Donnie Dinch on NFT wallets and Web3 adoption at Bitski

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from Block West capital for investment pitch media and today on the Crypto Coin Show we have with us Donnie dinch CEO of bitsky Donnie welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time yeah Ashton thanks for having me excited to be here you're very welcome I'm looking forward to your insights on nfts and web3 I'm looking forward to you know

0:21the next evolution of nfts and what will happen in this next Bull cycle and I'm interested in your insights and what your team has built at bitsky let's just dive straight into it by talking a little bit about what your team has built so far at bitsky with regards to nfts and then we'll dive into all the details yeah absolutely so I mean for bitsky the

0:42biggest you know North Star that we've been really focused on is how do we enable the idea of digital ownership for anybody and we've really kind of nailed that down to what we think is the you know most common denominator is the wallet and we see the wallet is probably the most important piece of consumer software over the next 20 to 30 years and we're still very early stages in

0:59what that looks like and you know the amount of people that can actually use those and so the core product for bitsky is our wallet offering which is you know available on a web it's available as an IOS app we have an Android app in the in you know in development as well this idea is almost like a Gmail of wallets you don't have to worry about security you

1:17don't have to worry about you know a lot of complex you know seed phrase management or anything like that you just you created a busy wallet and you're able to interact with web3 properties we you know for us again it's really how do we get everyone on board we see huge opportunities with nfts around you know loyalty around gaming you know digital Collectibles

1:36obviously has had a huge wave over the past year and really in order for people to participate in this they need to have a place to put all this stuff and so that's really where we kind of focus on in addition to that we've built you know a handful of adjacent features that are great for brands or entities coming into web3 for the you know helping them

1:52with the distribution and onboarding folks so whether that's selling an nft with a credit card or giving them away with just a link I'm really just helping it be easy for people to get that first nft into their wallet wow I like those little added features at the end there and I'm interested to learn more about this core wallet functionality obviously it's a huge the

2:11main barrier to entry of getting millions of people in is you know they have to have a wallet of some sort to store their digital assets and you know writing on the private keys or you know trusting certain entities everyone sort of has to make their own decision on how they're going to go about it with the now thousands of wallets that are popping up what's the best choice you

2:31mentioned they're about not having to write down the private keys not having to worry about the security maybe you can talk about you know your approach to building a wallet like this that it's going to allow millions of people to have a wallet without having to worry about these things how are you approaching that sort of balancing safety security decentralization access

2:54yeah absolutely I think it really comes down to optionality I think we have an Enthusiast group of people in web3 that you know really have taken to the idea of self-custody this idea of self-sovereignty of assets and I think that's great optionality to have that in this in the system I don't think it should be a requirement for anyone to participate

3:13and so that's really where bitsky kind of comes in that we've you know basically built our own Hardware infrastructure for Key Management that'll you know you can think of bitsy almost like four billion lock boxes or four billion ledgers in the cloud so it's a hybrid between having your own device that you have in a you know fireproof safe but much more safe in our

3:31mind than have any browser extension where your keys are stored in memory and so for us we see this is The Sweet Spot we're as close to sort of you know old Hardware storage as you can possibly have but with the accessibility that we're all sort of familiar with just like clicking a button something happening on the internet definitely and you mentioned there your team has mobile

3:49applications which are great and there's many different ways you can have wallets you know whether it's on your trezor Hardware wallet or in the crypto exchange and everything sort of in between whether it's hot or cold where exactly you could specify do you lie in that sense you know you're not having an extension on the web browser as you know there are

4:10Ways that they could potentially be you know exposed or do you guys have that so we actually I guess you know maybe Pat out of the back a little bit there may or may not be an extension and development but I think that for us again you can think of your bitsky account as a single sign-on oauth compliant wallet so you can connect it whatever platform that you're on

4:34You know I think that ultimately you know for us it's just really about making sure that's a seamless experience it's one that's incredibly secure you know the sacrifice that you make for having self sovereignty is that you have the responsibility of all of the you know all keeping all of your assets safe and so for us you know whether are we cold

