#109: NFTs and the Metaverse with Jason Rosenstein

Guest Introduction (0:00)

Sean Weisbrot:

Welcome back to another episode of the We Live to Build Podcast. I’m here today with Jason Rosenstein, the founder and CEO of Portion of Blockchain based auction house. Jason has a degree in computer science with a specialization in cryptography at NYU, and started his first company in 2013, which sold turnkey crypto mining machines. Jason has taken Portion from a digital auction house specializing in NFT to a man averse development platform and not just a marketplace. Portion was one of the few companies that paid a whopping seven figures, $1.2 million for virtual land. Most notably, Portion has featured celebrity works, including 2-Chainz, Wiz Khalifa, Virgil Ablo, I’m sorry, who knows you name? Kisa, I’m trying here, Philip Plein and well-known artists to make exclusive NFTs.

Now, the team has big plans for the Portion district in decentral, and today we’re going to be talking about NFTs, what they are, and why you should take them seriously, even though we’re in the middle of a downturn in the global economy and a crash in the crypto market. So, thank you for taking the time to talk with me today, Jason. I appreciate it.

Get to know Jason (1:09)

Sean Weisbrot:

Why don’t you tell everyone a little bit more about yourself and then we’ll go into the NFT stuff.

Jason Rosenstein:

Cool. Well, thanks so much, Sean, for having me. Very grateful for you. Very briefly, my background, I started with cryptocurrency specifically, of course, Bitcoin in 2011 as a minor, I’m a developer, I’m an entrepreneur. Everything I’ve done over the last decade, I guess it’s been a little bit over a decade now, it’s been in blockchain and been in cryptocurrency. That’s really been my fascination. And just watching this space explode from being purely financial transactions to data. Now, of course, the NFT has been fascinating.

What is an NFT (1:48)

Sean Weisbrot:

Before we go any further, I think the first, most prudent question that I should ask you is what the hell is an NFT?

Jason Rosenstein:

Okay, so an NFT. So, I started seeing NFTs around 2016. We didn’t call them NFTs at the time. It was referred to as crypto arts in those rather early days for what soon became the NFT. An NFT is nonfungible token, which means you can’t trade it for anything else. And as simply as I can put it, the most popular NFTs are digital arts that are attached to the blockchain in a very specific way, meaning that one individual knows they have irrefutable ownership of that digital image.

Sean Weisbrot:

I’ve heard of this thing called a smart contract and I’ve heard of this thing called an NFT. Are they really not just the same thing?

Jason Rosenstein:

But you need to create a smart contract on the blockchain to be able to instantiate an NFT. So, NFT are smart contracts on the blockchain, most popularly on the Ethereum in blockchain.

Sean Weisbrot:

And what do you think the strengths of NFTs are? Why should people care about them?

Jason Rosenstein:

People should care about them, because we’re entering this new age in the Internet where we’re shifting away from ownership of physical items. And now with an NFT, it allows individuals to have access and ownership of digital items. And I think that’s really porn, especially for areas in the metaverse. As things become more and more digital, it’s important for individuals to know and have ownership of those objects that they’re utilizing in this new instrument.

Sean Weisbrot:

Where we are with NFTs right now, do you feel like we’re past the money grab stage, or are we still there?

Jason Rosenstein:

I hope that we’re past it, because, as you know, Sean, in early 2021, NFTs really blew up. From my perspective, so many people that never would have been interested in NFTs were talking about them, and there were money grabs. And I guess what’s used a metaphor, because history repeats itself in the ICO boom of crypto in 2017, there were money grabs. And after that bear market that occurred after the ICO boom, all those projects got washed out, and the ones that were left were there to stay. And it’s just my hope that the same thing is occurring now in the NFT space. The projects that were money grabs, that didn’t have the proper culture, that didn’t have the proper community and utilities. I hope that we’ll see them getting washed out. It’s the survival of the fittest. And the money grabs just simply won’t live.

What NFTs should you look for (4:36)

Sean Weisbrot:

So, what are some NFTs that you think were not money grabs? Things that people should have paid attention to?

