Seedphrase, also known as Daniel Maegaard, is a DJ and investor from Queensland, Australia, who made his fortune in cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. He invested $4,000 in Bitcoin in 2013 and cashed out in 2017, making millions of dollars. After traveling to over 40 countries, he discovered NFTs and bought some of the most sought-after ones, including his signature CryptoPunk #8348. During his performances, Maegaard wears the CryptoPunk image as a helmet, which enables him to entertain fans and pique ...
Sep 20, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 26
The Fabricant is a leading digital-only fashion house based in the Netherlands, establishing the concept of non-physical couture. They are known for creating and selling the first fashion NFT in 2019 for $9,500, and have partnered with the likes of Off-White, Google, H&M and Adidas. They recently released their Primal Rave collection, remixing elements of Dutch culture from the 17th century traditional dress to 90s gabber wear. In this episode, we cover: - Is Fashion Week going digital? - Ho...
Sep 13, 2023•58 min•Season 2Ep. 25
Krista Kim joins us for our first-ever tokenized podcast episode announced live on-stage in an exclusive fireside chat at The Gateway: Korea. Krista Kim is a Canadian Korean contemporary artist who has been active at the forefront of web3, wellness, and digital consciousness for more than a decade. Krista is a cultural leader for the World Economic Forum who has collaborated with the likes of Louis Vuitton and Lamborghini. Her work has been featured in both Christie’s and Sotheby’s and and has b...
Sep 11, 2023•56 min•Season 2Ep. 24
Julie Pacino is a photographer and filmmaker known for her upcoming feature-length psychological thriller, I Live Here Now . As an early adopter at the intersection of film and Web3, Pacino has used photography NFT projects, including “I Live Here Now” and “Keepers of the Inn” to crowdfund her film projects and bypass traditional Hollywood gatekeepers. As the eldest daughter of acclaimed actor Al Pacino, she has forged her own path in the film industry despite the pedigree of her family name. In...
Aug 30, 2023•42 min•Season 2Ep. 23
Zeneca is a creator, collector, and community leader who, prior to entering the NFT space, was a seasoned crypto trader and poker player. After becoming discouraged during the crypto bear market of 2018, Zeneca took a few years away from the blockchain, only to return during the early NFT boom as a thought leader and educator. One of Zeneca’s most significant contributions to the NFT space is ZenAcademy: a Discord-turned-YouTube channel centered around shared learning. He also created The 333 Cl...
Aug 23, 2023•37 min•Season 2Ep. 22
Sam is a New York based artist best known for his Luci series, comprised of digital paintings paired with written psalms, released as episodic pieces of an evolving story about the rediscovery of our most ancient human values in a post-historic world. The first Chapter released in October of 2021 and since then, the project has generated seven figures in primary sales and six-figure sales at major auction houses like Christie’s. Spratt recently announced The Monument Game, an interactive competi...
Aug 17, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 21
For the nft now podcast’s 100th episode, we welcome Beeple (Mike Winkelmann), one of the most well-known figures in the NFT space. He made history in selling Everydays: the First 5000 Days for $69.3 million at Christie’s in 2021, the first time a major auction house offered a fully-digital artwork. Since then, Beeple has remained at the forefront of the web3 space by collaborating with Madonna and Time Magazine, making guest appearances on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and selling his 10KT...
Aug 09, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 20
Fxnction is an expert trader, investor, and advisor in the NFT and crypto space. Previously known by the crypto alias Shill Nye, he is best known for being early to Solana NFTs, as well as his deep dives on crypto, AI, and different NFT communities. Fnxction has garnered a significant Twitter following of more than 120,000 due to his expertise in trading and offbeat humor. He is also the host of Crypto Chaos Hour, a new weekly Twitter space on @nftnow every Wednesday at 5:30 pm ET. In this episo...
Aug 02, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 19
Daria Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova are the founders of DressX, a leading digital fashion retailer with an app and NFT marketplace. Over the last three years, they’ve partnered with the likes of Bershka, H&M, DUNDAS, and Agoria. Recently, the brand raised a $15 million series A round led by Greenfield with participation from Slow Ventures, Warner Music, Red DAO, The Artemis Fund, and others. The funding will be used to focus on achieving interoperability of DressX’s digital fashion assets...
Jul 26, 2023•44 min•Season 2Ep. 18
Ed Balloon is an active Web3 artist, musician, and community leader within the NFT space. In an ecosystem that is often overrun by PFPs and memes, his stunning pieces showcase his unique existence as a prolific stop-motion NFT artist. To help uplift his fellow artists, 50 percent of the proceeds from his flagship Run Ed collection secondary sales go to The Ed Balloon Generational Wealth Fund, which collects work from Black and other under-represented artists in Web3. From colllaborations with Ti...
