Japanese NFT Market: What Is It?

00:00:00 John Daub: It should show up on stream is live. Okay, so here we are. We are live in Tokyo. And we just kind of went live. This is pretty fun. Today we're going to be talking about NFTs. And I don't know a lot about this. What exactly is an NFT? The person that introduced this to me is Neil Van Wow, who's going to be joining us in this live stream to talk about it. And if you have any questions, you can write in the chat. This is a live stream. And using that information, we can ask Neil and get a better idea of what the NFT market in Japan is like. Now, I've seen this on Twitter and Instagram where artists are making digital art and selling it to people in a marketplace. I guess that's what an NFT is. But the person to ask is Neil. And I'm going to bring him here right now. Neil, how are you doing?

00:01:33 Neil Van Wow: I'm doing good. I'm actually getting kind of a delayed echo.

00:01:39 John Daub: Oh, maybe if your YouTube is turned on, you're gonna have to turn that off. Because YouTube is delayed. Is that is that what's going on? If you're watching and you have YouTube window open somewhere, it might be playing that.

00:01:58 Neil Van Wow: No, I think I just have the zoom.

00:02:02 John Daub: Okay. So you have a delay?

00:02:11 Neil Van Wow: Oh, oh, that's actually possible. That was it. Okay. Thank you.

00:02:18 John Daub: Sorry about that.

00:02:19 Neil Van Wow: Yeah, as long as you can hear me. Why don't you explain to us what is an NFT?

00:02:25 John Daub: So an NFT is a non fungible token, which is a blockchain term. So it's, it's a way to link digitally to something on the blockchain, to a piece of media, or, well, basically a piece of media, typically, like a graphic or a movie, and then it's linked directly to the blockchain. So that means that, you know, something on the blockchain like that, it, it never disappears, it's always in public, and it can never be changed.

00:03:07 John Daub: Right. Absolutely. So if you say, you know, so and so owns this, then it's linked directly to the blockchain piece of media then that's it's you can be pretty confident that that's you know that's true for that it's true and that nobody can like fake that or uh replace it or anything like that so it's very useful for because one of the things about like um art is how do you show ownership especially for digital art like if i have a photograph and then someone and i say this is the original and someone else has a copy and they say this is the original you know which one of us is is correct right so if we use uh an nft to link to the photo and that that photo you know that nft has been put on the blockchain at such a you know a certain time then everybody can refer and check to that you know who has the nft link to that photo what's a blockchain like i this is like digital currency kind of talk right yeah

00:04:13 John Daub: So you have to know a little bit about um bitcoin and things like this in order to understand an nft yes sort of but i mean it it's on the one hand that stuff is like can get incredibly complex but on the other hand it's just like i mean if you think of it like like we're all used to using the internet now uh but we don't really you know most people don't understand all the underlying technology like tcip and all these things that are the very that that make the internet work right so blockchain is kind of an underlying technology it's a it's a very clever way that somebody came up with to to keep adding it's a ledger basically like in accounting i mean ledgers in accounting are incredibly boring right you put somebody you know sam paid bill three dollars and a bill paid suzy two dollars right and you just keep adding to that right

00:05:14 John Daub: And the thing about a blockchain is when you add to it and it's it's out there it's not owned by anybody so it's uh the data is sort of maintained by all these different computers in a very sort of clever way that makes it extremely hard for people to go back and change it that's the important thing is that once it's on there uh well we know that you know uh bill paid suzy two dollars then that's there forever right and and so bitcoin it that's all bitcoin does and then uh um there's another blockchain called ethereum which took bitcoin to the next level which is there's something called smart contracts and smart contracts instead of just saying bill uh paid suzy two dollars we can we can have a uh a smart contract that that um uh you know it says if this thing happens then let's do this right and it's on the blockchain and then you can have a smart contract and then you can have a smart contract and then you can have a smart contract and then you can have blockchain and so that's nfts are created by smart contracts and that's uh so something bitcoin can't do that ethereum can do and it it sort of opens up this whole new world of what's possible with assigning ownership and keeping track of it and it's going to be very important in our world moving forward and we'll all get used to it as we see the applications of it things that we get used to and the underlying technology

00:06:44 John Daub: And the underlying technology you know uh that's only for the people that you know want to really deep dive in that stuff yeah

00:06:51 John Daub: air to the ron wright's in here what a delight welcome to the world of blockchain all right

00:06:57 John Daub: look i'm i'm still completely lost i i'm i i sort of understood what you were talking about but then i just tuned out and was looking at this donut on my story

00:07:08 John Daub: but but wait there's you you've actually created one now this is that neil's company is called scramble media scramble um as in like scrambled eggs scrambled media and that's based here in japan and i want to i get sort of an idea of what an nft is i'm still like um googling fun fungible i don't know exactly what that means like is that like spongible like fungus that i can explain so fungible means uh something that's replaceable so uh f it's fungible like uh if and and that's what bitcoin is like so if you take one a 10-yen coin and and i have a kenyan coin and we swap our tenha and coins they're indistinguishable they both work the same way and and an nft is more like when you like collect the baseball card the baseball card is like non-fungible because there's only one there's only ever one that is that exact baseball car

00:08:14 John Daub: your house there's only one you so things that can't be replaced by another equivalent thing are non-fungible okay so that that's easy to understand you've created on um scramble media a non-fungible image here that you're that can go up for sale which is a memory and i i think this is super cool i'm i'm holding it up right near um this is something that that was created as a memory from only in japan go a stream that we did together which was we went to a horror truck and you had this is how i met neil um i know neil from a few years back but we we've uh reconnected after a couple of years just of like last week at a horror truck where uh amazing jiro has created this haunted house inside of a truck like a mobile haunted house and there were a couple of moments in there where i i screamed like a child um and you could hear it from outside the truck and it disturbed all of the wildlife around tokyo tower there's not that much of that luckily um i i guess i could i could show it to everybody well why don't you explain a little bit about um about about these cards these look like trading cards here i'm gonna put it up on the screen right here what can you tell us about

