Hot Topics: From Singapore to the Blockchain: Insights from Token 2049 and the Royalty Project

October 3, 2024
Podcast
Richard Carthon, Josh Krieger, Adam Decada, and Toby Lewis discuss Token 2049 and Elvis on Bitcoin Ordinals.

In this episode of Edge of NFT, Richard Carthon and Josh Kriger explore the latest and most exciting developments in Web3, blockchain, and digital assets live from Token 2049 in Singapore. Joined by Adam Decada, co-founder of Royalty, and Toby Lewis, co-founder of Ordinal Spot, the discussion covers the monumental launch of Elvis Presley as the first-ever Bitcoin Ordinals inscription through their partnership and reflects on the exciting networking opportunities at Token 2049.

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Key Topics Covered:

  • Token 2049 and the Networking Scene: Richard, Josh, Adam, and Toby discuss their experiences at Token 2049 in Singapore, including the high-powered networking events and the viral influence of the Redacted plane.
  • Binance and the SEC Legal Battle: An analysis of the ongoing regulatory pressure on Binance, particularly the SEC's suit, and its potential impact on the cryptocurrency industry.
  • Royalty and Ordinal Spot Collaboration: Adam and Toby unveil the groundbreaking project featuring Elvis Presley on Bitcoin Ordinals, diving into the technical aspects of inscriptions and the importance of cultural icons in the digital era.

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:

  • Adam Decada: “When we consider Royalty, Elvis Presley is truly generational in terms of his impact. It’s the precedent we want to set as we immortalize icons on Bitcoin Ordinals.”
  • Toby Lewis: "Bitcoin collectibles are in their early days, and putting the king of rock and roll on the blockchain through Ordinals is a game-changer for the space."
  • Josh Kriger: “The effort and precision that went into inscribing Side BTC, a tribute to Elvis’ 1968 comeback special, are setting a new standard in digital art and collectibles.”

For the full transcript, see further below. 

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About Our Guests:

Adam Decada and Toby Lewis

Adam Decada is the co-founder of Royalty, a digital platform that brings iconic cultural figures into the Bitcoin Ordinals ecosystem. He has led groundbreaking projects in Web3, including the highly successful Artball project for the Australian Open.

Toby Lewis is the co-founder of Ordinal Spot, the premier Ordinals inscription service responsible for some of the largest files ever inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain. With over 300,000 users, Ordinal Spot is leading the way in Bitcoin collectibles.

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Transcription:

Richard Carthon: Welcome to Hot Topics on the Edge of NFT. I'm Richard Carthon. I'm here with Josh Krieger, and we're diving into the latest and most exciting developments in the world of Web3, blockchain and digital assets.

Josh Kriger: It's another production of Edge of Company, a rapidly growing media ecosystem empowering the pioneers of Web3 tech and culture.

Richard Carthon: Today, we're recording in Singapore at Token 2049, and we'll be talking about what's happening here and what's going on with the SEC going after Binance. And we're going to cover some recent news with Adam Decada, the co-founder of Royalty, and Toby Lewis, the co-founder of Ordinal Spots.

Josh Kriger: Let's dive in. Hey, guys. Welcome to the show.

Adam: Great to be here. Thanks for having us.

Richard Carthon: So we're going to dive into today's first topic which is talking about Token 2049. So we're here in Singapore and we arrived in a lot of different ways and one of them made global news. There was a plane with hundreds of influencers whose videos are going viral all over social media about redacted coins. So Josh, Toby, we'll kick it off to you first. How was that experience?

Josh Kriger: Yeah, it was cool to run into you on that plane ride, Toby. And actually I saw a lot of friends and folks in the industry that I've been sort of meaning to connect with. So I found it extremely high powered networking. I think the Redacted team put a great crew together of interesting people. You know, it wasn't like a completely like a perfect start, but it was a perfect landing and all around a pretty good time. Yes, the news covered some of the shenanigans on the flight, but there's also just a lot of people having fun networking. Yeah, all that good stuff as well. What do you think?

Toby: Yeah, no, it was. Really a truly incredible experience, I mean. It's not every day that you run into people who charter an entire jet for transporting people to an event. So I thought it was actually one of the most impressive events I've been to in terms of the caliber of the people. And like you say, Josh, probably the news didn't reflect what was actually in general quite civilized, but clearly people were drinking a lot. So, but yeah, it's, yeah, cued off to redacted. I think it's probably the suddenly seems like we're getting into more bull run territory in terms of behavior.

