A Chat With Robin Schmidt

coin Bureau Podcast. My name is Guy and I have a very special guest with me today. Now you may have heard me in the past mentioned one of my favorite YouTube channels of all, the Defiant, and we are very lucky to have today Robin Schmidt, the man, the face behind the Defiant. Robin is a content creator extraordinaire. The work that he has done not only with The Defiant but is now moving on to do elsewhere is just incredible and very lucky to have him on the

line today. So Robin, thank you so much for joining us. Oh that's a very very kind I mean, you probably the face behind in front of something, but really taught you. I'm the Assine which which I'm also fine because I really did mess about and everything else. But I mean, I would like to say that, um, from one content credit to another, like what you've managed to accomplish with Combia is impressive. I couldn't do what you do and I couldn't do it the way that you do it. UM,

So you know, admiration is mutually my friend. Thank you. Well, I mean right back at you as well, because I remember we've we're we're all big fans of of of the work that you do here. And I remember we've watched so many of your videos and just gone, how are they doing that? That's extraordinary? And you know obviously because I think, well we'll talk about this in a moment hopefully, but you have, UM, you have a filmmaking background. That's been your Is it safe to say that's been

your whole career? Yeah, no, that's very safe to say. For twenty three years. I think film has been the love of my life. It was the thing I grew up on and it was the thing that I thought wasn't for me when I was growing up because I was a musician. Originally I played the violin, the piano, I led orchestras, and I was a singer of chorister in Westminster Cathedral, one of the foremost boys choirs in the world. So that was the training that I had.

And then around about the age of sixteen seventeen, I realized that I just had enough of it. I've been performing in front of audiences up until that point, and I just hadn't ever met a girl, and I hadn't done sports and all these things that were just like, I want to do that. And I also realized that like the world of classical music was just not where I wanted to go, and the film just seemed completely remote. It seemed the thing that other people did, very expensive,

very difficult to break into. But it just the thing that I was determined I was going to get into. And basically I became a content creator using the same tools and things that people use now. Just back in the days when it was Mac cos nine and you had a little DV camcorder that you plug into an

iMac and that was how you record video. But fast forward to where we are now, and yeah, I've spent a long time looking at stuff through a lens and then editing it in such a way as to make it entertaining, so you pick up a few tricks along the way, that's for sure. Yeah, and and so how did you how did you kind of make the move from from filmmaking, How did you how did you discover crypto? How did you get to the defiance as it were? It's a really sad story, right. There's there's this phrase

which is nothing is more destructive than mediocrity. And I know it's kind of a weird thing to say, but like I was moderately successful for most of my career. You get these little moments where you're like, I'm about to break out and I'm about to be successful. And I never maximized those moments for various different reasons. I think one of it was a little bit to do with fear not trusting that I was good enough because the thing, like I said, I think I'm really really

good at his music, but I don't do music. And it's weird because that's the thing that I naturally am the best at, but I don't do it. I do film instead. So there's always been this feeling of imposter syndrome when it comes to film, that it's someone else is much better than me, and I'm simply meaning on this thing that I had and using it for film.

And so all these little kind of periods in my life where I won awards and I started to get openings, you know, into bigger productions everything else, I kind of fudged them. The last one I had was about ten years ago where we suddenly blew up went viral and we were making silly music video skits around the plot

of east Enders. So we take the plot of east Enders that week and then in like turn into a rap song, shoot the rap video, but do it like to make it look like the original, so we do like pop it like it's heart and it'd be and why being a studio and like, but it was the plot of EastEnders, and we got featured on radio while we got featured on Fern Cotton if you know Fern Cotton, Ferns the one um. But playing music videos on the radio is so bizarre. And Saturday of this blew up.

But I just had my first child. I'd also just shot a feature film, and so my wife was like, it's time for you to kind of be a dad and a husband and like probably be at home. So I just kind of stopped and I moved to Holland with my wife, and I was doing really well as a commercials director. But I was shooting vacuum cleaners and coffee cups and like plenty of budget everything else. But I was just so bored and starting to really get to that point where like you reached a certain age

and like I should be more successful than this. I believe I'm better than this. What has gone wrong? And I was just poor, broke and just trying to figure out what to do in my life. And I was like, well, what I need to do is I need to completely reinvent myself and shoot a completely new bunch of work because the word that I've done but previously doesn't represent me. It's not honest, and I need to show what I

can do. But problem is, filmmaking is expensive. So I thought I need to find a way to solve the problem of money, because I thought not having any money was my problem. What I have come to realize through crypto is that money itself is the problem. But that's a whole other story. But it was just a random discussion with my boss on the way down to a shoot in Belgium where he was talking about this cryptocurrency the board. He was like, oh my god, look it's gone.

Whoa Jesus. I was like, cryptocurrency? What is that? And then then that was early two thousand and seventeen, that cryptocurrency was eight and he was basically able to pay off his entire mortgage. And I was like, well that sounds like fun. Let's see what this is all about. Fell down the rabbit hole of that and just kind of looked at it and said this, this entire industry is It is about storytelling. Everything is a story that one person tells another in this very kind of linear fashion.

It's oral storytelling. Someone on Twitter says, oh, this is going to go up, this is going to do this, and everyone just buys it or figures out their own version of that story, or they tell themselves the story,

which is I have done a good thing here. I have bought this token and it will make me rich, or I'm absolutely sure that this is a good investment because this guy told me so, or you know, I have done my homework because I have learned how to be an analyst, and therefore this is a good investment.

We're all just telling stories. The Friends Center, So, well, what I was also really kind of kind of I found really weird was that no projects were any good at telling their own story, and that's probably because they didn't even know what that story was. If you're a layer one, you literally are everything. You're just a blank piece of paper essentially on which you can do anything with.

So how do you tell that story? So it's very, very slowly I started to get to a position was like, well, I know enough about this space where maybe there's a room for someone like me to tell these kinds of stories. And the rest was who would I do it with? Where would I do it? So I was still working shooting commercials at this point and just just having all the creativity just bled out of me because like it's particularly in bene Lux, like bene Lux's Belgium, Holland Luxembourg,

it's just boring. Everything is like we have to run this decision via the team in Germany. I actually know we have to run this decision by the team in China. It's like why, like why why why can people in China not see trees out of their windows? Well, because there are no trees in China, but that's not true. There are cheese. But this is an air filter product. So you're imagine someone living in a fifty you know, fifty story high block of flats. They don't see trees,

so they cannot be trees outside the window. I was like, okay, sure, so there's the kind of battleity fighting it, and that's that's why I was just like, I need to do something different. And this opportunity came up to go and meet the team at Harmony because I had invested in them and had a chance to go through a syndicate

to invest in them. And I went to meet them just on a whim, paying my flights out there, and then pitched them an idea for a documentary, which is to essentially take what is good about blockchain and get it in front of an audience that didn't know anything about blockchain. This is two thousand and eighteen. I pitched this and it was It was basically one of those crazy ideas where I wanted to see if we expose the ideas of blockchain through pop culture through doing something insane.

