Bitcoin NFTs: Yes, they exist! | Own Your Crypto: Episode 3

TRANSCRIPT

Elizabeth (Host): What are NFTs? They are a unique data on a blockchain that can be linked to digital items to provide proof of ownership. For the first time, we have a real tangible way to provide proof of ownership for digital items. Believe it or not, the concept was actually developed back in the 90s, and then the first NFT was created or minted, as we say, in 2014.

They've actually been around for quite some. But in the past few years there's been a lot of hype around NFTs. We wanted to bring this topic to our listeners seasoned and new to the crypto community as the market has since grown to become $40 billion market and it's expected to reach 98 billion by 2028.

Definitely something to keep an eye on. The most expensive NFT ever sold to date was The Merge appropriately, sold a couple months ago in June at $91.8 million. Even traditional auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's have gone so far as to launch their own on chain NFT marketplaces.

This is something institutions are also honing in on. Even Christie's last year, Beeple sold for 69.3 million in the first 5,000 days. You probably have heard of it and you've probably been aware of some other household names out there like, Snow Fro, PAK, Hackatao, Fewocious, Trevor Jones, and many others.

The majority of them are on Ethereum, but today we're going to hone in on NFTs, on the Bitcoin blockchain. Yes, they do exist. How is this even possible? We'll be talking about that. Why they can be considered a major upgrade for NFTs and so much more. To kick everything off, let's introduce our speakers.

We have Ken Liao, Xverse CEO and one of the notable faces of stacks in the Bitcoin ecosystem. But since everyone knows you and I, let's jump right into introductions with our guests today.

• Brian from Satoshibles
• Nick from Gamma
• Ken Liao from Xverse

Brian (Satoshibles): Thanks for inviting me on. I'm a huge fan of Xverse and everything you guys are doing. excited to be talking about Bitcoin NFTs today. A lot of background on myself. I'm the creator of the Satoshibles NFT project.

We actually launched on Ethereum in June 2021, and when I found out about Stacks and everything they were doing there, I wanted to have a presence there for my collection. I created the first ever NFT Bridge from Ethereum to Stacks. And since then, I'm a huge Stacks advocate. I'm really trying to grow everything, trying to get more projects over the bridge as well. And yeah, excited to talk today and learn more as well.

Elizabeth (Host): Awesome. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll definitely want to dive in deeper into the cross-chain bridge later in the talk. We're also joined here today by the co-founders of Gamma, Nick.

Nick (Gamma): Thanks for inviting me. Also, Jamil was going to be here as well, unfortunately, he's a little under the weather today. We'll catch him next time. We are the leading marketplace for Bitcoin NFTs built on Stacks. Love working with everyone, including Brian, Ken, and you Elizabeth, everyone at Xverse.

Just a quick overview of what we do. If you're unfamiliar, we have kind of three core offerings. One is being our core marketplace which, you, if you're familiar with Ethereum NFTs, would be the equivalent of like an open sea. The second is having a creator launchpad, which allows you to launch smart contracts that you own in just a few minutes without coding.

Finally, our third offering or platform that we're really trying to build out a little bit more now is our kind of social platform that ties these two together in a web3 native way. And then I guess I'll mention since we're here together with Xverse, we also offer things like APIs which is actually how Xverse is able to provide some additional functionality in the wallet, like showing NFTs, and their traits and all of that. Just really great to be able to work with everybody so closely in the ecosystem.

Elizabeth (Host): It's so wonderful to have you and it’s always so fun to be collaborating together. So, before we dive into Bitcoin NFTs, just wanted to ask a few more general questions. they could be open-ended questions. Anyone can just hop in here. I think a lot of people sometimes struggle to see the value in NFT technology beyond digital art, which to be fair, there's definitely a wide range in quality of digital art.

Q: Can one of you share some use cases for NFTs beyond this scope of digital art?

Nick (Gamma): I can jump in real quick and then maybe Brian can follow up as well. As you said, one of the most prolific examples of what people are using NFTs for today is certainly centered around art. But I think there are two things here. First, we're already seeing some trials, some quite successfully, of using NFTs to access gates, and certain things, whether it be software or access to events or access to communities or VIP experiences.