Josh Kriger: I mean, they had some great sponsors, right? Qatar Airways, Polygon, a number of different emerging tech companies that got a chance to share what they do with the world. We got some great headphones from one of the partners. So overall, I think it was a really cool thing they did. I got to hand it to them, you know, as a, as a company that puts together a single multi-day events, the logistics on this, uh, were quite, uh, uh, overwhelming, I would imagine. And, uh, I know that the team, uh, is, is sort of resting now and, and, and taking a breath and they deserve that. So thank you Redacted for giving us this cool opportunity.

Richard Carthon: So yeah, obviously that was a really cool experience, but now we're live here at Token 24.9 Singapore. At the time of this recording, it is September 18th, Wednesday, and the main event starts today. There's already been several side events that have been going on. I believe there's a reported 600 plus side events going on, which is pretty awesome. I personally have already gone to, I believe, five and plan on going to probably another 15 in addition to going to this main event. So really excited for everything that's going on. But Adam, what are you looking forward to this week at Token?

Adam: Thinking about 2020, 2021 events, I definitely felt fatigued and didn't see the value when a lot of the conferences were happening. I'm really looking forward to catching up with a lot of people this time around. There's tons of events, as you said, there's 600 plus. I like the fact that I'll sort of see what Toby and Brian are up to and receiving a Telegram message at some point saying, hey, come here, being able to be free enough to be able to do it. So yeah, nothing truly specific, but outside of the conference. But yeah, I'm sure we'll bump into each other.

Josh Kriger: I think Yeah, it sounds like, you know, Adam, you have a more civilized approach to sort of how to deal with all the different events. I think part of these big events is coming up with your own strategy. Like, when do you get up? When do you go to sleep? Are you a late night person? Are you trying to do the early stuff? How much moving around the city do you want to do? Do you want to go to the core conference? These are the strategies that we all have to think about. For me, Richard and I got a good night's sleep last night. We know it's a marathon, not a sprint, but it's going to be a fun week. Let's focus on Binance now. The SEC filed an amended complaint against them last week and its founder, CZ. This legal battle represents one of the most high-profile cases in ongoing regulatory scrutiny of the cryptocurrency industry by U.S. authorities. The suit against Binance, originally filed June of 2023, includes 13 charges that will be going forward. The charges include operating an unregistered exchange, misrepresenting trading controls and oversight within the Binance US platform, and overall market manipulation. The case could set important precedents for how digital assets are regulated in the future. Richard, what are your thoughts there?

Richard Carthon: Yeah, I'm not surprised they're not letting go and they're doubling down. I think one of the main things that will be focused on here and needs to be addressed is the market manipulation piece. There's a complaint against Sigma Chain, which is an entity owned by CZ with engaging with manipulative trading that artificially inflated the platform's trading value, which obviously isn't great and shouldn't be able to do. And learning from what happened with FTX, we don't need to have any amplifications of are implications that doing anything like any nefarious activities are acceptable. So I think they're going to double down and make sure that other exchanges are cleaning up their act and aren't doing nefarious actions like that. Toby, Adam, do you have any thoughts on this?

Toby: Yeah, like I think the sort of general landscape has been quite crazy. We've had suits against OpenSea, Uniswap, Binance has been continuously in the courts. I think there's a degree where it can feel a bit unfair, the amount of activity against various different crypto companies. I'm sort of in terms of like, after the 2008 financial crash, I think like, no, no bankers actually went to jail, which is kind of crazy in retrospect. So, so, in some ways, you kind of feel that cryptos had a bit of a hard time. But obviously, as you say, Richard, like, like, unfair anti-consumer activity that there's a good thing that that everyone in in crypto digital assets are very focused on how how on appropriate behavior so so that's a good thing from this.

Adam: Yeah, I think, you know, keeping people honest and having a clear understanding of what is acceptable or not, especially when coming to the US is super important. Yeah, my perspective is pretty simple though. It's nothing we can control and, you know, we'll ever truly know even though there will be court documents and the likes. I just look forward to the day that Binance starts to list runes and dog to the moon all the way.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, they'll have to, you know, they'll have to see what sort of capacity they have for R&D after this is all over. You know, the part of the complaint is that Binance made over $11 billion on their Binance US product during this time during CZ's involvement. So I think that's an indication from the SEC that a lot of this comes down to the significance of the revenue of the company relative to the allegation. So it'll be interesting to see what kind of budget they have for listing new tokens in the RUNES ecosystem. But I'm optimistic for you, Adam, that your wishes can come true there.

