In this episode, Seth Goldstein, co-founder of Bright Moments, discusses the innovative NFT gallery DAO he established in Venice Beach, exploring the intersection of art, technology, and community engagement. He shares insights on the evolution of NFTs, the role of DAOs, and the future of decentralized art experiences.
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Key Topics Covered:
- Community Engagement: The creation of Bright Moments as an NFT gallery DAO emphasizes the importance of community involvement and interaction, especially in a post-pandemic world where social connections are vital.
- Decentralization and DAOs: The discussion highlights the innovative structure of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) as a way to democratize decision-making and empower community members, contrasting traditional startup hierarchies.
- NFT Utility and Integration: The conversation explores the evolving role of NFTs beyond mere collectibles, envisioning them as tools for enhancing real-world experiences, such as loyalty programs and community engagement through local partnerships.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let us know in the comments on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@edgeofnft/
Episode Highlights:
- "A DAO is, as many people know, it's a decentralized autonomous organization... They are decentralized, they're on chain, they're all tokenized, and they operate and they're governed by voting of the token holders." - Seth Goldstein (00:05:47-00:05:58)
- "We really want to use this physical location as a way of prototyping new ways of using NFTs and non-traditional ways that are more rooted to day-to-day life." - Seth Goldstein (00:20:04-00:20:14)
- "To me, when I think about what an NFT is, it's just a file format with ownership attached to it... There are so many different vertical applications of them." - Seth Goldstein (00:31:02-00:31:14)
For the full transcript, see further below.
People and Resources Mentioned:
- Seth Goldstein LinkedIn
- Bright Moments Website
- Fred Wilson Website
- Greg Cipes Website
- Carlos Nino Website
- BRT Tokens Webiste
- Crypto Venetian Website
- SuperWorld Website
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About Our Guest:
- Bio: Seth Goldstein is a founding member of Bright Moments, an NFT gallery DAO based in Venice, California, which opened its doors in May 2021. With over 20 years of experience as an early internet pioneer, visionary entrepreneur, and successful angel investor, Seth is dedicated to leveraging technology to create opportunities for everyone. He has a background in building businesses that enhance the way people use technology to improve their lives.
- Website: Bright Moments
- Twitter: @seth, @brtmoments
- Instagram: @sethgoldstein
- LinkedIn: Seth Goldstein
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Full Episode Transcript:
Eathan Janney: Today's episode features guest Seth Goldstein, a founding member of Bright Moments, the Venice-based NFT gallery DAO that opened its physical doors in May 2021. Seth is an early internet pioneer, visionary entrepreneur, successful angel investor, mentor, and artist himself. He is committed to creating opportunities that harness and leverage technology for everyone. For more than 20 years, Goldstein has successfully built businesses that evolve the way people use technology to improve their lives. Seth, great to have you here.
Josh Kriger: It's great to be here, Seth, with you in person. This is our first time we have a live guest slash host experience, guys.
Seth Goldstein: COVID is ending. IRL, and you can hear the galleries loud. I'm going to tell them to be quiet over there.
Jeff Kelley: So good.
Eathan Janney: Extra flavor for the episode, man. That's great. Yeah. Tell them to pick it up. Tell them to say something interesting.
Josh Kriger: You know, the gallery is actually down the street from me and it's really cool to be here and to go to your opening event. That was a lot of fun. People are really ready to socialize and drink. That was very clear.
Eathan Janney: Did anybody get rowdy? Or should we not talk about that?
Seth Goldstein: The pendulum is starting to swing the other way. It hasn't swung all the way the other way, but I think by the time July comes, there's going to be a lot of excess.
Eathan Janney: Yeah, pent-up demand, put it that way.
Jeff Kelley: We didn't get a chance to experience it though. Tell Ethan and I and the listeners what the story is with Bright Moments. How did it even come to be?
Seth Goldstein: So I think there's a couple of factors that went into it. I mean, obviously, we're all coming out of a pretty deep, depressing pandemic. And my case and our case here in Venice Beach, the only thing that was really open in the dark days of the fall in December and January was Menotti's Coffee Shop on Windward right by the boardwalk. And so I would trudge out every morning with my partner, Christy, or whomever. We get our coffee and that's where we meet people who are also kind of trapped in for the day. And that's where a lot of the conversation started. I had moved out to Venice about a year ago from the Bay Area. And I just started to meet people here in front of the coffee shop.
There's a guy named Stan who's an AI, ML researcher. There's a guy named Greg Sipes who turns out to be the voice of Beast Boy and Michelangelo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
Eathan Janney: We know the guy who sang the song for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So there you go.
Seth Goldstein: There's just a lot of interesting, you know, Louis and Liam, his son, who run Menotti's and the townhouse next door. But it really felt like a community, even in those dark days. And so as I started to meet people at the same time, just out of curiosity, I was starting to explore NBA Top Shot and was buying and starting to sell some Top Shot moments. And then I think on top of that, I I was taking photographs of the sunset by the breakaway on Venice, and a friend of mine who I used to work with, Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures, suggested that I take some of these synthetic videos I was making of the sunset and mint them as NFTs on Foundation. So I did that and I remember back at the end of January, one of the NFTs that I'd minted, I woke up the next morning and it sold for one ETH. And so I just stepped back and said, wow, this is a new file format, that there's a big unlock that's happening with NFTs, where the same type of file or asset class that I was buying and selling on NBA Top Shot, I was also creating and selling through foundation with my photographs. And so the light bulb went off. As well as we come out of the pandemic, wouldn't it be awesome to create something for the community in the form of an art gallery, where instead of having to have physical paintings and artworks, you could just have displays, you know, large displays with Wi Fi and you could change the art. constantly and yet given the fact that each of the artworks was an NFT there could be a QR code attached to it and people coming to this gallery could scan them and learn more about them and even buy them. So it's a long-winded way of saying kind of how it came about.
