Speculation Plus: the new growth strategy

Transcript

GM GM welcome to web3 Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet don't get caught in the hype cycle I'm Jerry bird joined by my co-host Kyle rehead and we believe that speculation plus is going to change the world that's why we're carving the path for doers to confidently build and invest in web 3 well Happy Thanksgiving to any Canadians that listen to us you're listening to this I guess it's Tuesday so a day after uh Thanksgiving but we're recording this over Thanksgiving weekend Jay and I obviously are Canadian the American Thanksgiving what's that like a month away I don't know why we had different thanksgivings but whatever it's it doesn't matter well we're all giving thanks I'm thankful for you everybody's thankful to be alive everyone's thankful

for whatever crypto we have even though the bags are low hey it's all are I don't think everyone's thankful for their cry Sam Bang from fre is not thankful being in court right now no no he is not but that's okay that's a whole another whole another world we're not going to touch on that today today we are talking about the thing that Jay believes is going to change well I guess we believe are going to change the world which is speculation plus I'm not sure it's going to necessarily change the world but probably actually so speculation plus is a New Concept that I've mentioned a couple times here on the podcast but it's a term I heard used a lot quite a bit actually at at permissionless conference a few weeks ago and so I've been mulling it over a lot I keep talking about it trying to figure out

like what does it really mean and why does it really matter and I think we have come to a few conclusions that we're going to discuss today on this podcast and I think speculation plus is going to be something big for apps for their sort of growth strategy and just like they're entertainment they're fun I think we're going to see the speculation plus thing a lot moving forward and so I think this is something we as those inside of the web through ecosystem should be aware of whether that's hey this new app is out and it has speculation plus other things maybe this is a good investment or I want to build an app how should I do it speculation plus might be a really good thing for you to be thinking about to build out the utility and things around your application speculation Plus for those

of you who have not heard other episodes is basically the idea that apps can now really because of blockchain but I guess they they can have this in in other means as well but really it's the idea that you can have speculation right so the ability to uh invest in something that may go up or may go down and then on the side of that you have some sort of utility and that utility could be whatever could be having fun in a game could be listening to music it could be accessing to I don't know a Discord it could be content it could be you know group chats like in frch I could be many things and so there's many ways that I can give examples of speculation plus being used already in web 3 if we think of nfts a big thing around nfts was

speculation unfortunately there was not a lot of plus to go with nfts in in the ear days but we think of music nfts for example right this is a way to connect with artists um to usually get access to you know events or maybe it's their Discord or different things sometimes it's drops from merch Etc but then also you not only do you own that let's call it like a membership or a fan tool some sort of loyalty type thing but then you can speculate on that maybe a bunch of people want that and the price that thing goes up that is speculation plus some form of utility we see it music nfts we see it in content nfts like podcast nfts and even newsletter nfts for example we're going to show you some in the coming weeks with something we're doing there's a lot examples of it with

nfts absolutely but outside of nfts you have things like frch right this is speculation in terms of buying a key and then there is the Utility side of getting access into a chat right so access into a chat is normal we have telegram groups we have I mean Twitter and the big key differentiator of what frch has done versus any of them which they have a way to pay they pay wall things just like what fronch has done the difference is the thing you're buying you also speculate on it you could win or you could lose on that thing when you pay for pay W content on Twitter you pay let's say it's $18 or whatever and that's it you have no way of getting the $18 back you Just Lose It essentially but you gain utility what

speculation plus is is you pay that thing you get the utility and then you may lose it which whatever that's what you got in web 2 or you might get it back the same amount you put in or you might get even more which is a whole different scenario and so anyway that's my sort of like quick sort of rundown of of speculation Plus for now yeah so just to make it crystal clear for everybody speculation plus really means speculation plus utility the reason the term is being used as speculation plus is before it was just utility that's all any app any digital asset any any well there wasn't digital assets for blockchain but any app was just utility before whereas now we have speculation

and I think that like and on the other reason that there plus is because most things in crypto were just speculation with no utility and now we have the combination of the two I think that's the key differentiator what's interesting for you know and this is where I think anybody who's been listening for us to web3 Academy for a long time knows that you know both KY and I we're big utility Max Maxis right like we're all about we're not about meme coins we're not here I mean we told everybody here not to buy Pepe sorry it actually did pretty well after we told you not to buy it but then it actually crashed back down so it all works out in the end but we we're not talking about shitcoins in this podcast we're not the speculators we are the business builders that are here for the long term they're

