right? But the digital flexing now becomes really important, because you can now have your profile picture on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Instagram, all the digital platforms, for example, that showcase your CryptoPunk.

Nick Abrahams:
Right.

Tim Lea:
One of the things that’s really interesting, and I know you’re laughing-

Nick Abrahams:
I love it. No, I’m a believer, so, no, no-

Tim Lea:
No, no, because if you’re not laughing, it means your audience aren’t laughing. I know your audience will be saying, “Oh, this is baloney. What are you talking about?”

Nick Abrahams:
Oh, no. No, no. I think its absolutely true.

Tim Lea:
The thing that is really powerful, and where this is heading, in my opinion, Twitter announced a couple of months ago they will be validating your profile picture in your Twitter profile. Think about this for a second now. All right? If you’re on Twitter and you’ve right clicked and saved the CryptoPunk, right? And you’ve put it up as your profile to try and flex and say, “Yes, I’ve got that,” all of a sudden, Twitter, when it goes live, will be able to say, “You know what? You’re not the owner.” But the original owner will have a tick mark by their name that’ll link to their Ethereum wallet. Right? So, what it means is that your digital flexing becomes very powerful.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah.

Tim Lea:
Because then now, instead of 250 people seeing your digital flexing with your Lamborghini, you’ve got all the people that are following you on Twitter, and goodness knows what, seeing digital flexing wherever you go. Then that’s going extend, because with Twitter doing that, they are essentially positioning themselves, in my opinion, as an identity play now. What’ll happen, I think we’ll see that style of identity going into the Metaverse. So, if you do buy the Gucci sneakers or the Dolce and Gabbana suit, there was one that sold the $670,000 going back about six weeks ago. Right? If you can actually identify that it’s been validated that you own it, you are going to be digitally flexing. Whether flexing is right or wrong is a completely different issue.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah.

Tim Lea:
But it’s all part of the game. Right? So, as we head more and more into the digital realm, and, I mean, if we look at the way marketing is going, I mean, offline marketing, that’s very challenging. I mean, TV advertising is way, way down. I mean, as a digital transformation specialist, you’re going to be across a lot more of the data than I will be, but we’re going to see a massive transformation, and we’re going to see identity being linked into your digital assets that you own.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah.

Tim Lea:
I think that becomes a really fascinating layer as we head into the Metaverse and that type of thing.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah. I mean, you’ve mentioned the Metaverse, so what is the future of NFTs and the Metaverse? Maybe your views on, I mean, perhaps explaining to people what is the Metaverse anyway?

Tim Lea:
Yeah. The Metaverse has got a multitude of definitions. It’s essentially where you’re living in… it’s almost like, what was it? Second Life and those types of things.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah.

Tim Lea:
Except it’s Second Life on steroids, where you’ve actually got the virtual environments. I mean, there are a number of areas like Decentraland or Sandbox or Cryptovoxels, there’s a number of places that are coming up, and these are creating communities online through VR, virtual reality.

Nick Abrahams:
Wow.

Tim Lea:
Through VR, virtual reality, which I think it’s still got a long way to go because you’re encapsulated in a screen that is very one dimensional in terms of its experience because you can’t share it with anybody. We’re going to have these two and a half D environments where you go into an art gallery, for example, that looks like 3D, but you’re looking at it on your desktop or your mobile phone or your tablet. These types of virtual experiences are beginning to ramp up. Facebook announced going back about two and a half months ago that they’re changing their name to Meta. Now there’s a whole variety of potential issues around why they changed their name as you know, because obviously they’ve encountered a few challenges, but they are actually going to be funding $10 billion in the metaverse. They’re seriously committing to it.

Tim Lea:
From my eyes, what they’re trying to do is trying to go for the land grant and they’re instead of actually looking at the eyeballs that are looking at the website, they’re going to follow your eyeballs. If you’re in the metaverse and you actually look at a painting, you say, “Oh, that’s a good painting,” painted by your kids that you sent across to their Nan, all right. If people are looking at particular paintings, whatever they might be, Facebook want to have the situation to be able to sell you ads linked into what you’re looking at. All right. But the Winklevoss brothers and their Gemini exchange who had the massive legal stoush with Zuckerberg. They are now billionaires in their own right with the Gemini exchange. They announced a couple of weeks after Facebook announced their meta investment, they announced they’d raised $400 million to look at a metaverse, an open source metaverse outside of the walled garden of Facebook.