And the idea was, how could we incentivize people to not use Facebook and WhatsApp for an entire weekend and how can we then pay them back the money they would have made for you know, in terms of the data they would have generated for the platforms. We will return that value to them through Harmony tokens and then maybe they can stay those tokens, maybe they can exchange them, but at least get them into people's hands in a

way that was kind of positive. And then it was like, well, if we're getting people just to step off Facebook for a weekend, what does that time look like? What are they going to do with that time? Well, you know, can we put on a festival? Those kind of things. That was sort of the idea, and it was going to be this big, kind of tilted a windmill to see if we can make something happen. We weren't able

to make that happen. But what it did do is it got me a job with Harmony as their creative director. And even then I wasn't making films, it wasn't making videos. And about four months into that job, I realized that I missed making films so much that I was like, I need to offer this up to Harmony as a thing I can do in my role as credive director and start telling their story. And then that's how we sort of got into making YouTube videos for Harmony as

a really tough time. Oh my god, it was. It was tough because making videos for a project is tough anyway, because things moved quite slowly, but the audiences expectations move very quickly, so they always want something new, and if there isn't anything new, then you're kind of fidgeting around trying to tell the story of maybe there's a project that's building on it, maybe there's a new kind of

piece of tech. But on these remote layer ones like Harmony was, there's not a lot being built, and it's hard to get excited about a little bot, but we tried to make it fun and creative. The other problem was that Harmony had launched on Binance. It was one of the first Binance I e O s that went on the Binance decks, and there was just such a bad smell about all of it. A lot of investors got very badly burned by the performance of that token and the promises that were made by that token, and

it just looked bad. And then we just got slaughtered by the community and fighting our way back from that. We're super tough because like everything you did was just like no, you guys are scammers. Your scammers, your scammers, you scamras, scamras, scamras, scammeras, and like whatever you try to do, put the CEO in front of the camera, try and tell the positive story. Yeah, it didn't didn't work.

So um, we guysally got to the kind of Defy summer phase of things, and I realized that Harmony probably wouldn't have enough to kind of attract this kind of Defy that was out there. But DeFi was the big story, as you remember, So I thought, instead of us having a product, maybe we could tell the story ourselves and

tell it in a really interesting and weird way. So I reached out to the two defined us that is that I knew, which was Bankless and the Defiant, and they already interviewed Camilla away back and I went down a certain way with Ryan Shawn Adams and then he ghosted me. So I and well, you know, maybe we should just shoot some videos with the Definer because that seems to be a more positive place. Kamilla said yes,

So then we did this co production. Then we started doing a weekly video where we would just tell the story of Defy. What's going on Wifie all these different things, um and that was a weekly thing and it did really well, and then she offered me a job and I was like, Okay, maybe this is what I should be doing. And that's when we started building the defined YouTube channel and grew it too. I think a hundred and seventeen thousand subscribers in about fifteen months, so not

too shabby, not too shabby at all. It was. It's an extraordinary channel. And I mean, just just going back to what you were saying about this idea of you know, feeling kind of creatively upper cul de sac, I guess when not being able to show a Chinese audience trees. I mean watching thinking back to thinking back to so many of the videos that you made with a defiance that that just seems the whole thing just seems to be like this massive release of creative energy. And it was.

I mean, it just ticks. It just does so many things so brilliantly. And I mean I think the best of your videos were, you know, slightly just an archic in a way, like you know, you could you could see like the the ideas Department had just gone just been allowed to go absolutely insane, and so you had this kind of anarchism. You had this just boldness of

what you would what you would try. Obviously that the skills that you and Alp as well just you know, brought to the table in terms of in terms of what you're able to do with a with a camera, and then on top of it all, it would be this incredibly like informative and often like brilliantly opinionated thing as well. It was, it was absolutely it was. I mean,

some of those videos are just just extraordinary. UM And I should say for the audience, I'm for those listening and and watching, I'll I'll leave some links if that's okay with you, Robin to to to some of my favorite UM of you know, some of my favorites that you you did with the Defined and in particular I think that the work you did on n f T S um the greatest n f T film ever made.

And then just this extraordinary light mic drop that you did with um Why Gamers Hate n f T S the two part, which I watched again the other day whilst I was, you know, whilst I was kind of gearing up for this is extraordinary, Like what you were able to, what you're able to achieve and I remember sort of me and my a lot of my colleagues here at you know, coinbea just sitting around and going, wow, okay, uh so the bar has the bar has been raised

quite quite high. And it really and I think, you know, it's it's a it's from from from my point of view, was kind of exhilarating and also a bit scary at the same time, because you you suddenly see the bar being raised this high and you're like, wow, this this has come such a long way since a guy, you know, since dudes just with a webcam kind of mounted awkwardly on top of their monitor, just kind of yelling into

that with half their face showing. And suddenly here we are with these really you know, amazingly kind of high concept movies in a way. But yeah, it's that's it was just such a such a such a glorious thing to watch. But also, you know, crucially, and I go back to what I said about, you know, the informative nature of it, Like you seem to you seem to be able to not lose sight of the fact that, okay, this is this is great entertainment. But you've got it,

as you say, you've got to tell a story. You've got to you've got to shed light on this project. And and of course defy itself is such as such a dense topic. I mean, it's one of the ones that it's one of the Narlie Yeah, it is. And to try and try and explain that to you know, someone who who might be coming to it for the first time is is so tricky. It really it really keeps you on your toes. Did you, I mean, how how easy was what was the I guess what was

the easiest part of all that for you? No, what's the easiest part. But I think probably what we should say here is that my background. Yes, I'm a filmmaker, but I'm also I've always been a multi hyphen it so I was always picking up a camera, trying to understand how to use it, learning about lenses, learning about specifics of you know, lighting has actually been one of the latest skills that I learned. But I was always shooting my own stuff and editing my own stuff and

then writing on top of that. But I also you know, I read English at university and a lot of that is to do with like just hardcore research. You just read a lot, so I sort of had these background skill sets that were setting me up for that. That's

that's sort of sitting in the background. And I've done a lot of filming and lots of different types of situations, particularly music videos or I've directed a feature film, so I kind of understand the different ways that you can tell a story and lenses can do certain things to be you know, we're shooting this on seventy at the moment, but it's like it's quite tight, it's quite photographic and nice, but you can shoot things on wide lenses and suddenly

they become more cartoony in with There's a lot of versatility in terms of what a camera can do that people don't really exploit when they're shooting beautube videos, and that's a shame because it's a storytelling tool at the end of the day. So you learn all these tricks. You know, how to tell a story in a different way, why you use handheld, why you'd use a moving camera.