trying to teach you about how to use this tech for bigger things but I think what what is Wild is being you know 250 plus podcast in here's Kai and I saying you know what maybe speculation not such a bad thing at all buddy I'm becoming a bit of a speculation Maxi actually no I'm a speculation let's let's go speculation plus Maxi and so the rest of EP we're going to talk about why that is and how why we've kind of at least myself and I'm assuming Jay has two but sort of transitioned a little bit into becoming speculation plus Maxis in two forms of reasons one actually in air drops which I've always hated we've always tripped them hard but I think there's a certain way that this might make sense which I'm going to explain in

this episode and then of course we'll just talk about building an app and how all that works and what I just explained and why I think that's going to become a bigger thing so we'll cover both of those but Jay before we do that we got to take a quick second to hear from our sponsor modern newsletters are built on paragraph that's right paragraph is a brand new newsletter platform that combines the best parts of web 2 and web 3 to supercharge newsletters for both writers and readers build a community not just an audience paragraph uses blockchain Tech to allow readers to collect and own the words that matter to them this takes reading a newsletter to the next level with paragraph readers can mint collect and show off quotes qu from their favorite newsletters this

opens new possibilities like creators sharing Revenue with fans i' also love their new feature paragraph AI this integrates gp4 natively in paragraphs create edit and improve your writing effortlessly with one click and guess what we at web3 Academy are on board and have already moved our content over to paragraph We believe this is the future of newsletters because of profound engagement it creates between creators and fans so whether you're a Creator writer or an Avid Reader it's time to check out paragraph and capitalize on the opportunity of being early welcome back ironic that we're talking with

speculation plus and one of the reasons why we moved our newsletter on chain to paragraph who you just heard about is because we can now allow people to collect our newsletter now right now now collecting your newsletter is free but in the coming weeks we're actually doing something and actually in the next week we are launching something new where you're going to be able to speculate on our newsletter so it's speculation plus as well we're not GNA te I'm just G to tease you with that right now okay speculation plus Kai before we jump into airdrop farming and really what speculation plus allows and why we think it's such a grow great gross tactic for Builders and for apps let's just talk

about this state of speculation within the world basically and within our culture and Society we believe that speculation is becoming more stream why is speculation becoming more mainstream yeah I was thinking about this recently and you know especially before the internet the only people that really speculated and I mean typically on like stocks and things were highly educated people in Western countries that had access to you know buying stocks and then there was like some sports betting and maybe if you went to Vegas of course but again these were adults right and really over the last like let's say 20 years I would say apps that allow us to do sports betting has brought in a younger crowd that now do a lot of

speculating on things like Prine and fantasy football and fantasy everything like betting has really brought a lot of like younger adults I'd say into it I would say it's also it's also reached a much wider audience because as you said in the and this is what crypto we keep talking about is on anything that is going to be you know on chain can reach anybody in the world right so and online sort of I mean did the same thing right that was the first thing that reached a way bigger audience before you had to go to Vegas to bet now you can do so from your coach you can do it anywhere exactly so there's that then there's and so it moved out of just the finance world but then there's also the finance World grew massively especially postco but even before that with things like

Robin Hood and other apps that just make it easier to buy and so like that was a big one then the other thing if you start to think of like kids inside games they are getting you know familiar with buying things currencies and different currencies outside of just like our typical Fiat currencies really really early age like I'm talking under 10 years old and you know about buying things inside of games and different currencies and earning them Etc and while they're not tokens per se like that are on chain some of them do change in value and also you can buy win and trade different um skins inside of games now again they're not MTS you don't own them but games have their own marketplaces inside um how you do this so like kids are making money inside of games at you know below the age of 10

and like that just wasn't a thing 20 years ago I mean it wasn't a thing 10 years ago probably right so I feel like we are coming to this world where Finance is becoming more normal inside of a lot of people's homes at a younger age then you have betting becoming and gambling and stuff becoming more normal for people in terms of sports and stuff and then you have games which is a lot of it's gamified betting essentially a lot of this stuff and there's so many people in gaming that so many of them are getting exposed to this and so it feels like speculation is becoming a bigger part of society I guess we're learning about speculation maybe without speculating in the traditional way of you know buying an asset and then

looking to sell that asset for gain right well there and there's also entrepreneurialism is becoming so much bigger now because of the internet which again that's speculating speculating either on your own business maybe you're speculating on a friend's business by giving them some money or a family memb business like the number of people who start businesses Now versus 20 years ago is just not even like the numbers are incomparable so there's also that side of things too yeah and and where this is leading is it's making speculation more accepted but it's also making speculation in itself a utility basically in itself is fun it is valuable right people enjoy doing things where there is the opportunity to