That's actually already starting to happen. I'll give one example. In the stacks ecosystem, we have the Explorer Guild. By holding one of the explorers, you get access to a decentralized blogging platform. Block survey is another one where they're offering a B2B surveying tool. You can actually purchase a license for that software through an NFT and get access to the software that way. That's maybe more creator or business-oriented side.

There are, of course, also more community-driven ones, like on Ethereum, you have tons of popular ones, like the Proof Collective and these different kinds of Quasi-Dao, Quasi NFT, LinksDAO, and CabinDAO, and things like that.

I think the second thing that is really just like an exploration. As you said, when you opened up, NFTs are essentially most simply put, it's an ownership record, so when somebody asks like, what do NFTs do? What can they be used for? It's a little bit of a loaded question because it's saying, what does a record of ownership anywhere do for anything?

 It's such a broad potential use case that it's almost infinite and endless, so I think that there are certain markets or certain use cases that we'll probably see first. I think probably NFTs will take over in lots of other ways that maybe none of us even have thought of yet.

Maybe a couple of examples would be concert tickets, which already have tons of problems with scalping, lack of transparency, and crazy fees. Even brokers like Ticketmaster or StubHub, which I know a lot of people are maybe not too fond of, even they could potentially benefit by having transparency of exactly who is owning the ticket, getting a royalty on secondary sales. Then, of course, the funds go to the actual artists that are doing the performance.

I think there are lots of ways to go. I could talk for hours about this and probably speculate for most of it. I think those are just a couple of examples. I don't know if Brian, you want to add on anything.

Brian (Satoshibles): Yes, it's all great points, what you said. The answer is we don't know where NFTs are going, and that's a really exciting prospect. It's like back in the day, the internet, nobody knew the huge impact that it was going to have back then. I believe that blockchain and NFTs in particular are got to do basically what the internet did for communication, NFTs are going to do for ownership.

Nick touched on it there, it could be from tickets, but I think there'll be also an aspect of if it's not broken, then we don't really need to fix it. I think the ticketing system's working okay, but like maybe ticketing on steroids, for example, maybe our bands could release an NFT, which gives them all access area to any concert for life. Now you go to that concert five times and then, you don't want to go anymore, so you could then sell on that asset. That's the kind of juicy stuff that could be coming of it. 

But as I say, it's just a really exciting time. The art explosion that's happened over the last year is obviously it’s easier for people to understand that I have this digital asset, I can hold it, I can sell it, and it maps really well to like traditional artwork, which you do the same thing. I think the art thing has been a really great way for onboarding people. But in the future, it's got to be crazy kinds of solutions we didn't even think of and it's really exciting.

Ken Liao (Xverse): And just to add to all these great use cases, I think one thing that hasn't really been mentioned is being able to track the provenance of physical items. For example, a luxury good designer handbag or something like that.

Right now, there's a huge problem with counterfeit items and these big brands don't really have a way of combating these kinds of issues, but I think NFTs actually offer a really good way to track the provenance of these items, and also, something that's easy to transfer from owner to owner if there's like a secondary sale going on. That's just another thing to add to the list of potential game-changing use cases for NFTs.

Brian (Satoshibles): I agree. I think as well, the physical world thing has got to be really amazing. Everyone likes to use the analogy, “One day I'll be able to buy my house as an NFT.” Technically yes, but that requires fundamental government changes to the whole housing market, like how that actually legally works.

It's not just the technology side. It's also obviously these entities. For example, if you want to sell a car as an NFT, I'm sure in the UK, DVLA is not going to be so happy about that. They have [unintelligible 10:38] sheets and all that kind of stuff in the US so it's got to require obviously those kinds of organizations changing from the ground up and adopting that technology. If it makes sense, they could. There’s nothing stopping them from doing that.

Nick (Gamma): I think that's a great point that I try to remind myself of is because NFTs can be so boundless in terms of what you could possibly do with them, you can almost get into a little bit of a trap of maybe trying to do too much. I think you mentioned earlier, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

There are plenty of use cases and applications. Ken mentioned provenance. That's an actual issue that exists today that we can solve using NFTs. It's fun to speculate and it's fun to think of these different applications, but I think in some ways it could turn off a non-crypto native person or someone who isn't in the mindset of the potential when they hear, “Oh, my house is going to be in NFT.” Their mind just goes to, “Oh, now someone's going to steal my wallet and I'm going to lose my house. How does that even work?”

