Episode 143 | Zeneca | founder of Zen Academy & The 333 Club |

Welcome back to another episode of NFT Catch Your Podcast. We'd like to remind everybody that nothing on the show is meant as financial advice. And please do your own research. Thank you and enjoy the show. Now the subject is NFT. They're known as non-fungible tokens or NFTs. This is a technology that will come and change the way people interact. So it is happening whether you understand it and like it or not. You have now joined Jenny from the blockchain and Michael P on the NFT catch your podcast. What's up everyone and welcome back to another episode of the NFT catch your podcast with me Jenny from the blockchain and my co-host Michael Keene. For today's interview we have Zeneca joining us, founder of Zen Academy and the 333 club. Also a fellow podcaster, co-host of the two board apes podcast Zeneca. Welcome to the show. Hello. Good to be here. My video is frozen on my end. I don't know if that's been your end. It's a great stop. I'm just like, wow, he's really just smiling so hard right now. But I'm happy to be here. Happy to be here. Yes, we're happy to have you. And I know before we get started Michael had a little message that he wanted to share before we jump into this interview. Thank you. Well, it was a pleasure to have you here Zeneca. We're going to have fun. We're going to get into it. But Andy and I are recording today with very heavy hearts. We lost one of our best friends yesterday, Dave McDermott. We're going to dedicate this episode to him and you know, Dave was one of the guys. If you were his friend, he would do anything for you. So it's really, really sad and hopefully I get up there and makes it hard to live a thousand miles from home, not being with my friends right now. But you know, I know everyone's there for each other and we're going to miss Dave and we love him. So this episode is for Dave McDermott. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. To everybody who's lost a loved one, like I'm sure you can relate. It's always super tough. You know, when you first hear that news and even a while after that, like getting used to living life without them, like that is just, it's very hard. It's one of those things where everyone says it's time heals all. It gets better with the time. It's true, but you never forget. You never forget them. You take them with you, Jennifer, as you were saying before you started recording, in everything you do in life. And it's sort of like as long as they live on through you. We have so many good memories for sure. I know we're going to get together and laugh and laugh as hard as we can. You know, when we get together and tell stories of Dave, so that's never easy. But yeah, here we are. Here we are. Okay. So getting into the interview portion of this Zeneca, by the way, first of all, I'm wearing a Zeneca or I would say a Zeneca hoodie. It's literally Zen Academy. Zen Academy. Zen Academy. I'm just going to call it my Zeneca hoodie, which I forgot to wear when Emily was on. But apparently there's only 100 of these. This is limited edition. That is correct. It was never like it wasn't an intention to make it some limited thing. It's just that we got them created for NFT NYC in 2022. And we had a couple of events there. I just wanted to give out some merch. And then we just never got around to creating more merch. So at this point in time, there's only 100 of them. I'm sure we'll do other merch, but they'll be different. So like of this exact style, there's only pretty, I'm pretty sure they'll only ever be 100. Oh my gosh. When we post this episode on Twitter, I'm going to have to like take a picture of this hoodie and be like, I have the hoodie. It's like on everyone. Okay. So before we get it, because there's a lot we have to talk about, I mean, obviously, and you juggle a lot of things too. So I'm very curious how you're able to juggle everything. But I want to start out by hearing your story on how you got into Web 3 initially. It's my origin story, how I got into crypto. Basically, so I was a professional poker player before this life. I did poker for 15, 16 years. Maybe from high schools, I ran straight into poker more or less. And then I first heard about Bitcoin all the way back in like 2011 or something, because a lot of poker players get into crypto and back then, the US made it illegal to play online poker for various reasons. And so we all started playing online poker in Bitcoin. But me, I was in Australia, I never really cared that much about it. I play my usual sites. And then 2017 rolls around and I had some friends that were talking to me about Ethereum and like, we should get in and see if you can make some money. And that was a crazy bull run, but then it all came crashing down in 2018. And for me, in 2017, I was in there to make money and I like vaguely understood the concept and the fundamentals behind crypto and blockchain, but it was very speculative. And so when the bear market hit, I was like, I threw my hands and I was like, oh, bubbles over, funds over, let's go back to real life, back to poker. And then 2021 rolls around and prices are going up again. And again, I had friends from poker, one friend in particular, Jamie, co-host of the Trueboard H podcast, he asked me if I knew what an NFT was. And I said, I have no idea. He had only just found out about it. And so like we together started learning about them initially thinking it was a scam and then finally coming around to it. And that's when we saw DeFi and how that was a big thing. And like, there's all this stuff I've been built in crypto, you know, over the last few years, I think from 2017 to 2021 was massive period of building. And I just got the buck. I was like, all right, this is it. I was already looking for something to move on to after poker. And I just made this conscious decision. Like, you know, I'm going to dedicate like all my time and energy into understanding this, this crypto thing. And it just went down the rabbit hole. And here we are two years later. That's crazy. I did not know you're a poker player for 15 years before this wild to think about. It's not a life. He's almost as old as me. Wait, wait, wait, how old are you? I'm 35. I have my 35th birthday, like a couple of weeks ago. And it's the first time I've actually felt getting up there in age. And I was talking to my brother on my birthday. My brother is like 44. And he's he just said kind of in passing because we're joking about how in six years he's going to be 50 and he's like, you know, 15 years, you're going to be 50. And to me, that was like 15 years. Isn't that long? Like when you're 22, 15 years is forever. When you're 30, 50. So, but now it's like, I remember what I was doing 15 years ago. It wasn't that like I remember like eight years back. That was like yesterday. Oh, yeah, I was doing this. And then another 15 years is going to be and I'll be 50. And it's just like, oh, yeah, life comes out you fast. So, you know, I guess 15 years ago, I was 12. But yeah, you're still very much in the youngest. Attico. It's weird because when you're younger, like when you're 12 or when you're a kid, it's like you think that when you're like in your, you know, I'm 27 now, it's like, I think that, oh, oh, when I'm 27, like I imagined, first of all, I'm five foot two, you know, I imagine I'd be some tall, you know, mature adult that like had every other their whole life together. Like maybe married and have kids like, I don't know what I envisioned, but I just envisioned now some like professional person. And it's just, it's crazy because I feel so young, like even though, I don't know, it's like every year, like my mom's, oh my God, you're getting older. Like you're 27, you're almost 30. And it's like, I still feel so young. And I still feel like, I don't know. I think, yeah, it's just such a weird thing. Like I think it's, it's mostly like how you feel. I feel like, you know, I totally agree. Like I think once you get into your teens, you like become