4:55or are we hot it's a great question because we really do lie right in the middle and it's in it's very you know it's its own category in a lot of ways with the architecture that we've used you know prior to crypto there really wasn't a great reason for an individual to have a public private key cryptographic pairing it was built for you know managing certificates

5:15online a lot of back-end systems and things of that nature but never for individuals and so we're kind of the mind that in a lot of ways that should still be you know the way like you shouldn't necessarily have total or you shouldn't need to have carte blanche access to a private key in order to interact in this space and so we try to provide the Best of

5:32Both Worlds where the keys aren't sort of exportable from our Hardware but you have really easy access to you know sign and things whether it's from an IOS app or a browser or wherever you know an Xbox wherever you're spending time definitely and with regards to storing nfts in the wallet and you know the nft craze that we saw throughout 2021 and now you know sort of a die off of

5:55you know volumes on nft marketplaces going down 95 plus percent but I don't expect nfts to really disappear anywhere anytime soon maybe an evolution of what the future of nfts are looking like how are you and your team building upon a bit ski wallet to sort of provide for the potential future of what nfts will turn into yeah I mean I think that ultimately you

6:21know the collectible Market over the past 18 months has obviously been you know just nuts what we've seen is a lot of the I would say core D5 Primitives being applied to non-fungible tokens in the way that we've seen these 10 000 you know image collections come up ultimately I think a lot of what we've seen with nfts is we've you know they do one you know they do a couple

6:39cool things but one thing is that you have liquidity with them and so you know the use case that we've seen to date is one that is really just about liquidity and speculation I like to create like you know buying a set of golf clubs just to fill on eBay versus actually use and so what we see with the future of nfts is people using them and doing

6:57interesting things with them and we see you know again and back so it's and then with loyalty we see that becoming more and more compelling from a brand perspective that want to you know not necessarily just reach the you know we've seen a lot of Brands over the past you know 18 months do things to reach the core web3 audience but now you're seeing Brands expand

7:23Beyond those sort of marketing activations and like how do we build systems that for all of our users or all of our you know members but we take advantage of web3 Primitives but we don't necessarily require them to be experts in the space so we see a lot of that around loyalty which I think will be quite exciting over the next you know six to

7:3912 months definitely and I have seen a lot of large Brands some of the largest companies in the world that are starting to create nft collections some of them just testing the water some of them seem to be going full out and obviously they need a place to connect with their fans to get those nfts to them and the wallets are sort of important for that

8:01Are you working with big companies on nfts or do you see that as a major factor for sort of the next wave of people getting into nfts that aren't involved in finance or crypto I absolutely I think yeah so we've done you know we've done a lot with candy with NLP with you know Levi's Adidas the US Open we've worked with a bunch of different brands WWE for the distribution of

8:27nfts over the past you know year or so and I think what you're seeing now is you know they were very much you're right testing the waters these are sort of marketing initiatives with very tight kpis over a very tight timeline and a few of them now have like you know quite a bit of conviction in the opportunity with nfts outside of just

8:46selling them and using that as a revenue stream yeah I think you know you know you saw that you know the announcement from the Starbucks a couple weeks ago around you know you know them executing on a web 3 loyalty program I don't know if you recall but you know Starbucks set the tone for what a mobile just mobile ordering looked like and a mobile reward system for you know

9:06such a huge huge retailer and so it's it's quite it's quite exciting I think that's rubbed up a lot of interest I think that people sort of look at Starbucks as a bit of an Innovative thought leader in that way and so we've been you know receiving tons and tons of inbound on those type of things well and that's a great point I think I read that Starbucks you know they have

9:25one of them like with the way that they built points up in their app it was one of the most like used in-app currencies that's not an actual you know government currency of people that have their Starbucks money in their Starbucks app and if they're moving that into nfts which I'm sure eventually then that's going to bring millions of people just in you know getting their