Maybe we'll get there someday, but I think finding these really ripe opportunities, obviously, art was the most obvious market, which is why it's taken off, where artists were not getting royalties for the work that they were creating. it was difficult to reach a wide market. It was hard to find people outside of a physical gallery.

There are so many benefits for artists. There are plenty of other markets and opportunities that are like that, and I think we should focus on those so that we can actually execute and get a working solution out there.

Elizabeth (Host): We could dedicate probably multiple Twitter spaces to all the endless use cases out there for NFTs, but I think this definitely gives our listeners a great scope of the opportunity and how this could also help ultimately lead to mass adoption.

Also, most recently, for example, the Starbucks Odyssey program that just launched. They're essentially doing journey stamps is what they call them, which are NFTs on Polygon, that basically unlock loyalty perks for exclusive merch, private events, trips, and whatnot. There are so many opportunities out there for NFTs and before we get too sidetracked with all the different use cases, I think let's home in also on Bitcoin NFTs in particular.

Q: I would love to hear from you guys the origin story behind Bitcoin NFTs if we can even back it up to Rare Pepe’s connection to Bitcoin. What essentially sparked the demand for this?

Ken Liao (Xverse): I can give a really brief history of just Bitcoin NFTs. I think the earliest kind of Bitcoin NFT was actually something called colored coins and they're essentially, differentiated coins on Bitcoin that you can transfer between people.

But I don't think there was really any real utility to it and it never really got any traction, and people forget that this was a thing. Ethereum did not invent NFTs, but they for sure made it more popular and usable.

Brian (Satoshibles): Yes, I think my first experience of NFTs was actually CryptoKitties. Believe or not, they were obviously launched on Ethereum, but when I went down the whole Rare Pepe road, that made me think, “Oh my goodness. These have been around since the beginning of Bitcoin. That's really interesting.”

And XCP is basically, I guess it's a layer where they can create these assets. Nowadays, they're really historical assets. One of those Rare Pepe’s sold for over a million dollars as well. There's a huge historical aspect to these Bitcoin NFTs, and then now, Stacks is bringing it into the future.

Nick (Gamma): I would say just continuing on that history there you might ask, “Okay, NFTs began on Bitcoin, and so then why did they fall off and why did things move to Ethereum?” I think that probably the main reason is that Bitcoin is hard to change and hard to get to do additional things that you want it to do.

While you could view that as a negative, I actually view that as a really strong positive, like a base layer for securing assets and for settling the most important information. That should be hard to change.

I think that what happened on Ethereum was they had this mindset of really rapid expansion and experimentation. That's great. That's really important. We wouldn't be here as web3 without the people who were trying new things, and so they made this world computer layer where they were able to try these things and able to say, “Oh, that didn't work. Let's fork this and try it this different way.”

I don't want that happening on the Bitcoin base layer. I want to know that Bitcoin is not going to change. I think that the big unlock took many years to figure out, and it's essentially what Stacks has done. Stacks has figured out how to add a smart contract programming world computer layer like Ethereum on top of Bitcoin without changing Bitcoin.

That's a really important thing for everyone to recognize. The reason why this layer is separate is it's a separate smart contract layer similar to how lightning is a separate payments layer. The point of it is that we don't need to change Bitcoin and we can separate this secure settlement layer with a smart contract layer where experimentation is encouraged. Anyway, just to give a little context there.

Elizabeth (Host): Perfect summary and also a perfect segue into Stacks and how bringing smart contracts to Bitcoin is making NFTs on Bitcoin possible.

Q: How could this be considered an upgrade for NFTs, for example, in regard to security and really just making these NFTs even more valuable?

Brian (Satoshibles): Bitcoin is obviously the most secure blockchain in the world right now. It's number one. it's the largest. it's the oldest. The prospect of having assets that are secured by that blockchain is really attractive, and one of the reasons why I wanted to get a presence on stacks.

Q: I also wanted to segue into the future of how we see Bitcoin NFTs evolving especially in regard to some major unlocks and exciting developments. Any thoughts on that?

Ken Liao (Xverse): I think one really big upgrade that a lot of people have been asking for is the ability to send and receive these Bitcoin NFTs using just Bitcoin addresses. right now, the way it works on Stacks is that because these are NFTs bound to Stacks’ smart contracts, you still need to use a Stacks address to transfer these NFTs.