And we've done a lot of kind of tabletop product photography type stuff where it just looks really expensive, but like it's just a thing on a mirror with a couple of nice lights, and that's it. It's very very simple to do. But that's that all feeds into it. So when you're asking me what's the easiest part of it, Honestly, making films is the easiest part for me because like that's what I've done my whole life. And I sort of funny for me hearing you looking to go, oh,

ship the bar is raised. But like in the world that I come from, that's normal. That's just the way we do things. Um. But I realized then that I've spent a long time just making that normal and getting my ten thos in so that I can pick up, you know, put something in the script and know that even if you've only got two hours to shoot it, we can still get it done because we know what

the solution is. Whereas for a lot of people like just figuring out, oh, you need to put the light here or that won't work because of this, like you just kind of know that already. That's the easy bit. The harbit for me in terms of all of this is well, the couple of bits. One, like you said, understanding defy and understanding where all the information was in

defy was a thing. But again, if you're in the right telegram groups through in the right disco groups, you can get that information that The next bit was just probably trying to figure out like when enough goofing around was enough. I was always right, just I wanted to make stuff that I wanted to make, and like we'd always come up with a story for the week, and I'd be like, well, this is the story, and maybe

I'm just gonna use tomatoes this week. I'm just gonna tell them like I did the video on the Merge. I was just like, I just had this vision in my head of tomatoes, and I think it's because the merge in my head was these two things squashing together. I was like, that feels like tomatoes soup. It's like blending tomatoes soups. So like, why don't we just use

tomatoes as a metaphor for all this? And that's a really important point because, as you know full well, the only visuals you get when talking about this business our websites. So you do screen grabs of websites, and you do screen grabs of Twitter accounts. That's it, and I get so stale so quickly, So trying to find other ways of telling these stories and maybe I'll do a music video this week or maybe I'll do something else like. That's how I kept it interesting for me. I'm just

trying to find these weird visual gags and that. You know, it got to a point when we were producing six or seven videos a week where I could only put that into like the first minute of the video. But that first minute was always the most worthwhile bit, and it gave you the springboard to make, you know, the twenty five minute video that followed something at least um. But yeah, that that that was some of the gold.

Particularly difficult when we'll be putting a video out on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday to on Thursday, live stream on Thursday, as well as one on Friday. Yeah, that was a lot. That

was a lot. Yeah, And and that's that was That was something I wanted to ask you as well, because obviously from you know, from a filmmaking background, you're you're used to, I guess to deadlines, You're used to things, you know, being you used to having to run a kind of tight ship to get things done on time and keep things within budget and all that sort of stuff.

Did but I mean, how did you how did you cope with that sort of that kind of growing demand, because I guess, I guess because as we've you know, as as as me and the guys here have sort

of gone along with coin beer. I mean, for instance, I remember reading reading a comment ages ago, now is when we were still you know, when we were still like in the maybe tens of thousands of subscribers, and we couldn't get a video out on our kind of regular day because either I'd had the either I'd been ill, or I think actually it might have been just everything had gone wrong because none of us were none of us were filmmakers here, So the the the amount of

footage that just sort of never got recorded because the camera was the camera battery had run out half an hour ago or something like that. But I mean, I'm sure this is all stuff that you went through many many years ago. But I remember just reading this comment. We eventually got the video out like twenty four hours later, and it was it was fine, like you know, everything

was everything was cool. But I remember reading this comment from someone um and seeing a couple more like it along the lines of like, oh hey guy, UM, great to see, great to see you got your got the video. I'd wonder, I wondered where you've got to yesterday, and I just remember thinking, it's, oh my god, who just we're just kind of locked in this now, you know, And and it's it's great, it's it's it's amazing, it's you know, it's the best job in the world. But

it's still it. Suddenly you have that you feel that responsibility you have you know, you have to keep pushing forward. And YouTube is all about it's all about growth, it's all about eyeballs, it's a it's about you know, you can't stand still. Did I mean did that kind of did that take you by surprise at all? Or was it was it something you were kind of already familiar

with from from making films outside of YouTube. Yeah, it's so much time pack there's I mean, the financial reality of it was one was the year that you signed sponsors and you rent the sponsorship money as much as you could because people were cash rich and ready to spend, and they wanted to spend on a niche channel within a niche industry, which was what we were. So we just put out more videos and attached more sponsorship to them. I mean, that's basically the way it work. Way it worked.

And also because the La Chryptim moves so quickly. The story changes every twenty four hours. So if you can stay on that and become a kind of regular habit for people, it's quite important. The problem is then that you and then a regular habit for people, and if you don't show up, it's problematic. We never didn't show up, but that's something I'm really proud of. We always put a video out and you should see some of the

stuff that we had to do. Like we would get to Friday a lunchtime having shot, you know, a thirty minute video, and then we'd have to deliver it at five o'clock, and we did because we had to output take half of it. I would take the other half. We would just blitz it. And it's amazing what you

can accomplish if that time pressure is there. And one of the things I was very very clear about was if for whatever reason, then the imperative to deliver forces us to work beyond the normal working hours of the day, it's over because you do that once it becomes twice, becomes three times, and then your capacity to absorb all of that it goes away. You're it's it's never gonna last.

So I was always very clear that working hours and working hours, and if we cannot deliver the video within working hours, and something's gone wrong and we need to do a better job. So it was always delivered within those parameters. And then go home and sleep and rest and and make it, you know, make it not become a thing where you're resenting it because you're working late, and then like the comments, you know there we we

should spare moments to talk about the comments. I I think from probably February last year, maybe March, until I left the defined didn't read the comments anymore. I just stopped um because I realized that I was starting to become that thing where you're trying to make the content for your audience, and I don't think that's the way you've got to do it. There was a reason you're audience stuck around, particularly during the bear market, and if

you change that, then it's gone wrong. So but it was also the comments got really nasty at a certain point, and it's we're and how like I am? Now I'm now dealing with someone who's trolling me on on Twitter, who seems to have a real problem for me and seems to know not only where I live, but also where my kids go to school. It's a problem. Geez, yeah, it's a problem. So I'm like yeah, so I'm I'm I'm like what. There's a part of me that's like, why do I want to go back into this pit

and do this again? Because I left for like, I'm a pretty mentally strong person. I can deal with a lot. I can I can put up with a lot. But this got me, and it got me because we um that film a lot of the line goes up by Dan Olson that came out last year, massive kind of excoriating diet tribe against n f t s in which there were many good points, but one of the things he he did was he made us pointed out my boss Camillariso and quarter of Feil journalist and called her

book an abortion of a book. And I was like, we can't let that stand. So I wrote, I made a video and it was a bit of a hot take, released it, posted it on his channel in response, and then and then they came brandishing their pitchforks and I was like, WHOA, what's happened here? And then for the next three months they were just like they were they were there, and that was that was rough. And then like the worst thing was in the middle of all of this, our sponsor was next, so and next, so

I cannot say anything about next. So other than that, for most people, that's problematic. And so I was saying these sponsorship messages and like, you know, that's sitting there in amongst all this other stuff, and like, ah, the optics, the optics. So so that that was problematic. So I just stopped reading the comments at a certain point and like, yeah, I gu said, I'm still dealing with someone who keeps saying karma is a bit karma is a bit like

karma for what what did I do? It's this extraordinary thing, isn't it. It's like, you know, you become you become the focal point for people, and they project, they project any sort of disappointments that they may feel or anger, you know. And obviously at times like this, when when crypto is is a tough place to be at the best of times, you know, there's just so much going on.