a real human. For that you're a kid, you don't really have them in thoughts of your own or the world. And then you get like your teenagers. By the time you're 20, you have like these, you're like a human. And I feel like that's kind of, you keep that essence for the rest of your life. Yeah, you sort of learn things and get more understanding of how the world works and less naive about some stuff, but you're still that same person. And at 20 as you are at 30, and I think we'll probably be the same at 40. And it's just who you are. And I think that's cool. It's like even when you're 80, you'll still be doing things that you were doing when you're 20 and thinking that you were thinking when you're 20. Once you've turned 40 and you glasses, that's one thing that happens when you're. Well, yeah, I'm surprised. I haven't got them yet. My whole family has glasses and I'm sure it's coming soon, but not quite there yet. Mine was literally, I was literally 40 years old. My mom, myself and my son went to Mexico City. We went for like a long weekend and her and I were in this restaurant. And she saw me kind of using my iPhone, struggling on one of the menus. And she hands me her reading glasses and just changed my life. I was like, Oh my God. There you go. Good. Like, see, it was pretty wild. So that's how I knew. And I was literally 40. Never warned before. So you might have it coming. Maybe not. I'm sure I do eventually, but maybe not. It's nice. I feel like that's Michael's like one. Like, Oh, when you get all the yoga glasses, like you never say anything else that happens. You only say glasses. You only luckily not going, I don't have any of the other ones to complain about. I can't hear all that great. My hearing's always been bad. My hearing's always been bad. That's going to go like I've been to so many concerts. I listen to riding on the bus from Penn State to Philadelphia for five hours, blaring, you know, mob deep or something. Like my hearing is not the best. Yeah, I guess it depends what you do when you're, yeah, it depends what you do when you're younger, like leading up to as you get older. So try to build good habits. Yeah, stretch to everyone. It's young. Because when you just wake up and like, Oh, my neck is sore. Oh, you know, especially for us who just sit, spend so much time sitting, just like, Oh my God. Stretch. Yeah. Yeah, stretch, keep moving. My uncle Rocky, 93 years old. So he's texting me today. He wants to travel to Europe this summer. He travels by himself, youth hostels on a budget. One. 93. Yeah. He's 50 years. He's saying. Yeah. Oh, my uncle Rocky. Yeah, he's 93. He's my grandmother's younger brother. She lived to 93. He's 93 now. And he took me. He got me into traveling when I was 19 years old. We went to Venezuela for six weeks, him, myself and another cousin. And he's 50 years older. He's been traveling ever since all over central and South America. Oh, he's probably like so healthy. Like, see, that's the thing too. It's like 93. You think that you're going to be like in a retirement home, but some people are 90 years in traveling. He's in like he's he drinks. He smokes. He smokes. We smoke. That's so serious. He smokes. He smokes. We. Yeah. Yeah. I've been smoking. We were on the road. I can remember. I know all the men on that side of the family and my family. Pretty much. I don't know if anyone's listening, but from your family. Shout out to Michael. And then like every time people, the kids turn 18, they start smoking like it's just in the tradition. I literally found I was looking through my old, like, I'm trying to find my passports. I'm like, do all my important stuff. And I found a polaroid. Yeah, I found it. I found a Polaroid picture of me the first time I smoked weed. I was like smoking a blood and somebody took a picture because they're like, Oh, it's your first time. That's so cute. And they like documented it and I kept it. And I'm like, it was from I think I was 17 or something. We need to see that. We need to see that. OK, I can go get it and show you what you got to talk about something else for two minutes. Ask him about that Academy. We got to start getting into NFT stuff here. We're just going to do something. I have something to ask. I have something to ask about. I have something to ask about. So early on, Zeneca, like this was probably March, April, May, 2021. We were doing a little bit of the same thing. If you like, there were no data sites out there. Now there's a million data sites, DJs. There was nothing. And and I remember your spreadsheets very, very well. That was very important with all the projects. And I started doing it was running around the same time, but I was just doing like a thread where I was putting all these and I had like 200 followers at the time. And like it just started getting retweeted and got me up to a couple of thousand before I got on the bandwagon with Jenny up to 12,000. I was at 3000 when we started the podcast. So I made you famous. Yeah, pretty nice. Pretty much. Wait, let me show this really great. Nice. It's amazing for the first time. Oh my God. Also a lot like Chubby Air. It's just so funny. Like 20, 14. Oh, yeah. Yep. I was at a party and my friends are like, Oh, Jennifer, she's so innocent. She won't smoke weed. And I was like, excuse me. And then I was like, no, you know what? I passed me to the boy. And then I was like, I don't feel high. And then they're like, try this joint. And then I spoke to them. I'm like, I don't feel high. They're like, try this pipe. Like they literally and then they're like, try this bong. And then I like held it way too long. Oh my God. Take it out. Take it out quick. And I like, I literally had a coffee tag for 20 minutes. They were so scared. They had no water in the house. I was like drinking from the sink. It was like some super like ratchet place. And they were like, wait, like she might die. Like, and I was just like coughing up a storm and eventually I recovered. And that was the highest I've ever gotten to my entire life. I was like on the floor, like laughing so hard. Like they were like, okay, this girl, like we didn't realize we'd have to babysit her. It's her first time. It was a whole thing. Anyway, sorry. That's a great. Yeah, it's a good picture. It's a good picture to have. Yeah, so we were told, what do you remember about that time? Like what made you want to start putting that data out there? And honestly, it was I was trading a lot of NFTs and tracking the markets myself. And I had this Google sheet that I was just for my own purposes every day. I'd be like, all right, I own these collections. Let me check with the floor is today and tomorrow. And then in one of my group chats with a bunch of poker friends, someone was like, I wish there was a way to find out the floor of a bunch of projects. And I was like, Hey, I've got this. I shared it with them. I put it out on Twitter and it just blew up. It was like viral. And then I was like, Oh, let me do it again tomorrow. And just happened that way. Yeah, it was so needed. It was like, and that was at a point where you could almost track every single project. You literally could. Yeah. And then go ahead. No, I was going to say, I remember when there was a point where there would be like two new projects launching a week and people were going crazy. They're like, this is unsustainable. Like this is ridiculous. How can there be two projects a week launching? And then we got to like dozens a day. And here we are now. Yeah. Here we are. We are now with new shit coins, job launching every day. That's the new. So actually before NFTs, I spent a month or six weeks trading shit coins back in like March 2021, April, March, April, like that. Oh, wow. In the telegram chats, just nonstop. It was madness mayhem. And so anything NFT related was like calm compared to that. So we've just come full circle. Like I feel like every few years, every cycle, there's a shit coin, mean coin phase. And this is this year's. What was the switch that got you that switched