Why Brooklyn Nets Star Spencer Dinwiddie Co-Founded a Crypto Startup

or redefining finance concept. Yeah, I'm definitely starting to see quite a lot of more creative use cases. So there's a Barclay's note the other day that basically talked about using token ization 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 token izing future income streams from individuals, yeah,

token izing athletes. And this is also like are you 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 all like the idea of like owning, like the stream to a person's income or being able to invest in a person or a star has always been something kind of appeals to you, right, 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 Leavin Wants described this our Bloom columnists Colleague Ones described this as like the classic

sort of college like late night dorm um intellectual expercise model. Yeah, well, you know, like you know, 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? Tracy? This is me. This is so much more than dorm room talking about. This is this is this is one other thing you know we're talking about, like the idea of like betting on a person or buying a sort of a stake and

someone that you're really into. But uh, did you pay attention to the whole like NBA top Shot phenomenon a few months ago. 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 n b A. I am not an expert in the space by any stretch of the imagination, So go ahead and tell me what happened. Well, you know, you're excuses also

that you're in Hong Kong. But a few months ago, there was this huge upset should with these like digital sort of like blockchain based basketball cards, and people are paying like tens of thousands of dollars for essentially like a playing card like of of a Star dunking or something like that. It's like a video. It kind of looked like a gift but 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 as a proof of concept, people are just like really excited about the idea of like using token ization, digital collectibles,

all kinds of new ways for fans to express their support. Right. Well, if you think about you know, we've spoken a little bit about n f T s on the show you think about n f T s, there's 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, base cars, Yeah, exactly right. Well, I'm very excited about our guests because we have of an NBA star on the podcast today. He is the

co founder of the app Galaxy. He is a star player for the Brooklyn Nets. We're going to be speaking with Spencer Dinwoody as well as Solos, also the co founder, and they are you know, working on projects related to all this blockchain, interacting with stars, tokenization, new ways for fantasy to interact with the game. So I'm very excited about speaking to both Spencer and Solo. So thank you both for coming on. Thank you for having us. I

really appreciate it was on to be here. Thank you so Um Spencer, I mean, actually, Spencer, I'm sort of like familiar You've always been into like crypto stuff, or I know that like a lot of athletes are getting into it a long time ago, but I feel like you've actually been way ahead of the curve on this stuff, like thinking about blockchain and cryptocurrencies would get you interested

in this world. Yeah, no, I mean I was. I was fortunate enough to get into a big coin and other cryptocurrencies and early seventeen, you know, a buddy of mind the finance industry, uh, you know, told me about and unfortunately I didn't get in. Uh yeah, I know, I wish I had it. You know, you know, might be retired right now, honestly. Uh. But but no, I mean I was fortunate up to get in seventeen. Um,

my experience about the rise and the crash. Um, it's sparked kind of an education process, and I wanted to learn about it. And as my my pursuit of knowledge start started to open up a new world. Um, I started just trying to apply it to you know 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, uh, solo is is primed and poised to to lead us to heights that you know, no,

no consumer practice really senior in the black chain space. UM. So maybe this is a good time for you to introduce yourself. What's the relationship here and and how did you get involved in the project? Yeah? Sure, most definitely. So my name is Solosi, say, co founder here at Calaxy. UM. Yeah, so Spencer. Spencer is a very interesting guy. So he's actually one of a you know, a close friendly friend of mine. As you guys all know, he was one of the first people, if not the first, actually to

tokenize himself. UM. And so he's actually you know, a good family friend of mine. My brother actually put us in contact a number of years ago at this point, UM, you know, mentioning that you know, whatever it is that Spencer aspired to do with his contract and tokenizing himself, UM, you know, and all of those conversations didn't really make much sense. But UM it made equally no sense to

whatever it is that I did for work. So I was a securization investment banker previously, UM and so we started having those conversations about what the future of UM fan engagement looks like, but also the idea of montensation and democratizing you know, oneself, UM in order to you know, uh, you know, profit off of you know, you're like this in a way that you can you know previously UM. And so that's kind of you know, the impetus of