Obviously we're talking today on a on a day when lots of people are you know, speculating about f t X and the markets are going heywire and all this sort of stuff, and it just seems that you're Yeah, sometimes it seems that you know, your friendly neighborhood content creator is now is now just the target for for all sorts of all sorts of vitriol. It's like, how do you you know? How well you you and I are both grifters. That's that's been adjudicated in the court

of public opinion. Were grifters? Yeah, plain and simple, just gotta we just got to own it, haven't we, Robbin, There's there's no choice. We're just grifters, you know, I know. But but but how how how is it that the things that are positive about this space are so rapidly and easily overlooked easily because yeah, yeah, and easily forgotten.

And then it's just like, oh, no, you're a grifters, Like, well, no, I can have an opinion about a thing and and be concerned about the state of well everything and where it's going, and you know, be curious about the world.

But anyway, that's I mean, I think that's something that people understand, and um, the mental health side of this, I've never really been that challenged by it, and that there's a very simple reason for that, which is I could leave this space anytime I wanted and go back to the world that I was in and have a career and glad to be fine. I'm just too curious about what's here and too interested in it to to

do that. And honestly, it boils down to this, I can I can be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond, and like the opportunity to to create in the world where there's no rules yet, when nothing has been set yet, where you get to really explore and you can't really fail either in the in the world that any of this because no one really has the answers yet. That's just way more appealing, to be honest. So I'll put up with the haters and the you know, the the

grift abuse, because fundamentally I think there is something interesting here. Yeah, it comes with the territory, isn't it. It's an occupation or hazard of of doing, of working in a space that's you know that there seems to be you know, there are there are no rules. It seems a lot of the time. You know, you you you have to kind of you know, you have to adapt so quickly the space itself as you say is changing all the time. There are there are just so many that the parameters

just aren't even clear. So yeah, I mean it makes it, It makes it an exhilarating place to work in. But as you say, there's there's this dark side lurking underneath, and unfortunately times like this it seems to it seems to rear its head a lot more. What are you working on now? What's what's the next what's the next step for you? So I was I was thinking about where I would go next for some time, and it

wasn't because the Define was going badly. It was more if we were going to grow the Defined and I would kind of develop a new things like what would I want to be doing for the next five years, and how would we then bring new people onto the team to manage what we had been doing, and then I could develop this new thing. And where I was, where I was leaning was like, you've sort of pointed out the fact that I overproduced the videos that we put out on YouTube and do all sorts of crazy things.

I wanted to carry on doing that and and do more kind of store rework in and around that, and just sort of as it happened during the pandemic, I kind of landed on this thing called virtual production, and that's basically if you saw the Mandalorian and you saw they use unreal engine screens everything else behind, you know, to make the bad drops. That's really interesting. And then you have these PRPs that grew up, and those could also be three D characters and they could live in

their own worlds. What you're getting too is the metaverse, and so there are these two worlds colliding. My interest in virtual production using undreun engine to to create worlds that I couldn't go and visit or were too expensive to go and visit myself. That was really exciting. And then just this growing narrative around the metaverse and what it was, and so that was kind of where my head was at. And then, you know, when the time came to move on from the define, it was really

about what what would I do next? If I was going to do YouTube, what would that YouTube channel be about. There's a couple of reasons why I wanted to focus on the metaverse, and the first one is it's in my opinion, going to be the biggest story and technology in the next ten years. It's sort of inevitable now. I think the the really fun thing about it is that it sort of touches everything if you think about it,

is the new version of the Internet. It has a place in gaming, of course, it has a place in VR A r AI, actually everything like. And I look up with the way my kids play roadblocks and see them interacting with other people, thinking about economies, the way they want to present themselves in the world, and it feels like they're very much ready for the metaverse in ways that more grown ups, more grown up people are not.

And so a lot of the pushback on the METAVERSEI people who simply don't think like a ten year old kid, and I think more of us should because then we'll start to understand, I think, where technology is going and where the world is going in that sense. Also, just

you know, thinking about an iPhone. An iPhone is fundamentally a horrific thing for the human being because if you think about it, you're hunched over like this, and apparently, like the fourth and fifth vertebrae in in young people now is so messed up because of just being hunched over a phone. The entire anatomy of the species is being changed by this piece of technology. I was like, this is a bad thing, Like we need to get

away from that as soon as possible. So I'm sort of fascinating the technological side of it because I think this piece of technology, the the iPhone format is on its way out, So what's going to replace it? And you start to get into glasses and all these kind of things and wearables, and that's again that plays into this story of the metaverse. But your nose. I haven't mentioned Crypto or web three at any point in this.

That's also very important to me because, as you know, when you're in the cycle, you go up, you go down, and then you're down for a really long time, and you're apologizing for and defending Crypto in a way because you have to. I don't really want to be doing that, Like I I still love Crypto, Web three, n f t S, and I'm there's still going to be part

of what I'm doing. But the opportunity to tell our larger story that isn't wedded to that, that can be connected to something very much universal, which is what is a human being in a world that is virtual? That's a really big question and gives you lots of interesting stories to tell. So the other thought of it is

that I probably I am an extremely vain person. I saw the size of the audience that we were able to grow with the defined and I loved it, but it's very niche, and I want to see how big of an audience I can build outside of that, because I think with a big audience you can start to really do some interesting things and start to do a lot of the things that I think website and energies have hinted at and promised that but have been unable to do because they can't scale up in the right way.

So I'm sort of trying to trojan Horse in some ideas about n f t s and by what I want to do with enerties, but through I guess through content and telling stories in the metaverse. So that is that's basically what basset af is going to be. It's going to be a metaverse content monster, that's what we call it. And the style of film we're going to make is going to be not educational. That's very odd for people because they've seen me educate them in all

sorts of weird ways. But no, I'm just going to entertain. Um. We're gonna do essentially what Mr Beast would do, which is take the most ridiculous idea we can think of, wrap it around something to do with the metaverse, and

then just push it as humanly far as possible. Um. And when I say humanly far as possible, that's very, very important because I think there's this vision of the metaverse that it's like the end of Wally when you see all these fat human beings in the spaceship and there's just being whizzed around all over the place, fed stuff and given everything. There's a real danger that we

could go that direction. So thinking about the human at the center of the metaverse experience, thinking about identity, and trying to make what we shoot in the metaverse as physical as possible and give it that physical component, that human component. That's how I think the metaverse, sorry, will get really interesting. If it's just about technology or a platform like the Other Side or decentral Land, it's dehumanized

and we need to rehumanize that side of things. Um and it you know, it sort of helps and doesn't help. The Mark Zuckerberg presents like the most advanced Android you've ever seen, but at the same time, you know underneath it all there is. I guess what I'm saying is I'm teams Auck. I may not be Team Facebook, but I am teams Uck. And I think, having listened to a lot of what he's had to say, he may be very awkward in expressing it. I kind of see

where he's going with it. I've also got a quest pro now we need it for the first film that we're doing. Okay, uh, you know, I can't tell any much about that or why because it's a bit of a secret moment, but like we need it and we're gonna push that thing as far as it goes. But you put it on and you start playing around and it's like it's not the future, it's the now, but it points the way towards the future, and you can kind of see it now. You can kind of see

it with that device. It's like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like get rid of this, this is gone and you're just there and like it's goofy as hell and the battery runs out, but you get yeah, it's yeah,