you from shit coins to NFTs 100% in in that early 2021? What was like the first project to click or the big one was ZRUN for me. So like I bought some random things here and there and didn't really make money and some art did I like, but didn't really do anything price wise. And then I had some friends that said, hey, there's a ZRUN drop coming up. It's that runs a horse. And like even before I got any horses or anything, I saw the game and I was like, oh, this is really cool. It's fun to watch the horses race and you get prizes and, you know, I was lucky enough to get in on the first drop or like not the first drop, but one of the early drops back then. And it was like this crazy thing where if you could mint, you could instantly sell for like five or 10 X on secondary. And this was very common back in 2021. And I was like, wow, this is incredible, but also one of my horses that I raced was able to win and like make money in the races. And so I just spent like the entirety of April 21, I would just wake up into my horse and the races nonstop all day long and then go to sleep and then trade some other stuff. And so like that and from there, I started to build it like a small bankroll and bought some other things and yeah, the rest is kind of history. And the board apes came along pretty much. Yeah. So there was actually an eight project before board apes called eight only that I loved. There's 999 of them. You could burn your ape and get like a metal engraved version of it. I was obsessed with that. That was the first collection I ever like looked at rarities on. And I felt like I was doing some really smart stuff, sniping, rares and all that kind of stuff. But the collection never like really took off. It did okay. And then bought apes was sort of like not too long after that. And that went crazy. And I had like this chip on my shoulder because I was like, why is this? My eight project has a lower supply and I think the art is better and so I didn't look at apes for like, like I hated them for the first few weeks. And then eventually FOMO got me and I was like, all right, everyone's talking about them. I got to get in. And obviously very lucky that they did. No doubt. And then when do you start your podcast? Because you have the two board apes podcast, which I feel like, I mean, I remember that was around when when we started ours, like you, you've been around for a while with that podcast, you and Jamie. And you still like put out episodes and everything with that. Yeah, we recorded like a two hour episode today. We had a couple of other other people on. We started that I think in June or July of 2021 and we went like we were obsessed. I mean, again, bull market, there's a lot to talk about. We were loving it. We do like multiple episodes a week. I think we had like 50 episodes out within like six months and now we're up to like episode 77. So the cadence slowed down once every week, once every two weeks and it just sort of started slipping and we still do it because it's fun and we love to just get on a podcast and chat and we make it like loosely related to NFTs. But it's me and it offered all these random topics now. And it's almost like a lifetime cast for me and Jamie with some sprinkle of NFT content added in. You know, you know, it's funny. LG do set from the first minute. You have the first minute told us pretty much exactly the same thing. He and his brother, they talk about life a lot now and they just kind of like hang out. Yeah, it's fun. Honestly, it's so much more fun. It's not great for like reach and like getting people who are really interested in NFTs into your podcast. But for like the original there's nobody left that's interested in this. They're not exactly exactly. No, you know what I mean? Like you guys probably like, I mean, we peaked in January, February, March 2022. That was like the highest, you know, down for us. Right. And you know, there's just not those people searching NFT. Yeah. On how AI now, that's the the meme, right? All the people now go into it. Yeah. I'm doing it. I think it's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm shifting my focus. I'm sure you are. You said you are as well. We definitely are going to talk about that this episode. Some point talk about some AI stuff. Oh, nice. Cool. Yeah, of course, of course. Emily was telling us that she was saying, do you guys have a PFP projects dropping soon? We do. And she even said she was like, tell us, like, to hook y'all up. She said that she said it not me. Yeah. OK, we can hook you up. Oh, she. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyways, tell us about the PFP project. What's happening? When is it? Do we have any kind of ETA timeline? Yeah, we we there's not a strong timeline. I've learned, like initially we said Q1 this year, but initially we were going to pixel art and like there's so much more simple than, you know, more complex 3D illustrated art. And we ended up changing artists and moving that so that I've learned you do not give timelines in web three. There's so many things out of your control artists and other all this other stuff. And then yeah, so, but I would say within the next few months, it's like very reasonable and likely at this point without giving a hard date or commitment. And the entire reason we're doing it, we launched an academy in November 2021. And I very intentionally didn't do a PFP. Because again, at that point, there was a million PFP projects. And I was like, this space doesn't need yet another random PFP project. Just flooding the market. And the whole point is an academy was to be active, like a membership token, access token and like an ERC 1155 serve that purpose. But then somewhere like throughout last year 2022, the idea came up like, should we do a PFP and like, why would we do it? And it's really a lot of the community was asking for a PFP. And so instead of launching PFP first and then trying to build a community afterwards, we already have a community. And then we thought, well, maybe we could just have people sort of burn their current token and turn that into a PFP that then they can use if they want on social media and to represent and have a nice piece of art. And so that's the mindset we're going into with the PFP. And we've been working with some incredible artists and it's like, it's looking awesome. I'm really happy with how it's coming together. And yeah, within the next few months, it's going to be out there. And I'm not expecting it to be some massive, crazy, hyped thing where we're going to, you know, have massive, we're not doing a mint. It's really just burning existing tokens to get that. But I'm really excited for it because I think it's amazing art and I think the community will really enjoy using it, representing on social media, et cetera, et cetera. It's exciting. Yeah. OK, OK, so yeah, I know we saw a little bit on the Zen Academy, like Pins tweet. She's like, oh, you can kind of see a little bit of what it's going to look like and giving us some hints. But I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the art on it and also, yeah, seeing people represent it because that's kind of the most exciting thing, right? Like people repping and being proud of like, this is my NFT and like, you know, having that be their profile picture. That's kind of one of the main utilities for NFTs. I think that people like the most honestly is like the flex of being able to display it on social media. I agree. OK, oh, also, before I forget, before I forget, before it's the end of the episode and I don't say this, we asked you guys to write or like, if we could just get one review, you know, because Zenika, I'm sure you know, if you don't ask people to write or if you there's not, our last review was in 2022 when we did a really big push, wanted to get to 100. We got there and then we never asked again and we're like, wait a minute, one since our last review, we have to shout out. There were two people that were reviews. We have to shout them out right