Eathan Janney: I heard an interview with Beeple recently, and he was talking about the idea of, you know, isn't it cool that now with NFTs, you could have multiple galleries showing the same artwork at the same time? And he talked about it in sort of both a very liberal and then a potentially sanctioned way. So, for example, he said, yeah, anybody could show my work anywhere they want. That's a thing and you could do that. You don't necessarily, unless there's some sort of license around it, but you don't have to do that. But then he said there may be space for artists to come in and say, yes, but if you want to have an officially sanctioned show, there's also maybe a way to do that as well. So it offers interesting possibilities.
Josh Kriger: I think that that observation is a good segue to the fact that you went a step further you created a DAO for this gallery and our listeners are probably wondering what is a DAO and how did you come up with that.
Seth Goldstein: So a DAO is, as many people know, it's a decentralized autonomous organization. It dates back, I believe, to 2016, kind of like the original MakerDAO that caused a lot of trouble in the world of ETH in terms of a fork, et cetera. But the whole concept of a DAO, in the same way that Bitcoin is programmable money, DAOs are programmable corporations. They are decentralized, they're on a chain, they're all tokenized, and they operate and they're governed by voting of the token holders. My whole career was 25 years of doing startups in the traditional sense, which is either a C Corp or a S Corp or an LLC with angel fiat money, and then seed capital, and then venture capital, and then going public or getting acquired. But I've been fascinated by some of the, not just the currency speculation, obviously, of the crypto world, but the utilities. How do we learn from decentralization and apply that to organizational behavior and leadership and building holistic, healthy, sustainable communities that have profit motives, but are flatter than your typical startup where you've got one or two or three founders with the bulk of the equity, and then one investor with the next bulk of equity, and then it just trickles down, and the people actually doing the work have less and less. I think one of the hopes here by doing this as a Dow is to be able to engage the community who are all bringing different values and advantages to this community. So it's not just that you're an accredited investor because we're not selling tokens. We are providing tokens to different members of the community who are helping to open up this gallery. So somebody might be the one who's doing all the physical implementation of the screens and hanging them. and organizing it. Somebody else is curating different artists for display. Somebody else is working on software for displaying the NFTs. So there's different people bringing different things to the table, but they're all being rewarded with BRT tokens, which are the Bright Moments tokens of the DAO.
Eathan Janney: So a follow-up question about the Dao, and that is, when I say the Dao, right, it sounds like the Daodejing. I'm sure you don't necessarily have expertise in that. The follow-up question is, I haven't been part of a Dao yet, would love to be soon, and, you know, maybe even build a Dao. In organizations where I know there is sort of voting and debating and things like that, sometimes it can actually get kind of overwhelming. It's kind of hard to actually get things done because of all that. How have you seen that play a role or haven't you, or do you have any experience or thoughts about that in terms of getting things done and also letting people have a voice in it at the same time?
Seth Goldstein: A concept that I've taken to heart in terms of, I guess, what they call progressive decentralization, so that it starts centralized, right? So I started this and I handpicked a group of people to get involved and that circle of people is expanding, but ultimately it will be fully decentralized such that I won't have any more influence or power as anybody else. We're all going to have an equal amount of tokens in the DAO. But I think in terms of tooling and structuring the organization initially, making sure they're all good eggs, making sure that there's a diversity of opinions, that it's not all yes people. That's kind of what I'm bringing to the table as an OG serial entrepreneur. But then moving forward, they're going to be key. key areas, strategic choices we have to make in terms of awarding artist grants, or choosing what other cities we want to expand to, which will be voted on by the DAO. And the way that works in our case, very simply, there's 40 different members that each have 25,000 BRT tokens. And in order to vote on a proposal, you need to be able to show that you have 25,000 BRT tokens in a token-gated Discord channel to be able to enter and then vote on-chain through a snapshot. So the tokens are very literally, they're your admission ticket to being able to vote as a member of the Dow, right? And in the old world of starting a company, you have a board of directors, you have observers, you have your co-founders, you have to file things with the Secretary of State. The way that decisions get made is oftentimes behind the scenes in conversation with your lead investor or conversation with your co-founder. There's a level of radical transparency here with the Dow that I think makes it exciting. And I think given Some of the unintended consequences of hyper growth capitalism, you know that we've seen with Facebook and Uber and, and we work. I think we all want a kinder way of doing capitalism, and I, and I hope and I believe that tokenized communities and bows in particular, offer that.
Eathan Janney: Yeah, totally. So we heard you have your own NFTs as well as having governance tokens there. And these are called crypto Venetians. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Seth Goldstein: Yeah, so the primary user experience as an NFT gallery is people come in and they can see NFTs that are brilliant and beautiful and on large screens and are compelling and engaging in ways that looking at them on your iPhone or your desktop are not, right? So that's step one is we're open 12 to 7 every day. art openings every Thursday. There's a lot of programming scheduled, including tomorrow we're having the Tao of Dao speaker series here. But the first use case is when somebody walks in off the street, they scan a QR code, which brings them to bright moments.io, which is our website. And on our website, you can see what you're looking at on the screens in the gallery. And you can click on one of those tiles and see, oh, that that piece is on foundation or that piece is super rare. And you can see if it's for sale or it's been sold. And it's a traditional, insofar as there is such a thing, a traditional
NFT viewing experience socially. Right. Above and beyond that, though, what we wanted to make sure of is how we, you know, for whales or people that are already buying and selling NFTs, that's fine. They already have their metamask or their rainbow wallet on their phone. They have ETH in their account to be able to pay for gas fees, yada, yada, yada. What about the majority of people that are NFT curious that come in the gallery that may not be ready to buy a $3,000 NFT or a $500 NFT? How do we engage them and move them kind of down the path and down the funnel of moving from being crypto curious and NFT curious to actually having a crypto Ethereum wallet opened and owning an NFT, right? So what we decided to do along the lines of CryptoPunks and a lot of these other projects is to mint our own collection of NFTs. They're called CryptoVenetians. We have an amazing illustrator who's designed them. They'll be generated as a smart contract on art blocks. There's 200,000 possibilities of which only 1,000 are going to be minted and listed. And the idea is, starting in a few weeks, everybody, up to 10 people a day in the gallery, will get a magic ticket, which will have two QR codes. One will be, they'll scan it with an Ethereum wallet on their phone, and it will reveal one BRT token. And they will then send that token to the second QR code, which is an Ethereum smart contract address, to actually mint their own crypto Venetian that will get revealed to them in the gallery. So we're trying to onboard people in this, you know, we're as much sort of the art gallery of the future as we are a consumer bank in the future, where in the old days you go to Wells Fargo or Bank of America, and they give you a passbook and a savings account, and maybe a toaster. In the new world, you have to open up an Ethereum wallet, you have to write down your passphrase, your private key, and you have to fund it with some ETH so that you can pay the gas to mint a crypto Venetian or buy and sell an NFT.