9:47coffees and having an nft at the same time absolutely and there's such a core retentive user base there I mean how many how many you know whether it's restaurants or not you know have people coming back five days a week and have that sort of like dedication and loyalty it's quite phenomenal so as far as the opportunity I think that they're a great one to get it

10:04started and I think that you know there's a lot of loyalty programs across other whether it's you know FNB or other sort of consumer Brands that would love to have the retention and engagement that you're seeing at Starbucks and so yeah we're excited about that over the next six months for sure definitely and you mentioned about you know not

10:22just speculating on the nfts and flipping them but actually having utility and actually using them and you know I'm using them but eventually you know they're increasing in value and maybe you're able to sell it off because with nfts you own it you know it's not like a loyalty points for airlines that you can't just set sell it to your friend because sort of

10:40in your account you don't really own it with nfts you know you're supposed to be owning that property which I think is the major difference here do you see like the use of these large companies sort of creating marketplaces with the nfts where you know say you're a loyal Starbucks member for many years you know you have a lot of accrued value that you're able to actually

11:07capitalize on besides just getting more free coffees yeah absolutely I think that this is where I think you might have mentioned or asked us a little bit ago but I think nfts and distribution of points you know whether loyalty points or what have you are very much the way in most in which most people are going to get digital currencies and so you know I think it's it's

11:28less likely that we're going to see you know a token that's been created by a bunch of you know crypto native people and that be the token that a lot of people use a lot of places where I think it's actually much more likely that you know let's hypothetically say a Starbucks token does become you know erc20 I think that could arguably be a pretty large standard of you know

11:47type of digital assets that people are using and so as opposed to you know being like crypto native first it might be a brand that just decides to take everything you know all of their sort of inventory and assets over to a token so I think there's a lot of compelling opportunities there for sort of cross-pollination of Brands you know leveraging some of the

12:05interesting D5 Primitives you know different like sort of liquidity pools that you could have of and just having these interesting exchange rates I don't know five Starbucks tokens is worth you know one Toys R Us token or whatever I have no idea what the what the conversion is but the idea that there could be a market created around these apps that's actually quite

12:22compelling I think one of the most interesting things about you know even like Airline points is the idea that you know I or I can take credit card points and I can you know switch them over to you know Airline points and having that conversion it's kind of laborious and it's not like a very user-friendly thing it's generally an advanced thing

12:38But I could see that becoming a very just common use case and wherever you're spending time or wherever you're building loyalty or crewing points becomes sort of the way that you know it's under you even create your own you can create like sort of economic value for yourself I think that you know one thing about having these assets it's great that

12:54they're look you know that they're liquid and you can sell them but the other part of that is that you can accrue value and so you can do things to increase the value of the tokens that you have whether that's fine you know maybe it's an nft that you know changes state after you buy I don't know 300 copies and then now that means you get 50 off coffee for the rest of the player who

13:11knows what it is but I think that you know the more that I do the you know what I can as a brand what I can what kind of experiences can I create that will drive like an increase in like Perpetual engagement definitely and you know having an nft wallet in a world of many wallets that are trying to sort of compete to be the go-to for mainstream adoption

13:34What do you see as some of those key factors to bitski staying on top is it you know partnering with these large corporations or finding the next niche in which nfts will be popular to ensure that you know you're getting more user growth how are you approaching that with growth for bitsky yeah absolutely I mean I think candidly we're still very much we in web 3 are

13:57very much in the infrastructure phase of the industry a lot of the core components and Primitives are still being ironed out whether that you know it's you know this isn't you know in 2010 you could spin up a startup just using AWS and a lot of the services that exit there and obviously that's even quicker nowadays where you know it's it's kind of like

14:15pre-dat experience right now in web3 there's you have to roll your own services in a lot of situations and so for us it's about building non-readable features that we think have not just a single use case appeal that can be used across a you know a numerous different potential opportunities what brands or individuals want to do with web3 and so I mean for us we've

14:37we've always kind of we've been excited about this since 2018 and we've known that this idea of ownership this idea of asset liquidity and valuable are going to be inevitable and so for us we want to make sure that we're just positioned that when these Brands are coming that you know it's obvious that bit is the right choice but this is the wallet in which you know you wanna