00:09:41 Neil Van Wow: It's it's has the date it says mugon live stream from tokyo tower and explains what it is is this like a listing from exactly like a trading card it's the it's a digital equivalent of a trading card so we um we we we sell art on our website typically and uh um but we i started this so this is just launching today this uh the it's called scramble moments and it's gonna be like trading cards of like little milestones as we as we progress with our our site and so one of our our milestones was you doing uh our our first live stream when we went to tokyo tower there and so we captured that moment uh and made it into an nft so that's um and that's uh everyone's seeing it here for the first time we're just this is literally just uh uh went live uh an hour ago oh wow

00:10:42 John Daub: yeah this looks pretty really cool so i've got the website up now um and it's it's scrolling through here uh so you you can just make these digital image digital images from a point in time and put it into a card and and these could be on the marketplace that's so cool so so we're we created this this part of our site well you know one is just to sort of commemorate our little milestones

00:11:12 Neil Van Wow: But this page, this part of our marketplace will be all of the proceeds that go from buying cars will go to charity, particularly sort of sustainability type initiatives. And we price the NFTs very low so that it's kind of a place for people who are new to NFTs. And I'm going to be adding some pages on my blog, like exactly how to go about what are the steps to buying your first NFT. And this would be a good place to practice.

00:11:50 John Daub: These NFTs, I mean, they look great, don't they?

00:11:52 Neil Van Wow: But these are created by Jesse Franklin, who is an Emmy award winning CG professional and CG artist. I mean, it's incredible. I mean, this was just put together. Over the last few days. Oh, there's Pablo a little bit. I'm running outside of the truck. There's sound effects here. Hold on. I can play it on my smartphone. You can play it, John. It's so fun. Really? I don't know if I want to. Hold on.

00:12:34 John Daub: Oh, it even has a crappy. It ends with, I ate my mask. The ending part here. I ate my mask. That's really cool. Yeah. So I'm still trying to figure this out. So somebody could purchase this. One card. This is the only one available on Earth.

00:13:00 Neil Van Wow: Well, it's the only one. But just like baseball cards, there's many only ones because they sell them. They sell them. And so more than one person could get the same kind of their cards would be individual. Like one might have a ripped corner and the other one wouldn't. Yeah. But they still.

00:13:16 Neil Van Wow: So for some of our so we say this when we put up an NFT, right? For some of the art, we'll say one of one. Yeah. Which means there will only ever be one. So for the Scramble moments, we will. You know, we went through so much effort to create them. Jesse put so much hard work into creating them that we will we will meant more than one. But it's a limit. So it's a limited series, but there won't be there will never be more than 100 and probably it'll be more like eight or 10. And then as we make new ones, we'll we'll sort of the other ones will just say sold out. So they will be very limited.

00:13:54 John Daub: Hmm. Are there any questions here? We're going to be going in for another 10 minutes or so talking about NFTs. And I'm going to ask Neil more specifically about the Japanese market for NFTs and the global market and the US market. Is this a global market? Is this a regional market? I get a lot of questions about that, but I'm looking at the live chat here. And if you have any questions about NFTs, this is the time and the person to ask. Because Neil. Neil, whenever I have a question about an NFT, I'm going to be going to Neil because I don't, Peter might know a little bit about it, but I don't know too many people who have been in this marketplace. It's pretty new. How long have NFTs been around?

00:14:39 Neil Van Wow: Just a few years. And it started sort of as an idea, right? How can we sort of tie this problem of digital content, like not having ownership, right? So it was sort of like, oh, hey, we can show that this works. And it started with little graphics of cats, crypto kitties, and little low-res pictures of punks called crypto punks. And they were literally like, it was like, here, I made a bunch of these. They're free. Pick one up. And now the crypto punks are selling like a Christie's auction for like millions of dollars. So it's...

00:15:22 John Daub: It's a little bit mind-boggling how that has developed so rapidly in such a short time. The other super interesting thing about NFTs is that once you own it, you can resell it. So you... And when you... And it can be set up so that royalty goes to the creator. So the artist could continue to receive a royalty, which is typically like, you know, when you hear the typical art market for physical art, you hear of these amazing prices that paintings go for. But that doesn't typically go to the artist. That goes to some collector who bought it from another collector. So a lot of the big money gets made after the original sale. But with an NFT, the smart contract that governs how the rules for how the NFT can be sold can specify that the... You know, the creator will always receive 10%, for example.

00:16:29 John Daub: Oh, wow. So if this is increase in value, like a Picasso painting, for example, and it keeps getting resold for millions and millions of dollars, the original creator will still receive an income from each one of those sales going on because it's digitally tracked in some database.

00:16:49 Neil Van Wow: Exactly. Well, it's not a database, right? It's the blockchain. It's on the blockchain. The blockchain. Yeah. So it's not, you know, if it was a database, it would be owned by some company. And then you're relying on that company to keep that going. But the blockchain is, you know, it's sort of out there in the open. It's out there.

00:17:07 John Daub: We got a lot of questions here. Is NFTs, are these used for money laundering?

00:17:15 Neil Van Wow: I don't know. Well, I don't know about, I mean, there's certainly like cryptocurrencies. You see the... I mean, there's some things that are used and used like ransomware and stuff. But it's sort of like, is money used for money laundering? Is anything, you know, is art used for money laundering? Anything of value could be. So there's always going to be that, right?

00:17:39 John Daub: Totally different topic of crime, maybe for Peter Van Gom's crime show. How much is one NFT? So the ones that we just launched today?