Jason Rosenstein:

Definitely the early NFTs, the OG NFTs. And we’re talking things like Crypto Punks and Rare Pepes from 2016, 2017 for the punks. Those are just very rare OG NFTs that are here to stay because gigantic communities formed around them. And there’s been a tremendous value created in that.

Sean Weisbrot:

What kind of value is created? Because from where I’m sitting, it just looks like a picture.

Jason Rosenstein:

It looks like a picture. It is a picture, but it’s a digital collectible that’s extremely desirable.

Sean Weisbrot:

Why is it desirable, though?

Jason Rosenstein:

It’s desirable. Well, because people want them. Because they’re rare. Think about, like, rare stamps. It’s a similar thing that happens in the physical space. Think about rare artwork. Think about a Picasso. Think about things like the Mona Lisa, the early NFTs are the Picassos and Mona Lisa of this new movement, and people simply gravitate towards them because they’re the most well-known, and because of the most well-known, people want them. It’s a simple thing that happens throughout the art culture for thousands of years.

Sean Weisbrot:

So, do you think. And I would probably, like put more of emphasis on the Gen Z because a lot of the ones that I know are really interested in NFTs. Do you think young people see NFT as a way to, like, hold wealth the way older people look at real physical paintings?

Jason Rosenstein:

Yeah, absolutely. In the older days when someone’s been successful from a financial perspective, they diversify those assets into, say, like a traditional Picasso, like we’re saying before, some form of art that retains its value. And now when a Gen Z or even like an earlier millennial has created wealth throughout this ecosystem, no matter what is, whether it’s in crypto or somewhere else, financially, they diversify that wealth into NFTs. And for them, it’s important because they can diversify the wealth, they can have their collection. They know that if they’re choosing the right NFT, it’s probably going to retain its value. It’s a simple method of diversifying.

Who earns the most profit in NFT space (6:59)

Sean Weisbrot:

There have been a tremendous number of NFTs that have come out. Who do you think makes the most money from them? Is it the creator of the NFT? Is it the designer of the art that goes into the NFT? Is it the buyer of the NFT who then tries to resell? Who is it?

Jason Rosenstein:

It’s a very good question, and it’s entirely dependent on what sort of contract the creators have with the artists. I’ve seen deals where the artist gets 50% of the sales and so do the creators. I like those. I think the artists should always be rewarded sufficiently, and then, of course, the owner of the project and the artists are also splitting the royalties. I think in any given case, generally, the owners and the artists receive the most monetary benefit from an NFT project. You’d have to really, as a collector, you’d have to really buy a significant share of the NFTs and then hope that you’ve done well on what is an investment to be able to make more than the owners.

Sean Weisbrot:

So, obviously, I have to ask, have you bought any NFTs?

Jason Rosenstein:

Yeah, I’ve got probably over a thousand NFTs. And I have profile picture NFTs, which are usually quantities of 10,000 or in the thousands at the least. I have a lot of one of ones that I really like from some of my favorite artists in this space. Yeah, I mean, I love NFTs. I can’t own an auction house for NFTs and not own any myself. I’ve created NFTs too.

NFT Marketplace (8:40)

Sean Weisbrot:

What’s the average price of an NFT that you see on your marketplace?

Jason Rosenstein:

Our goal is to be this high end, curated auction house. It’s really hard to know the exact price because we’ve done both Profile Picture and NFTs and one-of-ones, but when we do like a one of one, I’d say the average price is. For one of one, between 10,020, $5,000 for one of one.

Sean Weisbrot:

What are some of the other marketplaces that are out there that people might look at for NFT just because they may not know anything about NFTs and a price pooling of $10000 or $25000 on your platform might be too much for them? So maybe there’s other ones that are cheaper.

Jason Rosenstein:

OpenSea is a great place to get NFT for the biggest marketplace. There’s ranges from probably like, a few bucks to millions of dollars for an NFT. There’s just a whole range. Super rare has significantly high value NFT, some of them probably go for $1000 on there.