now. Antonio Sosa 21 wrote great for learning about NFTs. I'm a beginner and I love how Michael Keane and Jennifer Sudo packaged the complex topic for me to understand. Thank you so much, Antonio. And also over on Spotify, I guess you can write Spotify reviews now. This is our first Spotify review. I think this is like a new thing, but the showroom guy said Michael and Jenny and Andy always do a great job, which they were podcasting every day. Thanks for what you all do. There we go. Shout out to those who wrote a view. We appreciate you. And speaking of every day, Zeneca, you have a daily Twitter spaces that you do in addition to all the other stuff, which kind of brings me back to my original thing that I want to talk about, which is like, how do you juggle all of the different things and even doing like a show every single day? I mean, I guess it boils down to time management, but I do have any pro tips. How do you do it? Don't do what I'm trying to do. It's my approach. It's too much. Like, honestly, it is, I've done a lot over the last 18 months and have been doing a lot. And I literally just spread myself too thin and it was like that whole going a mile wide and inch deep instead of an inch wide and a mile deep. And so like, I've done and we've done at Zen Academy even a lot of really cool stuff and a lot of stuff I'm proud of, but then a lot of stuff that doesn't really move the needle or matter that much or have that much of an impact. And I think that what I'm learning is that and we're trying to do more at Zen Academy. As well is pick one or two things and just like really focus and hone in on that rather than try a million other things. So yeah, we have the Daily Show now and all this other stuff. But I think within the next few months, we'll be streamlining and cutting back on a lot of our other initiatives and picking one or two lanes and just really going all in on those. But the Daily Show is honestly, it's really fun. It's actually not that much time at the end of the day. It's like a one hour show on Twitter, Monday through Friday. And for me personally, there's, you know, 15 to 30 minutes of prep time per day. Emily has her stuff and then we have a couple of other team members helping out as well. So it's, you know, an hour, hour and a half a day, Monday through Friday, which does add up, but it's not stupendously overwhelming, at least at this point. How many people do you have on the Zen Academy team? We have a lot there as well. And again, it's probably part of the reason was spread so wide and all that kind of stuff. And the other thing is with our team, we have people who work like very part time, 10 hours a week, moderating discord type thing and then full time, full time. We have six people full time and another like 10 to 15 in varying degrees of part time, which is a large team. And yeah, we're at at the moment. What's your like long, long term goal with Zen Academy, like money wise? I don't know. I don't remember exactly how much you made during the minute or whatever. But what's your plan before we get into that? I do want to let you know, I was listening to two board apes when you described the, I was on an airplane. I remember pretty vividly when you described the whole project. So I was a podcast. Yeah. No, I listened to that podcast a lot, especially when we were getting started. Cause like Jenny said, you were at the at the start of like a month before us because we started in August. So there weren't many back there back then. There were there weren't. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. The DJI network spreadsheet. I remember. Oh, yeah, I made almost spreadsheet of all of the because for evaluate and we've been sponsors. Then it was out of value. It sponsors that is podcast for a couple of episodes. But yeah, I made it into my spreadsheet of all the NFT podcasts. I'm like, wow, yeah, there's really not that many. And even of the ones that there are, there's not that many that are actually doing well, you know, like, and consistent and have a lot of episodes and all that. So yeah, that's very true. What was the question? End goal of Zen Academy and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. What's the? Yeah. So that's something that sort of evolved a lot over time. Again, at the time of mint, there was no road map. There was intentionally, I had no strong plan. I just said, you know what, I want to be full time in this space. I want to spend more time on content. I want to spend less time trading and flipping, build a team and do some cool stuff. And we'll see what that ends up being. And people are like, cool, 0.033. So we'll jump in and see what happens and come on for the ride. And we've done a lot of cool stuff along the way. We've created educational courses, ebooks, YouTube videos. We have weekly events and all in-person events and stuff as well. And that's been really excellent. A community building and on the education front, we've on boarded, I think, a lot of people as well into understanding what NFTs are. However, that is not a business model. So like something that's been in front of mine for like six plus months, at least for me. And I think most founders have these thoughts is the difference between community and company. And then, you know, on the one hand, you have a company that needs to generate revenue, that needs to sustain the business, that needs to deliver products and services and content and this, that, the other. And on the other hand, you have a community that you also want to reward and because they've supported you and give some sort of perks and benefits and utility and all that stuff to. And oftentimes what's best for one is not necessarily best for the other and vice versa. And it's difficult to straddle those two things and like find that balance. And I don't think too many projects have done that. And I think a lot of projects are trying to do that. And obviously we are as well. And so we've tried a lot, especially with the royalties sort of going through dwindling and bear market stuff, running away. We've been trying to spin up alternative revenue streams. And I think like consulting is one area there. Content is obviously something we've done a lot of. And like you can get sponsorships and affiliate links and stuff and potentially generate revenue there and yada yada yada. But in terms of like what I see is like the end goal vision and then my new perspective and I haven't really shared this anywhere. I think yeah, it's just very recent thinking, but it's sort of pivoting in a way and like making the focus being on founders and builders and like more on that B2B and like advisory consulting founder side of things. Because the end of the day, there's like we do a daily newsletter, a weekly newsletter, daily Twitter space, you know, all these other stuff. There's a lot of other people doing exactly the same stuff and to be perfectly honest, there's way better daily newsletters out there than what we're putting out and things like that. So like we can kind of compete and put energy and resources there, but it's nothing too special. Whereas in the other hand, there's not too many people writing content or creating stuff and creating resources and platforms specific for project founders or like web to companies wanting to get into web three. There are a few, but far fewer. And I think that's something where we have a unique position or relatively unique position and ability, partially because of me and my experience and I've advised, you know, a hundred plus projects, but also the other people on the team who have worked in web three for a year, 18 months and have their own alternative backgrounds and history to an expertise to bring to the table. So we want to really focus on catering to people who are like more serious about the building in the space and founding and create content around that and build that into a business pipeline as well where we can generate. Revenue, whether it is through like spinning up the consulting