00:17:53 Neil Van Wow: Yeah. I guess the question is, so NFTs can be sold in any currency? And... So they can. Any, you could say. So some people have tied in regular e-commerce sites. So they're accepting like dollars or other, you know, regular fiat, regular sort of currencies. If it's in cryptocurrency, then it's likely to be, you know, depending on the blockchain it's created on. And... And how and sort of how things are set up, whether it lets you buy in multiple cryptocurrencies. Right. So this is... We're on the Ethereum blockchain. So by default, the Ethereum is how to pay for it. And these moments are set up to be 0.01 Ether, which at today's rate in Japanese yen, I guess that's about probably 2,500 yen or something.

00:18:54 John Daub: Oh, okay. So the artist can sell this at any price they want it to.

00:18:59 Neil Van Wow: Yeah, you can stick any price on it.

00:19:02 John Daub: Interesting. Peso writes in here, NFTs are often associated with other physical digital goods, which can be replicated, copied. While the token's ownerships can be traced back to you, how would you link the physical digital collateral to the buyer or owner?

00:19:22 Neil Van Wow: Yeah. So that's, you know, an interesting thing. So in a way, for example, like with Mugan, right, Jiro, Amazing Jiro's auction, which is going, which is starting tomorrow, that we're launching that tomorrow. So we're going to have several pieces of art from related to Mugan. But most of them are going to be bundles. So they're going to actually have a physical thing. So in that sense, the digital media is like a coupon. It's like if you got a coupon to go to get a free ice cream, then, you know, how is that coupon linked to the ice cream? It's like, well, you've got to redeem it somehow. So that, so we, you know, we will have a coupon and that coupon will essentially, the big one will actually be tied to the truck itself. So we will ship the truck anywhere in the world and send over, you know, five people, staff, and Jiro will go for a signing event. And we will run the event. It can be done in the haunted house. You know, in your backyard, if you, if you want to bid on that.

00:20:33 John Daub: So the NFT, so when you say bid on this, the NFTs. It's an auction. It's an auction. And this is on scramble.media.

00:20:43 Neil Van Wow: Yeah. So, so it can be set up as a, with a set fixed price or it can be set up as an auction. And there's various ways people are doing the auction. So the way we're doing it is uh uh the first we have we have a minimum bid and the first uh bid over the minimum bids basically starts an auction to run that will run for a few days and then uh yeah yeah wow so this is this is new and like for me this is the i i didn't really know much about nfts until last week when when you were telling me about how this entire truck in the background of this trading card you see this there's there's like this um truck that we come out of that's a horror haunted house made by a very famous um artist here in in japan for for horror uh jiro and the it's not just this card it's the truck the whole truck is going to be on your website to sell as an nft

00:21:50 John Daub: i like how is tell me a little bit neil about the japanese market for nft is this a global thing is this something that's uh like an nft market in the united states or is there a japanese nft market how is this all separated and the market is in on any website it doesn't there's no central marketplace like uh skiji market which is where you would get your fish right this is anywhere anytime yeah so it is certainly a global thing the blockchain really has no borders uh uh

00:22:41 Neil Van Wow: I I'm not sure what that is the thing between the nft and the japanese and kind of where the blockchain integration projects are and um because they're expanding our market by 지금까지 uh much those are manyORATACs truly so uh i'll try to just try to comment on these feels with uh with the ability of um twenty three people so is this in is this at in stoלי no that's what it is well let's hear it go with me how is it working what does nfts do and and i'm i don't stuff that hit in the U.S. primarily and last year, especially the fall and then early this year, I think that sort of took off more in the U.S. and a lot of the stuff that was being talked about that wasn't being talked about in the Japanese media. So a lot of people in Japan are not as familiar with it, but it's starting to get more news and there have been several Japanese sites that popped up. Now, I've been making software and websites and services for people both B2B and B2C in Japan for 25 years and I think we'll probably see a typical pattern where, I mean, there's so many artists and so much creativity in Japan, but actually so little of it actually gets put in. I mean, they're not going to be brought into English or broadcast outside of Japan or is known about outside of Japan. And so I think, you know, because it's a very healthy domestic market here and I think the same thing will happen with NFTs. I already see it happening. I see sites that are very domestic-focused popping up. So the purpose of Scramble, I mean, Scramble, we took the name from the scramble crossing in Shibuya.

00:24:19 John Daub: Hachiko Scramble, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of the idea of Scramble Crossing in Shibuya. Hot Shogo Scramble, yeah.

00:24:23 Neil Van Wow: Yeah. So it's kind of the idea of Scramble Crossing in Shibuya. So the idea is we want to sort of just have a mix of high art maybe and punky art, street art and established artists, famous artists and upcoming artists and even things that maybe aren't considered art per se. I'm talking to artists that do traditional dyeing in Japan's styles of using traditional materials to do color dyeing. And just yesterday I was talking to somebody who is doing traditional lacquerware. So these are types of things that we might work with artists or craftsmen and try to do combinations of digital and physical things and bring that to the sort of bring Japan to the world.

00:25:24 John Daub: From an NFT point of view. It's fascinating to me. It's starting to sink in a little bit. I'm a little bit slower than most people with crypto and stuff like this. I have no crypto. I can't I can't even figure it out. But NFTs is not just digital, is it? I mean, it's a digital you can this is the misconception and I think Makare wrote in here that we were kind of dodging an issue. I don't think so. See, he's actually on an NFT has a a truck that can travel around the world to a location. So is an NFT only digital or is it the digital currency? It's only bidden by digital money. Could you explain that a little bit?

00:26:08 Neil Van Wow: Well, so the NFT itself, of course, is digital and the blockchain is all digital. Right.