what Calaxy the modern project is um. You know, we're really excited to you know, take a take a stab at changing you know, the creator economy and changing uh, you know, using crypto um as a means to get there. Spencer, what don't you or either one of you really? But what do you sort of describe the basic galaxy? What is it? What is the model? Yeah? Sure, so calaxy stands for the creator's galaxy and essentially we are at

one stop shop for a creator to monetize themselves. So if you think about the creator economy currently, there is a number of different social media platforms that exist out there, and you know the power of influence and the growing

of the creator middle class. You know, nowadays you can walk on the street, um, you know of New York and walk by somebody that has you know, two hundred thousand followers that's looking to monetize and connect those fans, and so you know, those guys are often found exactly right, 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 for them. Um, you know, so a you know, a celebrity chef might monetize their fan base differently than a star running back, like differently you know, monetize their selves than a reality TV star. And so Calaxi is meant to host all

of that all of one place. And then we obviously have the crypto and you know, blockchain architecture to be able to benefit, um, you know from things like entity s and really helping you know, introduce that to you, um, the masses in a palatable way. 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 to you know, what

a basketball player would do or a reality TV start. Yeah, most certainly, so like to to 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 um

in order to buy you know, Spencer Dean Woodi's token. Um, you know you would buy that and you would be able to redeem it for an interaction with Spencer, so be a video call, FaceTime call, you know, directly within an app. Um, you know, whether it's access to exclusive content, you name it. You know you're able to essentially use that as a form of currency to redeem those, um,

you know, interactions. So it's really monetizing someone's time versus kind of their income screens, right Like, this is distinctly different than you know, securitizing your own you know, NBA contract for example. UM. You know that's something that speaks to you know, the masses of influencers, right like, not everybody is signed to the Brooklyn Nets for a luquidid deal. We all wish we were, but we're not. But you know, somebody, like a celebrity ship might want to offer cooking classes.

They might want to offer you know, you know different you know products that makes sense for their communities. And so in our platform, you're ablet's turn on and off different things that makes sense for your fan bases. UM. And then obviously you're also able to set your pricing, which makes sense. So UM, you know, if you know you set your price at when you know at one point and you know more, you know, competitive influencers. That's

very similar to you. And you know, in a perfect market, you know you might lose your fans to go there, etcetera. But um, you know, we're all about community building and all those things, so um, you know, quite honestly, it's usually not a zero sum game. But that's how the

act works and how the ecosystem functions. Especially you know, you've been in the league since so uh seven years and from a sort of technology social media and obviously anything related to cryptocurrency, that is a lifetime, just seven years. Can you talk a little bit just about like how the fan player relationship has been changed by technology over that time. Oh man, it's funny. I mean I feel like basketball, the entertam industry, technology, it's kind of like

dog years. You know, everything's just so accelerated. I mean, to give you a basketball dotch. I mean when I got in the NBA, a lot of teams still had too big in it, you know what I mean, Like it was right right before the kind of Golden state transitioned. Uh, you know, shooting threes and there was still a big question marks on if you could win the game shooting threes.

I mean, now we're talking about you know, NBA Top Shot and then they're being you know, virtue v our components, you know, to to the NBA and it's viewing experience. I mean, obviously you've seen through social media where platforms like Instagram had become content distribution on a wide scale, not just for individuals and creators, but but also for you know, these brands as well. You know, the NBA does a great job of sending out Instagram posting and

videos and things like that promoting games. I mean, we we played in Milwaukee Bucks tonight, and I'm sure if you go to the NBA's the timeline right now, there's gonna be honest highlights and Katie highlights. Obviously capitalizing on YouTube and and and having highlights that 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 you know, also having a shoot the Twitter Live show that I participated with Taylor Roads and Channing Fry and Isaiah Thomas and stuff like that, where you're where you're getting some of that live streaming and commentating from uh you know, not not just the the telecast crew, but also some more maybe familiar personalities and maybe arms and length personalities. Uh you know,

like I said, like a Channing fry. All these things that I've I've referenced are just part of that dramatic shift.