arm even more solidly or it could be through content, but then the content is specifically on how to be a founder or builder in the space and run workshops and, you know, masterminds and all sorts of stuff around that particular niche and not like not do all the other stuff that we're doing. I see that I'm frozen again. Let me try and fix that. So, yeah, that's kind of where I see things going. We're not going to like completely forget where we came from. Like a lot of our stuff has been on onboarding people into crypto and NFTs and we're going to keep those courses and like there'll be excellent resources, but we probably won't spend too much more time energy on building out that side of things also in part because I don't think in five years from now, people will need to be hopefully having a bit need to be onboarded into NFTs because by that point, it should just be stream or 10 years whenever it is. There's a point where it's just part of our lives. They're not called NFTs anymore. Everyone has an app on their phone. It's just like seamless and the user experience has improved. And then if we're still focusing on boarding, we'll be obsolete. So hopefully that answers your question. I sort of rambled and I tend to do that. Thanks for giving us exclusive. You heard it here first, folks. Alpha, alpha, alpha. Yeah, I'm fully yet worked out alpha, but thoughts and works in progress. That is the kind of where I'm thinking. And I think it makes sense and aligns well and we can benefit and reward the community and in a myriad of ways there too. But yeah, that's where my head's at these days. Yeah, that's very smart because there are a lot of builders in the space and aspiring builders and founders and there really is not that much content or information around how to be a founder and web three. You know, it's like, that's a relatively new thing. So there's, I mean, there's definitely a need for that. That's for sure. A lot of people, you know, realizing that the opportunity is ripe. You know, they can really, there's so many different things you can do in web three that haven't been done before. So many new paths, the carve. Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot to learn to, a lot of mistakes to make in the beginning that, you know, a lot of people they like to learn by making mistakes themselves. But the easiest way to learn is to learn through other people's mistakes. You know, if you can learn through other people's mistakes, then you can fast track, you know, your progress on what you are able to accomplish. So I love that. Love that for you guys. Yeah, there's nothing quite like learning from your own mistakes, but I agree like paying experts for their knowledge and experience is like one of the best could be like a therapist. It could be a personal trainer. It could be a life coach or a business coach or consultant. And it's like that is one of the best use cases for money, I think, no matter what area of life you'll think, you know, it's just like, yeah. Yeah, it's like, it's like reading books, you know, it's like learning things that yeah, I, I've definitely taken my fair share of like entrepreneur courses and stuff where it's just like learning from mentors and people that have done what you want to do. Like that is so, that is so like so helpful. People don't even realize how helpful that is. I'm kind of curious why you go by Zeneca because I don't know if your real name, your real name is public, right? Yeah, Roy. Roy. Yeah. But so why do you think Roy's a nickname anyway? But like, oh, what? Rohit is my birth name, but like ever since I was like five growing up in Australia, kids at school couldn't say Rohit. They would say Roy, like they'd be like Roy, and then it just stuck. So, but yeah, I think that's what that comes from. So when I was creating my Twitter account in 2021, I needed a screen name because I didn't have like, I wanted a new Twitter account. I had an old one with poker, but I was following all poker people and I was like, let me just create a new account and everyone has a new pseudonym and most people don't use their real names. Some people do. And that's great. But like, I was like, yeah, this is crypto Twitter. Let's come up with a name. I literally just looked around my desk and then I had a book and I actually have one right now by a stoic philosopher Seneca. It was a different book, but I'm a big fan of stoicism. And so I was like, oh, that's cool. Maybe there's something I can do with that. And I didn't want to just use Seneca. But like, I like Buddhism and Zen as a concept. And also this was 2021 and like, you know, COVID was on everyone's mind. AstraZeneca was a vaccine. So like, I didn't actually consciously think about it. But like, I think somewhere in my head, there was some jump that went there. I was like, oh, cool. Let's just do instead of Seneca was to Zeneca. And then it just stuck. That's crazy. That's a really good name story. That's really interesting. I love hearing how people got their names when it's like unique. It's like, Zeneca. How do you think of that? So you have Zeneca. I do have Zeneca. Thankfully. Oh, did you secure that earlier? Did you have to buy like someone? No, I got it really early. Thankfully, like, I think like June or something of 2021. Nice. I have. So my Twitter account was actually initially Zeneca underscore 33 because Zeneca was taken. And I was 33 years old at the time. And so like, people always ask me like, why 33? What's the symbolism there? Is it this? I was like, I was just literally my age at the time. There's nothing special to it. And that would like the brand. Now. Well, it was the brand, but then I was able to get at Zeneca on Twitter and without. And I was like, that's just clean. I'm just going to go with that. And then I've just cut the 33 out of it. Now, there's like a remnant in other parts of whatever. But yeah. Did you buy that Zeneca handle or you just? How did you get that? Actually, Emily, she met someone who works for like a nonprofit that works very closely with Twitter. They're like, they're like a nonprofit that help. Teenagers or kids who like, gamer kids who go through like mental mental health problems caused by gaming and abuse online or that kind of stuff. And she works with them and their parents and social media platforms. Because there's a lot of cyber bullying and stuff like that. So she had like direct lines with Twitter and she was able to help Emily get at Emily V and then us to get at Zen Academy and me to get Zeneca. So very fortunate to have that connection. Wow. Emily coming in clutch. Seriously. Yeah. Connection inside Twitter is real. That's especially now like. Yeah. Yeah. That's a nice one. Whatever happened to co-tweeting. Remember that was the thing I was like, I do. I do. That was fun for a lot. You remember it all too well with Ryan Carson. Oh, right. You remember it all too well. Wait a minute. Now we're going to talk about that. I've done like, I think four co-tweet in my life and that was one of them. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So wait a minute because yeah, what was this? A couple months ago, basically Ryan Carson, everybody kind of knows Ryan Carson. He started out as I think the COO of Moonbird. Just kind of how he came onto the map. Anyways, people found out he was like kind of doing like insider trading with the Moonbirds basically. I don't think he was doing that. I do not. He did a lot of other stuff that is not good. But I think that was one that was. He maybe not a should have made those trades, but I don't think there was like, he laid it out where there was proper time for other people to maybe see the rarerities, whatever I think. Yeah. Yeah. It was good. No matter what. Right. It wasn't. It wasn't. It wasn't. Two questionable things related to Moonbirds. There's a lot of special stuff. Yeah. And also he left super early. Basically after they minted out, he just like left. And I remember when they got the 30s or whatever, they get the 35 beats. He's like, peace. I'm out. So then, and then, I mean, I'm not 100% sure on his storyline. But then at some point he starts daily. The Daily Dose starts doing daily Twitter spaces, which were very popular. Like thousands of people were joined because he would have like, you could claim a Po app if you listened. And he would just like randomly say it at some point throughout the show. So you had to be paying attention, which was a brilliant move. That was a brilliant move that Bell app he did. Yeah. He was early on that move. And it was like, oh, if you had the Po app, like you would have like a allow list for the for our project when it comes out type of thing. Like it was it was that kind of things. Of course, people were grinding for these Po apps. And I'm sure there's a lot of people paying people to listen in and say the codes and stuff like that. So yeah. So then, oh man, of course he had his fund. What was it like? One, two, one, one. Oh, wow. I'm good. Okay. One to one G fund, which was doing really poorly. And people were like tweeting about how bad it was doing. And then he launches another fund. And okay. Now it's starting to get fuzzy for me. But Zenika, would you like to take over? Yeah. Now, then he, so the whole point of people, or the end goal for people getting Po app. From the Daily Dose base was for a project that he was calling Flux that was meant to go in like late 2023. And for that, he was raising a bunch of money to help fund it basically. And it was going to be like a Y Combinator style incubator. And I actually thought the idea was really cool, but like the way he approached fundraising and the messaging around it was very not good is putting it generously misleading in multiple ways. And didn't leave good taste in people's mouths. Plus the fact like if that was the first time he did something like out of step, then I think given like everything he would do, the Dose people would forgive him and all that. But because he'd already done some not great things with the one two on G fund and around Moonbirds, it was like people were like, all right, fool me once, fool me twice. This is the third time. And just basically the space had had enough of him. And I think he ducked out of the space as well because it was just, yeah, it wasn't right. He couldn't tweet anymore without a million people being like, you mother. Because he was doing all these like, co tweets. That was the thing. He's doing all these things with people that were basically supposed to be investors, early investors in his projects. But then they never like actually gave him the money. And he basically like kind of made it seem like, oh, they did already pay him to be investors in this. And it was just very misleading and basically just him trying to raise money by making it seem like other people had already given him money. And then a bunch of people started backing out being like, I don't even want to be a part of this. And then literally everybody started saying that. And then next thing you know, hands over the daily dose to you guys. And then or just kind of is like, okay, we're emerging our community with, you know, is that academy? And then he just leaves about three leaves Twitter goes over to LinkedIn and starts doing AI stuff. Right? Is that what he's doing? Yeah, he's on some LinkedIn spaces, equivalent during an AI space. And then even I think in the last couple of weeks, he started tweeting again a little bit. And it's probably a whole new group of people that are following them because he could talk really well. You can't knock the hustle. He is absolutely master at talking and building community. Like there's no doubt about it. The daily community was excellent. I mean, they were good people. Yeah. They were an are amazing people. And some of them stuck around in a part of the Zen Academy and Zen daily community, all amazing people. But yeah, even all the way back to Moonbirds, like the reason he got to be his position as CEO, and all that is because in the discord, in the proof discord, even before Moonbirds was there, he would just be on voice chat for hours. And like just the community would just form around him. And he was just known as the pillar of the community that brought people together. And then again, I didn't know that. OK. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, definitely. Definitely one of those people where it's like, OK, they're just they're a smooth talker. They know how to if you can be a people person and get people to like you. If you can be likable like that, that's huge. That'll get you pretty far. Even if you do shady things, you know, because there's a lot of people in the space that I've done shady things. But people still like them because they're likable. And they also like if you just keep putting yourself out there, the more people see you, the more they're going to like you, because it's just like they're constantly seeing you. And even if you don't like somebody, like if you're constantly seeing them, you eventually kind of, you're always kind of thinking about them. It's like top of mind awareness, you know, and then it's like, OK, I think about them. Yeah, exactly. Like I remember like you go to school with people and there'd be some people who were just like jerks. Or just not that pleasant. But you see them every single day and then like three years later, you bump into them and you're like, Oh, hey, we're in the same school. Yeah, it's like if you're actually thinking about it, you had nothing in common with them and all that kind of stuff. But you know them and you're like, all right, you have pleasant feelings still. Yeah. Yes, that's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's let's switch up from Ryan Carson to the other mildly controversial thing. Oh, no. We're a pro-bo-blare. It's not that bad. But the blur to you, your advisor for them, what's what's what's exactly? I was an advisor. I'm not. I have been an advisor since January of this year. Got it. So I invested in them all the way back in December 2021 along with about two dozen other people before they even called Blur actually, they were called Audubook. And then in April of 2022, I joined the team as like this hybrid between advisor and ambassador to really just like help them understand the NFT space and all be that conduit because they were coming from a DeFi background and they wanted someone like entrenched in the space. And so I worked with them, advised them over the course of 2022 and then started 2023 rolls around and we basically amicably parted ways on that front. I'm still sort of involved in a very minorly active role for one of the Blur entities, the Blur Foundation, which is like they've decentralized into multiple entities. And it's mostly just like a on paper type role there, but I haven't actively been advising or doing anything really with the platform since January. No doubt. I figured there's something like that. And so, you know, I was I was a fan of Blur earlier, very early on when it got announced, you know, the whole professional trading where you can do all this bulk stuff that you can ever do before. Really awesome. I actually talked to Pacman and did like, did everyone know that they were going to get into? So I want to get your opinion on like the farming and the rewards and now the new lending and did like people know early on that that was the goal of it? Or was it more just a trading platform? When you say people, do you mean like the community or the? I guess. Yeah. Well, you I guess you. Yeah, you did you know me? So I obviously, yeah, I knew that before they launched, there were all these ways to get a token allocation. It was sort of kind of thing. Oh, wait, no, not before they launched before they went public. They were in like a beta phase for a while. And if you traded there, they were like trading will get you tokens when the token launches. And I knew that like the trade, they incentivize. Yeah, I was in the beta for a little bit. Incentives were there up