00:26:13 Neil Van Wow: But it's the idea of using digital things to represent, you know, transactions or linkages or physical items. I mean, it's something we. It's something we already do with I mean, if you have a piece of paper that's a deed to a property, right, it's it's a piece of paper, right? It's just a piece of paper and there's nothing there's no string attaching it to that property. We just we accept that we accept that as something that it is. It's a you know, we say, OK, that's valid, but usually based on the issuing authority. Right. So that this is a key thing about blockchain is that most of the things that we accept in in the past as a sort of linkages like a piece of paper or, you know, bank accounts are all tend to be all digital. But we trust this number. This digital number represents some money that somebody has in an account because of a trusted authority. Right. So there's these authorities we trust. There's banks and governments and and and corporations. And so blockchain takes that away from it, from the centralization of the blockchain. And so we have this centralized trust thing and says you don't need you don't need that that central authority to trust because this is out in the open and nobody can change it. So you don't need the trust. It's there. It's it's it can't be changed.

00:27:41 Neil Van Wow: So that is a very that's a very important thing. And it's the thing that that got me involved with this because NFTs is sort of our our first project. But I see this as a very key thing for technology for the world moving forward and how we, for example, sustainability is something that is very critical moving forward. Like, how are we dealing with climate change? And and we we know that somehow we have to keep track of carbon and we have to account for it. And right now it's kind of the honor system. Like a company says, oh, we're trying very hard. So you should buy more of our stuff because we're we're good. But it's like, well, how are you good? You know, what exactly are you doing? And what are the standards for tracking that and and proving that? And and we know that it's just natural for corporations to kind of fudge the numbers a bit if it or not necessarily fudge the numbers, but represent the numbers in a way that's most beneficial to themselves. If if you leave it up, if you don't have standards. Right. And this is blockchain is something where if it's a place, that's where the ledger thing comes in. If you can put, you know, very, very trustable numbers that that account for everything related to carbon cap, carbon capture, carbon offset, carbon usage, then that that blockchain is likely to be, you know, critical in how we get down to the nitty gritty of handling this moving forward. And this may this may take another decade or so, but I think it's inevitable.

00:29:24 John Daub: Yeah, everything's going to change. And I think that's going to be on sale in a marketplace. I think there's a comment in the live chat where somebody said they bought a an image of a burrito for one hundred thousand dollars. Like, I think these sensational stories, you're going to hear more and more of them were an image of something sold for a ridiculous amount of money. And that brings in a lot of press. And it's actually like the Japan, you know, the Doge Doge coin. Right. All based on the Doge meme. Right. And the Doge meme came from just a photograph, a regular photograph in Japan. So this is this is a meme that that came from a photo in Japan. And recently, the owner of that photo, the original photo put put it on auction on the actually the same on Zora, which is the same auction platform that Scramble is powered by. And that photograph, literally a photograph of their pet dog sold for $4.00. $4.5 million. See, it's these sensational stories that is generating a lot of buzz for NFTs and making people kind of open their eyes to them. But they're ridiculous in scale and like the majority of NFTs is not like owned by just rich, crazy people who want to buy something because it's in the media. For me, this kind of reminds me of the of the mango auction in Miyazaki. They have mangoes. The mango is like, wow. What? Ten, fifteen dollars in Miyazaki because they put a lot of effort into growing just one of them. There's cost. And at the auction, you can buy a pair of them for like $5,000. But it's a gift to generate media buzz, which is good for the mango industry in Miyazaki.

00:31:15 John Daub: Oh, the mangoes are valued at $5,000. But nobody would actually buy that for $5,000. It's just on the auction. Is that sort of what is happening sometimes in the news?

00:31:23 Neil Van Wow: Because that's what. I think so. Some of it's like PR. So if you think about it, like, well, why would a trading card go for hundreds of thousands of dollars to like a physical baseball card or something? So it's rare to you and it's people liking it and wanting it. But sometimes what you really get is the break. Sometimes with NFTs, what you're really buying is the bragging rights. I paid for this. And I own it. Right.

00:32:00 John Daub: Right. And then we see like I'm looking at some of the live chat right now and they're talking about digital currency where it's hard to know. Like Dogecoin was it's turned into a joke and people invested in that got burned and now they went back to Bitcoin, which is like $38,000 for one Bitcoin, which is crazy. And maybe even we'll be going up for that up from there. But I guess, Nick, Neil, what what I kind of want to put a ribbon in this here now. And it just seems like NFTs is a kind of like like we're just so used to dealing with with cash, paper money and even digital money is new on a Suica where we can put cash to put it onto a card. So now everything in the world has value, even digital art. And that can be sold in this marketplace and you can buy it. What do you do? And then you just hold on to that digital art and it might incur value. Like I think these NFT cards that you have made here are super cool. Hold on. Let me get the window open. This is super cool. It looks really cool. But what are people? Why do people buy it? It's not a physical thing. I'm trying to wrap my head around it. Can you?

00:33:56 Neil Van Wow: Yeah, well, you could you might buy it because you're like, oh, I'm pretty sure Jesse Franklin, who created these is going to be pretty famous artist in the future. So owning something like this that that he curated made that that could be a good investment. Or you could just go. That's cool. It's going to charity or you or you could be going. I just want to try this out. I want to try this. And here's something it's cheap. And I can get it and I can figure this out. It looks like a safe place to buy an NFT. So it's like whatever your personal reasons are. But I kind of like that.

00:34:13 John Daub: It's with right here in the in this live chat. Viewers can give me super chat or a little bit of money as a gift and ask a question which will light up really big. And I'll be able to answer that. And creators can make some money from it. NFTs seem to be like. When you buy one, you're sort of also investing in that creator. And there's a lot of creators of digital art and other things. And the value of that digital art or or that thing because it's connected to a real life person is going to accumulate value or the images is something that connects with people on a really high level. And that's one of a kind. So that's what people are owning. Well, is that what? Am I getting it right?

00:35:00 Neil Van Wow: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's the it's the same as any kind of collectible. Why? You know, why would people buy some other collectible? It's some of them. It's just intensely. That's their hobby. They're into it. And other people are like, you know, this could be worth more later and I can sell it for more. And other people are doing it because they're, you know, their friends said their friends are doing it. They're like, oh, I should do it, too. So, you know, it's it's a little bit of all of that. But definitely there's so much more to talk about this. And, you know, we'd be happy to, like, have a part two at a later date. We'll find another angle on this and keep exploring it.