it's pretty good. Wow. So, I mean, I guess, going back to what you're saying about about, you know, telling sort of human stories, I guess putting a human angle on the metaverse, because this seems to be I think the stumbling block that that so many people have, and I must admit like i've I've I've kind of struggled with with the metaverse idea as well from from the kind of tech perspective, because it's so I don't know, it feels sometimes so hard to envision what exactly it's

it's supposed to be, and I don't know, I don't know about EU robe and I guess I I guess the answer to that question is it's not it's not yet supposed to be anything. It's it's we're in the you know, we're in the process of building it. It's still very much, uh an intangible thing, you know. It's it's going to be what we make it. But I guess it's it's going to be so important for for people to be able to to visualize it, to to

kind of to see it from a human angle. Otherwise it is is it not just going to be you know, guys wandering around with with VR goggles on. Yeah, Well that's the fact that you think about it. And the one of the thing about having a channel that's devoted to the meta verse is that we don't have to have the answer to that. We can test stuff out and if it's BS, well, we'll say it's BS. And if it's goofy, will say it's goofy. What I think nobody has really done yet is try to explore the

metaverse from the inside out. There is a lot of there's a lot of chat about the meta verse. Is this you know, ten trillion dollar opportunity from vcs who are investing in pumping their bags and all this kind of thing, And they're sort of right, and there's a lot of money being invested in it, in the infrastructure to be able to render three D through a web browser or through goggles or through whatever it might be.

But you've got this kind of confluence of all sorts of different things technologically that have been promised for like the last fifty years. But they're sort of finally kind of there, a little bit sketchy, but they are kind of there. On Facebook's pumping so much money into the middle accelerate. Again, that doesn't have anything to do with human beings. The technology is the bit that gets in the way. What again, you have to do is go back and look at ten year old to play video games.

Look at the way that they their their brains think and the way they observe and navigate these worlds. I give a shit about any of that stuff. It's all about social presence, about being with your mates in a space that you completely controlled and have ownership of, and none of the other stuff matters. Will get so obsessed over owning land and um, you know, I'm close to the center of this land. Kids don't care, they don't care about any of that stuff. It's just a social

presence device. And the technology enables you to be in a different place from where you are in a way that is delightful. That sensorial. It's multisensory, and it will be because you'll be able to smell things, It'll it will have all of those experiences built in, and it will be a secondary layer. It's basically the Internet in three D. And that's really again, it's pretty hard to kind of wrap your head around even what that means.

But that's because we're so god damn early But like I said, with the Quest proyer, you put it on your like I start to get there, I start to get there, I start to feel like, this is not a restrictive device that I'm tethered to a computer. And even with the quest too, it's in black and white. When you look at past through, it's still like it's a thing on your face. Crest Pro doesn't sit on your face and sits on your head. It's more like glasses, and it's like, Okay, I can, I can sort of

get there. And again I I don't have all the answers to all this, but what I do know is that there are certain things that I'm asking myself, certain questions I'm asking myself that I'm signed to use as kind of springboards for videos we might make, for instance, like what does taste manifest as in the most verse because it's one of those senses that cannot be kind of delivered virtually or through a computer screen at the moment.

But you're gonna want it. Guarantee you that you're gonna want that piece of it, and someone's going to build it, and it's going to be toxic and it's probably going to cause some accidents, but it's gonna be amazing and when they figure it out, like yes, Mr Beasts Virtual Burgers in the metaverse, you can actually eat and taste. I'm down for that. Like I I am that kid that like used to just just absorb as much about

new fangled tech as I possibly could. And I remember the old days when I was when I was growing up, Like my friends, like one of them might go to Hong Kong and they would come back and they would have come back with this swag bag full of the most insane technology I've ever seen. It would be like a TV on your wrist and you and like, I never thought that's crap and the areas are gonna work, It's gonna be a crap signal. I just thought, there's

a bloody TV on your watch. Obviously, in this day and age, that's not very remarkable, but back then that was insane. And so that's kind of where we're at, which is sort of busting through this wild technological phase. At the moment, we're going to have holographic displays, Like trust me, if it's been in a in a film, in some kind of science fiction film, someone's building it because that's where we get all our best ideas from. Yeah,

I love all that stuff. I can't help it. It's so it's so refreshing to hear to hear you sort of talk about it like that, Robin, because I think

so much of so much of the talk around the metaverse. Now, you know that the D word comes up all the time, doesn't it This this idea of it just being some dystopian place, you know something I guess, you know, I guess kind of Blade Runner ish and and well, you know, snow like snow Crash for those who for those who have read it, um, snow Crash isn't even that dystopian. Weirdly enough, it's it's and I mean it's just it's

just mad. Yeah, it's mad, and it paints it pends a pretty you know, even like how how long is it now? Like thirty years on from when he wrote it. It's pretty on point, But it doesn't it doesn't present dysturb because they love the world they're in. Like the main characters, like this fourteen year old skater kid career, she loves the world she's in. It's just fun for

so yeah, I mean, but I take your point. The dysopient part of it is is is always there and like we are rightly concerned about the role of technology in our lives, but at the same time, unless we unless we look at it from a different perspective and take a contrarian view, which is like, what if this is actually going to be really awesome? What if this is actually enables breakthroughs in medicine and enables breakthroughs in education and mental health, which all of those three I

think really can be helped. I mean, the military is basically where the metaverse comes from, and so let's not talk about that. But you know, fundamentally, yes, that those three things for starters could be really amazing. And again, I don't know, I don't know what it's going to be, but what I do know is that we've started a company whose sole focus is the metaverse, so we need

to get really good at understanding what it is. But at the end of the day, you me everybody, there's a massive gap between what we think the metaverse is and maybe what it is right now as a storyteller. That's awesome. And what this is sort of coincided with is like this new phase of YouTube where it's becoming we're sort of moving out of the Mr. Beast phase where it was just like everyone was copying him and taking suitcases for the cash and throwing them at an

idea and then suddenly that was that was success. Um a Mr. Beast is a very different animal from everyone who copied him. But that model where you just scream and shout and then like here's the prize, a hundred thousand dollars um or like the weirdest, wackiest thing you can possibly think of. Um, we're started moving away from

that into more storytelling based. I think the ideas are still going to be wild, and when we come up with our ideas, they have to meet that criteria, like the the thumbnail has to be like, oh my god, what did they do? And like that's what we're gonna have to hold ourselves too. But do you mean, Robin, do you mean that you're not You're not going to go for the for the orgasm face on the thumb? Now, I don't know how to do it. I don't know

how to do it. I mean, there are there are mirrors in the office, and when I look at them and I see that, and I am forced to confront sex face. Robin, it's not going to work. So we have to come up with some other stuff to do that. But yes, it never to be. You've done it. I know. I know. I'm yeah, it's it's it's a really interesting conversation. It's an interesting conversation to have. Way around it. People go, you've got to put your face on the thumb mel Man,

because I don't be your face and thumber. How good are people going to know to be excited? It's like that is that? What is that? Where we are exactly? That's what you've got. You're scrolling through, you scrolling through like this going oh look, that's really really wound up about to jizz. Let's watch that video. I hope no one. I hope no one's looking over my shoulder whilst I scroll through all this. Oh no, that's terrible. But that's

kind of the game you have to play. So that that whole YouTube algorithm bating thing is you know, the click through rate. It's like nobody's watching your video if they didn't decide to click on it. So you've got to get the click right. Um, So we we're sort of engineering all of that out at the moment. But when people do land on the video, there is there's a lot of attention retention tactic stuff that you can put in and a lot of it's very immature, which

is just keep talking. I mean something that quick, that's well, wow, it's not gonna work. It's gonna work, it's not gonna wait. Now that the returns every tip and you're like, wow, that was ten minutes of my life, I won't get but now I'm deaf. But at least they but at least they're still watching. Yeah, but le's just a watching. But my fundamental belief is that if you tell a good story, you don't need to do any of that.