Josh Kriger: So guys, no morning meetings until I get my crypto Venetian. And I'm really hoping there's one of a Venetian holding a Manatti's coffee cup, because that happens to be the best coffee in Venice and I go to the spot, the place where Jeff goes whenever he likes their chai or hot chocolate or something. He's not even a coffee drinker. He likes the spot. But I need my crypto Venetian with a Manatti's coffee. How hard will that be to get?
Seth Goldstein: Well, I think what would be better would be, first of all, you have no control over which one you're going to get. So it's true. It's truly random. It's generative art. However, what we're trying to figure out, and I'd love to open up this conversation here in the podcast, is I think we've seen, or maybe we're seeing the evolution from NFTs as being a speculative asset to being something more utilitarian. you don't just own a Zed horse, you can actually run them, you can breed them, you can make money off them, et cetera, right? Same thing with, you didn't get amoebits, I mean, you could in the open market, but if you had a CryptoPunk, that gave you the utility of getting amoebit when they were minted. Or now we're seeing with the Board 8 Yacht Club, you can't buy the merchandise unless you can demonstrate that you own one. So what we're trying to invent here with these crypto Venetians is how can they unlock local value from merchants and service providers in the local community, right? So that when you show your CryptoPunk to Monatis, maybe that opens up a secret menu. Or if you show it at Townhouse, the club next door, maybe you get in the VIP line. Or that maybe you go to Joosta and you get a discount or you get some special appetizer. How do we make these NFTs like a loyalty card for local experiences? And then knowing that we're only gonna be issuing a thousand crypto Venetians, every time we open a new gallery in New York or Berlin or Tokyo or Miami, we will mint another thousand crypto New Yorkers. or crypto-Japanese, which will be local characters that will be tied to that community and try to engage with the local community and not just live in the metaverse.
Josh Kriger: Jeff, Sarasota's got a good art scene, man. Maybe you need to open up one of these NFT galleries over there.
Jeff Kelley: Yeah, no, it's a huge one right with Ringling Circus and Ringling College here, little little known but massive art influence here yeah I think I'm trying to. I'm already talking to folks here about it, trying to bring NFTs to the forefront. You know, and we'll talk about some hot topics later but there's not a lot of people that know about it. even though it seems like they do. So yeah, that's pretty awesome. And let me clarify too, Seth. So when someone comes to the gallery, that is what affords them the opportunity to acquire a crypto Venetian, right? They just have to pay for the gas. It's their presence that unlocks that opportunity. Is that correct?
Seth Goldstein: Yeah, we want to tie it to somebody actually being here and not randos speculating remotely. Right. I think a lot of what we're trying to figure out and prototype here is as the world comes out of quarantine. How do we want to engage socially and culturally, right? The location of the Bright Moments Genesis Gallery is almost equidistant from the boardwalk in Abbot Kinney, right? You know, I think of it like, you know, Coney Island meets Hauser and Wirth, you know, high art and mass culture. And so, you know, we're very much trying to tap into what the world looks like post-pandemic, NFTs aren't going away. Crypto's not going away. But it's going to come out into the open. It's going to be something that we do together as people, not that we do isolated behind our screens at home. And so to the extent to which we want to be leaders, we want to be leaders there, figuring out safe, obviously, and hygienic ways for people to connect. But there's no reason that, I mean, not only is there no reason that these crypto NFT experiences should be solo, I think there's actually much more richness when people together, physically, socially come together around some of these ideas and some of these new asset classes.
Jeff Kelley: Sorry, just real quick, the coming together thing is so interesting to me. We're coming out of this pandemic, we're coming out of this remote only environment and community is at the center of all of this. What other means do you have or plans do you have to help nurture community for owners of crypto Venetians and patrons of bright moments.
Seth Goldstein: So give you a couple examples and again these are just prototypes you know one is. We had an opening a couple of weeks ago. We had a great live jazz band, and it was sort of a celebration of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who was sort of an out jazz saxophonist, you know, from the 60s, who wrote, you know, who had a great album called Bright Moments and a great track called Bright Moments. And that's where the idea of the name of the gallery came from. And Carlos Nino, who's a music producer and DJ, put together, you know, three amazing musicians and almost ad hoc, we had this idea of, well, why don't we take the flier for the event and we minted it as an NFT on Foundation with all the proceeds going to the live jazz performers. So while the concert was happening, there was a live auction on the Foundation of the concert poster. Foundation didn't have splits implemented yet, but we would have used that. Instead, I just split the proceeds to four ETH wallets of the jazz musicians, one of whom already had one, three of whom opened up new ETH wallets to get paid for the gig. Right. So if, you know, another example, we've got a Dow member, you know, dinner in a couple weeks, and Travis Lett, who's amazing chef and visionary entrepreneur who created just Angelina is going to be cooking and we started talking yesterday about, you know, do we make, you know, if there's 40 people to come to the dinner is each plate. its own NFT with a QR code on the plate that you buy and then you fill your plate with food and all the proceeds, you know, get immediately transferred to the kitchen staff and the waiters, right? That we really want to use this physical location as a way of prototyping new ways of using NFTs and non-traditional ways that are more rooted to day-to-day life. And thinking about if, as a Visa card or PayPal. We really want to do as much on-chain as possible. We know there are gas fees and there's a lot of volatility in the price of ETH, but I think as a community, my feeling is the more we're doing on-chain, the more we're doing natively, using ETH wallets, using NFTs as a file format above and beyond artwork, the better we're all going to be positioned in the future. And we're probably going to build IP and products here that we could roll out in other locations in the future.
Jeff Kelley: That's great, man. Do you guys have a Discord channel or someplace for community members to connect?