00:35:42 John Daub: Yeah, I'm I'm fascinated by it because I don't understand it completely, but I have a better grasp of what an NFT is. And I guess it's not until you buy one maybe or really invest into it that you understand it. Like how much? Yeah. Now, these NFTs that the cards that you made here, these are going all to to charity, right?

00:36:08 Neil Van Wow: So, yeah, like it's an auction. So what do you start? The cards are not auctioned.

00:36:11 John Daub: Oh, these cards. They have a set price. OK, so have you decided a price on these cards?

00:36:17 Neil Van Wow: Yeah, they're 0.01 Ether, which is about 2000 yen or 2500 yen right now.

00:36:27 John Daub: OK, so about 20, 25 dollars.

00:36:27 Neil Van Wow: Yeah. And then you've got to pay. There's like a kind of a fee for running anything on the blockchain. And the fee kind of goes up and down day by day. But it's probably going to be another 100 or so to buy it to actually do the transaction.

00:36:49 John Daub: There's audio to this, too, by the way. It's the only one we did out of our series. It's the only one we did with audio. I just had to get that scream in there. And I ate my mask. It's so good. Yeah. You got that. You got that. Like, I kind of like this being able to capture really funny moments or something that was just a viral moment inside of a video or something like this. And then capturing that and then selling that as an NFT. I've already I think I've seen some new stories where people have been selling NFTs like logos or like animation or like little things. And I've seen some cool little teeny clips of it and raising money and generating awareness based on the media that comes from it already. Has there been any famous NFTs that you can think of right now as it's just an example of something like that?

00:37:43 Neil Van Wow: I mentioned the dog. I mentioned the dog one. And actually, I don't know exact percentage, but a portion of that went to charity. And the and the buyer of that that paid the 4.5 million was a group called PleaserDAO. And a DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization. So it's a little group that came together just to buy NFTs. And they're buying big ticket stuff typically associated with charities. It's extremely cool because it's like it's almost like an MPO. But it's just literally on the blockchain. A bunch of people invested and they set up a smart contract. So they each depending on what they've chipped in, they all own a piece of what they buy and together they vote on what they should buy next. And they and.

00:38:28 John Daub: Yeah. They have some of the coolest pieces out there that have been related to charity initiatives. So I'm showing I'm showing that dodgy dodgy the Shiba Inu, right? The one that was. Yeah. Somebody paid $4 million for this thing. This is just so that I mean, this is a meme, right? So everybody copied the photo and did stuff with it. Right. But the actual original photograph was was. Put up for auction. I just found this off of the Internet and put it up on the screen so that that image sold for $4 million. And the meme was something that was viral all around the world. So everybody knew what it was. It was a famous, famous meme. So that had a lot of value generating $4 million for it.

00:39:16 John Daub: So basically a digital art that you could you could buy for $20 could over time become this big beam that accumulates. Accumulates lots of interest raising the price of it. And you could resell that at 10 times the cost when you resell it and get like a nice windfall. A percentage of that goes to the original creator. That's pretty cool.

00:39:45 Neil Van Wow: It is. So that means the original creator never really. I mean, loses connection with it and and get something from it. That's I mean, yeah, it is. It is. As a creator. I think that's pretty cool.

00:40:01 John Daub: So where do you see this going in the future? And I think it'd be pretty cool as this evolves and you launch scramble media and some of these get on the marketplace to bring you back in. And I'm fascinated on the NFT market in Japan, how this is going to evolve. Probably in a few months, we're going to have a lot more feedback on on how successful this is. But so much. There's so much to say on this where where it's going. And I mean, I touched on, I think the link with sustainability, the link with potentially funding open source projects, for example. There's something really cool happened a couple of weeks on that. So, yeah, I'd love to come back and do like I could bring collections of like, what are the sort of strangest NFT things that happened over the past little while? Or also touch on some of these really cool initiatives. But. Yeah. Right. We've been doing a lot of research on, on the blockchain. Right. So let's let's do that next. Let's let's do that because we have to let you go. The one question I is in a lot of people's minds, is, is this something that could just fizzle? Do you think if you could just answer this one and then we'll we'll cut up? Like people a little bit. Scared about.

00:41:17 Neil Van Wow: Yeah. So the answer to that is a definitive no. It's not going to fizzle, right? So, I mean, there were, you get bubbles where things get like a little bit overhyped and we saw a little bit of that in the spring and things got a little bit crazy, like people were paying too much for all kinds of stuff. And then that just disappeared, right? And then it sort of settled down. But there's, right, but in the, it didn't go away. There's just everywhere around the world, there's creators and artists thinking up new, interesting ways to do stuff with NFTs. And there's big brands coming in. NBA Top Shots is basically taking cool clips of just like we did with you there. They're taking like really cool basketball points, so game winners and stuff like that and turning them into cards and selling those. And that's a huge success. So this is not going away.

00:42:14 John Daub: Yeah. It's going to become massive. Yeah. I've got some of the sales here from Scramble Media panning across the screen and that's really cool. I'm pretty excited for you, Neil, and I'm excited about this NFT market. I think I got a better understanding of what it's all about, but I'm looking forward to having you back on and talking more about NFTs in the future. Thanks so much also for bringing me into this project with Jiro and making an Only in Japan Go NFT. That's pretty cool. I'm interested to see how this works out. Thank you very much.

00:42:50 Neil Van Wow: All right. Thank you, John. Thank you very much.