And I think, you know, as these uh social media's and as uh these technologies come that that decreased the barrier between fan and and and player or fan and product necessarily, I guess, and I know it sounds terrible to call us products, but you know, the content that we produced, the basketball game we play is is like weaving a one of a kind of you know, our piece every night, and that's what the fans want to be attest to and a part of you know, it's

all about kind of decreasing the friction for for the fan to be able to interact and consume the content that they love. Well, this is something that I want 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 you know, 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. Yeah, I mean, I think to sell those points. When he kind of referenced each creator, each demographic, each subsection of

this entertainment industry has their ways to monetage. You know, TikTok stars are going to do a pletely different than a YouTuber. It is gonna do a different than a game, or it's gonna do a different in bassement player um

or member. Like all the kintent that I produced still 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 small endorsements, right like this this summer I should sign you know, a contract that's north of let's call it sixty million dollars, right if I could pick up another one to two million dollars and endorsements or whatever it is a year, it still wouldn't just it would take me thirty years,

you know, to satisfy my you know, abbreviated NBA contract. So it wouldn't make sense and be nonsensical for me to start posting elaborate or disingenuous or you know, 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 wanted to be authentic, and so if you look at my social media, specific my Instagram, it's typically me working out as I'm coming back from a c I kind of showing my progress.

So it's very authentive in my life that I live every day, you know, multiple work scouts, uh, at different times and and maybe you know, you might see a smoothie or something like that because I try to eat healthy things of that nature. But you know, I can't necessarily, uh, you know, it just would be remissing me to post like alcohol in large quantities or something like that. Um. And I mean I like wine, but I don't drink obviously hard liquor and large quantities and things like that.

But I just couldn't do that and still expect to maintain the type of conducive image that that represents kind of the shield well at the same time, so each person and that's the beauty of social media. It's it's such an individual experience that you kind of have to

attack it in the manage that's best for your life. Yeah, and I think on that point too, like you know, just to try and men see we've uniquely identified that in terms of like our broader vision for the Calaxy platform, and that you know, each creator like this, like Sensor mentioned and like you know, 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 to see the future where you can not

offer securitization as that potential your you know, liquidity event for you know, an NBA player or an NFL player, etcetera. Like having the rails set to be able to do

something like that might make sense. And then you know, obviously, you know 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, you know, the need for monetization is you know quite great in that set, you know, in that creator middle class, like right, like you know, to Spencer's point, you know, he's just talking

about signing you know, lucrative NBA contracts. But there are people you know that got a million followers that you know, really need to know monetize because that's their lifely, right, Like you know, Spencer makes money playing basketball, but like you know, some of these people don't necessarily make money out and you know a ton of followers on Instagram and so their price, um, you know per you know, unit of effort or or you know, however you want

to think about it is probably lower, right, And that's the beauty of our happen. You know, setting your price, you know, you're able to really take ownership and talk

and like have autonomy over what your time is worth. Right, Um, And that's something that's you know, really important necessary when you think about how you know, traditional legacies, so show media platforms exist where you have you know, tip talks or youtubees are bigger, you know, larger organizations are deciding how much these people are worth based off of the

follower accounting traffic that they bring. Um, you know, the whole idea of centralization and defy 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 their time as you see fit is you know, really the key. I think this is super helpful for me and Tracy as we think about sort of balancing social

media against our sixty million dollar contract. Something that I'm really interested in is like I'm curious because you know, like Tracy and I, you know, I'm forty. I don't know all Tracy is. But you know, it's like we didn't grow up with all this stuff, things like tokens and buying cryptocurrency is like related to a star. It's

like still like very like awkward for me. What is your experience with like this sort of like the 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. You guys are probably older generation, but I don't think it's actually that um, you know, unfamiliar