until launch. And I think the plan, I'm trying to remember in my head, I think the plan was to have tokens distributed after launch as well for trading, just as general trading incentives. Similar to like looks rare or extra wide. We were even after the platform, like for the people that use the platform, you got. Comments in the tokens, the exact mechanics of all of it. I don't think we're clear even to like Pac-Man. As far as I'm aware, like a lot of the times I would ask him, like, what is the plan? Like we haven't figured it out yet. We'll figure that out later. And so it was like, yes, there would be. The tokens will be distributed to the community somehow, but I certainly didn't know how and I don't think they even knew how necessarily until we got closer to the dates. And how do you think that the whole thing is affected? And I'm not even suggesting that it's positive or negative. I'd like to know honestly how you think it's affected the market. So I think there's two components to blur and its impact on the market. There's the platform and the protocol itself and what the features of it do. And then there's the incentives for the token. And so on the platform side, I think it is, is allowed a lot of things that weren't possible prior to blur. Like, for instance, the mass bidding across things and the mass accepting of bids and the blur pools and the speed with which you could sweep and just like really trade in large volume. It had like started to emerge a little bit with like gem and genie and pseudo swap, but blur really combined marketplace plus aggregator in one and just created this massive ability for people to move significant volume. And I think what that did is it really just shone a light on what the space has really been for a long time where the reality is that most people who own tokens are speculating and want to sell when price goes up. And certainly anyone that owns more than one NFT in a collection, almost all of them. There's some rare exceptions, but most people who own multiples, they want to eventually sell like the excess ones and like I'll buy three. And then if the price goes up, I'll sell one of them. And sure, some people buy specifically a dozen or a half a dozen, because they really liked those, the art of those, but I would say for the vast majority. So then what it did, but like with the way marketplaces were is you have to list one by one by one by one. It was difficult to really move in mass. And so no one is really trading a significant volume. Blur comes along and then now all this, all this ability is there to trade and move massive volume. People started doing it. And what people realized is, well, hey, everyone is trading and most people aren't here to hold and say long term, combined with the overall macro bear market, the world and just things like that and NFTs bubble popping in and of itself, led to a collapsed in floor prices, perhaps a little more quickly because of the abilities of Blur. And then you had the token incentives in. And that unless convinced on the impact positive or negative short, medium of long term of that, other than it does introduce inorganic motivations to the market. So it's difficult to know what the true market value of certain things are, because some people are point farming and will buy hundreds of a collection and then price to go up and then they'll accept bids and price will go down. And so what the true value is at is difficult to know at any time. Yeah, I don't really have a strong opinion on whether it's a net positive or negative intern. I think the incentives are an X factor and it's confusing for the market, which is a negative, but the long term ramifications of it, I think, are TBD. If that makes sense, it does totally. That makes sense. Yeah, I think Blur is great for for the traders, but not great for the holders looking at it, right? Like, but it's like, if you're going to diamond in anyway, then you don't really need to look at a marketplace because your point is to hold. But I think a lot of people focus too much on price that are not even looking to sell, you know, and then that kind of messes up with them. Exactly. So from day one, Blur set out to be, and again, this is partially why I invested in 2021 was the NFT marketplace for pro traders. Like we had, we didn't have an NFT marketplace that was like your, I mean, FTX was the example at the time, but like your Coinbase or your, you know, you have, so not Coinbase, your Binance or other coin marketplaces that have advanced features and trading features. There wasn't that for NFTs. And I think there were a lot of people that were trading a lot of NFTs and speculating on them in both directions. And Blur was meant to be for them and still is, I would say, the issue is that that's not the whole market. And like there are people that are there just to appreciate the art, to appreciate the art or just to hold one NFT because I like the collection. I like the project. And when price goes up and down and fluctuates, then they're impacted by that. And they think it's Blur's fault, whether it is or isn't, it's, I mean, Blur is an excellent scapegoat right now. And I think that they might be rightfully so. They might be to blame, but they might also not be to blame, but they, they're no doubt just an excellent, like when the market gets, it's not even Blur. It's like, just look on the Twitter timeline. There's so much toxicity and like people are going after each other and influencer wars and like meme coin wars now people, your meme coin. But it's mine. Me and Coem. It's like as the bear market rages on people get a little more toxic, I think, which is understandable. You've lost money. It's, you know, it's wearing on you. And it's just led to this unpleasant environment, I think, less pleasant environment. Yeah. Michael, do you have any more questions before we go to the gas force segment? Well, one more quick one about Blur. Yeah. I my conspiracy theory self. Oh, you know, remember when when Blur came out and Beanie reappeared? And he's the best. Very well. I feel like he's behind. He could be behind these tokenomics and a lot of the, a lot of the ideas they're having. He's sharp that way. He does. I'm almost certain he is not like I, I would almost bet my reputation, but I don't want to go that far. Because somebody recently said he's still doing stuff. People say a lot of things there. Like if it was a team member or like the coke, if Pacman or someone said that, that's one thing. But again, like I was in the Slack channel. I was on meetings and calls for a month, like a lot of 2020. There was literally not a single mention of Beanie. I didn't even know he was involved. So like he invested in 2021 or early 2022 through an LLC. So like on the cap table, it wasn't Beanie Maxie or Beanie. It was some company. So I had no idea who that was, then it all surfaced and then I was shocked as many where. So I had no idea that he was involved in any capacity, where that he's involved. Now again, I would be very, very surprised. Like I've spoken to Pacman and that they want absolutely nothing to do with him. They've spoken to lawyers, but like it's just like he is an investor. You can't just remove an investor easily. And so that's to me, that's the extent. Like again, there's a very small remote outside possible chance that he is involved, but I would be extraordinarily shocked. Understood. Cool. And and we didn't get into AI. We don't have a lot of time to chat about it. But what is your favorite use case that you have used personally? What are you enjoying with AI right now? Honestly, it's nothing too fancy. I have fun making AI art and like fun things like that. But for things like creating courses or content and things where I like you can ask AI and it will create like 80% of the work. It will be like, if you're a good structure or outline and you might have to modify it a little bit here or there, just doing things that don't need to be particularly creative, but AI can just do 80 or 90% of