00:42:50 John Daub: You're welcome. Bye-bye. And that's Neil van Waal. He's from Scramble Media. And you can take a look at it, scramble.media. There's a link in the description if you want to check this out. He's the only one... I know some people on Twitter that are digital artists that have NFTs being sold on the marketplace. They're really cool pieces of art that move and jitter and they make the image come alive where you can feel Tokyo in them. But Neil is the only friend that I have that's taken this to make their own marketplace. And that's pretty exciting. And I'm very curious to see how this all works out. And again, we'll bring Neil back in a few months to see how Scramble Media is doing with some of the things that they've sold and maybe even see if the Only in Japan Go NFT has sold. Again, all the money is going to go to Scramble Media. I'm excited to see how they're going to charity. So none of it's coming to me, which is fine. Unless it's been sold again, apparently, because I would get them like 10% of that or something or Neil would. That's interesting. That whole... the way it works. But I'm really fascinated about this technology. And if you want and have some questions, in the comments below on this video, let me know what you think because I'm still kind of learning about this. And I think a lot of you might be too. I don't know if this is that for me, I don't know if this is something I'm going to buy a lot of, but you just never really know, which is why I have friends that have Bitcoin and all sorts of cryptocurrency because they're just not sure if this is going to be the future. So they invest in a little bit of it because you can't go wrong if you just put a little bit of it. Maybe I skip that cup of coffee and buy some, you know, cryptocurrency. Anything is possible in today's world.

00:44:45 John Daub: Do you have any questions here? Before I get off of the live stream here, we have the J-flog. For new undershirts, what do you mean you don't like this one? What is it? Is that a hint? Could be. Yesterday, I was with NBC reporter Amanda. I can't remember her last name. Whenever I'm on the camera, Placentas, I think, is her last name. She's from NBC Miami 6. And we got a lot of questions about her. So I'm going to give you a chance to talk about how the media came into Japan and the process that they had to go through in order to come into Japan for the Olympics because there's not a lot of tourism coming into Japan. Her experience, she described it in pretty good detail while we were walking around Akihabara. So you might want to check that out and see that this might be an indication of how tourism returns to Japan in the future. So you might want to check that live stream. I'm going to go ahead and get back to you guys. I'm going to go ahead and get back to you guys. Yesterday in Akihabara on a very hot day. It looks like another hot one. It's sunny skies in Tokyo, and I might go out there for another live stream later on in the afternoon. Any live questions here? I might be going on Twitch as well. Don't waste your money, writes in Wayne. I think, you know, this is such these NFTs are such a new thing. I don't know what the value of it is to somebody yet. And I think the market is just evolving right now. And that meme that sold for $4 million, I think that that's going to be kind of uncommon. But putting a price on something, I don't know, there's jewelry, for example, that has a value to somebody because it's precious. And I don't know, like I would never buy like diamond necklaces and a bunch of jewelry because I don't see the value in precious stones, for example. So for me, the precious stones market, is never something I understood at all. Why is that stone worth that much? It just because it's rare. I don't I don't want it. It doesn't help me. I can't eat it. So for me, it has no value. A diamond has no value for me unless it's I need to get like out of jail and I need it as a bargaining tool in prison or something. It could be but maybe NFTs become something that you use in prison to bargain for cigarettes. I don't know. Look, I'm just just trying to think about it. I'm thinking outside of the box to try to find a practical purpose of it. But no, I'm not going to be going to prison anytime soon. How did that even come up? All right. Some of the questions, some of the questions here in the live chats are pretty good. But I've never thought of it in a lot of NFTs or cryptocurrency or this. Hold on a second. Crypto is complex. I agree with Mrs. Quillis-Johns. If you go there, do your homework. Absolutely. Right. Right. It's in chain here. Tony P. writes in NFTs are just a fad already dying. Could they come back? Maybe. But I doubt they will sustain. I think it just depends how this market goes. I don't think it's ever going to go to go once it started. I don't think it's going to go away. I think this marketplace, you're going to see more really famous creators come in and start to sell stuff, which is going to generate more buzz. It's just going to be done by creators and who can make of this. Then you're going to see some pretty amazing things possibly sold as NFTs. I don't know. This is just possibly the future. So maybe it goes away. I don't know. But I don't see that happening. I just see it only getting bigger as more people see the potential of it. Big creators with large audiences could set something up on an auction and that could generate quite a bit of a buzz, which could generate quite a bit of a buzz. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. These things get in the media. People see it. They embrace it more. And then everybody is doing it. And I think for the everyday person like me or anybody, it's going to be really hard to sell an NFT unless it's got a cool value to it. And I see a lot of creators on Instagram that are making images that are sold as NFTs and generating enough revenue to keep them going as creators. Something similar to Patreon, which is what keeps me afloat, selling postcards to people. But I like to sell. I like to send the physical medium to people because I like stamps and I like the art of sending a postcard and receiving it in the mail, which is pretty nostalgic in this digital age. By the way, I have a postcard club, so you can go check that out on Patreon. The blockchain is a tech protocol and application. Applicable to many, many things. Yeah. So I don't think it's going to be going away. I think it just has to do with understanding. I grew up in the 1980s. We didn't have this. Now it's about me learning about it, just like people that grew up in the 1960s had to learn about VCRs and stuff because they didn't. It was actually hard. In fact, I still couldn't even until the death of VCRs. I couldn't figure out how to do the timer. Just really complex to get in there with the buttons. Ask a millennial about sending a fax. Huh? Actually, I don't think it's that hard. That's a pretty bad experience. That's a pretty bad example. Has anyone done anything with an NFT as a key? Interesting. So like, I personally, I haven't. I simply can't wrap my head around how all of this really works. And I think having on as a guest and people here in Japan on as a guest to explain a little bit about the marketplaces and how this works gives me a better understanding. And I'm glad today that I could share just a little bit of it with you, because maybe that helps you either from helps you to get into it or not to get into it, because I just know it's a word that we're going to hear more of. So Tony P, maybe just a little bit. I disagree because I don't know. But I think NFTs are going to be here for for a while. Maybe the NFT is not a really cool name. So maybe it'll it'll come into a cooler name. Like they shouldn't have named the space shuttle the space shuttle should have named it like like badass rocket or something. Right. So I don't know. Space shuttle sounds boring, like shuttling back and forth between airport terminal one and two. You know, whoever came up with that at NASA needs to be fired or they probably were. Awesome. Adam from 2099. Thank you very much for that. And look, leave me a question below. I didn't know what to expect. And I'm really happy that Neil joined me. And Neil's helping me create a horror episode for only in Japan's main channel where I'm going to be making an episode and edited episode about explaining Japanese horror in great detail on how that's different from Western horror for an October release on on the main channel. And I've got a couple other episodes on the way. And I'm like looking for last questions and I don't see anything. John, if you use a credit card, right? Yeah, that's sort of what it is. It's virtual money that's created by physical money.