for you guys. You guys traded basketball cards, baseball cards, things like that, which is you know, a kin to top shot Oie bonds came out, you know, a long long time ago um. And that's something that obviously my tokenization is similar to. I think people throw around the word cryptola, throwing on the word token, and people get a little bit gunshoting 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 black team really do? It gives a trustless trust later, 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 their hashgraft blockchain it self. I take out the you know, counterparty risk in that sense, right, because the ledger is the baseline and and something that I know to be true, right because it's been it's had verified trade x for

however many number of years, etcetera, etcetera. So it's more so utilizing the trust layer, the speed right to handle these kind of exco 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, um in ways that I thought it's solved issues and solve problems, right Like Bowie Bonds was something that 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 financial obligation, but they want to Hunderson control. Well, how are you going to

get that? It has to be from the fans. No other billionaire's gonna say, hey, I give my money, but I don't want to board. See, I don't want executive decision making. I don't want to look into the financials. I don't want to That's not gonna happen, right Like, but fans will buy in because of their emotional talk of the experience. It's the same type of thing with contracts and other ill liquid assets such as intellectual property or time for example. You know things that are hard

to distract value from. We want to kind of put it on this blockchain. Right, So you take out the fear of not trusting this person, and then you you you set the playing field level and you say, hey, if you want to interact or you want to buy a piece of the team or you want to buy a piece of a contract or whatever it is. And we understand some of these things are uh securities and

some are non security. So I'm not saying Calxum handles all this right, but just in terms of blockchain is application, that's the way we viewed it and the way we kind of go about applying the technology and scaling Caxium to the future. And obviously, of any of these ideas, the Caxie doesn't do if somebody systems to the podcast take it wrong way, and I hope you make you know the dollars with it um. So, 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 um a gym. I think it was like a New York sports club gym or something like that, and there is 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 the 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 it, You've given me the sort of um the case for crypto here, but there are other platforms doing this that do not use the technology and seem to be achieving the same thing. Yeah. So I'll take the first piece in terms of broad vision, and then I'll dedicate the solo for the comprehensiveness of Calasi.

You know. On that note, when you talk about looking into the future and 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 innate the special I use this analogy a lot when when discussing this kind of broader topic. If you took the Brooklyn Nets lego and you dropped it in the middle of you know, times square or wherever people probably stop people take pictures. Um, it would

be somewhat of an event. It would kind of be a little you know, like, oh what's going on here, But it wouldn't stop traffic. Right if Lebron James right now tweet it out, Hey, I'll be at Times Square at you know, twelve 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, whether they have to take their picture from you know, ten yards away, or they actually get to meet them and have a conversation.

Whatever it is, Everybody showing up, and so it speaks to what's actually special. Like a long time ago, people thought of this more in the uh you know college way right where there's all this uh you know, school pride and program tradition, and they thought it kind of applied to the to the professional realm. But it doesn't.

You know, there's a there's a reason why McDonald's goes to a Lebron or Katie or whatever ask them to endorse their food, you know what I mean, because people want you know, that that that access to that person, Like the Golden Arches are nice, but I'm much try to talk to Katie, you know what I mean. So you know that's where it's going. It's not going to stop. And so you know, on that note of sale shifted

to two solo one black cockxy help staff. Yeah, I mean I think you know to to figure back off that you and like you know, I think in general, the answer has a lot to do with the idea

of just customizability for each person's you know, intended audience. Right, So, like if you think about Cameo, right, like, you know, I love Spencer to death, but like you know, he may not be the type of person that makes a killing off that platform, right based off of who it's or even better, you know Patriot, right, he's not a content producer. He's not gonna have and you know in you know, in exclusive you know, documentary series or documentries

like some athletes do. But like for him personally, that's not how he spends his free time, right, Like, so in order to monetize that or like the reward of you know, being on a platform like that, that becomes a lot of work, right, Like when you were saying, you know, at the beginning, you know, you want to minimize the friction, right, Like, we keep coming to the same idea, right, you know, take that example and apply it to you know, an Instagram model, or to apply