receive additional gain even if it's not financial gain as you said even if it's just like a point system within a game or something that doesn't have Financial attach to it that feeling is fun like fun and ENT almost like speculation yeah think about how much time people put into their fantasy football teams they do homework and research and that's all for speculation you're all just speculating on players that they're going do well and that your team's better than others so like people put a lot of time and effort into speculation well and that's a great example too because one of the unique things about fantasy sports and I'm not a big gamer but I used to play a lot of fantasy sports and I'll bet you gaming is sort of similar is there is a lot of these

fantasy sports leagues are multi-year and a lot of gaming I think is like that too so there is this feeling of like oh I was there early in fantasy sports it's like I dra drafted that rookie young right I think that this also always comes up for me in one of the reasons why I think music and blockchain is so cool is I want to be able to prove that I went to the concert before anyone else did and be able to say that like I discovered that and we all like that feeling of being early but right now being early doesn't get you a reward necessarily right right right right but with blockchain it can so we know that speculation is becoming more mainstream we see speculation as utility it's own it's fun it's entertainment people

really take value from it they feel good about it they enjoy it for for the economy actually for people thinking about that I was like okay speculations can be more mainstream that's great but like is that good I mean for the economy it's just yeah it's for the economy it's good I met economy it's great work for people but it's pushing money around which is what the theonomy needs uh okay let's talk about what are the ways an app or a builder can use speculation in order to grow users and use it a grow strategy there's many ways I mean like so the frch example is the easiest one right think of just like any product that you buy now has the ability

to have speculation turned on you buy our premium newsletter right now we don't have this setup yet but let's say that you buy our premiun newsletter it's a membership you would never think that's a spective thing you just pay 18 bucks a mon mon or whatever it is I don't even know what we charge but somewhere around there probably yeah like your Netflix account is $516 a month you would never expect there to be speculation around that but you could turn that on right if those those memberships were nfts which we back our membership nfts but if the membership itself was an F that membership could be speculative and we could put out memberships at $15 some at $18 have scarce amounts of each exactly can speculate on those two right so there's like you could do anything right again

with the Twitter accounts how you have like the paywalled Twitter accounts those could end up being something that you buy once and then you could spec it on you could sell them to other people right and everything can be this way I mean tickets already are quite speculative but they become even more so like tickets to concerts and things so like you could think of it with games of course games can be any sort of game can have speculative things in it now whether you know speculative assets speculative currencies Etc and but when I think of what you just talked about of like being early into something right this was something that everyone loved to do with positions with I don't know lots of different things like sporting cards things like that these are all things that now allow you to not just prove that you were early but then

speculate on it it potentially win something and so there's just different I don't know what the word is but different features and utilities that we can put into any app that we currently use with the ability to add speculation around it so I don't know there's just so many things that I think a good a really good way to think a couple good ways to think about it one good way to think about it is you're just gamifying it right exactly that's probably the simplest a good about it except right now when most things are gamified in web to you don't actually get anything you get like I don't know a badge that's worthless or you get points that are worthless like they but they probably have value to you because they have sentimental value or like you want to flex and show off to your friends who

also play that game whatever right you cannot then go trade that in an open market you can't go sell that to to somebody else so that's one way to think about it I think the other way to think about it or another example of where we are seeing speculation plus is so you use the example of yeah nfts like basically the whole initial I hate to say nfts like this because it categorizes nfts in a very incorrect way but the way that most the world thinks about nfts which are basically jpegs like pieces of art that whole initial movement was businesses selling art cartoon characters for speculation you didn't even get anything from most of

those in the beginning right like you think about b b Club literally the the road map was like one image that was like a cartoon map that was kind of a joke right and then eventually so they took that speculation they made a whole bunch of money and then they started doing AP fests and events which you could attend which have value to them right you have a Discord and a community and all of these things you can get into the other thing is rewards right like your air miles and things like that so you have I we talked about Blackbird on the rollup last week but also there's like expectative nature to rewards now because originally like you get air miles you get credit card points and there's no they don't go up or down they don't become worth more or worth less so

you just like you pay for things whenever you want to pay for things but now that they're on an open market it's like well is it worth more like if it happens to go up you're like well maybe I want to buy my thing now or I want to sell it to usdc now and it's like it becomes a little bit more gamified and more fun these tokens these Rewards these credits whatever there's a little bit more to it they become a little bit more complex which adds a layer of fun to it potentially it also could add a layer of people getting wrecked which is another problem but is what it is yeah I feel like uh it's almost like we could do another show about how speculation is bad but in this episode speculation is good because it is a good growth strategy because I think what we're