So, that’s a very good place by NFTs. Known Origin is excellent. Maker’s Place is very good.

Sean Weisbrot:

What’s the most expensive NFT you’ve ever seen sold anywhere?

Jason Rosenstein:

I guess the biggest collection that I’ve ever seen. I think it was by the artist Pack in his merge series. It was a series, though there were many, many NFT sold, but I think the total was around, like $90 million that pack sold in that sale.

Sean Weisbrot:

Wow. And do you know if they kept it all themselves?

Jason Rosenstein:

I don’t know if they kept it all themselves. I’m sure that the platform they sold it on got a percentage. I’m sure that the developers who helped with the smart contracts got a percentage. It’s not just going straight to the artist in that case.

Use cases of NFTs (10:42)

Sean Weisbrot:

What other use cases can end up have besides just being a picture?

Jason Rosenstein:

Oh, lots of things. I mean, an NFT can be a ticket to a concert. It can be ticket, really, to anything. It can have a utility so that you’re getting you have access to a discord, let’s say a server or community. It can be representative of a deed of a house, or some other object that a person owns. The sky is really the limit on what an NFT can be, but as simply as I can put it, an NFT representative sense ownership of anything imaginable in the digital world, or even in the physical world.

Sean Weisbrot:

I’m glad you mentioned those things, because as I mentioned earlier, I feel like the first time anything happens in the crypto world, it’s like a money grab. And then there’s a crash, and then people start to think about what it could actually be used for. And while that’s being built, people are already moving on to the next money grab. ICOs happened. They became a money grab. They blew up, they crashed, the companies got wiped out. The ones that were real stick around, but then the DeFi boom happened. So, people were trying to figure out how they could take advantage of yield farming and staking and all of this. And then that boomed and crashed. And while people are reeling from that, and then defy companies that are legit or sticking around, then the NFTs come out and people are money grabbing and all.

So, I’m like thinking about what the next potential thing could be. But while that’s happening, I still see that NFTs have a massive potential beyond just being a picture. For example, I’ve only purchased one NFT, and I don’t think I’ll ever purchase another NFT. But the NFT I purchased was called Gents Croquet Club GCC. And the only reason I bought it, and I didn’t even know about it before the mint, so I bought it on OpenSea. So, I paid a good bit more than everyone else, but I bought it because it was access to a discord server. There was only 1000 of them. And it was access to a website that had a lot of reports about cryptocurrencies trading and NFTs and metaverse, land, things like that. And really, a lot of the people that are in there are entrepreneurs. I’ve spoken to a good number of them, and a lot of them are seven, eight, nine figures a year in what they’re doing with their different businesses. So, I bought it for long term access to those people, because I think that they’re really cool.

Jason Rosenstein:

Cool. Yeah, it’s all about the community. The community is always more important than the technology.

Sean Weisbrot:

Exactly. I had thought about even using NFT as access for beta to my software companies’ platform form, because I thought NFTs are a way to raise money, and we need more money. So, might as well think about how we can get web3 forward thinking entrepreneurs to get access to our product, get access to each other. So, we would have a community, we would have the product, they would get access to all this stuff, and they would get like a permanent discount on services.

Now, obviously, the problem with launching an NFT is that it’s intense. It takes months and months and months, and it requires a lot of money. Just kind of like an ICO and like, crowdfunding.

Launching an NFT Collection (14:12)

Sean Weisbrot:

You said that you launched your own NFT collections. Why don’t you speak about kind of the process that you went through in terms of saying, hey, I’m going to launch a collection, to launching the collection?

Jason Rosenstein:

When I started making crypto art, it was January 2017, and they really. We didn’t call them like I mentioned earlier, we didn’t call them NFTs at the time. It was crypto art. They were Rare Pepes. At least I wasn’t thinking about making money. That wasn’t even a thought that crossed my mind. I was having fun. You know, there was a very small group in this community, and it was kind of a joke to be creating these Rare Pepes, and then, the culture behind it was that we’re creating art. We’re a bunch of artists. But it was frog. But then it started to get serious, and the pieces that people were creating started to evolve, and all of a sudden, people were pulling in things from all different cultures and montaging these rare Pepes, and it just made sense.

