NFTs Where Art Meets Business
Interview with Michelle Grey
This one is fun! Get ready for a ride into the epicentre of art and commerce as we talk to two people at the vanguard of the NFT revolution. In addition to owning Culture Vault (an NFT marketplace and Web3 agency), Michelle is listed in the top 100 people shaping the cultural landscape in Aust and the top 100 innovators in Aust. Ribal Hosn is a Mixed Tech-Media Artist Film Director & storyteller. He is one of Australia’s leading fashion filmmakers having worked with Harpers Bazaar, Vogue and brands like Country Road, Coach, Fila and Adidas.
Michelle is focussed on how big brands can harness the power of art and NFTs to find a new link with an audience but also how crypto wallets are the new data play – brands can deliver promotions direct to the wallet – it is the new email address. For the individuals, wallets will be a “social passport” where the NFTs that you have in your wallet will say things about the sort of person you are – similar to photos on your Instagram account.
Ribal is a self-confessed recovering “Degen”. What is a “Degen” you ask? There are a few definitions but effectively Degens are people who obsessively trade the crypto and NFT markets – sometimes 24/7. We get to understand Degen culture and terms like WAGME (“we are all going to make it”). But also we get to understand more about how art, technology, commerce and community are coming together in Web3.
Transcript
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Hello everyone. And joining me today are two true evangelists of the NFT movement. We have Michelle Grey, who is co‑founder and CEO of Culture Vault and also listed in Top 100 people shaping the cultural landscape in Australia as well as the Top 100 innovators in Australia. We also have a very special guest, Ribal Hosen, who is a mixed tech media artist, film director and frankly, just an amazing storyteller. One of Australia’s leading fashion film makers having worked with Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and brands like Country Road, Coach, Fila and Adidas. So, Michelle and Ribal, great to have you on the show. |
| MICHELLE GREY | Thank you for having us. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Thanks for having us. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | And so maybe starting with you Michelle. Quick back story – how did you end up getting to where you are and listed in the Top 100 in a couple of different categories? |
| MICHELLE GREY | Well, I had worked, my background is really steeped heavily in what the crypto jargon call the “tradup” world. So the traditional arts and cultural space. I spent a lot of time in New York working everywhere from the New York Times to Soho House and many institutions in between. I wish I could say that I was one of these early adopters and that I was trading crypto back in 2013, but alas I was not that forward thinking and returned to Australia very much against it in the traditional cultural space. I founded a programming platform or a cultural programming platform called Arts Matter and then really by accident I was introduced to two D-gen guys who were heavy in the crypton and Web3 space. They actually had started to work on a crypto exchange platform which at the time was called Oz Merchant and they have realised that their…you know it was at around July last year, so we were heavy into the height cycle of NFT, in fact quite late because it started much earlier in the year, and they saw that there was a real interest in the space and specifically in the cultural space with arts and music and they had done one NFT with a music, what are they called, DJs called Flight Facilities which are quite famous in Australia and that went really, really well. They created a series of three different air drops for Flight Facilities fans, they had a really incredible reception to that and then realised, hey, Oz Merchants should, why not create a subsidiary and build an NFT platform. I don’t think they realised how difficult that was and how hard that concept was going to be, but they brought me in really from the traditional art world and we started to nut out this idea of not just making it part of Oz Merchant, not sort of like a drop down menu for NFTs, but really building out something quite special and we, actually originally we were going to build on a mutable, but then that was, that felt very much like a very, like a gaming play and then we decided we went for Polygon which I’m sure your listeners may or may not know is a layer two solution that uses purpose. We felt that in the cultural space specifically with artists the environment was a huge factor. So went on to Etherium with their energy consumption felt a little off. As you all know Etherium 2.0 is coming and we’ve so this idea of building on Polygon is almost a moot point. It also provided a lot of challenges for us and we’ll talk about that I’m sure later. What are the barriers to adoption and Polygon has a much larger, all of these layer two solutions have huge barriers to adoption, worse than in Etherium. Anyway, so, we spent eight months building a Web3 platform on Polygon and Etherium and we launched in February with a whole host of chat artists and digital artists. Everyone from Steve Ormandy, of course Ribal to some more NFT artists like Chris Yee and several other Australian artists and interntional artists. I would say 50% of our platform is artists from New York, Japan, London, Paris, Africa and the rest are local Australian artists. So, that’s that. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Fantastic. Well, thank you, and Ribal I guess your back story, as one of the world’s leading fashion film makers and now involved in the, significantly involved in the NFT world, I guess, how did you come to where you’re at now? |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Well, I guess the first time, so my background is…actually I used to be a pharmacist. So that’s a whole different line. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Of course you used to be a pharmacist. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | And, yeah, I used to do that and then work professionally as a fashion photographer and eventually, I think in like 2014/2015, started to feel that motion in fashion stuff was coming and there was just no‑one here doing it and so I’d be on shoots and it’d be like, hey, you know, let me film some stuff as well. I’m going to do this and that kind of led to like creating some sort of my own niche in the space which has been really like rewarding and I’ve been fortunate to have heaps of opportunities because of that. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Yeah. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | And I guess in terms of getting exposed to the Web3 space, so crypto NFTs, to be honest the first time ever I was exposed to it was when my friends used to buy things off Silk Road in 2012 and, yeah, like my cousin actually still has a 150 bit coins as locked up on Silk Road’s website. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Ohhh. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | And the government’s like taken it back, but anyway, I never knew how to use it, like Onion Tour and all that stuff was so confusing to me, but then like at 2017 I started investing, like buying crypto coins and stuff. I think I bought Etherium back then for like 100 bucks. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Nice. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | But then I sold it for 200 bucks. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Okay. Not that good. Everyone one of those stories. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Yeah, so, I had all that kind of exposure and then to be honest the way I entered the NFT space is I was at the NTV and there was this massive artwork as soon as you walked in. It was like 20 metres high. |
| MICHELLE GREY | Oh Rafeete Annabel’s. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | And, yeah, it was Rafeete Annabel’s work. It was like this, he uses data to generate art. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Oh, beautiful, okay. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | And it was just like, to me I was just like, you know, I’m into visuals and everything, I’m just like standing there frozen. I was following him on Instagram and then I saw him go live on an Insta story and he’s like, oh for the next 24 hours I’m dropping an addition of NFTs and I’m like, oh my God, that’s sick, like I’ll buy that. Like, you know. So, that was my first entry into the space and you know bought a few other art things that I like and then I started really jumping in on the bubble of it. So, you know, oh wow, there’s heaps of money to be made here. By this, you know, after I got the art pieces, it was more like let me enter the NFT space as a D-gen and make heaps of money and blah, blah, blah, blah, but then obviously the last 8 months, if you’re not down 90% then you’re doing good. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Right. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | In terms of a D-gen spot, like it’s so hectic how, I mean I find it’s played out as a microcosm of what’s actually going to happen in the real world, but I guess once that all kind of started happening I still decided to be like oh wait, what are actual artists doing, like…or what are the crypto artists because it’s kind of weird in Australia. We don’t really use Twitter. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Mmm. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | So, like I opened an account in October and, which sucked, because the entire Web3 crypto artists here is all on Twitter. It’s like that is, they don’t even look at Instagram. So trying to figure out Twitter and then get in the space and just seeing the culture and learning the terminology and doing all that stuff and then you start to see who’s super famous in the crypto space. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Yeah. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | And then you see all these celebrities who are just clear cash grabbers. Like it’s so transparent. Even legitimate brands, there’s probably only a handful of brands that are legitimate and careers into the space. Yeah, once I started getting figure out like participating in that way because, you know, participation is progression. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Yeah. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | And once I started doing that and being part of more sort of groups around the world, I’m like, well now I want to contribute, you know, as a creator and that’s kind of where I am now and I’m, Australia is a bit tricky, it’s just because in terms of on‑boarding, I think we’re a bit more conservative in terms of the unknown. There is a pocket of like the most forward thinking creative explorers, but in terms of the general sphere, and I’m sure Michelle can agree with that, you know, there’s way more resistance than you’d expect. So, I’m in a spot now where I was kind of like, yeah, how do I contribute, how do I participate, what do I want to make and yeah, it’s interesting. It’s just the Aussie time zone is hard. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Yeah, yeah. I think maybe just to…and I think it will be interesting too because with the…many of the listeners to this probably don’t necessarily understand exactly what a D‑gen is and maybe could you even just give us a definition of what, what does that mean, as a D-gen so forth? |
| RIBAL HOSEN | I’ll give you a handful of definitions which I had to learn on crypto Twitter – so crypto Twitter is abbreviated as CT… |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | So this is, this I mean for listeners, this is saving you hours, hundreds of hours of trolling through sometimes excruciating tweets on crypto Twitter. So… |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Exactly and D-gen is pretty much a degenerate. Right so people who are jumping in on trades, in/out like a day trader or a gambler I guess. So just there’s D-gen life and there’s collector life whatever. There’s the phrase “WAGMI” and it means we’re all going to make it. |
| MICHELLE GREY | That’s my favourite crypto jargon. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | My favourite is LFG which is let’s f-ing go. You know they’re kind of real common terms and there’s “NGMI” so not going to make it. Like when a celebrity enters a space it’s like oh LOL not going to make it, like everyone just like pays out. An yeah D-gen is a degenerate. A degenerate like you know a full tilt poker player. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Yeah yeah. |
| MICHELLE GREY | And if you’re a degenerate usually you are up all night watching the market, you’re trolling discord and you’re probably a member of about over 100 different discord servers… |
| RIBAL HOSEN | 200. |
| MICHELLE GREY | 200 there you go, 200 yeah you’re jumping in and out of these servers looking to see if there, if certain projects are scams, making sure you’re part of certain wait lists, making sure you’re up at 3am when something is alive minting this guys I mean basically yeah full tilt in the net space and… |
| RIBAL HOSEN | I’m not there anymore which is good because my I think comprehension of the space is like I don’t even have to worry about that stuff anymore, just because, like I’m pretty much in one discord 24/7 now that’s always on. So it’s no longer, I will never grind for…a white list is like an early access to a project so you get to you know but it before everyone else, but I would never try and get that unless it is given, so like yeah I’m not in that hectic period anymore, I’m not as bad a D-gen as I used to be. I’m more of a reform. |
| MICHELLE GREY | A reformed D-gen. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Well fantastic. I think this is you know you’re our first fully fledged degenerate to be on with us. I’m super excited about that. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | I wear that proudly. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | So what you raised is something that fascinates me because I mean this podcast is all about talking I guess to enterprises and more traditional organisations about the opportunities in NFT and Metaverse and so forth and you know what’s fascinating is you get a lot of corporate style NFT projects going on but there’s this real culture clash it feels to me between you know enterprises big business to consumer companies that are selling NFT and I’m assuming that a large part of the community that’s buying those are probably in the D-gen space which is you know it’s just an odd…you know are they even people that big brands want to have as clients or customers I don’t know. |
| MICHELLE GREY | I can answer that, I think first of Ribal maybe you’re going to dispute me but I don’t think that a lot of people who are buying NFTs that are created and minted by big brands are necessarily deep in the D-gen community. I think D-gen, D-gens are buying different types of projects. I think that the benefit of big brands and big enterprises entering the NFT space is really to bridge the gap between the crypto community and the traditional consumers. I’m assuming like if you’re you know there’s a brand obviously a brand so Estee Lauder, Clinique did, well that’s always a very interesting you know not particularly complicated NFT drop where they dropped tokens, sort of as…like sort of a membership loyalty programme and part of that so if your listeners know a little bit about NTFs there are different types right, there’s an NFT of this digital art which Ribal was talking about, Rafeete Annabel’s where you’re buying too early because you love the visual aesthetic of it and it’s an artwork and you may display it in your home but there are other types of NFTS – NFT can be a community token or a membership