But the Stacks address themselves is just a different representation of a Bitcoin address. You can actually represent a Stacks address as a Bitcoin address. The complexity here is that the way that Stacks derive its address is not the same way that a lot of Bitcoin wallets do, so it's difficult to just convert the Stacks address to a Bitcoin address and then be able to send and receive NFTs.

I think there are working groups in this ecosystem that are coming together trying to create a better solution that removes these kinds of limits so that these user experiences are super smooth and people don't need to know about Stacks even to exchange Bitcoin NFTs.

Together with that, the ability to mint NFTs using just Bitcoin without Stacks is also going to be huge. I think right now obviously, there are a lot more people with Bitcoin than people with Stacks. Bitcoin is more used as a store value and a method of payment, whereas Stacks is like the fuel for smart contracts, so I see more people wanting to pay for their NFTs using Bitcoin or even the lightning transaction versus having to spend Stacks. That's going to be another big unlock.

Nick (Gamma): I completely agree. Hopefully not to get too technical here, but just to give another reason why I think we have maybe one or two more unlocks that Ken was pointing to. One of the unique ways that Stacks interacts with the Bitcoin blockchain is that it is able to read the state of the Bitcoin chain. This is something that Stacks uniquely does.

If you were to send some transaction that represents an action that you're looking to take just with a native Bitcoin transaction, today, you can actually have that, perhaps send somebody Stacks to a particular wallet. That is something that's functional today because the Stacks blockchain can read the Bitcoin blockchain. And a smart contract can see what that's trying to do and perform it.

What it can't do today is what a lot of Stacks OGs like Muneeb, for example, refer to as the Bitcoin write problem, meaning actually writing different state changes back to Bitcoin which is actually what's needed in order to say, “I wanna buy this NFT and have it in my Bitcoin wallet.”

It's a little bit above my pay grade and I'm not super technical on the blockchain dev side but there are some unlocks that are likely coming in the next, hopefully maybe six to nine months. It might be a little bit more than that. That will actually unlock that ability to write back to Bitcoin. Once that is unlocked, basically, all of these super native experiences like user experiences and being able to use native Bitcoin will become much more practical.

Brian (Satoshibles): It's got to be huge. It's something I'm really looking forward to as well. It's great saying they're secured by Bitcoin and these are Bitcoin NFTs, but the real true Bitcoin NFTs is when you can actually buy them with Bitcoin. That's got to be a huge unlock for the Bitcoin community.

I think there's also the whole Bitcoin Maxi story. The Bitcoin community is huge. I think that if you offer this to them, the ability to actually buy NFTs, you're going to see a huge flood of people finally using that rather than just holding it. It's really exciting.

When I've been talking to people about Bitcoin NFTs, their eyes open just a little bit wider, like, “What? Bitcoin NFTs are a thing?” It's a really exciting prospect. Also, in Stacks, the right conversations are happening in terms of how we get better integration with Bitcoin, et cetera, so it's really exciting things.

Q: Tell me more about that process, where you developed a bridge, and what that was like doing a cross-chain with Satoshibles?

Brian (Satoshibles): As I mentioned, we launched Satoshibles on Ethereum because actually, that was the only place I knew at the time. I didn't actually know about Stacks when I launched Satoshibles. Then it was actually only a couple of days after I launched that I got contacted by Trevor Owens, who I'm sure everyone in the audience knows.

He's a huge advocate of Stacks and he minted a whole bunch of Satoshibles on Ethereum and then basically messaged me saying, “Hey, I wish I could have bought this with Stacks,” or “I wish it was on Stacks.”

And I was like, “What Stacks?” Obviously, Satoshibles are a Bitcoin-themed NFT. We use Satoshi as our mascot. I really was fully focused on how do I get a presence on this blockchain? One of the ways I could do it was— I could obviously just launch a new collection there, but then I'm diluting my supply. I didn't really want to do that.

I had this idea of “Is it possible to do a bridge? Can we somehow bridge these assets over?” It turns out that bridging between blockchains is quite a difficult problem. Interoperability is a thing that is still being worked on today. I think it's got to be a huge thing going forward, but the ability to basically cross, and move assets across different blockchains has got to be hugely beneficial.

There's a lot of work being done right now on the EVM side, being able to bridge assets from Ethereum to Solana, et cetera. But not so much happening on the Stacks side, unfortunately at the moment. there's basically no one working on that stuff. we have to implement a bridge, which is basically more of a trusted service which allows you to lock and release on each side.