And when you saw a Rare Pepe and if you were bringing together these threads and creating this beautiful piece, we refer to them as dank. That was, like, the actual phrase that we’d use. And it became serious, and people started to buy our pieces. And at that point, when we were monetizing it, it was just really it became down to creativity. And it was pretty simple. The most creative that you the most creativity that you could put into a piece obviously made it more desirable on that market.

And then we were getting paid for it. So, it came in the reverse of what some people might think today. It didn’t start with I want to make money. How do I make money? Okay, I’m going to make an NFT. It was just, I’m going to create some art. And then it started to make money, fortunately. So, it was just this very rare happy situation where the passion preceded any sort of thoughts of being successful financially.

NFTs and Metaverse (16:25)

Sean Weisbrot:

There’s been talk of metaverse and NFTs. I’m curious how you see NFTs playing a role in the metaverse.

Jason Rosenstein:

Okay, so metaverse, you have an avatar. You have objects in the metaverse. It’s important that things that you own are NFT is my opinion. I can see the metaverse being done properly if there isn’t an actual NFT scribe to all the things you own. You know, let’s say you have a sword, we have some sort of weapon in the manifest on your Avatar. I think that we’re approaching this asymptote of a physical reality blending with the digital reality as it becomes more and more real. The things you own are going to be real because they’re instantiated by the scarcity that an NFT provides, and they’ll have real world value because of that.

So, NFT can be ownership of land in the Metaverse. It can be ownership of objects that you have, it can be ownership of wearables and clothing on your Avatar, and it can be even as simple as in your little Metaverse. Whatever house that’s, that you have built in five years, you have an NFT on the wall, which is an actual NFT created by an artist. So, we’re blending these two worlds and we’re approaching the digital world being just as real as physical.

Sean Weisbrot:

So, let’s say you’re playing Final Fantasy 25, which clearly doesn’t exist yet, and let’s say it’s like Final Fantasy 14, where it’s an MMORPG. Are you telling me that a random bar in a random city in this MMORPG could be purchased with an NFT and then all of the people who play the game, who go to this place to buy stuff would end up actually putting money in your pocket?

Jason Rosenstein:

I think so. That’s my bet, at least. Because I see when the metaverse really starts to take off, because it hasn’t, simply hasn’t yet, there’s going to be this play to earn economy, in my opinion, that’s going to be created. I don’t think that people in the future will ever be playing video games for free, essentially.

I think that every game will have an economy in whatever metaverse it is. And I think people will be playing to earn, and I think that everything will be real. I think the objects will be real and there will be rewards. It just comes down to that. I don’t think gaming in the future will be just to play the game. I think there will be real money on the line and there’ll be real estate and risk.

Sean Weisbrot:

Do you see us needing to have VR headsets for the Metaverse to work? Or do you think Metaverse can work on laptops and phones?

Jason Rosenstein:

It’s not as good of an experience right now on a laptop. Phones just like, it’s terrible, but a laptop, it’s not that good. I mean, I think headsets are going to be more and more popular. They’re going to be less bulky in the future. They’re going to be easier to, affordable, essentially easier to acquire. I think they will be essential. But I think the technology is going to get to a point where it’s going to be just like a pair of sunglasses you wear and you’re immersed into that world.

Future of living digitally (20:00)

Sean Weisbrot:

Does that scare you at all that we might be living in a digital world?

Jason Rosenstein:

It doesn’t scare me. The only concern is that people start living in the digital world more often than the physical world. There are definitely concerns.

Sean Weisbrot:

Don’t we already do.

Jason Rosenstein:

We do. And we hope it doesn’t get any worse.

Sean Weisbrot:

Is it realistic to expect that it’s not going to move in that direction?

Jason Rosenstein:

I guess we can only hope that at a certain point in time, it blends so much with the physical. And it’s just like these augmented reality worlds where you’re living in both at once. It can function in both worlds simultaneously. There probably will be a period of time where people are so immersed in their headsets and they got, like, their BCI, the brain computing interface on, and they’re just living in this world. But I think it’s going to come to a point where we come out on the other side and both worlds are completely meshed together and interoperable.