Like if you are, if you doing proper set ups and payoffs, if you are, if your concepts good, and if you have a if a really good ending and you know what that ending is, you can design it in such a way that it builds and rises and falls in succession. Um to keep people hooked eat any of any of that stuff, But that's just a harder task. And I think the first film that we're making, we have been working on the script NonStop for about two

and a half months now. We're still not finished, just refining, refining. Obviously, it's a pilot, so it has to be good. But that that's the that's the bit that I think we'll hopefully keep people coming back because they know that our stories are nuts. They would just not go where you think they're going to go. And I love, I'm going to really enjoy seeing whether that works, whether that tactic is valid um, and if it's not, well adjust But that's the hell I'm going to die on, at least

for now, storytelling. It sounds I mean, it sounds amazing. And you've also I mean, I guess you've got this kind of blank canvas in a way, because going back to what you were saying about the metaverse, you know that it's we're still figuring it out. So you've got this, You've got this kind of blank canvas to work with, which I guess is must be really kind of must be really liberating and also kind of daunting at the

same time. But I mean, you don't strike me as you don't strike me as being at all phased by that. That that seems to be, That seems to be like just a kind of a red rag to a bull for you. Well, it kind of was. It kind of was. I mean, we we raised some money from vcs to get this going, and they believed in me enough. I guess they saw that I was fearless enough to take this on there is. There's an increasing level of technological competence required in all of this, and it's not just

the filmmaking. For instance, if you want to inhabit the body of a digital character, there's a few different ways you can do it. You can go and be our chat. It's pretty limited the expressiveness that you can put in there, but that's also kind of part of its charm and that's fun. But if, for instance, you know, we see the Other Side trailer, Okay, so that the Other Side trailer was amazing and it's a glorious piece of animation.

It was beautiful put together. So much work, so much post production, so much effort to get that onto the screen. You know, that's very labor intensive, and you can't just jump into the body of that character and perform as that character. So we're looking very carefully into motion capture so suits that you can put on that you can

then pilot a character with. Because as much as it's nice for me to present a story and it be an in real life story with the metaverse, comes in expectation that some of it will look like it comes from the metaverse, and it has to be beholden to rules that are metaverse rules, whatever those are. So you have to kind of start thinking about what does this virtual life production look like? How do we shoot in the metaverse? Um? And like really quickly, any platform you

go onto it's just sucks. You can't You've got no control, no subtlety, and it's really takes a long time to shoot anything in there, so you just end up with this very goofy kind of proxy of stuff. So for us, the logical conclusion was look at the suits. The suits again a little bit limited. They have inertial sensors in them, like an iPhone um, and so the sensors can kind of know where you are in relation to other sensors,

but they don't really have an understanding of where you are. Specifically. They're getting a lot better, but they lose kind of contact with the ground, so you end up then sitting in a chair, and again that's pretty limited. And then they sort of lose touch with the coordinates that you've programmed into them, so that you have to reset them halfway through. So I wanted to stream as a character, um,

something weird might happen. Then you have to have a helmet on and a phone and all these kind of things, and facial motion captures particularly difficult. Um So a long story shot, where we ended up was we basically built the system that they used for Avatar Wow, which is which is nuts. So we were sort of on on its way being built the moment, but we put together they're a an optical motion capture system, which is so we've got twenty viscon cameras, which are these infrared kind

of cap motion capture cameras. You put twenty of them around the room and then at any time they can triangulate your position. You wear a suit with pink pong balls on it, still have to wear a helmet with a phone on it, and we still need to figure out how to do the facial motion capture. But with that system, basically what it means that we can have more than one person in the room at the same time. We can trap props. So I could have this bottle and I could throw it to someone else and it

would track perfectly, pretty much in real time. And that means that we can then live stream as those characters. We could just do a variety show, we do a chat show, and it would just be a question of putting the suit on, stepping into the volume we call it the Holiday deck, and then spinning up the environment that we want to be in, so it could be anything we choose. So that level of technical proficiency is

is it's it's taking a bit of time. And then just like we want to build stuff in the metaverse, and you end up then needed to do custom Unity builds a customs script, and those custom scripts are incredibly problematic when it comes to UM plugging in metal mask, So anything that has a metal mask wile it component and an external script big no, No, okay, as you as you can probably understand, So you know, figuring out what platforms to use and how to use them and

then make them safe for people to use, because you know, the meta should be a social experience. So if people can't come and join in when we're doing stuff, then it kind of falls down. If it's just a recording of an event, no, well it's okay, but like we need to do events where people can be part of it, participate, win prizes, you know all of that kind of stuff. So we have to figure out a lot. Yeah, it's

quite hard work. It sounds it. It sounds it, and I mean going back to what you were saying about you know that the meta verse has to be a social space and stuff. Do you do you feel that obviously, the Internet came along and no one was adequately prepared for it, and it's morphed into this amazing and at the same time terrifying thing. There is. There is so much that's good about it, there's so much that is deeply,

deeply wrong about it. And do you think that with the metaverse, this is this is a chance for us to you know, to to to build it, to make a better Internet. Do you think that the lessons of internet, you know, the first age of the Internet, if you like, do you think those can be learned? Do you do you think we have do you think people like yourselves and others sort of building in the metaverse? Are you going to have the opportunity do you think to shape it?

Or do you think it's going to be something that's just gonna, like the original Internet, just kind of become so organic that it kind of gets a little out of control. Well, that's a big question. So you have to look at it this way. There is there's a hardware interface version of this, and that's that's hard because Apple has basically exerted such an iron grip over everything, Yeah, taking its cut over everything that it's like, we need

to get off that as soon as possible. And I you know, I have a lot of love for Apple products and always have done, but like the iPhone is is bad news. And then you look at the Quest pro and the Quest platform and it's like, are we just repeating the same thing again? And Zuck is making a lot of noise about embracing you know, decentralization full

short of Web three and everything else. But that's understandable, but you know, where does that really sit and what Once you kind of dig back into the history of the Internet and the open source standards, the drive it like, I mean, I there, these things need to work at scale, right, they need to be delivered at scale, and everyone's sort of fighting for their piece of the pie that they

can control and ring fence. And you know, it would be weird if all of our websites were served up by private servers and it wasn't an open source standard and you had you could only if you had an IBM subscription, you could only access a certain chunk of the Internet. That would just be so weird. But that's