Seth Goldstein: We do have a Discord channel. We have Telegram. And as I mentioned, the logistics of distributing the crypto Venetian NFTs start with giving visitors to the gallery a BRT token. Right? So you'll earn a token simply by coming in and starting that process. And that's a way of getting you into the community as well. That's amazing stuff.
Jeff Kelley: That's great.
Eathan Janney: By the way, it just made me think of this. Have you ever heard of the, what is it called? The Super Show? The last great jam of the sixties? Check it out. It's a concert where Eric Clapton was there, Buddy Guy was there, but also Rashawn Roland Kirk and the Modern Jazz Quartet and all these different jazz and rock musicians are all jamming in the same place. Very, very cool to check out. I appreciate the Rashawn Roland Kirk reference as a jazz musician myself.
Josh Kriger: Cool. Have you started to get any inbound interest for galleries elsewhere?
Seth Goldstein: I think we're starting to. My sense is New York. The locations that seem to keep popping up would be New York, Tokyo, Miami, Mexico City. and probably Berlin. So if there's any listeners out there that are interested in NFTs and galleries and DAOs, please follow up with us. We're looking to grow quickly and take a lot of the lessons. I mean, if you think about what Bright Moments is, it's basically just an MVP of a product. It's a pop-up. We have this space until the end of September. We're building a lot of software based on what we're learning from live people coming through the gallery. We have realized, for example, that the native way of experiencing NFTs in a real-world gallery format is like a playlist. It wasn't obvious to me months ago, but now it is, that you have 30 to 40 NFTs, like you have 30 to 40 songs in a playlist, and a playlist can be grouped by genre, right? It can be 3D rendering NFTs, or it could be the most expensive NFTs from the last week, or it could be the most valuable LeBron James top shot moments. or the most recently purchased CryptoPunks. I mean, there's just infinite ways of slicing and dicing playlists of NFTs the same way you would do with Spotify playlists. So we're making tools to make it easy to create NFT playlists across different platforms, and then ways of displaying those playlists. Ultimately, if we have 10, 20 galleries that are all live, then one artist or one creator or one celebrity will be able to drop an NFT and have it go live to people at the same time across multiple locations at the same time. And that's really exciting.
Jeff Kelley: That's very exciting. You know, it also makes me think of a super world, right? The augmented layer on our physical world. And I think of your galleries and if you have an augmented presence also in those physical spaces. It's activated by those physical spaces. You could literally have a physical gallery representing digital goods in an augmented world. Like it goes on and on. It's mind-blowing. It's really cool.
Seth Goldstein: Yeah. So we're going to want to set up, you know, we'll set up Bright Moments virtual galleries in crypto voxels and Decentraland. And the flip side is we could sell virtual real estate in the physical gallery here. It starts to get mind boggling. I mean, already, I think a couple months ago, NFTs were a big head fuck. And now I think we're getting used to them a little bit. I think DAOs are kind of the next bright, shiny object that we're all trying to wrestle with and understand the implications. My sense is after we all process what DAOs mean, virtual real estate will be the next thing that we try to wrap our heads around. I'm not sure what comes after that.
Eathan Janney: So guys, who owns the Bright Moments gallery in Superworld? Do you have it, Seth?
Seth Goldstein: I don't own it in Superworld, but I know that I was talking to a collector today who has a beautiful plot of beachside land in crypto voxels that he's going to lend to us to do a pop-up. So we'll have a virtual pop-up as well as a physical pop-up. Awesome.
Josh Kriger: That's really cool, man. You've done a lot of different startups over the years, including ones in digital advertising and online music. Just to change the subject for a moment, how do you see NFTs fitting into those worlds as we move forward?
Seth Goldstein: To me, when I think about what an NFT is, it's just a file format with ownership attached to it. And the reason I'm so bullish, regardless of the price of ETH or the price of a particular NFT, is it's like a JPEG or a PDF Or an mp3 file right is so many different uses of those file formats, depending on whether you're a lawyer or you're a writer or a pornographer. Right. It's just a. It's a kind of a neutral file format. In the case of NF T's I think there are so many different vertical applications of them. Yes, we may have seen a bubble in the high art people, contemporary art NFT world, but I think that was just to get this whole thing going. There's going to be a lot of real world applications of NFTs. It's important for us, I think, here at the gallery to not just be NFT art, but also be NFT collectibles. right? That the, you know, in the old days you'd go to the Pokemon store or the magic, the gathering store or the baseball card store. I think in the future you'll come to bright moments, right? There's no reason why we can't be the baseball card memorabilia store and Sotheby's and some, you know, super funky, hot gallery, you know, in Venice.
Josh Kriger: So your NFTs could theoretically integrate brand sponsorships and music. Sure.
Seth Goldstein: Yeah, why not? You know, I think to your point about, well, my own evolution, you know, I started as a kid in theater. I was always interested in the arts. You know, I got early involved in the web in 1995. I started one of the first online advertising companies called Sight Specific. We were the first customer of DoubleClick. And I saw that game and that world of web one to web two play out. And I just think there's something really magical about NFTs in terms of the way it has galvanized the creative community that up until now just didn't know how to monetize itself. And there's an amount of creativity that's exciting. We'll see where it goes. But I think the combination of the commercialization of ETH wallets is right? That it's easier and easier to open up a rainbow wallet or a metamask wallet and start doing things with it. And the fact that coming out of the pandemic, we know what to do with the QR code, right? A year ago or a year and a half ago, maybe 10% of the people would know what to do with the QR code when they saw one. Now it's got to be 80%. And so I think that's another way that this whole world gets unlocked.
Jeff Kelley: So as you think about the future as a fan of NFTs, as a collector of NFTs, as an entrepreneur making waves in NFTs, what are the projects that you see outside of what we're talking about here today that are gonna be here making waves in the next three, five, 10 years?