it to a you know, a YouTuber, 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 definitely is a need for a platform that can meet the needs of them, and they all exists in some way, shape or form. There are a lot of unique interest gacies about Galaxy

that don't you know, you can't really find elsewhere. But like the idea of doing a video message, right like, are doing you know calls or you know, exclusive content that does exist as to your point um, but you know, in order to you know, 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, you know, depending on you know, who you are as

a person. If you're a YouTuber and you've got seventy five thousand followers, like I'm sure of those seventy five thousand dollars, 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 when the rock is offering the same thing, right, And so like I think when you think about like our platform, you create this sort of ecosystem, not to mention, you know, the idea of the added benefit of integration of blockchain technology, and you think about n f t s and you think about the idea of ultimately tokenizing a person and having them listed on in exchange one day, like that future and that architecture is so innately important and like

our d NA, can you just talk briefly about your technology choice? What platforms blockchains did you use and what is the what was the thinking behind it? You know, so when when building this platform and understanding that to kind of future proofing in a sense, that's why we use blockchain. I mean, you spoke about the cameos, and

you know only fans, patreons, etcetera. They don't, but you know, we we view a you know, an ecosystem and environment where not only are you showcasing n f t s, but also you're gonna have kind of fluidity of these these tokens in terms of the secondary market structure. You know, and to do that efficiently and effectively, blockchain was was going to be something that would would greatly help us.

So with that being said, you know, we started talking layer ones and looking at which one has had the most robust infrastructure to support that. You know, obviously Ethereum comes up first because it's it's by far the biggest smart contract layer one. They could do smart contracts, obviously, but we we knew that crypto kitties had once kind of throbbed in at working and fees were very high.

So you know, that wasn't gonna be appealing because if we were bringing on people such as myself, Razcue Elliott or you know, we just got a TikToker. Uh, you know, excuse me, I don't know if TikToker is the right normal clature, but somebody that is famous on TikTok has about eight million followers on TikTok you know today we just signed him up to Uh, if we bring all those followers, right, we didn't want to throttle the the

app nor the etherory of network. We didn't want feat of skyrocket and becoming usable, so you know, we figured that probably wasn't gonna work in its current State. So looking at other layer ones, whether it be Tesso's algorand um just just several flow wasn't quite out of uh you know, it's baita yet, So we we didn't choose them, although I'm invested there. Uh, and we still don't have

their hashgraph. The reason for that, if you're looking at their hashgraph, they have you know, a council with fortunate companies that we had to pitch and get a grant. So you know, there's there's incredible reputation Chris management to be aligned with, you know, people like Google and and LG and IBM and d L A. Piper and Deutsche Telecom, uh, to name a few. On top of that, they're they're kind of considered the next generation blockchain. They technically aren't

blockchain shipping. They actually are hashgraph technology literally. UM. The only one that comes to uh, you know, a complete finality Asyncer in his busy team fault tolerant UM. So it's the highest level of security. That 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 they that they're networks just out racially robust and so you know, when when when choosing a layer one, like why not align yourself with some of the top companies in the world, Like, you know, it's it's a it's an honor to for when their hashcraft puts out you know, their partner's list to see Google, IBM, Coxi,

you know what I mean, Like, it's pretty killer. And granted our balance sheet doesn't necessarily look like there's as of now, but to be in that same breath at this early stage, you know, is both humbling and instrument and aspiring. So you know, for the to get their standpard approval and all that stuff, it seems like a no brainer for us. 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 you know, 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? Yeah, I mean I think from my side of things, what

you know, what we what we discovered. I guess like from our side of things is that you know, there are you know, there is a big need and and a big want actually to to understand this technology. Right Like, we're not the only ones and Spencer being you know, one of the 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 you know, we're actually you know, really close as Matt James, the most recent Bash learning that he you know, it's 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, you know, 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, um, you know on was creating a product that was out of something that made sense and something that wasn't going to confuse you know, the average person you know in Middle America a right, like when it comes to creating something that, um, you know, is highly functioning, but at the same time, you know, something that's 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, but at the same time you don't know how it works. It just works, right, UM. 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. Um. 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 we know path to be able to kind of help educate and you know, teach um and bring crypto you know, very similarly to the you know, to our partner, you know, to uh you know, to the Flow project, and you know Rohan is you know,