Sean Weisbrot:

How long do you think it will be until that happens?

Jason Rosenstein:

So, we come out on the other side and it’s like this augmented reality world mesh together with Metaverses?

Sean Weisbrot:

Yeah.

Jason Rosenstein:

It’s really hard to tell. Maybe by 2035. I’m just guessing a random number. The technology really has to advance.

Sean Weisbrot:

Yeah, of course.

Jason Rosenstein:

We need to have BCIs that are safe to use and not, like, a chip under your skull on your brain, some sort of headset that we can use, it just really has to advance.

Sean Weisbrot:

So, there’s actually a company that beat Neuralink to having a chip in a human.

Jason Rosenstein:

Really?

Sean Weisbrot:

I think they just announced it yesterday or two days ago. Like July 19 or July 18.

Jason Rosenstein:

I have to check that out. What’s the name of the company?

Jason Rosenstein:

I’m not sure. I’ll have to check on you. Yeah, I got, like, a ping on my newsfeed.

Jason Rosenstein:

Cool.

Sean Weisbrot:

And I didn’t get a chance to read the details yet, but I saw that, and I was like, oh, that’s interesting, because NeuralLink was talking about doing that, like, in two years.

Yeah, no, I think they wanted to do it by the end of this year, but I don’t think they’re going.

Jason Rosenstein:

I saw the Neuralink. I guess we’ll call it an experiment. The experiments with I believe it’s like a chimpanzee. I don’t know enough about it, but he’s controlling the screen because they implanted the chip in his head.

Sean Weisbrot:

What do you think about that?

Jason Rosenstein:

I don’t like the idea of having a chip.

Sean Weisbrot:

Okay. Thank you. I’m glad you said that.

Jason Rosenstein:

It’s an uncomfortable feeling, man, to have to do that invasive surgery. It’s paradoxically barbaric in a way. I think BCIs will take off, but the way I see it is you wear a headband or something, you’re out to interact with your machine.

Sean Weisbrot:

Well, the problem is you can’t directly connect your brain to it because it’s only able to feel the movement of the skin or know the sweat coming off the skin. However, it measures maybe the waves coming out of your skull. But I can see why he wanted to do it like that. It makes sense that you put the chip inside of your brain. Obviously, his first goal is to help people who are disabled or have injuries, spinal cord problems, things like that to have normal functioning.

But at the same time, learn from that how you can have healthy people to improve themselves, even become more than just human. Obviously, with an end goal of creating this telepathic species in which everybody has one. So, we don’t need to speak anymore, basically, and which you can access the Internet. Basically, you can surf the Internet with your brain. Which I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen Ghost in the Shell. I’ve been watching Ghost in the Shell. They’ve got multiple series and movies for the last 25 years, 26 years, 27 years. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that, but like, that’s some crazy pretty crazy stuff.

Jason Rosenstein:

No, I haven’t, but I’ll check that out.

Sean Weisbrot:

No, you’ve never seen Ghost in the Shell.

Jason Rosenstein:

It sounds interesting.

Sean Weisbrot:

The first movie came out, 1995, and they were talking about 2032, I think it was, and now we’re pretty close, and they’ve had to actually jump forward to 2045 in their latest series, just because when you look at what they were predicting almost 30 years ago, pretty much none of it has come true. And it’s not their fault. They’re just heavy on the Sci-Fi, and we just haven’t really caught up, because in 2029, 2032, like they were saying, we’d have full cyber brains. Like, you could have full replacement body parts and you could cyber guys and things like that. We just can’t do that stuff now. It’s really just meant for people who’ve injured themselves and lost to them and things like that.