Seth Goldstein: It's a big question, right? I keep coming, I mean, one of the things that I just, I don't know if I'm answering the question, but what I love is this, the idea that NFTs enable a reimagining of old ways. When I was in New York in the late 80s and 90s, you had off-track betting. right? OTB parlors. And you had these old guys in polyester suits taking all the money they made and banging their newspapers and yelling horses to go on the closed caption. Like we're going to have live Zed races here in a couple weeks. If, you know, hopefully we're, you're going to get crypto, you know, whales, you know, betting on, on, on crypto horses. In the same way, we've had people come through thinking about ways of taking a gem collection or rare coins and connecting those to NFTs. We talked about real estate, we're seeing sports and memorabilia, in merchandise, right? All of these kinds of ticketing, right? All these old world experiences, I think, have an opportunity to get re-imagined in the world of NFTs as a file format. Right? It's just a better way of doing business. I think decentralization is the master theme here that connects everything we're talking about, you know, from Bitcoin and Coinbase and Ethereum to DeFi to NFTs to DAOs. And I think it's gonna continue to spread. We've seen some examples of Hollywood starting to think, you know, in a more progressive decentralized way, like why wouldn't a movie just be structured as an NFT with all the cast members and all the crew members being part of that smart contract. And every time the movie gets streamed, a microtransaction gets released to everybody involved. Right? So there's just a lot of ways you can take it.
Eathan Janney: Thanks for attempting that question. I was like, that's a big question. That's exactly what you said at first. That's a big question.
Jeff Kelley: It always is. Yeah. But we're looking to the future and we're trying to stay on the edge of NFT, guys. Hey, so much good information here. So much good content. Fellas, are you ready to make a move to Edge Quick Hitters? Learn a little bit more about Seth on a personal level? Oh, yeah. This is going to be fun. All right. I'm ready. I'm ready. All right, well, as a reminder, Edge Quick Hitters are a fun, quick way to get to know you a little bit better. There's 10 questions and we're looking for short, single word or a few word responses, but feel free to expand if you get the urge. All right, let's dive in. Question one, what's the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
Seth Goldstein: And when you say you remember, is that like I purchased myself or I got my parents to buy for me? Because I have a very distinct memory of getting a big track. Which was this robotic tank thing that I got for Hanukkah. And I was insistent on getting it. I don't think I had the funds to buy it myself, but I got it and my brother broke it the first fucking night of Hanukkah.
Eathan Janney: I think that counts. It's clearly had an impact. You bought it with your sweetness and extorted them through your whining. I'm sure that could count as some type of purchase.
Josh Kriger: but now i'm super curious what did you buy with your own money what was the first
Seth Goldstein: Um, I, I bought like a, like a, a broken down Toyota, like, uh, um, pickup truck from my aunt Gail for like a thousand dollars as my first car. Does that count?
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I had a Toyota too.
Jeff Kelley: Yeah, it definitely does. All right. Number two, what is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
Seth Goldstein: So I, I used to work when I was seven years old, I made a dollar 15 hour, um, working at outermost kites in Provincetown on Cape Cod in Massachusetts with my first job. And I was selling kites.
Jeff Kelley: Right on. So number three, what is the most recent thing you purchased?
Seth Goldstein: I would say with purchasing and selling, I guess the example is, you know, and this was, you know, critical for starting the gallery here and kind of going down this rabbit hole. I bought a Jokic, you know, top shot moment for like, 300 or 400 bucks before he was voted to the all-star team in early February. And then a couple of weeks later, I sold it for $2,000. I hope the IRS isn't listening. I think you might have bought that from me actually. Okay. But you know, like that was a big moment for me to realize like this was real. you know, that there were real buyers, there were real sellers, there was real price appreciation happening. You know, for years on the internet, we always talked about turning things into stock markets, right? Stock market of ideas, stock market, you know, like the idea, you know, the number of business plans I saw about people saying, oh, we're gonna, you're gonna be able to buy and sell up and coming bands as if they're stocks. None of it worked out. You really needed to have the blockchain, you needed to have some of these like dapper and flow and some of these platforms to enable these kinds of transactions to happen in a decentralized way.
Jeff Kelley: Indeed. So besides the Jokic card or moment, what is the most recent thing you sold?
Seth Goldstein: recent thing I sold. I have an amazing collection of old computers, like antique computers, like Altairs and M-Size and Commodores. I sold an old cryptographic machine called a NEMA at an auction house about a year ago. The most prized possession I have that's not for sale is I have an original edition from, I think, 1690 of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, which is kind of the canonical example of the prison of the future where There's a kind of a guard in the middle that can see into all of the prisoners rooms but the prisoners can't see the guard, and they use the panopticon if you've heard of it as sort of the metaphor for the surveillance society that we live in. And I have a copy of that.
Eathan Janney: I got to bring in this, that's interesting that you have that. I got to bring in this kind of funny story. So in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, there were some projects nearby where I was living several years ago. And every once in a while they would bring in this police thing where it had a, it was like a crane, right? It had a base and had a crane that went up. And then there was like a, there's like a little windowed thing where somebody could be in there, like looking out, but you couldn't see who was in it. You know, it's like, wow. It was very Panopticon-ish. But on top of that, there was this really kind of humorous, for me, moment in a kind of weird way. I was walking from the subway by it, and there was a younger guy with a kid, probably like a three-year-old, walking in. And the little kid said, what's that, daddy? What's that? And the dad goes, without skipping a beat, he goes, well, that's to monitor the populace, son. That was perfect. You know, the kid had no idea, but I got a kick out of that.
Jeff Kelley: That's parenting. So, that was question five. So, let's move to question six then. If you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical service, that is currently for sale, what would it be?
Seth Goldstein: Let me come back to that. Next question is good. What do you get? I'm trying to buy less, you know, my, my, my, my partner and girlfriend, Christie is really teaching me to be more minimal. So I'm trying not to covet things. I definitely want more, you know, more like nature. So if I could buy some really just beautiful natural property around the world to hang out. That would be nice, right? I don't really need more toys or technologies or gadgets. I've got plenty of that. I'm trying to think more in terms of just buying some peace of mind.
Jeff Kelley: Right on. Perfect blend of Eckhart Tolle and Marie Kondo, right? There you go. I know. So if switching gears a little bit, number seven, if you could pass on one personality trait of yours to the next generation, what would it be?