14:56it's the only one that you can use to really get the you know the 100 million people that you want to come into the space so for us it's really getting a good understanding of what that audience needs and at the same time addressing the core audience that's in this phase we again we're not of the mind that it has to be black and white but you know we're only building a wallet

15:13for new people you know we looked at products like Robin Hood that have done a really good job of building sort of you know fake casual trading app but progressively is at a lot of complex you know features now it's not replacing anybody's Bloomberg terminal but it's certainly taken a lot of the Casual investment away from other brokerages whether

15:28it's because of high fees or fees in general which is you know for us we want someone five years from now to be able to install you know a bit ski wallet quickly understand they can just own something but if they have gone down the crypto rabbit hole and they you know are excited about doing swaps or all these different sort of crypto native

15:44things that they have the opportunity to do that as well definitely and in terms of the product you know integrating with some of these Technologies to make it ease of use does it connect into like minting locations or nft marketplaces and sort of seamlessly you know say you want to sell the nft in your wallet how many different Avenues do you

16:06have to do that through bitsky so that's a great question so a lot of a lot of the more popular products have bit pee is the native supported wallet so if you go to openc for example you can just sign in directly with your BP account we have also on our mobile app support wallet connect which allows you to effectively connect to any web3 property so if you basically and

16:27right now we support ethereum and polygon in BNB and we'll be looking to go multi-chain over the next you know a couple quarters but effectively any place that wallet connect is supported you'll be able to use your biscuit wallet okay that's great to know and it's hard to have a crystal ball but you know with the volumes down on nfts it seems like there's a lot of innovative

16:49sort of nft 2.0 projects that are coming out and I'm guessing that there's definitely going to be a correlation to you know Bitcoin prices ethereum prices and the cryptocurrency markets but do you have any anticipation of which areas or when you know nft volumes will start to grow and more interest in it yeah I mean I think that I think that you're right there is this sort of

17:12second S curve of sort of people that have you know been exposed to nfts over the past you know year or so and now I've started to build some pretty compelling experiences I think the you know the Silver Lining over of you know of the whole wave is the over the past 18 months have been the amount of capital that's gone into great Founders and I think that's the other

17:29part of it is that you know you know I've been in Silicon Valley for over you know 10 years and some of the best Builders of consumer products that I've seen in Engineers are now working on really compelling web 3 experiences Beyond just minting that ones that where you're actually using nfts and so that's really what I'm excited about I think is probably the largest you know bull

17:46indicator for me is just the talent and capital that have come into the space and those people are you know totally I would say pretty insensitive to the price of ethereum or Bitcoin right now they're just you know building a product and it just happens to use this new technology definitely and you know smart investors they see you know the technology hasn't has only

18:06gotten better since you know the peaks of nft last year I took continuing to grow with all this Capital now seems like a good opportunity to be getting involved and getting nfts because they don't have that overvalued hype from you know the retail jumping in and trying to make quick money on it yeah that's right that's right that yeah 100 accurate

18:27awesome and you know for people that want to learn more about bits Keys like updates and just learn how they can say they're already using a different wallet they want to start moving stuff into bitsky what's the best way for them to like start testing it out yeah you can go to bitsky.com right now and create a Wallet create a bit ski account if you install the IOS app

18:50you can also follow your other wallet so if you have a metamask account what have you can you can connect that to the IOS app and you can start get notifications on activity that's happening in your wallet when you receive assets when anything that really happens on chain with respect to your wallet you'll get sort of some amount of alerts for that we'll also we're

19:08adding a new feature that will allow you to establish for price alerts for if you're keeping an eye on things so yeah it's very easy to get started bitski.com amazing thank you so much Donnie for the insights into nfts and the bitsky wallet I'm going to get it on my phone right now and start using it and connect it to my openc and check it out

19:31I appreciate all your insights into the industry and all the best on bitsky moving forward and let's follow up in the near future absolutely thanks for having me