Richard Carthon: Yeah, we'll see. It'll be very interesting. And again, I don't think this is the last we're going to be hearing from Binance with any challenges that are coming from the SEC in the US. But now we're going to go to our final story, which is the main reason why our two guests are here. We have Adam, who is the co-founder of Royalty, and Toby, who is the co-founder of Ordinal Spot. And I'm going to give you a little bit of background on both as we dive into this particular hot topic. So the new platform, Royalty, is a modalizing culture defining artists on ordinals and announced that Elvis Presley as the first in a series of artistic royalty to inscribe on Bitcoin ordinals as Elvis side BTC royalty has formed a strategic partnership with Arnold's bought the premier Arnold's inscription service. Ornalspot brings Rockstar credentials of their own to the project team behind 80% of 10 largest files ever inscribed on Bitcoin blockchain. Ornalspot has a user base of over 300,000 and raised $3 million at a seed round. So Ornalspot has launched a parent-child inscriptions feature on the Roon's launchpad and it took to the skies. So now we want to talk about this, especially because you did this on the redacted flight to Token 2049 Singapore, which Toby you spoke on a little bit. you could have worked with anyone, but you decided to select Elvis. Can you just tell us a little bit more about that decision, Adam?

Adam: Yeah, we've been fortunate over the last five or so years to advise and deliver projects for some of the largest brands within Web2 from Linktree. to the Australian Open and the Artball project, which is, you know, super special in terms of what it's set in terms of benchmarks of deliverables. And I think, you know, when we consider role team, what we're building and the network that we have as a team, collectively, Elvis is one of the biggest artists of all time. It's, you know, truly generational in many ways. And yeah, for us, it's the sort of precedent we want to set in terms of the quality of what we define as icons moving forward.

Josh Kriger: Please tell us a little bit more about this genre of art that is inspired by Joe Petrucci's original piece, Side B. It sounds really interesting.

Adam: Yeah, so Joe's been working with the Elvis estate for many years, and it's great to be able to partner with him on one of his projects, which was called Side B. For us, it was quite fitting, actually, and came later down the piece around. Side B is the project title, but Side BTC makes a lot of sense, and it's very fitting. Yeah, so from our side, generative art, We'll always play a large part in terms of how we approach digital assets and here with Elvis and his 1968 comeback special, there's 26 songs. Each song has a scale and a key and we've been able to then different ways that these data points talk to each other to create what we call a color theory. There's a lot more detail about each and every part of this and you can head to royalty.ordinalsbot.com to see more of this.

Richard Carthon: Yeah, that's that sounds really awesome. And one of the things that I think is cool is obviously the technical side of being able to put this together. So, you know, being behind the inscriptions for other successful projects, like French Montana, Ghostface Killer, Trevor Jones, what does the king of rock and roll and his legacy bring to the industry and Cornell bots as it as it shapeshifts and other technology that you're going to be exploring with this project, Toby?

Toby: Okay, so so effectively, putting the king on Bitcoin, I think is is a great privilege. And we're, we're, we're making it easy for anyone to do that with a credit card or pay with Bitcoin. And, and I think the, this is going to be a truly one of kind collection. And like you say, I think it will be up there with ghostface killer or runestone or Audi or some of the like the biggest sort of multi billion huge projects. And I think what Adam and the Royalty team are doing is truly visionary. And I think this is very early days in Bitcoin collectibles.

Josh Kriger: So thank you, Adam and Toby, for continuing to push the edge. Really excited to see this drop come to life. Adam, what are any key dates or other information about the project that folks should know before we wrap?

Adam: Yeah, we're a few weeks away from updating the color theory and releasing it. But as I'm pretty pumped for it to come out, the ideal timing will be around London Underground, which in middle of October, so the 17th. But again, I don't know if I'm dropping some off or I'm not there. So don't quote me.

Josh Kriger: all right well stay tuned guys you heard here uh Elvis is coming to the blockchain that's a wrap for today's hot topic we covered the Singapore token 2049 event the suit against finance and the royalty ordinals bot project collaboration feel free to share your thoughts on these developments in the comments or on social media your voice shapes this space

Richard Carthon: Stay curious, stay secure, and keep pushing Web3 boundaries. This is Richard and Josh signing off from the edge of NFT. Catch you on the flip side of the blockchain.

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