kind of where it was heading at one point. So we do need these open source standards and that when you dig into the what's needed to deliver a fully fleshed out metaverse, there's a bunch of stuff that's like it's really hard to do. And it's not just interoperability, which is just such a misduding term anyway, but it's like, what does the economy look like? How do we make payment rails that don't go via Apple for instance, or Android or one of these other platforms that are just

there and just work. Um, it's really tough. I I think we can play a role in shaping it. I think I guess where I sat with all of this is that there are there are going to be a bunch of really interesting people who might not take a look at this space. But if I can make the story about the metaphors really fun and entertaining and not this top down twenty training dollar opportunity, we should invest or here by this land and it's going to go up a thousand decks next month. Um. But it's just like,

here's a really interesting question about the metaverse. What's the weirdest way we can tell that story? Um? That might get somewhere, that might get somewhere, but I just don't know what what I what I fundamentally believe though, is that the growth potential for anything that's sort of around the metaverse is off the charts. So I'm I'm keen to kind of plant my flag here and see see what we can do with it. Yeah, it's so exciting,

and I mean it's interesting too. It's interesting to hear you as well talking earlier about how your how your team's up, because I mean what you say makes a

lot of sense. I guess I think, you know, the fact that the fact that Facebook now meta has has has made such a strong play for this, you know, it's it just seems, I think to so many people, myself included in to a large extent, it just seems like such a kind of power grab, you know, in the same way that in the same way that Bezos and Elon Musk and Richard Branson all seemed to be, you know, kind of trying to grab a chunk of

space before everyone else. It's, you know it, I think there is still this deep unease that people have with the fact that, oh, you know, web web two, that the facebooks and the Google's and and everyone else are already kind of you know, they're already trying to get there.

They're already ahead of us in so many ways. But but do you think you get more of an impression that he's I don't know, it's kind of more in it for the tech do you think or is it kind of perhaps perhaps has better motivations than we than we give him credit for. Well, I wouldn't presume to know what what I what I do feel is like I I kind of get his philosophy around the metaverse, particularly when it comes to things like it's physical, it

makes you move, it makes you think. There is a sort of element of creativity that jumps out of all of this. Obviously, if the way that we experience it is through one single company and their vision of it and there gatekeeping processes, then yeah, that's problematic. But again that's meta and not Zack like the Zark sort of vision of all of this, and he takes a lot

of crap for it. That's kind of where I say, beyond that, Mom, I'm not going to say I support all of what they're about, because yes, that is that

is a problem. Yeah, if there's too many yeah, there are shades of gray, of course, And I mean where the message with where we are, with where we're at with the metaverse now, you know, it's it's so it's so easy to kind of for people to sort of pile onto it, especially especially at a time when you know the kind of where the whole kind of where Web through to some people is just you know, almost

a taboo subject. And n f T s are you know, just said with you know, people almost spit when they say that, when they say the phrase, now, oh, I know this, this whole this whole Reddit thing where Reddit released n f T s but they didn't mention the word n f T and everyone was like, Wow, that's how you do. I'm like, grow a pair. Just call it what it is. It's an n f T. Like that's fine. It is an n f T. It's a

piece of technology. Like all the other crap that comes around in TASE, Yes, problematic, but the thing itself, it's like getting angry at a JPEG or PDF. It's like it's so dumb, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna fight that fight because I've I've said that in publicly before and got crucified for it. But it's so so ridicuous if you're gonna release n f t s, call

them what they are, own that ship. Yeah, yeah, And I mean, before I'm rubbing, I'm I'm conscious that I'm taking up a lot of your time here, But I wanted to ask as well, I mean, do you think do you think we're we're in a good place with the metaverse in terms of you know, when you consider and I think it was it was Matthew ball in In in his article and he was talking about it

in Time magazine recently. You know, he made the point that that the way the Internet is set up is, you know, it can't handle what we're what we're trying to do with it at the moment, you know, which which is why it's it's so difficult to make to make a voice call and all these sorts of things. You know, do you think, with with the tech that we have and the understanding that we have, do you

think we're in a good place with the metaverse? Or are you do you think we've kind of do you think we could could be could have done better by this stage? Well, that's a difficult question to answer because firstly, I don't have the answers to it. What I do know is that there's a lot of money being spent by a lot of different companies on it. The most knows to being better, of course, and they are. If they're not developing it, they're buying the companies that are

developing specific pieces of technology. And again, try the the quest pro and you can see the fruits of those labors. But it just takes a long time to get a device like that into production and then through testing and everything else. So in terms of that, no, But then I look at what Adobe is doing and the way that they're sort of setting up these open source standards for three D rendering all these kind of things. It's on its way. It's happening, whether we call it the

metaverse or not. That vision of things is inevitable, I think, in terms of whether they're in a good place for it. But it comes bring the Internet crashing down, probably, there's

the answer. Probably, you know, um, but then you you know, you just build more capacity and some tycoon will get incredibly rich building the chips that we need all the you know, yeah, well that's but that's another fascinating thing, like the the race to create silicon, you know, transistors that are one nanometer one name, that's like one atom. Like there's been this arms race between Intel and TSNC, the Taiwanese chip manufacturer, and this is a whole crazy story, right,

and we should probably cover it on base. But like seven nanimeies used to be like really like a lot that was that was that was hard to pull off. And then it became five, and then it became three. And they the rumors that TSMC are about to build a factory that can do one. And that means you can make these tiny, tiny, tiny tiny chips because it's very difficult to make them faster because they just melt

if they get to a certain point. So you can make them smaller, and like, how can you make something smaller than an atom? I mean wild stuff? This is what this is what I get to nerd out on. How are un animator? Good? Lord? It's um you know, yeah, it's so exciting too. I mean, it's so exciting to to hear your you know, to hear your kind of I guess just enthusiasm for it, Robin. And you know, as I said that it comes in the metaverse and web three and you know, crypto, the wider world of crypto.

There's there's so much, there's so much negativity around it at the moment, and to hear someone like yourself, you know, you've gone from you've gone from this amazing thing that you've built with the Defiant and now it seems like you're you're, you're, you're, you're just times in that by a hundred, you know, to to to make to start this new crazy project which is going to I think, I mean, I I personally can't wait to you know,

to see what you guys come up with. But yeah, I'm also just I'm also just intrigued not only to kind of watch what you're going to produce, but actually you know, just see what it is, do you know what I mean? And it's it's so I think everybody is well that we we were doing and a prep drob, oh god, oh no he's doing but like we we are and there's a very specific reason why we're doing that.

But it's you know, there's there's this idea that there's like nine percent of your audience is really the valuable bit and like your super fans, and we wanted to kind of reward them with the thing that represented them and that gave them sort of passport to be a participant. I'm going to fall short of saying the word owner, but have some form of ownership over a YouTube channel in its inception and the rate that we are kind of hoping to grow shouldn't make that fairly meaningful over

the course of a couple of years or so. And so that that's launching probably the beginning of December. Stuff is going to get really weird around me and around what we're doing in the run up to that, because we don't believe in doing things the normal way. So that's something of a clue. And then the first film we're doing is going to go out, um, just before Christmas. That's sort of our pilot. So we we thought, basically, do one film before Christmas and then we start production

next year. But um, it's so balls out this first film. I'm actually a little scared, to be honest. Yeah, it's personally. It's going to put me through some stuff that I I don't know if I'm physically or mentally prepared for. Um, So we shall see if I if I survive what's coming for me, because it's it's gonna be nuts it's almost it almost sounds like a kind of meta metaphor for the metaverse itself, like be prepared to just to just experience some completely wild chip because you just no

one is no one is ready. Well, that's exactly it. So this is where the rubber hits the road, because if you think about really Play one and snow Crash, you have these fully fleshed out, gory, glorious, three D rendered versions of everything, and we're not there. We're basically you know, it's the wild West. It is. It's basically garbage.