an advisor to our project, the CEO of Japper Labs, um, you know, in their whole ethos about kind of bringing

crypto ites and the masses through games. You know, very similarly, we're trying to do you know, a very similar thing here, um with creator economies and social media and so um, you know, from our side of things, it's you know, we've learned a lot um, you know, and we've been able to iterate and continue to grow and build a product that's you know, truly and organically felt like it's been built by the creators, you know, center and influencer himself.

He goes in Brooklyn nets like behind this, we had a lot of you know, 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 on board 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 cohord that we started with um, you know, helped us you know last

as beginning points. So the last year has obviously been incredible for all things crypto. Obviously, the big coins had an incredible year, and top Shot became a phenomenon. Uh spencer. You know, we were talking about the beginning. You're you're very early on all that stuff. I'm curious, like what you've seen, like in the locker room and so forth as other players have like do they turn to you to like help help them like understand and navigate all

this navigate all this stuff. Uh yeah, a little bit, I think. Um, for me personally, I'm not gonna lie. It's it's much better being asked questions and being laughed at. Seen. I was definitely laughed for sure. Laughed, sure, for sure laugh that. But no, in all seriousness, I think, Um, you know, overall, since I've been in the league, I think people have spoken about the shift that's happened since I would say probably to go on in ten and now on we got it in the fourteen, but the

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 brilliant guys, um um that are that are looking to form generational wealth, whether in whatever avenue that is what it's real estate, traditional you know, stocks and equities and things, or now in emergent technologies. And I know BC was kind of the wave right before blockchain really kind of took over. Um, So it's been fun to get asked those questions. UM.

I actually shy away from from offering explicit advice. I mean I discussed my partners all the time. Yeah, I discussed my partners all the time. As financial journalists, this is one area that maybe we could actually genuine related. Tracy and I have a lot of experience and being asked financial questions from friends and family to buy anything, to which we have absolutely no good advice. We're just like you buy an index fund or something like that.

I tell them, I tell them, you know, I personally invested in bigcoin. I tell them that my my platform is built on hash draft. Two of my main partners are are Flow and chain Link, 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 gonna be invested with my partners, and and saying I'm gonna support a

bigcoin is no no secret at all. So you know that's what I'll give you. Um, if you want to talk about the big picture and where I think distributed technology, distributed ledger technology can kind of take markets in a comprehensive fashion, I definitely have to do that and I can talk to her off all day, but but explicit investment advice I definitely shot away from 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'm

ad at me. Yeah, that's good advice, and that that's that's exactly what I think anytime someone asked me a question. I just don't want to cost anyone their money now, and then you're not welcome back for Thanksgiving dinner. Um, there was something I wanted to ask you that Joe and I sort of alluded to in the intro, and it was this idea of, I guess the moral dimensions of selling some sort of financial interests that is tied to people. Um. Obviously, when you say a sentence like that,

it tends to make people squeamish. And I remember after the two thousand eight financial crisis, when there was so much criticism of the process of securitization 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 you know 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 to mention of all of this. Yeah, I mean, on that note, I think you're test on something that's good. Content creation is much more prevalent. But but the two factors that I think make this an

actual functioning ecosystem. And this really has nothing to do with technology, but it's the reason why, like it's gonna be easier for me to secure something versus like a college student. You need somebody that's has, you know, semi public to public cash flows so that it's not a situation where they can really high and divert money and try to screw their investors. Because you know, in more normal situations that wouldn't be too difficult to try to

try to do. But if you know, obviously I'm in the NBA and my contract is public, that 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 some entire contract and then if I play really bad, you know, nothing matters, and so I can take an injury and just sit down and whatever it is, and you know, and just put not only myself, put investors in kind of a you know,