00:52:29 John Daub: Yeah. So I mean, like an NFT has to have some sort of physical value to write. For me, if I can't eat it and I can't wear it and I can't throw it and I can't look at and go, wow, that look on my wall, that's really cool. Like, does it even exist? It's just a bunch of pixels or I'm just a bunch of cells. Like, if you really break this down into into anything, you break it down. Like, it's hard for me to see value in anything, except for my family, which is over there. They're probably watching me right now. So I kind of highly. Oh, how are you doing? You know, so if you do break stuff down, you can psych yourself out and not see any value in anything. It's just like 40 million pixels put together, you know. So there's that. Have you ever been to each Iran's ramen restaurant? Now we're getting into it. All right. When the chat gets off the topic, you know that it's time to to end this live stream. What's an NFT then? Yeah. You know what, Eric? You're going to have to play this back because NFT is like something that is sold in a marketplace that you can bid on. And it's digital. Does does John exist? You know, I think that's a good question. I could just be a bunch of pixels. But if you ask Amanda yesterday, we did like we touched elbows, which is, you know, what non cool people do in the pandemic. And I was there. She touched something. And it was my elbow. I'm pretty sure it was an elbow. I don't know. I don't know. Are you really there? Are you really there? Look who wrote that UFO Bob? Are you really there? Because I just see like a bunch of pixels in the form of UFO Bob with a wrench. You know what I mean? So look, value is in feelings, too. And I when I see art, I get a feeling and I want to express myself. And sometimes I can see the value in buying stickers. Do you remember when I don't know, in Japan, we use a messaging app called line and line is the I don't know what's app is a line. A lot of the world uses that. But in this part of the world, line is really big. You could buy stickers online, they were like $1 or $2. And you'd be able to buy 24 stickers, just digital images, images, right. And you could share those digital images with friends that had a value to you. Because when you share that image, you got some sort of emotional feeling from it like Totoro, like you were purchasing Totoro and Totoro's emotions to share as your own. Right? So people bought these stickers, like I don't know if they're really that popular right now. But I can see how digital images have a value, because we've been buying them for a long time in other marketplaces already. Then there's in video games, buying, like in app purchases and stuff for more digital coins to do stuff with inside of a digital world, or buying digital banners inside of a digital world, you know, it doesn't make sense to me as a kid, you know, grew up in the 1980s. But it sort of does. I'd like to have I would pay money to get my name on a wall in in Metroid. All right. Imagine that like having my name graffitied on a wall, I would pay like 20 bucks for that. So I can see digital marketplace just growing. Maybe I'm completely off. Just let me know in the comments how bad off I am with all of this in my line of thinking. I thought about making line stickers, but I just couldn't. I couldn't bring myself to do it. Hi from Chile. Hey, here, bless you and like all of your videos, but can't wait to get to Japan. 86% of my country is vaccinated. We are ready to travel. Yeah, Chile was one of the first countries to get over 70%. So hopefully you can we will Chile will be one of the first countries to travel would be which would be pretty cool. So I'm glad you're here. And I look forward to that. And there's a lot of people that would like to get vaccinated. There's a lot of people that are in the house cheering me on. There's a lot of people cheering me on with the animated emoji. And once again, like that that's a digital form of of like a gift that I received from Prime per visual. I guess This is sort of like a feeling that you're sending just like with line stickers and like the NFT marketplace I don't see it really going away I but I don't know how it's gonna grow this is the big question mark for me and Neil is the answer and I'm looking forward to having Neil back in a few months maybe after he sells the only in japan go I don't know how it works but the link is in the description of this video which you can check out and that'll take you to scramble dot media's website he's launching it I believe today or tomorrow and you'll be able to bid on some stuff and we'll see what kind of value it had it has and maybe the person who buys it for charity will get them on only in japan go and and asked why they bought it and what did it mean to them to buy it and what are they gonna do with it like I don't want some guy looking at my NFC in the restroom on his smartphone like I don't know wait as a creator can I put stipulations on how my how out my art is used but I guess van Gogh didn't know like some guy could put his you know artwork in in his you know 1 billion dollar toilet house if you wanted to you could do whatever you want with it when you buy it right it's like I didn't think about that I don't want somebody looking at my image in the restroom all right and are you watching this in the restroom yeah that's awful get out of there all right you know what I gotta end right now um I'll try to do another livestream hello van hello fans from Taiwan and Taiwan is doing a pretty darn good job in the Olympics too I've been watching some some pretty good competition and it's nice to see Taiwan winning some medals no shoot get out of there right now and wash your hands and your smartphone It's nasty. All right, you squad. Where is Kanye? Kanye is not my wife. Thank goodness. It's Kanae, but I know like autocorrect will do that. It's K-A-N-A-E. And I think you might have seen her in the background going by every now and then. This was an important live stream for me to do because this is how Twitch is going to be done through this camera and this kind of a format. So if I can do this, that means I can do Twitch and we're back. So thanks so much, everybody, for watching. NFTs are all about royalties. I guess so. And it's all about value and seeing if it has value to you, then you'll buy it. And that gives something back to the creator and helps them to keep creating. And NFTs create jobs.