Their storyline is way ahead of what our use cases are for, but it’s really cool to watch because they’ve got augmented humans and full cyborgs and robots that have AI in them and all sorts of stuff that are cool, and it takes a very heavy political tone. A lot of the main characters are government officials, but they’re in a special section, a special agency that nobody knows about. It’s just like, maybe 10 or 15 people from the whole government of Japan knows that they exist, and they’re supposed to lie about who they are, because their goal is to stop terrorism, like cyber terrorists and real terrorists and things like that. It’s just really cool. I don’t want to waste too much time here, but if anyone is interested in that kind of stuff and have some time to kill, a Ghost in the Shell one of my favorite anime series and, movies, there’s like five series and five movies over the last 27 years.

Jason Rosenstein:

I’ll check that out.

Sean Weisbrot:

Really cool stuff, but they don’t really, they kind of have a notion of a metaverse, but they never really talk about the buying of things and the selling of things and the ownership of things. For them, it’s more like you can put on this headset and you surf the Internet, or you can close your eyes and you can surf the Internet. Their brains are connected to the Internet and they’ve got, let’s say an arm is connected to the Internet. And so, this arm could be hacked by somebody and it could be used to choke yourself if they wanted to. All sorts of it really touches upon the dark side of what the future looks like with this stuff. And they have to find who these hackers are and prevent them and go to the manufacturers and make sure that the manufacturers are preventing their things from being hacked and just like, really crazy stuff, really crazy stuff, things that we need to think about for our future.

Jason Rosenstein:

I think that is a concern. I hope that the individuals creating that new technology or a really savvy encryptography can really encrypt all that very sensitive data with those new, what do we call them? Machines, I suppose, if we’re talking about, like, robotic limbs.

Sean Weisbrot:

Yeah. Well, don’t worry. You’ll always have work.

Jason Rosenstein:

Well, anything’s possible. I think we’ve seen the crazy stuff happen in the last few years, so I think your concerns of that being a concern are super valid.

NFT hacking incidents (27:39)

Sean Weisbrot:

I want to go back to NFTs because I just reminded myself of something. Speaking of hacking, I’ve heard that there have been hundreds of millions of dollars of NFTs hacked in the last two years. Something like this. Do you know the numbers?

Jason Rosenstein:

I don’t know the exact number, but it’s probably a lot. Yeah, I mean, just crypto alone, there’s probably been billions, including all the NFT’s hacked. Easily billions, multi billions in the last few years.

Sean Weisbrot:

How can someone, if they do buy an NFT, protect it from being hacked?

Jason Rosenstein:

Well, it’s good question, and I think that goes back to the philosophy of Bitcoin and the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency, because the user who holds the keys hold their funds. The only people who own the funds decentralized, there’s no centralized control. And that’s why people really like it, because they can be in charge of their own funds on their own accord, and if the proper security precautions aren’t taken, those keys can be stolen. So, it’s really important just to if you’re holding NFTs, you’re holding it in the same keys as cryptocurrency, it’s really important to know that your keys are always secure. It comes down to that. And having the right knowledge and information on how to make sure your keys are stored and that no one can hack it or steal it or just clicking on a funny link. Man on Discord people have gotten their stuff stolen.

Sean Weisbrot:

So, yeah, talk about a little bit more, what are some of the ways that you’ve heard of people being hacked so that the people listening can get a sense of how careful they have to be?

Jason Rosenstein:

Yeah, well, I’d speak from experience. This was a wild hack and one of my investors. How long ago?

Almost a year and a half ago. Got hacked and they stole his portion tokens. And this is one of the most savvy computer scientists I know on the planet, man. A guy who would never get hacked. And what happened was he clicked on a link on Discord, and by clicking on that link the hacker was able to access everything that’s ever been on his clipboard, everything he’s ever copied. Okay?

And it just so happened that months ago he copied and pasted his twelve-word mnemonic, his keys, onto another Metamask account, right, to back up another account, and they were able to look through everything he’s ever copied, pasted and within seconds I don’t know how they did it they must have had some bot running. Within seconds, his entire account is drained hundreds, thousands of dollars. Tragic.

It’s just tragic from a person, the last person on planet Earth that expected to happen to.

Sean Weisbrot:

How do you clear your clipboard?