A fun fact is, back in the early days of this, I got on a call with Muneeb and I’m telling him all about it. His idea was like, “Just burn everything on Ethereum and move everything over. This is a huge statement to make and everything.

I'm like, “Whoa. I love your passion and everything.” But want ultimately to give my holders the choice to basically choose where they want their assets to live. Although it is possible to burn everything on Ethereum and move over, I still wanted to make it a two-way bridge.

That's what we launched in February this year. Since then, we've been able to bridge over 10% of the Satoshibles. Actually, it's more now, actually 18% since we expanded the bridge this week. We've got around 20% actually of the Satoshibles already bridged over.

The cool concept is basically that most of my community didn't know Stacks either when I introduced them to the bridge. Now, many of my community are really deeply invested in Stacks. They've got their Megaponts, their Crashpunks, their Parrots, and everything.

Not just that. They're downloading Xverse. They're using Alex. What I’ve done essentially is not just bridge the NFT but approach the community over. Now, I'm at the point where it's, okay, how do we do this with a hundred more NFT projects, how do we get as many NFT projects using this bridge or something similar to get their presence on Stacks and get more adoption as well?

Elizabeth (Host): This is absolutely amazing and so fitting to have Satoshi, creator of Bitcoin, on Bitcoin with Satoshibles. Super exciting.

Q: Do you see that unlock happening for other Ethereum-based NFT projects?

Brian (Satoshibles): Yes, so I'm basically getting messages every other day asking, “Can we use the bridge?” And thing is, as I mentioned with the interoperability problem right now, it's not so easy to make us such a decentralized service. If it was easy to make a decentralized service, then we could roll that out, and then anyone could use it. It'd be amazing. But right now, there are some centralized aspects to that a bridge.

It's not really something I can roll out to too many projects. I basically don't want to have that responsibility of other people's assets. I'm happy to take on responsibility for my project, but that can become a problem if it's other people.

I'm talking to a lot of other people now on how to reduce the centralized aspects of it. What can we do to roll this out? There are some great people I'm talking to about it. If that happens, then yes, we can roll it out and start getting more projects out there.

For other projects, if they want to take on the responsibility themselves, then we can also just basically do the same thing we did for Satoshibles. At the end of the day, they’ll still be able to bridge their assets to Stacks. That's pretty much the most important thing right now, getting more people in the network.

Elizabeth (Host): It's really exciting to see so many people from the Satoshibles community coming over to Stacks, using our DeFi protocols, using Xverse. It’s just really exciting to see many members from Ethereum and have this cross-chain interaction. It's fantastic.

Q: Just to go over to Nick at Gamma, what projects are performing really well in gamma in regard to Bitcoin NFTs, in regard to volume, in regard to value? What's hot on the market?

Nick (Gamma): I'll pack on one quick comment to one point that Brian was making. One thing that's really important to call out is sometimes the way that these bridges to Bitcoin or to Stacks are almost talked about is, “Oh, we can help make the community bigger over here or something.”

That's certainly a value add, but I think the real crux of it is where do you actually want your assets to be secured. I think that's a really important thing to remember. This is not like a pity play or something like that. Personally, I want my ownership to be stored on the Bitcoin blockchain.

It's where I trust long-term money that I am storing for years to come. If I can trust it with my money, I surely can trust it with my NFTs that might be worth a fraction of that, maybe someday multiples of that once Brian has taken over the world.

Again, that's just a really important thing I always try to reiterate. This isn't about just coming to Stacks. This is about securing that ownership record on Bitcoin because it will live on and it won't change. That's just something that I think it's really important to say a million times. I know I'm beating a dead horse here but say it again and again.

Onto what's hot on Gamma right now. I think if you pop over and you can take a look at top collections, you can see lots of the traditional PFP-style collections that are doing quite well from a volume perspective, like your Megapont Ape club and your Bitcoin monkeys. They have whole communities and derivative projects and ecosystems around them. Of course, Satoshibles goes without saying, Crash Punks and so many others.

And then we also have another type of project or I'd say individual pieces that have been doing quite well, which is really just independent artists making one of one pieces that they launch on our auction's platform. There's an auction platform where you can go and you can bid for different pieces.