Jul 19, 2023•1 hr 31 min•Season 2Ep. 17
Trevor Owens is the CEO of Ninjalerts — an app for NFT trading alerts — and GP at Bitcoin Frontier Fund, where he invests in teams building new use cases for Bitcoin. Before this, Owens spent a decade coaching founders in the Lean Startup Methodology and authored The Lean Enterprise: How Corporations Can Innovate Like Startups. A leading voice in the Bitcoin Ordinals movement, he also hosts our Not Financial Advice Twitter Space every Tuesday and Thursday at 6:30 pm ET. Whenever a new ecosystem ...
Jul 12, 2023•57 min•Season 2Ep. 16
Kenny Schachter is an artist, curator, and University of Zurich professor who has been curating contemporary art exhibits for nearly 30 years. He writes a regular column for Artnet and has an upcoming project called “Open Book,” an ever-evolving digital book on Polygon, powered by Async Art. In addition, he’s written for various international publications including New York Magazine and The Times Magazine. A prominent Web3 figure, Schachter’s other projects include Pop Principle — a NFT-powered ...
Jul 05, 2023•50 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Michael Bouhanna is the Vice-President, Contemporary Art Specialist, and Head of Digital Art and NFTs at Sotheby’s. In June 2021, he facilitated Sotheby’s first curated NFT auction, Natively Digital, resulting in a total sale of $40 million across three editions. The sale included the first-ever NFT, Quantum by Kevin and Jennifer McCoy, and pieces by Snowfro, Dmitri Cherniak, Pak, Sarah Zucker, Fvckrender, XCOPY, Mad Dog Jones, Justin Aversano, and more. That same year, Bouhanna conceived, launc...
Jun 28, 2023•47 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Grant Yun is a breakdancer and med student who has emerged as one of the top-selling artists of the NFT space. While he insists that his entrance into the NFT space was a leap of faith, his Neo-Precisionist style has gained him numerous accolades in Web3. The high-profile sale of his piece “Cow” sparked a conversation about the utility and value of fine art NFTs. Some saw the piece as too simple to be worth 22 ETH (approximately $72,000 at the time), and others believed Yun’s creation to be one ...
Jun 21, 2023•53 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Valued at over $1 billion and with an estimated annual revenue of over $53 million, Ledger is one of the world’s most well-known and popular providers of hardware wallets. In May 2023, the company experienced a significant backlash around its Ledger Recover feature — a key recovery service that provides a backup of your seedphrase and allows you to restore your private keys. Many in the Web3 community claimed that the firmware update that enables the service to exist goes against Ledger’s longst...
Jun 14, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 12
Luca Netz (Luca Schnetzler) is the CEO of Pudgy Penguins, an 8,888 NFT collection of adorable cartoon penguins. In April 2022, Netz took up leadership of the project and community in the aftermath of its fall from grace at the hands of its founding team. Since acquiring the Pudgy brand, Netz has turned Pudgy Penguins into both a comeback story and a breakout project that extends far beyond the walls of Web3. In May 2023, the company introduced a physical line of plushies and figurines called Pud...
Jun 07, 2023•53 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Shira Lazar is an Emmy-nominated host, interviewer, and content creator covering social media, Web3, and digital wellness. Founding member of the Web3 community BFF and Co-Founder of the online yoga and meditation studio Peace Inside Live, Lazar has been a consistent proponent of mental health in Web3 — a dynamic often overlooked in the online-heavy ecosystem. She recently launched The JOMO Effect, a charity NFT collection featuring 40 artists with a focus on wellness and mental health. Partners...
May 31, 2023•52 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Shannon Snow is the COO of World of Women (WoW), one of the world’s leading mission-driven NFT brands celebrating representation, inclusion, and equity in web3 and beyond. Before WoW, Snow worked in big tech; she led U.S. Entertainment at Meta and spent more than a decade at Google building and leading teams. Although she only came on as WoW COO about a year ago, Snow was a holder of the project and passionate about the world of web3. World of Women was founded in July 2021, a time when there we...
May 24, 2023•45 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Andre Oshea is a 3D artist, animator, and musician who initially made a name in Web3 by partnering on NFT drops with Netflix, the Academy Awards, and the Grammys. Before finding his niche on the blockchain, Oshea cut his teeth through client work with Adult Swim, Snapchat, Tidal, Vogue, John Legend, and more. His unique style, which explores themes related to futurism, spirituality, new worlds, and aesthetic journeys, has continued to be tapped by many in the NFT space, with his solo pieces goin...
May 10, 2023•50 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Frank DeGods (Rohun Vora) founded the highly acclaimed DeGods and y00ts NFT projects. He is also the co-founder of DeLabs. After working on movie sets in his early teens, he was inspired to study film at UCLA but dropped out to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. He was accepted to the startup fund and program Y Combinator, where he raised $1.3 million. Soon after, he joined a coding boot camp and landed a job at Main Street, a software development company where he raised a $500-million valuation...