Jason Rosenstein:

I don’t know how to clear clipboard off. And I’m sure there’s easy way to, like, Google how to do that. I think the problem is we’ve learned from that situation is that you never copy paste your mnemonic. You never do that is what we learned from that. And I’ve done that in the past. Open up a new machine. I have to copy it to another machine. Done that. I’ve securely sent keys that are encrypted, but I had to copy them first. So, we never do that. Even if it’s on a new machine. You just never do that, because you never know what might happen years down the line. You click the wrong link, five years later, they could have access to those keys.

Sean Weisbrot:

That’s incredible. One of the ways I’ve tried to protect myself is whenever I get a new laptop or a new phone or whatever, I will put holes into the old one and I will burn it. I will set the CPU on fire, and I will set the hard drive like I will put holes I will drill that shit until it is on fire. And hopefully then, they can’t do anything with it.

Jason Rosenstein:

Might have to. You gotta do what you got to do, man. It’s like what’s it called? Cold storage. It’s excellent, like a ledger. Like device that’s not online ever. Those are excellent, store your keys on paper and it’s safe. Split them up. Keys are twelve words mnemonics generally. Split it up into four different pieces of paper, put it into four different safety deposit boxes. You can go to the end of extremity having to protect that and that’s DeFi for you. When the keys aren’t in someone else’s control and they’re not backed by a bank, you got to be your own bank. You got to take care of yourself. It’s the wild west, definitely.

Future of NFTs (32:31)

Sean Weisbrot:

Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention?

Jason Rosenstein:

Well, I’d like to reiterate the fact that this is the wild west. NFTs are the Wild West. The metaverse is the wild west. This technology is going to continue to evolve rapidly. It’s going to be completely unrecognizable in five to ten years. And everyone should just stay safe. Don’t to invest in things you can’t afford to lose. There are money grabs out there just like in any industry and stay safe, stay smart and continue to see what happens. It’s really exciting.

Sean Weisbrot:

What do you think NFT will look like in five to ten years? Or what do you think blockchain will look like in five to ten years?

Jason Rosenstein:

NFT is getting with that. I think the NFTs that blew up in this last boom, a lot of them were two dimensional. We’re talking about just profile pictures, images. I think NFTs are really going to evolve to be three dimensional things. Three dimensional things that you own in the metaverse that’s like the next iteration.

For the blockchain, I see the blockchain taking off more than it has in the past, Bitcoin and Ethereum. I’m betting on it as things that are here to stay. That’s not investment advice. These blockchains are going to get to be quantum resistant. There might have to be some changes in the next decade of the algorithms and hashing cryptographically that are utilized.

I think that major countries, we’re already seeing it, are going to be producing their own stable coins, are going to be using the blockchain in a much more consumer friendly way. And that brings me to the point of being consumer friendly. People that are, know, holding NFTs, collecting NFTs, interacting in the metaverse with the blockchain wallets, interacting anyhow, any way with the blockchain. I don’t think in the future they’re going to need to know how they’re doing it, what blockchain they’re on. It’s just going to work. You’re going to log into your iPhone app. You’re going to have your NFTs. You’re going to log in to whatever metaverse. And you’re going to have all your assets that you’re not going to need to know. Like this is backed up on the Solana blockchain and all the complexities are going to be taken out of the allocations that are going to be put into place so that it just works.

Sean, when I send you an email. It just works. We’re not talking about the complex TCIP layer and how it works like we are today in the blockchain. It’s just going to work in the future, and it’s going to be really consumer friendly.

Sean Weisbrot:

Do you think the governments that are making stable coins now are going to succeed in replacing fiat currencies?

Jason Rosenstein:

I think they’re going to succeed in in creating stable coins. I don’t think it’s going to replace fiat when they create these stable coins, it’s still going to be referred to as fiat. It’s just going to be on a different layer, different method of transfer.

I guess, my hope is that someday, and this is an outline statement my hope is that Bitcoin is like a world reserve currency. Someday, that’s really what I’m hoping for. But for now, it’s still a pie in the sky dream. And I only say that because it’s a better system. The money is digitally scarce. There’s not inflation that can occur. There’s not people really taking advantage of the system like they are with fiat currencies in a negative way.