Seth Goldstein: Um, I'm very optimistic. I mean, I have, I'm very comfortable pursuing my visions and my ideas. Um, it's kind of like a holy, holy order of mine, like I can't do anything other than scratch the itch of the things that interest me. And so in terms of passing that on, I think that's important because I have two boys, they're 22 and 19, and I want them to be independent. I want them to be entrepreneurial. I want them to learn from experts. I want them to learn skills, but I want them to try things. We only live once. And I think a hallmark of my career has been just not being satisfied and really trying to try new things. And I think building an NFT gallery now coming out of the pandemic in Venice is a good example of that. It's never been done before, so why not? And we'll figure it out as we go. I think the flip side is, what personality trait would I eliminate? Unfortunately, that sort of raging entrepreneurial curiosity can also, if not checked, be very impulsive. Right. And so it's great to be comfortable taking risks, but you don't want to get addicted to taking risks where you become a gambler and you become a degenerate fool. So balancing that and not being, you know, how can you be intentional as an aggressive entrepreneur without being impulsive?
Josh Kriger: The key is you only do the Zed horse racing here once a month and no more, no less.
Jeff Kelley: Yeah, something like that for sure. Okay, that was question eight moving on then to question nine. What did you do just before joining us for the podcast?
Seth Goldstein: I play paddle tennis every morning in Venice. I started last summer. I'm slightly better than I was, you know, paddle tennis is like tennis meets ping pong. It's on the boardwalk right by Muscle Beach. It's got its own fairly close community. A lot of old guys wearing interesting different kinds of braces and headbands and visors and the sound of the ball because the tennis ball is deflated. No Tom Brady jokes, please. It's a great sound when these smaller sorts of tennis rackets hit these balls. So I was playing paddle tennis.
Josh Kriger: Not to be confused with pickleball. Don't call it pickleball. It is not. Never call it pickleball.
Eathan Janney: That's what I was going to ask. And I'm sorry, I didn't ask. I'm sorry. I did ask that. I'm sorry. I said that I was going to ask that. I shouldn't have even said that was the question I had.
Jeff Kelley: Remove that from the tape. What are the differences with pickleball then?
Josh Kriger: I don't know. I played pickleball. I have not played paddleball. Paddle tennis. Paddle tennis.
Seth Goldstein: Pickleball is like a plastic ball. Usually paddle tennis is with a deflated tennis ball. All right. So when Spain, they call it Padel and you can actually play off the walls.
Josh Kriger: Well, when you're, um, you're done playing someone that knows how to play and you're tired, I challenge you to, to around. Absolutely.
Jeff Kelley: I'm here. All right, guys. Last question. Question 10. Uh, what are you going to do next after the podcast?
Seth Goldstein: So, actually I'm working with Greg sites who I mentioned, who's one of the members of the down we're working on a sort of a script for the crypto Venetian onboarding, so that when you come through the gallery and you get your magic ticket you come in the back, and there's going to be a kind of a retrofitted arcade game. that'll be sort of tricked out with an LCD monitor. And it'll basically walk you through this experience of opening up your Ethereum wallet, sending the BRT token to the smart contract and getting your crypto Venetian. How do we boil that down, make it fun, make it entertaining, give it a voice, give it a character, kind of do a kind of a Hollywood approach to it. So it's not just for nerds who study computer science.
Jeff Kelley: Right on. Sounds exciting. I can't wait to get back out to Venice and check it out, man. Looking forward to it. Are you guys ready to move on to Hot Topics? What do you say?
Josh Kriger: Let's do it.
Eathan Janney: Sounds great, yeah. Appreciate the answer, Seth. Yeah, very curious about Seth's opinion on what's in the news. So first thing we have here is Iconic signs a NFT licensing deal with Bravado, Universal Music Group's merchandise unit. So apparently Bravado, they haven't actually signed any particular deals with any artists, but Bravado's roster includes some of today's leading names, Ariana Grande, Adele, Billie Eilish, Blackpink, Elton John, you know, The Strokes. So they've got quite a catalog. This sounds… I guess what I've been impressed with lately is these bigger players just jumping in, you know? I mean, there's ones that aren't, but there's ones that are. They're kind of ready to hit the ground running.
Josh Kriger: I feel like they felt like they were late to the game a couple times the last decade. And they're like, we're not going to do that again.
Seth Goldstein: I think also just from a timing perspective, you know, if this recent wave of NFTs sort of bubbled over in February, you can imagine all of the biz dev and corp dev and strategy groups within all the labels, within the entertainment studios, you know, we're working overtime to come up with a strategy that'll probably show up over the course of this summer going into the fall. So I think, you know, these are some examples of, you know, things that have been in the works for a couple months.
Eathan Janney: Have you noticed, Seth, anyone, you know, because you're stepping forward and the people that you're working with are stepping forward and jumping in, you know, coming to you for assistance, consultation, anything along those lines, or are you guys trying to keep to yourselves with your heads down? How's that look?
Seth Goldstein: No, no, absolutely. I mean, we're making ourselves available to any artist or creator or entertainer that is interested in exploring NFTs. I mean, there's a learning curve really for anybody, for most people, there's people that own crypto because they have Bitcoin in their Robinhood account. That's very different from someone who knows how to send ETH to a certain address or use a DAP, right? And so I think there's kind of crypto 101 of any entertainer, any artist just kind of understanding the basics of how this new world works and how to be flexible and fluid with it. And then, you know, as an artist, you know, how do they want to express themselves, how do they want to do something unique that's not just derivative that doesn't look like we're just jumping on to make a quick buck. And so we've talked to really awesome, you know, hip hop, you know, stars and different artists and activists and painters and you name it. We're trying to get there, you know their feet wet and trying to learn how to mint and list their own N F T s. And that's part of the gallery. If we have creator grants that we give out to help their existing NFT artists exhibit in the gallery or artists that haven't done N F T s do their first N F T s. So the answer is yes.