really identifying is and frch is the best example of this right is you can lach an app which has very basic utility and almost like a bad user experience not a great app but if you have speculation you can get a lot of attention and a lot of energy behind it because as we have said we keep saying over and over again people want to speculate like people like to do it it is something that people have fun doing it is a good growth tool so like frch is a cool thing I mean token gating or like pay Walling chats of course

that's a big thing we everyone does that already right so like it's a thing but the reason why frake was so successful is you add the speculative nature to it and it brings attention right away it brings users right away because there's people that want like the early opportunist it brings liquidity which that liquidity means that creators want to come and use friendtech versus whatever else is out there because they know they make a bit of money on people speculating on their keys right if it doesn't have that then people are less likely to use the that other app whatever that is but the fact that they could make money just on people speculating on them even though they're not speculating it adds a whole different business model and just like I don't know a way to think about it it's quite interesting this concept of being

early is actually a really important part of speculation plus let me give you another example is the largest hip-hop Festival in the world what's it called oh man name we we've talked about this on the show like probably a year ago yeah they dropped a 10,000 nft collection that was a lifetime ticket to their Festival so for the rest of your life you can go every single year not only can you go every year you got it which one is it rolling loud rolling loud rolling loud that's it yeah rolling loud so narly can you go every year you could go to different they have like concerts all or festivals around the world you could go to different

locations right so that is an example of they sold this as a lifetime pass and really what people were betting on there was being early is going to matter because you're betting that rolling loud as a business is going to continue to be successful that their festivals are going to increase in demand they're going to do more around the world that's a bet on being early and if you're right then your lifetime more access right more valuable yeah not just Equity it's about betting in to get access it's about betting in to get better reputation it's about betting a bunch of different things right that's cool that's very interesting there's one other form of speculation that comes and

I think we're all familiar with it which is aird drops right now Jay and I typically have not always normally are against the way that most people do aird drops in terms of like flaunting like Hey we're doing an aird drop come aird drop Farm to get volume like blur Jay and I have always been against what blur has done for mul reasons I mean blur has made no money doing this they've just completely ruined good businesses like openc and others and they just brought a bunch of people over literally to do nothing but farm this token and then people who had the token already or who get the token literally just inflates it and so the token has done terribly right so it's a pretty shitty way for everyone to do that type of air drop so I don't like that there are other irir drops

that are important which are to decentralize and to do this the right way and to reward your users and to reward your like developers and like the way air arbitrum and optimism have done it these are smart aird drops you're rewarding the key Dows and people building on your ecosystem so that you can fund them to build more okay that's very very smart the way that blurred did it was like a just trying to steal users and doing it in a way that just basically gave value to almost nobody so I think that's stupid what's interesting about frex way of their air drop which remember this is a speculative nature a lot of people are using frch not just because of the fun and thing that we were just talking about but also because they want to make some money on this airdrop but the way that frenic did this

is actually really smart and so for those that are building apps pay attention to this blur did it where you can airdrop Farm but you the blur themselves made no money so kind of not the smartest idea frch if you want to farm their airdrop they make money every time that you try to farm frch has made something like I don't know what it's at now 30 million could be more than that J have you looked recently it's it's somewhere in the tens of Millions of dollars in like two months it's actually insane what they've done and the reason why I think this is smart is one it's more of a controlled airdrop farming because the only way that people can really airdrop Farm is they have to also make money in the speculations that they're doing inside the game otherwise they're just pissing out 5% or 10% of

every transaction they make to creators and to frch right so like if you're going to air drop farming you have to be quite smart about it if you're air drop farming and you're not there's other people at least the other side making money in terms of creators that are on frch are Mak money and frch itself is making money which the reason why that's great is they've built a strong Sound business right and even if frch in the way it exists today doesn't work out they've made $30 million what did that do that around allowed them to get a raise from I forget who Paradigm paradig yeah so they've got extra Capital there plus they've made $30 million so they can hire so they made they've made $18 million as of October 2nd I don't have a DAT chart here right you're not far off

yeah right and so they've used speculation of this airdrop to generate a ton of Revenue and now they can make a better application as a result of it and people are having fun playing on friend Tech it's kind of been a win-win for everyone whereas blur was the complete opposite it was a almost a lose for everyone except I actually don't know who won someone has to win right there's always someone on the other side he lost money someone must have won something blur Wings longterm because they certainly I don't think they're going to disappear like they still have over 50% of the nft trading volume right and their plan is to I'm not up to date on blur and their plans but I know that they they have they're planning to introduce a fee a trading they got to

