158 - You're Not Bullish Enough on NFTs with Punk6529

In an extreme example, people go and die for their national flag. In less extreme examples, people go tailgate every week in a football game. In other less extreme examples, people will pay $10,000 for a watch when a $15 watch will do the same thing. And I'm not here to tell you this is bad. This is fundamental to human nature. This is how we are. Identity matters, community matters, emotion matters. NFTs are the moment where we can take all of those feelings from an off-chain world on chain.

Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams, and I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. Guys, the most well-known pseudonymous brand in crypto is on the podcast today. Punk 6529. That is this person's punk number, not his nation state name, is the idea of a crypto punk. He says on today's episode that NFTs will represent every single digital non fungible token that exists.

And there's gonna be a lot of those. A few benefits and takeaways from listening to this episode. Number one, he talks about the benefits of using an NFT-backed pseudonym instead of his state name.

Number two, we talk about why the freedom to transact is an essential human liberty, one that we'll lose without crypto. Number three, we talk about how the metaverse is just a visualization layer for NFTs. Number four, we talk about why NFTs are more important than DeFi. This is according to Punk6529, of course. He says NFTs are probably the most important thing crypto has produced thus far. David, in this episode, he calls himself probably the most bullish single individual in the world on NFTs. What's your take on that? And your take on this episode as folks get into it.

Yeah, what does it mean to be the world's most bullish person on NFTs? I think if I put myself into the shoes of Punk Six Five Two Nine, he just means that the reason to mint an NFT, the reasons will be so broad, so infinite, that almost an infinite number of NFTs will eventually become minted. And he'll walk you through the thought process, I think, in this episode. Punk 6529 really takes his time to fully unpack a thought. And so there's really only four or five questions throughout this whole entire podcast. But pay attention to each one because they do layer upon each one as they go. We first start talking about what does it mean to have a digital identity, Punk 6529 as a digital identity in the metaverse, is one of the foremost people exploring the worlds of online only identities. And then we get into uh one of his first principles, uh, tweet threads that he put together the freedom to transact and how the ability to transact financially in the world is a statement of self expression, which leads into how NFTs can also help people express themselves. So pay attention as we walk through some of these subject matters, because if you lose each one, you'll start to lose some of the benefits of layering each one on top of each other, is what I have to say to the listener.

Yeah, I I really like the way this guest thinks. Um you know, one of those first principles thinkers as well. And David, I think we've got a lot to discuss during the debrief, like particularly this idea of NFTs being more bullish than maybe the rest of crypto. I mean, he went as far as to say it's the reason crypto exists almost in a way. And of course, premium subscribers, you can access that debrief show right now on the Bankless Premium feed if you're listening to that. If you're not a premium subscriber, click the link in the show notes and upgrade and you can get access to that. David, this episode is also coming out as an NFT collectible. So on the day that this is released, the Monday that it's released, you have an opportunity to mint this episode and collect it. So if punk six five two nine is bullish on NFTs, maybe this episode as an NFT is also bullish? Question mark? I'm not sure.

I f it's definitely fitting his thesis. We're definitely proving it out.

Yeah, we're minting it and seeing what happens. So far, the community has been really excited by these, and you can pick that up if you're interested later. Guys, we're gonna get right to the episode with Punk6529 Bankless Nation. Excited to introduce you to our next guest. This is a pseudo anonymous guest, goes by the alias punk6529 on Twitter. He's a leader in the crypto space and he's heavily focused on the world of NFTs, the metaverse. He's also known for putting out some extremely punchy and thoughtful Twitter threads. I think some of these threads reveal how he thinks about the crypto space, particularly from a first principles perspective. Punk 6529, it is a pleasure to have you on Bankless. How are you doing today?

Get the schedule done, looking forward to it.

Yeah, I know we've been wanting to schedule this for a while. Ever since I started kind of reading more and more of your just banger tweet threads about this space, and we'll talk about a few of those as we get in. But I think the first question on my mind, and maybe some listeners' mind, is uh a little bit about you. So you're pseudo anonymous, of course. You have a voice distorter in this interview, this conversation that maybe listeners have noticed. What can you tell us about yourself, about who you are, punk, and what you care about?

Well, I can share the following. I think professionally

I was historically in the finance industry and the consulting industry.

But then I took a shift quite some time ago

into crypto

and certain other areas.

And so it's been a long time since I've done

those first two things.

And

I have spent a lot of time on, you know, initially Bitcoin and then more broadly cryptocurrency since 2013.

Back then was when I first, summer 2013 is when I first

really dug into Bitcoin. I had come across it in

2011

and didn't really pay any attention to it.

But in summer of 2013, I dug into it some more,

and I was convinced from then that the big idea here wasn't that we can now do wire transfers.

Faster or cheaper,

or that you had global money good settlement. All of these things are amazing things, right? They're great.

But that it was a very much bigger idea than that, that you had

now for the first time a second way

you can store data.

Now we've had a database,

and now we had

a public blockchain.

And that this was not only a major breakthrough in distributed systems.

A major breakthrough in computer science that would have all types of technical offshoots.

But ultimately,

you know, it's an underappreciated fact that

technology platforms, which

their operators might be operating them mutually.

You know, a database administrator, a software developer,

the head of a firm that has databases and software developers,

is almost certainly just trying to run their business

and just trying to

You know, compete in the marketplace, and that keeps everyone very busy, and it's hard running any type of business.

But a world that digitizes,

has the internet,

and is structured on databases

actually ends up centralizing.

And very oddly, you know, what people would think of as back end technology choices that you know nobody in the

social, political, sociological field has thought about for one second.

Actually, end up reshaping the contours of society.

And this was clear to me back then.

I thought it was going to be a

30, 40 year pathway

before we actually saw the full potential of what we can do with decentralized ledgers, with distributed blockchains, with public cryptocurrencies, whatever you call them.

It's basically all the same thing.

And a horizontal technology like this

takes time to get

integrated.

Right, like it was gonna be a long haul,