Tim Lea:
It’s going to be a battle Royal, I think, in the metaverse because the Winklevoss, it’s going to be the largest game of chicken that’s ever been played I think.

Nick Abrahams:
It’s round two.

Tim Lea:
It’s round two. But this is the thing. It’s personal. Now, it’s personal, but there’s a driving factor behind it. Neither party’s going to want to lose. The ultimate winner will be the consumers because they’ll be constantly fighting to position better products, better projects, all this type of stuff. I think what we’re going to see is that there’s going to become a rise in essentially the personal data economy, where you’re in the metaverse and you own your data and then you sell that according to organizations, enterprises that may want to buy it.

Tim Lea:
I think we’re going to see a shift in the business models away from the centralized version of Google and Facebook in terms of where you are the product. I think we’re going to see a dynamic shift and it might take a few years, but we’re going to see a dynamic shift in the way data is held, owned and sold. I think it’s just going to be a massive transition. I mean, there are so many opportunities building in this space, going back to the question of Enterprise and that type of thing. There are so many opportunities with new channels that are opening up and certainly fashion, going back to what we were saying before, is absolutely a leader and gaming is another area that’s just mushrooming.

Tim Lea:
When you think of gaming and even augmented reality, for example, these are all linked into the same style of technology. There are various event organizers that we’ve spoken to over time, over the past six months that are looking at the idea when the big music festivals come out again, that they’ll have augmented reality structures at the music festival, which will actually be an NFT that will give the opportunity to actually get free beer at the bar if you find it. It’s the idea that, almost like the Pokemon Go Moments that we had in 2017, this time you can actually put a financial transaction linked into the digital asset that you actually find and pick up.

Tim Lea:
That’s the structure of the metaverse as well. We’re going to see a whole shift in new dynamic models that are going to create massive business opportunities for those that are nimble enough to understand and get in them. I think the key thing I would say to anybody is look at this now, because we’re just touching the beginning of where it’s going. The early adopters are the ones that are going to make the mistakes obviously, and there’ll be early adopters that will actually drive the market. It’s going to be a fascinating world.

Nick Abrahams:
Oh Tim, it’s been fantastic. We can talk for hours on this. I should let you go.

Tim Lea:
I know. I’m sorry. I probably whittled on far too much, but.

Nick Abrahams:
I love it and you gave me a new term, digital flexing. It’s-

Tim Lea:
Oh, yeah. It’s amazing. Look it up on Twitter, the stuff on this. It’s just incredible.

Nick Abrahams:
I think it is. No, look, I agree entirely the whole Web 3.0. In fact, I say for every organization, they all need a Web 3.0 strategy because it will touch, whether it’s in financial services with DFI fashion we’ve heard about, who would’ve thought with wine. Then you mentioned that the terrific distinction with virtual reality keeps you in one space and so if you compare the Oculus experience, which is very much about VR, and then you compare that to the HoloLens experience from Microsoft, which is about integrating with your world around you, the opportunities are extraordinary.

Nick Abrahams:
Tim, thank you very much for, for being with us today. I wish you all the best of luck with Walking Between Worlds. I’m sure it’ll be a terrific success and we’d love to catch up in six or 12 and hear how it’s gone.

Tim Lea:
I’d love to. I’d love to, and I mean, look, thank you to you guys for putting the webinar on. It’s great. I think there is one thing that Enterprise needs to be aware about. There are massive legal challenges coming. The issue of copyright and the issue of intellectual property is a major, major time bomb that is exploding. I think if any enterprise is actually looking at this, get in touch with Nick and the team to get themselves protected. I think there’s going to be a massive level of conflict going on.

Nick Abrahams:
It’ll be interesting. Well, Tim, if we can help, obviously we’re here to help.
Tim:
Of course, I know. I mean, but it’s just a massive opportunity.

Nick Abrahams:
Fantastic. Well, once again, thanks for spending time with us and best wishes and people please do have a look out for Walking Between Worlds. Thank you very much, Tim Lea.
Tim:
Thanks Nick. Thanks very much for your time. Cheers.