I see Good Kitty is here in the audience. She handles the marketing communications for Arno Carstens, who is a ridiculously multi-talented rock musician, fine artist, and now NFT creator. He'll actually be launching some fine art pieces that are actually oil paintings that are digitized. Truly remarkable work. These one-on-one pieces can launch on the auctions platform and secured by Bitcoin, of course.

Brian (Satoshibles): Just to touch on that quickly as well. I think that what Gamma's doing, for example, with bringing it out in this space is really phenomenal. You've got Gamma doing this. You've also got the mentoring from the Stacks Foundation. These guys are actually going out and finding artists and trying to bring them over Stacks, and in a sense, introduce them into NFTs and get their artwork as NFTs. I think one hard part of that is to try and convince the artists to do this.

A lot of artists are traditional. They don't understand the NFT market. There's a lot of education that has to happen to try and communicate to artists like, “Hey, you can get your stuff online and it's a great way of spreading your message and getting your artwork out there,” which is really important.

But I think the mentor is also, I've had some chats with them and they felt that pain point's quite hard to get those artists over, and what they've been trying to target now is actually artists who have already made that leap to NFTs on Ethereum, for example, on other blockchains, and then try to grab them and bring them over to Stacks as well and get a presence on Stacks.

I think that's a kind of an easier route right now to try and collect more artists and get them over there. But I think education is really important and trying to tell these artists like, “Hey, you should do it.” It's really great exploring. From music to artwork to everything else, they should give out a go. There's nothing to lose basically.

Elizabeth (Host): Definitely. There are so many reasons to be launching on Bitcoin and Stacks, powered by Stacks. Really appreciate you guys spreading the word and definitely what we're hoping to accomplish here as well on this Twitter space.

Q: Nick, what are the current challenges on your side from a marketplace in regard to adoption?

Nick (Gamma): I think being such a small ecosystem is a gift and a curse in some ways. We have a really tight-knit community, a very loyal community. The last time I checked, the average user on Gamma had purchased 20 NFTs. They're coming back and back again supporting different projects, and different creators for months at a time.

The flip side of that though is, we're probably 10,000 strong in terms of users of the marketplace. That does present a little bit of a challenge when you are trying to recruit larger projects to come over because they do fear that there may be a liquidity problem. And while we haven't necessarily seen too much of that yet, I definitely think that network effects are something that we all need to recognize and all need to appreciate.

You have these step changes in growth and I think, not to belabor this point that I'm sure everyone has been seeing all over Twitter over the last several days, but there is a very large group of people that are discovering dot BTC, BNS domains, so we're now seeing, probably in the last three or four days, maybe several hundred or a thousand completely new people who had never heard about Stacks that have just discovered it. Then each of them is becoming evangelists and telling 10 of their friends and that can certainly multiply.

Seizing these opportunities and recognizing these inflection points are points where you need to make sure that you're giving a good experience to these people who have found you so that they stick around. We're doing things, and it sounds like Xverse is certainly doing things with being able to transfer NFTs, using your dot BTC domain, and send assets that way.

We do the same at Gamma and I think that combining that, meeting the market where it is, and meeting the market where it will be is really important in order to gain those network effects.

Elizabeth (Host): Thank you so much for diving into that. I really appreciate your insight. Also, to our listeners today, if Bitcoin NFTs are new for you, you can get started today with Xverse, available on iPhone and Android, and acquire some NFTs through the in-app browser. All you have to do is just open up the browser in your Xverse, and type in a marketplace of your choice.

For example, Gamma, you just type gamma.io and you can directly connect and sign transactions for NFTs and even mint collections. That's all from within your Xverse browser. If that sounds a bit intimidating, no worries, we've got a blog out with instructions on how to do all of this, specifically highlighting Gamma as well.

Guest 1: I moved across my NFTs to Stacks when the Satoshibles bridge came out. Congrats to Brian and the team for a great execution. This gets me thinking because I chatted with Ken in the past about the interoperability between Bitcoin and Stacks and obviously, one of the puzzles for people. The actual Satoshibles bridge solved for me is that I've been in the DeFi space doing quite a lot and had a lot in Ethereum and didn't really want to open up on the exchanges where Stacks was available just because I was set up on FTX or wherever, which doesn't have Stacks.

It's interesting actually. I used Satoshibles as a way to increase my Stacks holding on my personal account, which was probably quite a novel and fairly niche use case. I was really interested because I know Ken has been working quite a lot in terms of articulating Xverse as a kind of Bitcoin app.