token that has either real world utility or digital utility. There can be a memorabilia token, it can be a token that shows that you were at a certain concert or show or a place at a certain day and time. There are certificates of authenticity tokens or VMH is sewing them into the seams of their handbags so that you can tell that you know that it’s a real Louis Vuitton and it’s not a fake – so my point being that with this…back to this Clinique drop you know part of it were real world utility about those things like you know you could have a lip gloss that was out of stock you know if you hold the token of, you get 20% off at Clinique or essentially loyalty rewards. I bet you that a huge amount of those people who got those NFT tokens were current consumers of Clinique, I don’t think like D-gens were running out to get the Clinique NFT token. So I guess my point is, is that like I’m sure there are some brands that do a really good drop, like you know for starters Nike is… |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Clonex |
| MICHELLE GREY | Yeah. |
| MICHELLE GREY | Yeah and then they’re like crypto kicks and like I can’t remember what the RFN that puts their sneaker company… |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Artefact. Artefact |
| MICHELLE GREY | Yeah those probably I can imagine like pulling in some D-gens that you know Coca Cola just dropped a really interesting NFT on World Friendship Day where you got a free NFT and you could only see the artwork if you shared it with a friend. You know those sorts of…I don’t know how many D-gens are heading into that space. So I don’t know if I’ve gone off topic, but I do… |
| RIBAL HOSEN | I agree with that. |
| MICHELLE GREY | Yeah and also I do see this paradoxical gesture like because essentially, essentially block chain is the philosophy or the ideal of decentralisation right like let’s get governments out, let’s get banks out of the equation and so there is like a little, a little bit of a push and pull right between a heavily centralised organisation like Coca Cola or Estee Lauder or these big brands and really the ideal and the philosophy behind decentralisation which is trying to eliminate, like a permissionless economy or a permissionless platform where we don’t really need the interference of you know big third party entities. So I always find that an interesting push and pull. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Yeah. I think one thing I’d kind of add to that, I know the intention is decentralisation but you know it’s still a speculative market you know defined, identify the scarcities – what brings value to a lot of things, you know if a collection is a one of one or one of 2,000 or whatever. So that’s where D-gens jump in they’re like oh you know there’s only 500 of them, buy them, so strangely enough most of the D-gens or like the traders who are going to bring volume into a project to increase its value – their folios 80% of it would be trash which they’re just trying to buy and sell, buy and sell, flip, make quick Etherium. Then they do have their 20% hold-ins that are blue chip so Clonex by Nike, like Michelle mentioned, that’s one of the top five blue chips you know obviously, crypto punks and all that so there are blue chips that you do aspire to as a D-gen to grab and hold because you know maybe 1% of these projects will actually be around still in a few years. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Yeah. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | So Lacoste their project is not doing that well. Proof of Concept is still not doing that well. Mercedes not doing that well. Audi I understand is doing horrible, like… |
| MICHELLE GREY | Also I think what you’re saying too is like some things what not…like I think there’s a different definition of like what’s not doing well right so like Clinique, back to Clinique who I’ve worked with quite a few you could say that’s not doing well because the price of Etherium dumped right, so all of those tokens are… |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Might not say equate that… |
| MICHELLE GREY | As you know a lot of these brands their, their priority isn’t necessarily remuneration, it is probably around community buildings, you mentioned the NFL, was it the NFL or… |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | The AFL yeah. |
| MICHELLE GREY | AFL, you know it’s about connecting to wallets right. Because we understand, or we’re beginning to understand that the crypto wallets are the new data play. So brands aren’t…we’re connecting, you know yes it’s great if you’re a brand and you can make a million buck worth of Etherium because you’re selling digital access or tokens great but we’re all understanding that we’re connecting to crypto wallets, especially segmented crypto wallets like wallets that you know are into sport or fashion or art or however you wish to segment we’re realising that you know 10 years ago people were spending quite a bit of money buying email lists, now buying email lists is almost useless, there’s so many rules or you know anything that’s promotions goes into a promotions folder or spam but there’s not very much regulation around crypto wallets so we’re realising that’s a new data play, it’s also potentially a new social passport. So we’re seeing like, we’ve seen the absolute obsession with Instagram this idea that everybody wants to see what concert I’ve been to, what country I’ve been to, what bag I’m wearing – it’s a complete. Crypto wallet I think in the future will be a similar social passport so if you look at my crypto wallet for instance now you can see I went to the a fashion show, I had the Lash NFT, I have a Ribal Hosen, I have a Steven Ormandy, you know like you can pretty much identify, I won’t say to too much of an extent but sort of what I’m into and so this again like I said it’s a big data play for brands and I think that’s why we’re really getting to the space. Yes it’s good to make a quick buck but the data is the most value asset that they’ll be collecting. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Yeah. Yeah that’s an interesting topic that’s getting you know a lot of yeah, that’s an interesting one because a lot of the crypto areas are not into like paper and we’re going to give you a fake wallets, fake ID’s and so yeah that’s interesting. It’s interesting though like you know the culture, how the culture responds to certain players you know and yeah I 100% agree with what Michelle just said. You know Yacht Club did that at the start of the year doing a KYC check for anyone wanting to be part of their sale, KYC is – what is it – know your client. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Know your client yeah. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Yeah so just to sign up to potentially be on their white list all you had to do was going to their website and do a KYC and everyone was like why the hell they doing KYCs and then everyone realised it’s a data collection. Like everyone just sent the their friggen passports. Like you know just to make them buy all the D-gens and it’s like…but yeah no it’s an interesting…yeah it’s interesting how the culture shapes itself. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Yeah. We’re you…sorry, presumably… |
| RIBAL HOSEN | No, no, no, no. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Just because I mean it’s a fascinating topic and the reason why big brands are getting involved – presumably what has happened is we’ve seen you know I guess the D-gens or the early adopters really you know validate the technology but also need to you know on‑boarding is easier now than it was you know six months ago and so obviously it needs to get you know as easy as you know a credit card transaction before you know we see widespread adoption. So the D-gens I guess have you know, have helped to normalise that and I suspect whilst the D-gens may react against the data collection you know for 90% of the population they probably come on and maybe it does become that social passport. I just interested particularly Ribal your, so your, your life, your professional life at least has been around the intersection to a degree of art and commerce you know because you’re a film maker, but you also work with brands you know as you mentioned Vogue, Country Road etc – so is that what’s happening in I guess the Web3 where we talk about the creator economy and so forth but a layer above that which is you as a creator – are there opportunities that you’re seeing for you to work together with the big brands and sort of come up with an interesting solutions for folks? |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Well I think Michelle could probably talk more on like working with bigger brands – in terms of the space on my end – monetising creativities is nearly impossible you know like to monetise anything creative sometimes you’re ahead of your time, behind your time but if you can it, you know you have to, internationally you have to reconcile that your heart and commerce like you know. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Yeah. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | You can’t say you’ve created a gender too much which is like that’s an art in itself. So if you can monetise anything creative you do like keep doing because that’s so rare and hard, people I think underestimate. I guess the Web3 space is more liberating in the sense that like you can kind of do anything and it’s all, like anything you want, it’s all new tech and it’s just I feel like I’m a kid out on a playground again. Like it’s just like, I’m just like…you know when time stops and you’re like shit I haven’t moved for five hours, like when I’m sort of engaging in a space in creative stuff, so I mean and you do get exposed to big brands like you know or people on Twitter – again I can’t stress this enough in Australia how much we’ve missed out by not being a Twitter country. Like because you’ve got massive artists and celebrities around the world who are following a lot of Web3 creators and NFTOGs and NFT artists who are like they’re reaching out to them and it’s like dam and like we’re so like you know a bit behind on that. So there’s, I mean opportunities are endless and you would be surprised how helpful the Web3 community is. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Right, yeah. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | You know if you participate and like you make a smell someone who’s just in it for a cash grab that’s someone who’s just like legit you know. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Yeah. Yeah. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Yeah, no, I think there’s definitely opportunity. But again in Australia I think it’s a bit a slower burn that what people yeah than what’s happening overseas. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Yeah and Michelle you’re, I mean you’re at the vanguard of this, could you explain…we heard a little bit about culture vault and what that does, but can you, can you perhaps explain it in a little bit more detail sort of what the culture vault solution is and I guess you know how the creators worked together with you and also what it means for other folks who might want to access I guess art and NFTs. |