less the advantageous position. It has to be a situation where, um, 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 the athlete to continue to play well and win games and do right and and all that stuff. So yeah, I mean I think from my side of things too, like as

a you know, the securitization banker in a previous life. Um, you know, I think when you think about kind of the unit recession of two thousand and eight versus kind of now, I mean, I think, you know, there's a lot of different points, you know, places that you can point to, uh, you know, where you think that there are inequities in terms of the education level that you know,

people might have investing in these sorts of things. And you know, obviously this is some thing that you know we've touched upon, you know immediately in day one, is this something that Calexy is really looking to you know, commercialize as a business. Not exactly, Um, you know, it's definitely a part of our bigger macro picture that center you know has put together and his thoughts and stuff.

But when you think about, um, you know, just general education, right, Like the barriers to entry to trading are couldn't be lower, right, Like people are getting you know, five ten dollars to open up brokerage accounts and start trading on different platforms, and you know there are a lot of people what do you think about like game stop and you know AMC and different things that you saw this year, and you know, the idea of you know, people a wanting

to take on their own personal finances. You know, twenty thirty years ago, it wasn't the case that the average Joe was traded, um. But you know that's not the case now and that's distinctly different. And so you know to your point, you know talking about you know, securitization

and how it's had this stigma around it. Um. You know, there are a lot of different areas within the financial industry that you know, obviously require a little bit more you know, education around the ways in which that you can use this you know access for you know quite great wealth creation and building over time. But um, you know, when you think about the idea of you know, securitizing a person, you know that ultimately, you know, is the is the way in which that you think about the future.

Right Like if you're 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 law especially you know, as Spencer mentioned, if you have public you know cash flows because you know, outside of that, there are people you know taking out I can't remember, you know, it might have been a year ago, it might have been

a couple of years ago that since they're not this conversation, but there are you know, people that take out egregious loans to be able to you know cash advance their lives, right Like they'll take out loans that you know crazy, you know, you know, when there could be a lot more you know, efficient ways to to to finance your life, especially if you you know, have the you know, the

validity behind it. Spencer, you might if I just ask you if you general not specific blockchain related questions, like real quickly, a little quick like lightning round of other questions, how would you summarize why it feels like NBA is just on such a better job. So many people I know are so into the NBA. They like talk about the NBA, They like talking about the players of the NBA, like yourself, in a way that I don't see with

other leagues. Like what do you think it is? That's like the NBA has really like figured out something culturally. I think the NBA has embraced emerging technologies UMAN and this is a complete non blockchain techt thing I'm talking about, like streaming of YouTube highlights making easily accessible. I think you know they didn't put they didn't try to block

like the copyrights USA. So you see all these comedian things happen on your highlights, and the shoulding this content and repersing this content, and so you try to be fans right, especially in uh, you know, foreign countries when it's it's hard to watch the games live. I think another component of basketball that that makes it very attractive to fans. You can see our faith, we seem like human beings. Um, this is uh no shot to football

anything like that. But obviously they have to wear howmets we're protected, right, But you know, you don't necessarily know the person behind the mask unless he's the quarterback. Like quarterbacks take off there comes all the time, so you know him. But other than that, I couldn't tell you the linement if you walk down the street, the fact that he's probably you know, outrageously you know musket right.

Basketball players are recognizable, not just in terms, not just from the standpoint of seeing our Facebook also obviously statue you see the sixth stight person walking down the street and his face is familiar or probably think he's a you know, a brooken net player. So so just thinking that nature allowed a lot of innvati scale just familiarity and fans minds, um allowing players to be more vocal about you know, issues, whether it be uh, you know,

social or economics or you know whatever it is. So so that kind of broad ranging where you have outspoken people you see they're facing the recognizable um. Allowing your content to be repurposed and used for fun, for business, for whatever it is. It just creates a kind of wildfire type of distribution. So what do you do? You mentioned, if someone sees you walk around in 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? Oh? I mean before I started playing, well, I mean I would just kind of I mean, I wear sweats, hoodie, you know, stuff like that every day. So I'm a very chill person and were vans every day before I started playing. Well, you know, people might like catch a glance and then if I make eye contacted, like are you I mean, I don't know, maybe you are, and you can kind of keep walking and stuff like that.