the way. It just, it's such a time saver that I'm obsessed with it. It's so good. 100%. Cool. Yeah. Love it. All right. You want to send up your S-Hores, Jenny? Yeah. Um, okay. So, oh, here's how it's going to go. So this is our newest segment. It's kind of like our fun way to spruce things up towards the end. Basically, we're each going to do five rapid fire questions. We call it gas wars because I don't, we just call it. Okay. Because I'm full of hot air. Oh, because Michael's full of hot air. Yeah. And so, yeah, we're just going to ask you five questions. Mary, my don't have to do with web three and we're just going to take turns going back and forth. So my first question is, oh, I love this one. What's the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Track my phone, get out of bed. It varies a lot. So like recently, I said, I'm terrible with rapid fire answers. Recently I started being where, um, I can't remember, uh, God, I can't remember his name, but there's this really excellent YouTuber and scientist guy who tells you, um, get some sunlight first thing in the morning. So go for a walk. And that's like something I've started doing recently. Uh, but when I'm in my normal bad habit state, it's like just check the price of coins and stuff and then it's all for the 20 minutes and then, yeah, trying to be better, but. Yeah. I know I feel you. I'm like, I want to say like, when I wake up and I read a book or like, you know, but I literally wake up. I like grab my phone. I'm like checking my like messages and all this stuff. And I'm like, David, why is this the first thing I do? Um, but it motivates me to actually get up because I'm like, Oh, God, like all this stuff I have to do. Yep. Anyway, okay. Michael, all right. Best music album of all time. Oh, wow. Mm. Put them on the spot. Only on the spot. I'm not excellent with music album names. Let me think. You could do like a band or something if you want. You don't have to. So like I love Pink Floyd. Um, they had some good albums. The Eagles, Bob Dylan, like I like the older music fields, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd. Uh, again, I'm seeing the album stands out. Yeah. OK, Bob Dylan's one of my very favorites. I could listen to you forever, forever. Same. Yep. Nice. Um, what's your favorite NFC conference that you've been to? I went to Met Amsterdam. That's probably my answer in June, last year is a relatively small conference. So doing it again, I think in November this year, it was fun. It was small, but it was just, yeah, really great group of people. And it was one of those conferences that had one stage where like it all just like revolved around that. Not one of those conferences that has 50 different stages that have no one in the audience. It was like a nice, nice, fun environment. You really should have said NFT Melbourne, which you just took part in. Cause those are my buddies, Mark and Theo. And they would, they would, they would have gone nuts if you would have been like NFT Melbourne was. Honestly, if I was there, I might have, but I was virtually. I know you are. I know. Oh, wow, he wasn't even there Michael. Come on. I know. I'm just mad. So like, I was literally sitting in a hotel lobby at 2 AM. They didn't want to wake up. My fiance in the hotel room, you know, calling in there. And it was really fun. But unfortunately, next year, maybe when I'll attend the move in a hotel, you got to go into the, like the workout room in late and night. No one's in there. The gym. Yeah. What? That's the off. Yeah. They don't have a business center. You know, you got a business center, but sometimes. Yeah. Well, here we go. Most overrated NFT project. Oh, I know. I'm sorry. Yeah. See, though, it's not an easy one for some because because you're a bad, you're a little bit of a politician. You try and be real nice about everything. Yeah. I do. I do. I know. But it's also a case of like right now, there's very little that's over. Because everything's tank so much. Yeah. God, I will say, I mean, the one that comes to mind is clinics and but it's difficult to say that they're overrated now because they've fallen so far from grace and that like sentiment is low. But I just always felt a little something about like the whole Nike involvement and like the conflict between the holders and community and company and profit and customer and all that kind of stuff. So I'll say them. Yeah. Cool. What's your favorite fruit? Ooh, uh, pineapple. Ooh. Pineapple literally makes if I eat like one thing of pineapple, my tongue will start like feeling all like I think I'm allergic to it or something. I don't know. Let's get it. Cluts my. Like, make me like. No, seriously, like, actually, I always try to eat it and then I'm like, I lose taste and like everything gets all weird for me. And I always try to find out what that is just messes me up. But what number are we on? We're on this is number four. This is my number for you. A punk or apes. Punks, even though I have three apes in one. Yeah, I still. It's all right. Punks are ages. OK, I guess this is my last question, make account. What's a book that changed your life? Letters from a stoic by Seneca, which is the book that I had on my table when I came up with Zeneca. I've read it. I actually haven't read it in a few years, but I read it and reread it for a couple of years. And I gifted the 100 copies, maybe like 30 copies. But yeah, it's changed. Wait, what is it called? Hi, I got a right to Sunday letters from a letters from a stoic. I actually named my newsletter after that. My newsletter is called Letters from a Zeneca. And it was a pun on that. And people like, why is it letters from a Zeneca? Why not letters from Zeneca? I was like, it's literally because of the book. Yeah. Wow. Amazing. Nice. All right, Michael, last question. The thing you're most proud of yourself about. I think that I've like done stuff in the world that people think are good and a pre and a super vague. But being a poker player for 16 years is like the one thing the world does not need is professional poker players. You feel like you're doing nothing. You're not contributing to society or a parasite. Effectively, you just you do nothing. It's it's not me. I was a ticket scouper for that long. I was a ticket. OK, so you know, it's similar. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so like finally getting into so like getting into flipping NFTs and JPGs, they felt the same, but like creating content, Zen Academy, employing people, like that is incredibly rewarding. And I'm very proud of the fact that after 20 years of being an adult, I finally did something that did something for the world. Yes, sir. Congratulations on all your success, Anika. It's awesome finally getting you on. This was a long time coming for sure. This was a long time coming. So I don't know. It was a lot of fun. It was. Yeah, thank you so much, Seneca. All right, folks. With that said, we appreciate you for tuning into this episode and we'll catch you in the next one. Peace. Thank you for tuning in to the NFT catch a podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's episode and learned something new about the exciting world of NFTs. If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to subscribe to our podcast on Apple Spotify for wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you really love what you're hearing, please leave us a rating and review on your favorite platform. If you want to stay up to date with the latest news and insights from the NFT space, be sure to follow us on all the socials at NFT catch a pop. You can follow Jennifer at Jennifer underscore studio and Michael at NFTicket. I'm your producer Andy and I'm at AJC two by four. Our theme songs by It's Just Loose. We always appreciate your feedback and support, which helps us reach more people and bring you informative and engaging content about NFTs. We look forward to bringing you more great NFT content in future episodes. Thanks for listening. Peace. Shillmo! Oh! .