Jeff Kelley: I think men that the folks like bravado start getting in the mix or iconic you're bringing another level of marketing and community building expertise to the space that when combined with
the technical expertise of knowing how to navigate the world of NF T's and the community that's already supportive of artists and brands like what are listed in the article. There's recipes for some really, really fun and innovative things that I think we're just scratching the surface of so far. We've had some cool releases, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Seth Goldstein: And I do think when we go back to the point of the news about Universal, when we go back to in-person concerts and events and festivals, you're going to see a ton of QR codes that lead to NFTs in merch booths, right? And even on stage, you're going to have artists that, as part of their visuals, are showing NFTs behind the main stage. that are for sale. By the 100,000 people at Coachella in the audience jumping around, they can scan and they can bid on it. So I think when we do come back from this pandemic and we start to re-aggregate with each other at these festivals and at these events, and at these sporting events as well, the combination of NFTs and the adoption of QR codes It's going to add a different commercial layer that never existed before in the States, that we always knew was there in China with WhatsApp and QR codes, but never quite broke over for us the way it will now.
Eathan Janney: Right. Let's hit the next piece of news here. Nobel Prize winning data on cancer treatments is the focus of a Berkeley NFT contest. So apparently Berkeley owns data. that is Nobel Prize winning, and it was something that was purchased as an NFT or has been talked to be purchased, something like this. And there's a talk on the topic of what we're talking about today about the formation of a DAO to purchase that by alumni. Jeff, did you notice any other interesting aspects of this article?
Jeff Kelley: Yeah, look, for me, when you see an institution like Berkeley get into the world of NFTs, it's making its way into the mainstream. Educational institutions, as innovative as they try to be, tend not to be the first people on the train for these things. This is pretty early for a university to, I think, start to get involved in something like this, but it opens the door creatively to how do we generate revenue and support for the university with the resources that we have. So plenty of universities have partnered with venture capital firms, private equity firms to take the technologies that they develop, the research that they do, and make profit from it, right? They license it or they run joint ventures. So that's been there for a long time. But I think it's exciting to see that they're jumping in on the NFT side of things and viewing it I think maybe from a very similar lens, especially in a time when I think a lot of people are opting not to go to university.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I mean that's what comes to mind for me is, I think colleges are. are going to have to change it up to survive in the same way they do now and I think this opens up a much bigger question around co investing co creating with students and alumni. and generating creative sources of revenue for colleges while not cutting out the others that are contributing to that ecosystem. And I think the idea that we sell our data to Facebook is not too different from people that create ideas and inventions while at school, similar athletes have performed where the colleges get all that revenue.
Seth Goldstein: Yeah, I mean if you before the pandemic, you were seeing some really interesting innovations in income sharing arrangements and lambda school and ways of effectively treating students as if they were products that you could invest in, right, in lieu of them paying full freight. I know Indiana University was doing some interesting stuff. It's going to be really interesting now to see whether it's Berkeley or other places, you know, why aren't we, you know, why wouldn't a seminar be structured as a DAO? Why wouldn't the students who are studying computer science each be an NFT that people could invest in or buy a fractional piece of? We're going to see a lot of these concepts that are playing out in the metaverse, in the crypto art and DeFi world, I think, start to be applied in real world university environments. Because the Berklees and the schools that really know how to navigate this are going to be way better off than those that don't.
Josh Kriger: You've done, you've done some venture capital doesn't come down to the team at the end of the day. I mean that the team is a big part of the equation. Sure.
Seth Goldstein: the team and just how they're incentivized and how ownership works and how decisions get made.
Eathan Janney: Great perspective. Thanks for sharing that. I'll jump to the next article here so we can squeeze in the next two here. We've got just a question as to the title of this one. Is there a role for NFTs in travel? Recently, Lotex introduced a new product that allows travelers to mint exclusive digital ad sets based on proof of travel. called Pebble Tracker. The hardware is able to capture and cryptographically sign real-world data such as location, climate, motion, and light using a built-in secure element similar to the ones used in smartphones or Face ID. I mean, the first place I think of NFTs and travel is travel rewards, but I guess that's already kind of nailed down. I don't know exactly if they're gonna convert those to some sort of cryptocurrencies or something like that. might be down the pipeline soon.
Jeff Kelley: To me, it's all about proving you are where you say you are, right? It's like proof of attendance tokens or proof of participation tokens. It's saying that I am at bright moments. It's being able to legitimately say that without having to take an action, to scan a QR code or take some type of active step to prove that, like literally just your presence there. So yeah, geolocation. It's combining all those things together. So what does that open up for travelers? There's all kinds of mementos that people like to take with them from their travels. They buy things or they take photos at a certain location or whatever. Imagine all of those things taking the form of an NFT and being able to be shared and traded or sold or being the binding element of why somebody is part of a community because they visit Bari, Italy, and the other members of Bari all have this one particular thing. I think there's something in there that's really special about travel and also other fun things like geocaching or treasure hunts, right? And proving that you're at a particular location and having some interaction that's demonstrable that can then bind you with other people as part of a community. There's a lot of stuff in there.
Josh Kriger: I can think of dozens of companies that have tried to make this a thing over the years, but it becomes another app, another pro, another check-in. If this can be done seamlessly with, um, something, an easy tool and NFTs make that better, then it kind of goes to our conversation earlier than sure. It's going to work because there's friction there that NFTs could potentially cut out of the equation.
Seth Goldstein: Yeah, it just makes me think, you know, if you've ever gone to a beautiful foreign location or third world country and you're interested in real estate and it's so complicated to own a piece of land somewhere like my mom was in Dominica in the in the Caribbean and there's beautiful places but sort of how do you know what you're buying is actually the rights to the property. Right. But I think what NFTs are going to provide over the years to come is kind of a common framework to crowdfund and crowdsource some of these opportunities and give it a kind of a common language, you know, back to, you know, QR codes and NFTs and EIF. Um, I think we'll be able to do things, um, around the world, um, much easier with much less friction than we have been able to.
Eathan Janney: Yeah. Agreed. Let's hop to the next article here. NFTs for high school athletes? Baller TV's new plan pushes the conversation. So yeah, what if you could trade trading cards for the local kid who you think is gonna be the next Kobe Bryant or something like that? Would you do it? Do we think it's right?