Now obviously you haven't, haven't played better and things like that. You know, I'm more immediately recognizable. But you know, in that respect, I take it in strike and I actually enjoy it just from the standpoint off. I understand where 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 app and going through the tokenization and exploring entertainment isstueing and learning

how the NBA was built. You know, on a non profit system at all, just a bunch of different things. You understand, at the end of the day, fan make this thing work. If fans spend their money, we all have jobs. If they don't, then we don't know. What I'm saying is that kind of drives that simple? Like from an economics perspective, No bid, there's beuying an NBA team if it wasn't a revenue generating entity. At the

end of the day, that's where it is. Whether whether the stock goes up or you actually a cash for a positive one of them has to happen for for a being there to want to, you know, dive into this business. And so you know, I try to be as uh cordial, as inviting and as appreciative to the fans because they allow me to live it like that that I live it, you know that. And as long a thing approached me with common curacy and respect, you know, then then why would I approach them like there're any

less of that same human being? We're all humans. Great? Great answer. Final final question were recording the June seventh, As you mentioned your team, the Nets 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? It's tough. I've had, you know,

two main injuries in my life. One was a c on my left knee, was my right knee. You know, when when you when you're on the sideline, 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, with the energy in this playoff atmosphere. Uh, you know, the age to play has gone to you know,

through the roof. It's it's it's at ten times what it was during the regular season. Just keeping up with the guys now now to the level that's like me, I need to get back out there. It's it's a need at this point. I just at wance, so you know, I missed it in and I can't wait to play some All right, Well that was that was fantastic. H Spencer Solo. Thank you both so much for taking the time. Fascinating project, and uh appreciate you coming out outline. Thank you,

thank you appreciate it. Thanks so much, guys, Trazy, 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 something we've under explored. I guess the thing that stood out to me was just how much, um 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 sponsor sponsorship deal on the side. But it just feels like we're in a

whole new at a whole new level in many respects. Yeah, I guess what I mean by like, 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 famed in 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 you know, 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 um A A a celebrity, like is actually like a pretty huge use case for all this stuff that probably doesn't get talked about enough in that context. Yeah, and actually people like to talk about tokenization while 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 a d R s were 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 is funny, like I guess because I'm like, you know, old, and like it's hard for me to like wrap my head around like n f t s,

but like what is the difference? Roy between an n f T and of like a basketball card, Like it's really not the different, Like it's like when I was young, Like I could understand basketball cards or baseball cars, but this is a piece of cardboard. Yeah. The other thing I liked about that conversation that it was actually the discussion of applying the technology to a specific use case, because I feel like we don't hear enough about that. So this idea that you know, they couldn't do Bitcoin

for obvious reasons. They looked at ethereum, but they were worried about the costs 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 five thousand word posts about this idea that you can't look at crypto as a monolith because different technologies,

different cryptocurrency slash tokens, have different use cases. Yeah, it is interesting to like I remember the crypto kitties phenomenon in and that just like brought the entire network to a halt. And so you do see like this use is like, well, let's just use a different chain that's maybe more optimized for some other use case. So I don't be fascinating to see where it goes. And I feel like especially 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. Well, he's definitely a perfectly placed for that effluence 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. Yes, I think that's the only thing we have in common. Probably, all right, Um, shall we leave it there. Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at

Tracy Alloway and I'm Jill wi Isn't Though. You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart. Follow our guests on Twitter. Spencer din Witty, He's at as din Witty Underscore, as well as Solos He's at Solo Sees, and follow our producer on Twitter, Laura Carlson, She's at Laura M. Carlson. Followed the Bloomberg head of podcast, Francesco Levi at Francesco Today, and check out all of our podcasts at Bloomberg. Onto the handle at podcasts. Thanks for listening, O