May 03, 2023•56 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Long a mainstay in the Bitcoin community, Udi Wertheimer recently embraced the world of NFTs via Bitcoin Ordinals with Taproot Wizards. On February 1, 2023, Wertheimer announced the Taproot Wizards project to the world by orchestrating the largest block and transaction in Bitcoin’s history. Ultimately, the project achieved the absolute maximum block size of 4MB — something many previously thought impossible. While this move was considered controversial to some, it fulfilled Wertheimer’s larger g...
Apr 26, 2023•52 min•Season 2Ep. 6
The co-founder and managing director for FirstLight, Megan Kaspar is renowned as a champion of digital fashion. In October 2021 she became the first person to wear NFT clothing while giving a video interview and was featured in Haute Living’s Miami issue wearing a digital outfit by luxury fashion designer Fendi. Kaspar took an early interest in crypto, investing in Bitcoin in 2011. She is now a founding member of the fashion-centered Red DAO, a group that purchased one of the most expensive fash...
Apr 19, 2023•58 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Sergio Silva, known in the NFT space as Sergito, is a prominent investor, collector, and thought leader who leveraged his background in traditional finance working at Goldman Sachs and Barclays into a thriving Web3 career. Hailed by the NFT community as a maximalist of Meebits NFTs and a curator of memes, Sergito currently acts as the Senior Director of Business Development at Fireblocks. As a founding member of the NeonDAO — a for-profit investment fund focused on building and promoting the ope...
Apr 12, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Meltem Demirors is the Chief Strategy Officer of CoinShares — a leading full-service digital asset investment and trading group — the former co-chair of the cryptocurrency council at the World Economic Forum, and “High Priestess” of CryptoDickButts. An established veteran of digital asset investing, Meltem draws on her substantial experience to accelerate growth and acceptance of the asset class. She is a trusted partner to investors and entrepreneurs navigating the digital asset ecosystem and o...
Apr 05, 2023•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 3
We’d like to give a special thank you to Atomic Form for helping bring our studio to life with their NFT displays. To learn more about Atomic Form, go to: https://atomicform.com Dave Krugman is a photographer and writer based in New York City who has embraced the NFT community wholeheartedly as a new platform for expression and education for his fellow creatives. Following the successful release of his collection DRIVE — taken over the course of 10 years of street photography — Krugman founded t...
Mar 29, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 2
We’d like to give a special thank you to Atomic Form for helping bring our studio to life with their NFT displays. To learn more about Atomic Form, go to: https://atomicform.com We’re kicking off Season 2 of the nft now podcast with Elise Swopes, a self-taught photographer and graphic designer who has used her business savvy to spin influencer marketing on Instagram into a full-fledged career. Heralded as one of the premier creators on the platform, Swopes has been finding new and innovative way...
Mar 01, 2023•55 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Web3 gaming promises to be a critical driver for mainstream NFT adoption over the next few years. To put the scale into perspective, the blockchain gaming market size is expected to grow from $4.6 billion in 2022 to $65.7 billion by 2027. Many of the biggest game developers — including Square Enix and Epic Games — are already working on titles with Web3 integrations. That said, it takes years for any game to be developed, let alone a AAA game. So the space will only heat up as these projects com...
Feb 22, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 81
For those just skimming the surface of Web3, it may seem like NFTs are mainly images — of everything from Bored Apes to colorful Chromie Squiggles. But NFTs come in many forms, including literary NFTs, which constitute one of the space's most exciting emerging use cases. Literary NFTs promise to be transformative for the careers of writers and the publishing industry. Two of the visionary women at the forefront of the poetry NFT movement are Ana María Caballero and Sasha Stiles, Co-Founders of t...
Feb 14, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 80
The crypto industry has changed significantly since Joseph Lubin helped found the Ethereum blockchain in 2015. Now focused on innovating as the CEO of ConsenSys, a leading Ethereum software company and the firm behind the popular MetaMask software wallet, Lubin has remained at the forefront of Web3 as the cultural shift it created continues to reorganize the creative and tech industries. Speaking with nft now Co-Founder and CEO Matt Medved during a fireside chat at nft now and Mana Common’s The ...
Feb 08, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 79
Web3 is ushering us into a new era of marketing where Web2 tactics just won’t cut it. Brands must adopt new strategies (and technologies) to stay competitive and relevant. In December 2022, a group of trailblazers took the stage at nft now’s The Gateway to discuss the state of Web3 marketing and how to successfully grow projects amid this changing landscape. For the panel, moderator and nft now co-founder Sam Hysell was joined by Amanda Cassatt, Avery Akkineni, Jennifer Styles, and Swan Sit. Cas...
Jan 31, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 78