01:00:06 John Daub: NFT supports a family. You could look at it in so many different ways. NFT is a family. It's a family. It's a family. It's a family. It's a family. It's a family. It's a family. NFT destroys the environment from the electricity it creates. It's like every single angle electricity needed. So there's lots of different angles to look at this from. NFT is a way to share art. NFTs are a way to share a feeling with other people and to put a value on it. Maybe that's a good thing. I'm watching from a trunk. Chan, you know what? You're not in that same trunk. I returned that car to Toyota Rent-A-Car. It's already been cleaned. If you're still in there, how did you stay in there? Where exactly are you hiding? In the back seat? Inside of the seat? And you took out all of that Mochi's filter filling stuff out? And the springs too? And that's gross. All right? Don't do that. Get out of the trunk. Stop playing in the trunk. Do you need a key? Is it a blockchain key? Does anybody give Chan a blockchain? Is it a blockchain key to get out of the trunk? It's a digital trunk? Is this like the Matrix where Neo was stuck in a subway station? Is that what you're in, Chan? Apparently you're in Australia because that's where your currency is from. So I can tell where you are by your currency. Ha! There. Take that, blockchain. All right. I just busted. I just broke this whole system wide open. I'm glad that you had this stream, John. Thank you, Mrs. Quills. I'm glad you... I believe this stuff is the future. But there needs to be a way to get out of the trunk. There needs to be more changes and consumer-friendly stuff first.

01:01:44 John Daub: I agree. I think once we see some more really big names embrace this... Not billionaires, but normal big names... We'll see some growth in NFT market, maybe. But I guess I have sort of officially joined it by working with Neil on... Instagram. scramble media to get an only in japan uh nft kind of card and i i want to hear what you think of this i think neil is super creative and he came up with this idea and he's working with an emmy award-winning artist who created this created this card it's beautiful it's really interesting it reminds me of the old um like an ipod nano kind of thing and so like i would like to it would be pretty cool to own this because it looks cool what do you think i i don't know about i don't know so much about this like how this is going to sell because this is my first time seeing it when i first heard the name google i thought it was stupid and then i kept hearing it and then i thought it was cool so like google but it's cool now sort of it is youtube what and then like it's just a brand now so sometimes things take only in japan what you know you know so it takes a little bit of time before you you know it soaks in then people are like yeah you know just takes time all right thanks so much for the questions here i appreciate it very much this is sort of fun um if you have any if you have a comment leave it below and i'll respond over the next few hours i'll i don't know if i'm going to go out it's really hot maybe i'll spend some time uh editing the next video which is what i should be doing hanging out with you leo uh and can i um i nominate you for streamy please do i would and i would take that nomination and then sell it as a digital image i think i don't know am i thinking the right am i thinking the wrong way i don't i just want to have fun and eat delicious foods can i do that some artists even include the original artwork and a sales receipt that's interesting that i would like to if a digital art was printed out and then signed it would be a good idea to do that it would be really cool if it was signed by the creator and you got both that would be pretty cool that'd be pretty cool yeah tony p i'm working on that now uh so there should be something up pretty quick pretty soon i don't know artists include physical items i didn't know that either i think that might just just be something that get you over the hump um look do you remember like not everybody owned a blu-ray player but sometimes they sold the blu-rays with the dvds do you understand So then you had both formats because if you didn't have a Blu-ray player, you can get the DVD too to take it to somebody who didn't have a Blu-ray player. So you got both, best of both worlds. So maybe this is like a tweener where you can get – and this is not a Prison Break reference, but I did get the word tweener from Prison Break. It's from T-Bag who is an inmate and who really harassed Michael Schofield. Never mind that, but by tweener, I mean like an in-betweener. Did I just mess this up? So like is this something that connects one to the other? So you get the physical media until physical media no longer matters and we just have like Google Glasses or Apple Glasses and we just see things that we can purchase to put in our fake digital world. I don't know what the world looks like, but I hope we don't get rid of it.

01:05:35 John Daub: I hope we don't get rid of the normal world. This is getting deep. I hope we don't get rid of the normal world. I was watching Demolition Man just in the background and there was a scene where Sylvester Stallone is de-thawed to help get – you know, like Simon Says Criminal played by that other guy. I can't remember the names. But he's in with Sandra Bullock and they decide to go to the room to do it. And they do. They do it digitally. And Sylvester Stallone just can't wrap his head around it. And that's how I feel with NFTs. I'm Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man with Sandra Bullock right now doing this digital thing. The digital mambo – limbo. And it's not cool until I figure it out. Can you show the NFT again? I can. I could. Let me just get it here on the thing. I think it's pretty cool. I'll even – I'll do it one more time. So you get to see it. You get to see it with the sound effects. The sound effects are necessary. Here, I'll rewind it. Okay, are you ready for this? Here we go. Ready? Three, two, one. All right.

01:07:09 John Daub: That's it. Is that worth $1,000? $5? I don't know. Anything? I don't know. So Neil put that up on scramble.media. And I believe it'll go on sale. The proceeds all going to charity. And that's pretty cool. We'll see what happens with it. And the link is in the description. One more time, just a big thank you to Neil Van Wow, who is the president of scramble media and came up with this idea. He's also NFTing a truck, the horror truck that I live streamed in for that NFT. And I'm really curious to see how that goes, where they can send the horror truck to another country around the world. And Jitto will go in person too, sold as an NFT. I don't know how this, like, for me, I can't wrap my head around it. I just have to experience it. And then maybe I'll know. Thank you, everybody. I'll see you in the next live stream, which might be later today if I decide to go out to one of the Olympic venues because the games are going on and I want to be out there, which I shouldn't be, which is another reason I'm doing this. Anyways, have a good day. I'll see you in the next live stream.