learn a lot about their app and stuff by getting a lot of users on it lot and a lot of activity so fine but okay so one person Ben one team benefited from that's it whereas friend Tech it's like everyone's kind of benefiting which is kind of cool and so like when this airdrop comes it's going to be pretty fun I have no idea how much money everyone's going to make from it doesn't really matter the key thing is is that they're actually generating a real business from this and a real Revenue stream that can then allow them to build whatever comes next and I think that's just so smart so if you're going to do an airdrop I think the way that friend teas on this is actually is pretty genius okay before we wrap I've got to ask is speculation a good thing or a bad

thing because I think what we're saying is if you're a a founder are a builder that's building an app speculation plus is an incredible growth tactic growth strategy if you lean into it you can grow much faster than the traditional ways because you are going to get a lot of energy because speculation is fun and people want to make money everyone's looking for the next get get rich but there's the dangers of it because a lot of people get wrecked when you have speculation frch being the great example there is going to be more losers than winners on friend Tech usually that's the way it goes usually there's a few people who make a lot and then a lot of

people who lose a little you know what I mean yeah but if the utility is good enough then just because you lost I don't know 100 bucks on a key for whatever if you actually got a lot of fun in that chat then that's fine right like in the web 2 world you were going to lose that 100 bucks anyway if that's what it cost right and so like I think if the key thing is speculation by itself no good not a big fan of that right I think that's when people are going to lose like we with Pepe and basically most other meme coins but when it's utility first speculation after speculation to amplify whatever that utility is I actually think it's pretty cool and I think a lot of good can come from it yes people are going to lose money I don't know it's I was gonna say

I don't think everyone's in it for money but like I'm pretty sure most people are in frch for money but I think we need to think Beyond just FR Tech and I think there's going to be many other apps and things that are going to have speculation plus and I think yeah sure people are always going to lose money those things but I don't think that's going to matter as long as they got really good utility from it so I don't know where that balance sits it's going to be really hard to figure out but I think frch is the first sort of well one of the first iterations on this and so we'll see but I I think it's a big game for everyone right even like you think of like pudgy Penguins right that was the craziest speculative thing ever where that whole story you wrote a pro

report on it and it now is working out for everyone right and it's like well that was fun people probably lost in other ways but they like that one so it's like they'll probably stick around right funny the funny thing about that story is there's a quote from Luca Nets saying that when they closed the deal and he bought pudgy for $2.5 million he was like I would have paid 10 million for it he said he thought it was worth way more and the main reason being at that time pugy had made $6 million in the last 12 months off of royalties so he was like I'm paying 2.5 million for something that made six million in Revenue in the last year now we all know now fast forward Roy has gone to zero

basically so that Revenue might no longer exist but he was fully willing to pay more and I think you're right like in the end if you listen this podcast you're a Speculator right like you're a risk taker you're a builder whether you're investing in crypto web 3 whether you're trying to get a job in crypto web 3 whether you're building a company in crypto web 3 you're speculating in some way and I think that this is something we all need to I don't know kind of wrap our heads around and consider how you can use speculation plus utility together because I think it can lead to it's like an amplification or like rocket fuel on an already great idea or great app and while I used to think that speculation was very Niche I think as

again as long as there's utility with some speculation on top of that I think a lot of people are going to be down with that I think think again if it's only speculation there's not a lot of people that are in they're like I don't get it I don't care about it but if you can make it a game if you can use it for other means then I think people are gonna be like wait so I can get the product that I already buy and then I might be able to make money off of it that's going to onboard a lot of people into the bond chain World which is weird for me to say because I've always said I hate the gambling aspect of crypto and now I'm like you know what that's probably gonna onboard a ton of people but it kind of makes sense it's

just the way the world's going with everything moving online and just like I don't know the world seems to be more effective these days on a lot of different areas so we got to find a clip of one of the early podcasts from a few years ago of Ky slamming speculation and everyone betting in this space and put it next to this new clip hey look at us even we change even we grow that's wrap thanks so much for listening in everybody appreciate you all have yourselves a great week oh couple quick ctas if you are a writer we're looking to hire right now check out a link in the show not we want to build and continue to grow our team because we're prepping for the bull market it's coming at some point we don't know when but it's coming so we're speculating we're yeah we are definitely

speculating I think it's going to pay off for us so yeah we'd love to have you join your team if you're a writer you're passion the space check out the job application in the show notes have yourselves a great week everybody go speculate thank you for listening to web through Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet if you enjoyed this episode episode please share it and subscribe or follow so that you don't miss the next one while you're at it there's a link in the description for our free newsletter where we provide timely and relevant web3 insights so you can confidently build and invest in web 3 make sure to subscribe today one final note this podcast is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice crypto and web3 are risky and you should

never invest more than you're willing to lose thank you friends and see you in the next one