Bad Crypto Podcast hosts turn crypto leaders into superhero NFT cards on WAX

Ashton Addison: Can you give us some background on The Bad Crypto Podcast and what you've built around it?▶ 00:45

Joel Comm: We've been doing the show almost three years. It'll be three years on July 18th. We've had about 9 million downloads, we're heard in around 180 countries, and we've done over 500 recordings. We've travelled all over the world and interviewed many of the leaders in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Along the way we've tested this technology ourselves. As Travis likes to say, we're dogfooding it. We've also worked on a community-driven blockchain called BadCoin, which uses five algorithms. How weak or strong your computer is determines your difficulty, and the five algorithms compete to win the block every minute. We think that makes it the most fair blockchain. We also did Virtual Blockchain Week. We decided to do a conference, launched it 30 days later, and had some of the top folks in crypto be part of it. Now we've decided to go into non-fungible tokens and digital collectibles, to see whether that helps move the mass adoption needle forward.

Ashton: What is Blockchain Heroes, and how did the project come about?▶ 02:54

Joel: Blockchain Heroes is a set of 50 digital collectible trading cards inspired by real-world blockchain and cryptocurrency personalities. They're tongue-in-cheek parody cards. What if the leaders of the space were superheroes? I mean, they kind of are in their own right. But what if they had superpowers and fought the evil centralizers? Travis and I have been developing NFTs since the beginning of 2020. We started something called Proof of Listening for our podcast audience. If we had Ron Paul on the show, we could generate a special non-fungible token and drop it into the wallets of people who listened and filled out a form within 72 hours of the NFT going live. Then COVID and the lockdowns hit, and we mobilized to put on the first blockchain virtual event to come out of the lockdown. After that, we revisited NFT issuance once we saw what Topps and WAX did with the Garbage Pail Kids brand. They put out a set of collectible trading cards on the WAX blockchain, and it sold out in 28 hours. We finally saw a mechanism for selling, delivering and trading these cards. We went to WAX Labs, which has a war chest of 100 million WAX set aside for projects they vote to fund. We submitted a proposal and won, so WAX Labs is funding this project. It launches on August 4th, with a pre-sale on August 1st. We'd actually been planning to sell small runs on OpenSea. Five days after we talked about a Garbage Pail Kids-style set, Topps and WAX announced their partnership.

Ashton: For people new to crypto, what is a non-fungible token and what extra value does it provide?▶ 06:08

Joel: If I exchange one dollar bill for another, they're fungible. They're exchangeable for one that's exactly the same. But if I swap my back-row ticket for your front-row ticket, those are not the same. They're non-fungible. They both have value, but they're not identical. I can trade a Bitcoin for a Bitcoin, but I can't swap this CryptoKitty for that CryptoKitty unless we agree they're the same value. NFTs can be coupons, business cards, invitations, deal offers. What really got us going was digital collectibles, and seeing companies like Topps get involved. The head of Marvel games has joined the board on WAX, and Capcom, which owns Street Fighter, just announced it's putting Street Fighter on the WAX blockchain. Items within games can be NFTs you trade. If I don't need this armor anymore, I can sell it on a secondary market to somebody who wants it, and they can use it in their game.

Ashton: Is this like a digital version of baseball or Magic: The Gathering cards, with the blockchain proving authenticity?▶ 08:18

Joel: Very much so. Each one is pegged directly to an account, so you have proof of ownership of that particular card. A baseball card is just a static picture. With NFTs you can create what are basically mini movies that you hold in your wallet. Back in the day they'd sell a pack of cards with a Mickey Mantle rookie in it, and that card now sells for $30,000 to $50,000. Topps makes nothing from that. With an NFT and smart contracts, when a card is sold on a secondary market, 8% is kicked back to the creators, which in that case is Topps. About 2% goes to whoever owns the secondary market, and 90% goes to the person who owned the card. It creates a new secondary revenue stream that never existed before in digital collectibles.

Ashton: What do the cards look like, and what are you trying to achieve with them?▶ 10:07

Joel: We've got a gallery on our Instagram, BC Heroes, where you can see all 50 heroes. We don't say who the heroes are inspired by, except for this one, called Genesis, which is obviously a nod to Satoshi Nakamoto, who wrote the Bitcoin white paper. We're not tooting our own horn on the art, because we didn't design it. We went to Upwork and interviewed more than 60 illustrators. We auditioned 30-plus, then picked 10, then five. Each of the five created ten cards in their own class. There are five classes: the Defenders, the Champions, the Creators, the Boosters and the Celestials. Each character has a story on the back of the card, along with stats. It's not a game, so the stats don't mean hit points or shields. They just add flavor. There are also levels of rarity. Common cards are easy to get, and as rarity increases, fewer cards are available. The uncommon cards have a comic book style, and the rare cards have a DaVinci-type style. At epic, we start to bring animation in, so you're holding something in your wallet that has motion. We can't show the legendary, mythic or golden fury cards yet, because they haven't been revealed. Our goals are twofold. One is to create the most badass set of collectible digital trading cards made for blockchain yet. The other is to build a community that's well served and really enjoys buying, selling and trading these cards.

Ashton: How will the marketplace work, and how will people trade cards?▶ 13:53

Joel: With Garbage Pail Kids on WAX, a couple of secondary markets reached out and set up partnerships ahead of the launch. We've partnered with WAX, and those same partners have reached out to us. So we're taking what they did and building it at BCHeroes.com. You'll have a place to shop and buy packs, an inventory where you can see your cards, and a catalog of all the cards revealed up to that point. You'll also have a place to trade with other community members. Since it's connected to the WAX blockchain, you can also connect your WAX wallet to the partner marketplace sites and list your cards at a price you choose. When someone buys a card, a percentage comes back to us as the creators and a percentage goes to the marketplace. The rest goes to the person who owned the card before.

Ashton: How can people follow the reveals up to launch, and what do they need to do to start trading?▶ 15:35

Joel: Go to BCHeroes.com and subscribe to the mailing list. We'll send you one or two updates a week. We're also growing our Telegram, which has about 500 people already, at t.me/bcheroes. We're giving away a pack every day in July, in different forms on social media. Every Wednesday night we hold a community meeting called the Hero Report. We do the latest reveals, show the next level up in card rarities, share some surprises, do giveaways and get community feedback. We're also working with partners like Cointelegraph and CoinGecko, with others to be announced, on promotional NFTs. They're collectible in their own right, one of a kind and available for a limited time. August 4th is the sale date for people who want to buy with US dollars. Many people want to buy packs with their WAX cryptocurrency, so we're doing a pre-sale on August 1st to give them first shot. The fiat sale happens on the 4th.