That's the metaphor that we're leading into trash land. It's it's a kind of repository for a bunch of really terrible ideas, and somewhere in the middle of all of that crab is something good. And that's a much more apt metaphor because actually, out of garbage you can create an awful lot. You can recycle it, you can you can do wonderful things with it. But if you start from that position that that shiny version of things, that kind of glossy you know, isn't as beautiful, isn't this

render amazing? That's not it. It is going to be scrappy and slimy and a bit weird. And that's kind of something that I am looking forward to. It's primordial sup in a sense, a new beginning. It's um, it's so exciting new hope. But war with Guy and Robbin the metaverse. They didn't think two English accents on the same podcast could good work, but it did. They thought the air waves would explode. Gosh yeah yeah, I um yeah,

I'm not sure. I'm not sure what people are going to make it this Robin to to English crypto bros. It doesn't it doesn't sound it doesn't work. It doesn't sound quite right, does it. I could I could just go California for you. So I was like, you know, I was buying with half brow. I was like, anyway, yeah, that's not there. People get angry with me. Yeah, yeah, you can't. You've got to. You've got to. You've got

to keep keep these people happy. It's um, it's that extraordinary thing, isn't it about just just to just to touch on this idea of communities which are obviously so important in crypto and web three and they're going to be I think a massive part of the messaverse as well. But it's yeah, it's this. It's this amazing thing of you know, you have these groups of people, but they can be such a toxic entity as well. And you know, I think we've all kind of fallen foul of one

or other sort of crypto community in our time. It's um Again, it's the kind of thing that you hope, I guess that we can move away from in in the metaverse, but perhaps perhaps not. No, there's this, there's this sense of entitlement that communities have, and it boils down to one simple things. People in your community think they're working harder than you are, which I find insane,

but that's that's basically where it's at. They think, oh, we're working really hard to kind of find stuff, and we've given you our time and and you're not working hard, and you're like, dude. So one of the challenges that we have is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are indeed working extremely hard. I think one of the advantages that we have is a lot of energy projects in particular, find it really hard to

have that second album. So they you know, they launch and they have the art and that's great, but then what follows it up whereas whereas we we are not an n f T project, we are a YouTube channel, and so our cadence is going to be weekly. There's always going to be probably the other short form content coming out. You're not gonna be bored. You'll see stuff coming out, and there's always going to be something new

to show you what we've been up to. So I'm hoping that that will kind of mitigate that to a degree. But I'm not naive enough to think that we won't trip up and getting you know, get our community angry with us at certain points, because unfortunately, that's just the that's just the world we're in. It comes with the territory,

doesn't it. It does. Yeah, well, Robin, I mean I think you know, here we are, we're staring we're staring down the barrel of of of a bear market that is that is going to last for god knows how long. But I really feel that we've you know, with what you're doing with with bassed af. You know, it ain't gonna be all bad. There's gonna be there's gonna there's

still cool stuff happening. And I mean I hear, I hear anecdotally just in the crypto space in general about all the building going on and you know, all the crazy stuff that's happening behind the scenes. And I try to you know, I try to tell people that, I try to let people know that it's it's hard because there's so there's often so little in the way of tangible results, and you do sort of feel it's like, well, you're just you know, you're just gonna have to wait

to see what these projects are doing. But I think I think based a f is going to it's just gonna you know, just put it out there and and provent and let us see some let us see some building and some experimentation just just happen in real time. I think I think it's going to make make the bear market that that much more bearable. Well, I hope.

So we're we're definitely not leaving anything on the table when it comes to this, because we can't you know, the name Basically, it's the demands that we that we go there and we push things for the max um. But that's kind of why I wanted to do this. I wanted to, you know, go out with a bang. What can I see myself doing for the next ten years and like try and build something that that had my stamp on it, because I think, you know, there's a lot of the work that I've produced over the

last years was dishonest. If I'm honest, huh is it was just me past teaching other people or you know, trying to punch in a certain weight class and so presenting word that I thought would do that. Whereas now I don't give it monkeys anymore. I'm just like, what I want to do? How am I going to do it? I've learned all this stuff, I know how to do this, Like where where am I going to find the creative satisfaction of just pushing the boundaries? And I'm going into

places that just no one's ever been to before? Okay, well here it is so knowing that it kind of gives you a lot of confidence that you you can't really fail. Um, you just got to be bold enough and brave enough to to make those decisions that are going to scare you a little bit. But again, why else do it? There's no point unless you're going to really commit. Yeah, there's no And there's no point unless you're going to to enjoy the journey, enjoy the ride. Oh yeah, and what a rat it's going to be

let stay tuned. Yeah, absolutely, Oh it's brilliant. Well, thank Robin. I really appreciate you taking the time to to to talk to me today about this because it's it's just great too. It's just great to cover something you know, so positive and exciting and just mad. I've got to say it. It's it's bad. There's method in the madness. Trust me, I'm sure it's sometimes I'm like, why, why

why did we decide to do this? It's funny. Well, it's just great to hear that, you know, after after all the the amazing work that you did with the Defined and I should say as well that the Defined is still you know, a great and amazing channel that I recommend to anyone. But it's it's great Robin that you're going to be back doing this, doing this mad stuff on our screens very soon. I really can't wait. And yeah, I really appreciate you, you know, coming to

coming to tell me about it today. Um so where can people where can listeners follow you that there? Listen They've listened to this and gone that sounds insane? How do I get more of this? How do they? How do find you? Okay? So The best thing you can do is just follow me on Twitter. We are doing act, we're just just not doing it in the normal way. So just follow me on Twitter. I am supermassive one and yeah, that's probably the best thing to do. It'll

it'll become clear, it'll all make sense into your course. Exactly. Excellent, Robin, Thank you so much. This has been great, Um, and thank you everyone for listening to this week's episode of the coin Bureau podcast. Myself and Mike possibly will be back very soon, so stay tuned. Thank you so much for listening to the coin Bureau podcast. If you'd like to learn more about cryptocurrency, you can visit our YouTube

channel at YouTube dot com forward slash coin Bureau. You can also go to coin bureau dot com for loads more information about all things crypto. You can follow me on Twitter at coin burea or one word, and I'm also active on TikTok and Instagram as well. First of all, it's not thank you for listening, you're welcome for great contact. Yeah, like this is free and they're learning about a fairly

great topic in a non boring way. If you'd like to visit me and hear more about me go to mooch about m o O c h A b o U T or else. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever we get your podcasts. The coin Viera podcast is a production of I heart Radio. Pots going on n