Sean Weisbrot:

I’ve had this idea that as CBDs, rise up so central bank digital currencies as they become a thing, we will almost see cryptocurrencies try to be outlawed in a way so that you’re kind of either on this digital fiat or you’re on this digital cryptocurrency. And it will be difficult to go between them because the governments maybe don’t want to allow people to have access to the cryptocurrencies. So that it kind of becomes a black market and there’s like, people that are spending crypto and there’s people that are spending digital fiat and there’s no real way to exchange them. Do you know what I’m saying? Is that make sense?

Jason Rosenstein:

I know what you’re saying, and I hope that isn’t the case. I guess I have, like, this optimistic perspective on that these CBDs are going to be a much easier on ramp to cryptocurrency. That’s what I really hope for. And it really just depends on how they’re created, how those stables are created, how decentralized they are, how much freedom people have, and it’s too early to tell how they’re going to be created, but we just have to have an optimistic perspective at this point.

Sean Weisbrot:

My understanding is that they’re going to take, take some of the aspects like immutability and go, you know what, we don’t need that. They’re going to say, oh, you’re going to get your salary in our CBDC, but we’re going to garnish your wages on the way to coming to your wallet. Or we think you sent money to somebody that we don’t like, so we’re going to freeze your account. Does that not worry you?

Jason Rosenstein:

It does tremendously. It’s a big brother situation that we’re talking about here. They want to retain that centralized control. They want to have full omissions. Everyone spending money where that money is going, how it is being used. And I guess things like that are unfortunately possible and even probable. But I just hope that there’s a different sort of consciousness in the future and that there’s more freedoms than we have now that maybe that won’t happen. But the best I can do is retain my optimistic outlook that it’s going to give people more freedom. And when we get there, and when things are looking bad, there’s going to be a resistance to that sort of thing. That’s just what’s naturally going to happen.

Sean Weisbrot:

I try to be optimistic, but I lived in China for too long. Man I see. Like, the Chinese are the first to have a CBDC. Why do you think that is? Freaking they love to know what people do with their money. And for the longest time, people haven’t paid tax. Everything has been done in cash. Right. And then in the last decade, we’ve had the rise of WeChat, and so we’ve gotten this digital RMB, but it’s not a CBDC. And so, the government wants WeChat to tell them who’s spending what, when, where, why, how but Tenzen is like. I don’t know if I want to tell you that. Right.

The government, of course, tries to force them to do it. And so, the government doesn’t like the fact that Tenzen’s basically become a bank because they have trillions of dollars processed through that app every year, and the government is not in control of any of it. So, the government wants to push out the CBDC so that, guess what? You can use it on WeChat. Go for it, no problem. But I also have all the data of a billion people using WeChat and where that money goes and when, where, why, how, and all of that.

Jason Rosenstein:

Yeah, it’s a concerning situation. The centralization of China is just wild to me that something like that could even manifest on Earth. Just, you know, from my perspective, like, just got to pray for the best. That’s all I can do right now. And continue to create decentralized projects, projects that really innovate how people utilize technology and have freedom and their own control. The best I can do is to continue to create things that give power back to the people. And hopefully, on some little level, if it’s just a grain of sand, if each of us creates that little grain of sand, we can make a change.

Follow up with Jason (41:06)

Sean Weisbrot:

How can people follow up with you?

Jason Rosenstein:

My email address, jason@portion.io. If you have any questions, I’m down to chat a little bit through email. I have a twitter. Just Jason Rosenstein. If you type that in, I think my hand will come up. So, yeah, I’ll be around if anyone wants to chat.

Sean Weisbrot:

All right. Thank you very much. Jason. I appreciate that. If you know anyone that’s interested in NFTs, then definitely tell them about this episode. And don’t forget that entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint, so take care of yourself every day. Thank you very much, Jason.

Jason Rosenstein:

Thank you so much, Sean. I appreciate it.