| MICHELLE GREY | Yeah so traditionally we started this idea of bringing across and helping them kind of expand their practice and you utilise block chain technology to you know both like I said as a…use digital arms and you know if an expanded fund create medium but also potentially because we wanted to create other revenue streams. So that process you know for someone like Ribal is not as confronting because he is a self-confessed D-gen, but for an artist like let’s say Steven Ormandy who really have absolutely no understanding of this space it’s a huge amount of hand holding from setting up their hot wallet to setting up their custodial wallet to writing the smart contract for them, to writing off chain, you now as off chain and on chain contract, helping them and we went so far as helping with creative direction, we were designing animators and musicians to write the score to their NFTs and then we would need to list it, create virtual galleries for them, so it’s sort of like this whole suit of services for the artist. Then we realised that while that was great and we’re you know a part of our mission really is bridging the…you know bridging the gap between the full traditional world and the crypto community. That was so labor intensive and the return on investment is so small, we only take 10%. So you know you can’t be competitive as an NFT art platform, you’re going to be taking more than that. I think you know the big platforms like Foundation and Super Rare and Known Origin makes its players all took 15 but they’ve since dropped down to 10. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Right. |
| MICHELLE GREY | So you can imagine that if you’re taking 10% of an artist’s work that there has to be a volume for it right. So that’s how a company would make money but then the concept of volume say doesn’t really make sense as it sits next. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Correct. |
| MICHELLE GREY | …curation right. So you’ve either got a volume when you go open or you go curation and you know even now Foundation is no longer a curated site, it used to be that you had to have…you had to be invited by an artist that was on the platform and then others just opened it right up. Again I’m assuming you know some investor came in and said you need to monetise this baby and I’m going to work you guys are so then we curate. So we now take on, you know we now work with a lot of NFT artists where the on-boarding process isn’t so great and then we are working towards…so essentially I think everybody hopefully is listing on the crypto winter, we are in a bear market at the moment, it’s actually probably just for us the best time to build, it’s you know, it’s we call it the survival of the fittest stress test, all the people that are not adding value to the ecosystem fall away, all the people who are doing projects that don’t really make any sense they go to zero and so we’re kind of staying here with a heavily building tech, we are minting still once a week with artists, we’re working towards building what we’re calling a community curation DAO. So at some point when we reach, I don’t know if you’re readers…but for your listeners who don’t know what a DAO is – it’s a decentralised autonomous organisation essentially think of something where it’s bottom up governments rather than top down government, so there’s like voting by the people so the community curation DAO like I said once we reach a certain capacity we will start given tokens out to our artists and then they will start voting on their artists that come in. Again because we talk about this proposition of decentralised/centralised we curate. You know my business party is heavy, heavy D-gen and you know getting everything he can at all times to move more to decentralised and centralised. And then I guess you know we, a big part of our business proposition at the moment especially in a bear market is we work with brands to help them on their NFT projects, metaverse strategies, Web3 strategies. So we have I think over 15 clients, big Australian brands that we work with to help them with that. So that’s how we’re keeping our head above water during this bear market. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Yeah brilliant. Love to talk just a little bit on the working with brands side of things and so do you offer a sort of a strategy piece, so do brands come to you and say you know we want to do something with metaverse but we’re not 100% sure, but NFT mark and do you sort of get involved at that, at that level and then sort of help them work out you know what would be the right product and how to go to market strategy would work? |