Jeff Kelley: To me, this conversation is all about just ownership of who you are, owning, the rights to yourself, to everything you do, to what you put out into the world and having a piece of it. And like the NCAA has been constraining that for college athletes and throughout its entire existence. And that's shifting now. I think one of the things from the article talked about Governor Newsom in California signing a law that will go into effect in 2023. that will allow college athletes to hire agents and profit from endorsements, which is, I think, the right thing to do. But high school athletes should have that same opportunity or high school entertainers, whatever their talents are. People want to share their talents. I think they have every right to be able to do that, to earn a living, to make a profit, and to not have their creations taken by third parties or governed by third parties without their consent.
Eathan Janney: Yeah, that's an interesting piece of it, like having it, like just drawing the line a little bit more particularly between the individual, their ownership of it versus, you know, others who are, who might try to take ownership of it.
Seth Goldstein: If you're a 15 year old, you know, star running back, you know, why wouldn't you spin up an on-chain LLC and issue 10 million tokens under your own name and basically create your own currency, your own economy. I think there's going to be workarounds where people are going to be able to do this and have a lot more control and start to. There's always been a moment of pride if you see, oh, I watched Zion early. I saw his early mixtape before he was on the radar. But I think what these tokenized communities are doing is they're really rewarding the early adopters with a financial stake. Right. RAC has done a great job, you know, with this, with some of his, you know, tokenizing his music, you know, followers and community. So I imagine younger and younger athletes can use these kinds of token strategies to create communities where the first adopters are stakeholders.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, it's going to be also interesting what technology they adopt. You got Rally, who we'll have on the show soon, that has sort of some cool options for creators. You've got what these guys are doing. And then you got whatever Tom Brady's cooking up, which I'm sure will be awesome because it's Tom Brady.
Jeff Kelley: I had to get it in. Waiting for the moment. Slip in Tom Brady, I got it. Well, I don't know. I think it's cool. Having control of your likeness and your creations to me is paramount and NFTs and crypto are helping to make that a reality very, very quickly. So very cool stuff.
Eathan Janney: Yeah. Just quickly before we wrap up here, I mean, there is a controversial aspect to it. And maybe there's reasons why we don't want kind of kids in school engaging in commercial activity to a certain degree, because maybe different kids are, you know, progressing at different rates, you know, and it could put a lot of social pressure between kids, you know, having these things go on, especially around the sports that they play at school. I don't know that I would be on that side of the argument, but it's interesting to sort of bring that in and see that as something that might be wanted, wanted to be avoided. It can also, I mean, you look at kids that have become superstar entertainers, right, from an early age, and we see that kind of thing can really mess around with their development.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, it's inevitable, guys. I think it's going to be challenging for the local economies. How's the grocery store going to convince kids to bag groceries and work the cashiers systems if they can make money playing video games and doing what they love? I think this is going to be a capitalistic crisis, an opportunity for the evolution of our job market.
Eathan Janney: Well, in some senses, maybe it's fitting right in with the way the economy is going. Robots taking our jobs anyway, right? I mean, right now we bag your own groceries for the most part in a lot of stores. And then, you know, pretty soon I'll probably be a robot where you just hand them your cart and they'll take care of it.
Jeff Kelley: Indeed. Well, I think that's a hot topic. Yeah.
Eathan Janney: Yeah.
Jeff Kelley: Good stuff today. Yeah. Well, Seth, man, really amazing chatting with you today and learning about everything you're doing. Again, I can't wait to get out there in person and hang out over there at the gallery and come to some of your events. Really exciting stuff.
Seth Goldstein: Yeah, and we're open, you know, 12 to 7 every day. We've got lots of good art openings. Jeff Davis's show is June 24th, Thursday. Jeff is a co-founder of Art Blocks, and he has 10 new pieces that he's going to be minting and will be auctioning off here in the gallery. And we've got just a bunch of good stuff happening over the summer.
Eathan Janney: And tell people again, how they can get a crypto Venetian, right? That's kind of a fun way for people to engage.
Seth Goldstein: Yep, starting that week. So starting on the 22nd of June, we're going to be dropping our first set of crypto Venetians to visitors to the gallery. And so if you come here, it'll be first come first serve, and you will walk out with your own NFT, you will have to pay for the gas fee. But otherwise, it's free, you're free to resell it. And, you know, we're trying to, again, just, you know, connect it to the local community, making it something that's useful and valuable as a passport or as a loyalty card above and beyond its speculative interest.
Jeff Kelley: And where can folks go online to learn more about Bright Moments and also the other projects you're working on?
Seth Goldstein: Yeah, so they can go to bright moments.io, which is the gallery website, and Instagram is bright moments gallery. Again, I'm Seth Goldstein, so sethgoldstein.com will tell you more about me. I have another project I'm working on that will play off of all this in the future, which is nftinsurance.io, which is a way of underwriting insurance for your NFT assets. Uh, in the same way you can purchase flight insurance, or you can buy insurance for things in your house. Uh, you're going to want to, uh, ensure your, your digital crypto assets as well. So working on that. Um, but otherwise, um, just would love to have people come by and show up in person here in Venice. And thanks for the opportunity to share some of this. Awesome.
Jeff Kelley: Get out there, get out there, everybody.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, and by the way, Seth, we love what you're doing and would love to help our listeners get involved. So if anyone wants to reach out and talk with us about potential art galleries all over the world or artists that they might want to feature or would recommend for the gallery, hit us up at Edge of NFT and social. And if we can be helpful and support what the gallery is doing, we'd love to contribute.
Jeff Kelley: Okay. Well, I think we've reached the outer limit at the edge of NFTs today. Thanks for exploring with us. We've got space for more ventures on this starship. So invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey also much better. How to go to iTunes right now, rate us and say something cool. Then go to the edge of nft.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Thanks again. Welcome to the Edge of NFT podcast with your hosts, Jeff Kelly, Ethan Janney, and Josh Krieger. We aim to bring you not only the top 1% of what's going on with NFTs today, but what will stand the test of time. We explore the nuts and bolts and the business side, but also the human element of how NFTs are changing the way we interact with the things that we love. This podcast is for the futurists and dreamers, the disruptors and creators, the fans and connectors, and the makers and doers that are pumped about this ecosystem and driving where it goes next.