Q: I think a lot of us in the Stacks ecosystem believe that Stacks will fade into the background when its job is done, so I was just interested in how you see the convergence of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Stacks, and other chains, and where we're going in the blockchain space and how things will play out.

Ken Liao (Xverse): I think it's pretty hard to predict what is going to happen. I think at least in the short term, there's nothing wrong with these chains where it would lead to their death or anything.

I think for the time being, we are probably going to be in a multi-chain world. I think in the end, people don't really care that much about, what chain is backing their NFTs unless they really care about security and maybe speed as well. Then they're free to choose whatever chain they want to store their NFTs on.

Probably, there will be products in the future that will emerge that allows users to very easily transfer any NFT, not just a bridge between Bitcoin and Ethereum with Satoshibles, but like any chain, people can just freely transfer their NFTs in between these chains, and they don't really need to know what is the chain that it is on.

Brian (Satoshibles): I think it is similar to like how the internet works right now. Nobody really looks at how the HTTP protocol works. They just assume it works. You got a website and it shows you that website. I think it's got to be eventually the blockchain will settle into the background as a technology and then the user experience will take over, which I think is going to be really exciting.

I definitely agree it's a cross-chain future. I think that each blockchain will probably have its major use case, whether it be Ethereum as the metaverse coin, and Stacks being obviously for that security. Where else would you want to do DeFi, for example, other than the most secure blockchain? You've got maybe Solana or something along those lines for gaming.

So, I think being able to bridge your assets between those chains is got to be crucial. There are some great people working on it right now. I think Chainlink is the market leader in this space. They've just released this thing called the CIP. I think it's called the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, or something like that.

It basically allows you to call one smart contract function on one blockchain from another blockchain, which is got to be a huge unlock for the space. Again, Stacks is a little bit behind the times on that, but the future has got to be a multi-chain. There's got to be use cases for it. The user experience has probably not even got to know what chain they’re on basically.

Guest 1: Amazing. It's interesting, Brian. I was wondering what your experience is having decided I had a whole bunch of Satoshibles NFTs on Ethereum and I couldn't be bothered really to bridge them until you have this sort of free airdrop. I think I'd be interested to get your perspective as well on the gamification and in how NFT communities do well in terms of providing extra functionality on a different chain, like you're doing with the monster.

Brian (Satoshibles): When I launched this last year, I launched Satoshibles just at the kind of a hype cycle. And I met this amazing artist. We worked together and looked at NFT project.

Utility wasn't actually in our minds at the time. We sold everything. Then, I think it was the kaiju, all of a sudden they started generating revenue for their holders. That was suddenly this whole question of utility came into play.

“Then my community comes to me and says, “Where's my free money? When can I get my three stuff? What's your utility?” It's a difficult thing to try and figure out what to do. The way I’ve been growing the Satoshibles is just to build stuff that's cool, works well, and gives advantages to our holders and things like that.

Whether that's on Stacks or Ethereum. We've gone all in on Stacks now because we already built an ecosystem there. We've got a launch of Satoshi coin there. We've got a launch of the market community store there and stuff like that.

Nick (Gamma): I would totally echo that. I think there are no shortcuts and these things, like doing short-term plays to just try to pump a floor, price, or something like that. You see what happens to the 90% of projects that do that.

they are successful for a week. Barely exaggerating. And then they are worthless. I think it's no different than any business to be honest, except you're providing this more community-oriented benefit in a lot of cases in the style of a Satoshibles project.

I think yes, you can certainly gamify aspects to make it fun, ultimately that's why you want to be part of any community. But just genuinely have fun and enjoy what you're a part of. But I think, In terms of different recruitment strategies or whatnot?

I'm sure there are a million different ones, but there's absolutely no replacement for just doing something like what Satoshibles is doing. We're making a bridge that allows you to bring these back to Bitcoin. We're providing access to X, Y, and Z.

In the case of Megapont, for example, we're throwing a huge party in New York City near Times Square, and it's a free open bar, and you can bring a guest and just have a great time. Those are the kinds of things that people want to be involved in. You can only fool people into being interested in something less than that.

Elizabeth (Host): Great talking with you all. Thanks for tuning in. Definitely stay tuned. We're going to have another talk next week, so hope to see you there.

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