| MICHELLE GREY | Yeah exactly in fact you finalised it – brands come to us saying we heard the buzzword metaverse, we’ve read about NFTs we don’t really know what they are like but you know we noticed that Balenciaga has upped their collection in a fortnight and Prada is doing NFTs and Penfolds is doing NFTs so we’ve been hearing like let’s explore it so we provide the creative and business strategy and because we have our own smart contracts written in Web3 platform, we provide all of the technical expertise and execution as well. So we can airdrop, we can make projects, we can do NFTs, and we can do it all from a technical perspective, but obviously that sits beside the creative and business strategy that we provide them. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | No that’s fantastic, I mean it is remarkable, I mean literally you know sort of 12 or 18 months ago we started talking to big brands, banks and so forth about metaverse or crypto and NFT it was like you know they thought you were either criminal or stupid or you know a combination of the two and now no it’s very much changed. I mean thank you so much, there’s been a lot, it was other things we were going to talk about. Maybe we’ll just finish off on I guess, maybe two questions – one for each of you. I guess for Michelle that maybe something about what you see as a future particularly for brands in the NFT metaverse space over the next five, ten years, where we’re headed with that and then Ribal I’ll give you a little time to think about but what, what do you see, what excites you I guess about five years hence and what are you seeing I guess the Metaverse NFT etc but Michelle I’d ask you that question first, so where do brands and Metavese? |
| MICHELLE GREY | I mean listen, I think that I would be lying if I said I knew exactly what it was going to look like, I think the technology is moving very quickly – put it this way Web3 is coming whether we like it or not. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Right. |
| MICHELLE GREY | Metaverse is coming whether we like it or not. What the iteration will be how it’s all going to be inter-operable, whether the tech that is the tech now is even functional in the metaverse or what we’re calling the metaverse, as we know the metaverse is not here yet, we just have a lot of mini virtual worlds, the metaverse will be when everything is inter-operable which we’re quite far away from. You know I think that brands will move into you know like I said whether they like it not the Web3 space. I’m not sure what iteration that will be, I think that block chain has a lot of kinks to iron out and I think that what excites me about this space is exactly what Ribal said which is my favourite crypto jargon WAGMI – we’re all going to make it. I’ve spent my career in a space that was very much like this – don’t share contacts, don’t share ideas, don’t…you know don’t tell anyone that you’re doing that and it was, it was very exclusive and it wasn’t inclusionary Nick at all and I think that the reason why the space is going to make it is because their true D-gen kind of philosophy and way of thinking is I mean it’s open source right. Etherium, built Etherium. We can do it, that it is open…you know Mark Zuckerberg didn’t do that. It’s just a new way that I’m super excited about and I think all of us working together are going to create something really great. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Fantastic and Ribal you’re, you’re views on the future – should we be afraid or should we be enthusiastic? |
| RIBAL HOSEN | I mean there should be a healthy fear, like a healthy anxiety, like you know, but don’t be just blind and run into it but I guess, I guess one thing I’m really excited about is it does give you an opportunity to agency in your own realm, control of your world and your ecosystem and your community and collectors and stuff that you make. But the one thing I’m actually really interested in is when…because right now NFT space is really being used a lot to sell digital art, but the one thing I’m really interested in is when the actual technology becomes art, so like the texts of people when they get stuff, they can engage with the art and it changes based on the and stuff like that, like I’m really interested to see when it moves to that part. But yeah I’m just, I just like the unknown so I’m, I’m here for it. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | That’s fantastic. Well I think that it was probably sensible for you to move away from pharmacy, it seems like you’ve, you’ve found your spot in the world and are helping to shape it. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | My mum still introduces me as a pharmacist. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Oh really. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Yes like you know. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | You’ve met my son the pharmacist. |
| MICHELLE GREY | I love that |
| RIBAL HOSEN | I love that too. |
| NICK ABRAHAMS | Thank you both, that has been absolutely fantastic, I really appreciate your time, so Michelle Grey and Ribal Hosen, thank you very much for your time, best wishes, looks like the future is in good hands with you. Thank you very much. |
| MICHELLE GREY | Thank you. |
| RIBAL HOSEN | Thanks for having us. |
| MICHELLE GREY | Bye. |