NFT Genius CEO reveals Gaia, a music NFT marketplace built on Flow

Ashton Addison: How did your background lead you to blockchain and then to starting NFT Genius?▶ 00:20

Jeremy Born: I've been in crypto since about 2016. A friend told me to buy bitcoin in 2014 and I didn't do it. Before that I consulted for Fortune 500 brands on digital marketing, using geolocation and mapping technologies to drive customer engagement in real time. Then I got into artificial intelligence and machine learning, including chatbots and analytics that predict what customers will ultimately want. The developers I worked with kept telling me to look at blockchain and crypto, so I took a second look. What I saw was atrocious. The interfaces looked like they were stuck in 1992 and the data was a mess. Even the price of bitcoin is different on every exchange. So I wanted to help clean that up, and the analytics platform we built under Coin Genius was meant to create consistency. Then we moved into events, including NFT Day, and I caught the NFT bug. It was worse than the crypto bug, because I come from digital content and content creation. So I decided to dive in and create our own product, Bitcoin Origins. It's the first time anybody tried to merge storytelling with NFTs, and we did it on the WAX blockchain. It tells the story of bitcoin from the white paper to today. We're on moment five out of 15, we've booked a couple of million dollars in revenue, and we're now known as the high-end art storytellers of the crypto space.

Ashton: How do you build stories into NFTs, and what does Bitcoin Origins add beyond a picture or a GIF?▶ 04:09

Jeremy: NFTs are our art in some capacity, but they're more than that, and I think people miss what's possible. William Quigley, the CEO of WAX, always says NFTs are mini supercomputers. In the same way you can program crypto to do whatever you want, you can program NFTs to do whatever you want. They can evolve over time. After an NFT has been traded 50 times, maybe it morphs into something else. Or you could tie it to real-time analytics, in something like fantasy sports. We're trying to start telling a story that can grow into that, and you do it with community. Every card has a hidden clue that leads to part of the story. If you hold one card and somebody else holds another, the treasure hunt doesn't make sense unless you talk about it in the community. That has driven an organic community experience I haven't seen before. At the end of it, a whole bitcoin is the prize. You can win it as a community, as a small group or as an individual. It's also free to play. You can look at everything we've released on AtomicAssets, so in theory you don't have to buy anything. It's like playing Candy Crush without spending a dime. It takes a lot longer, but you can do it. We're at the end of our first chapter, The Uprising, now that the fifth moment has been released. Because we've grown so much, we're adding more bitcoin, so there will be multiple bitcoin prizes along this journey.

Ashton: How are the NFTs released, and where can people trade them afterwards?▶ 07:09

Jeremy: This set is on the WAX blockchain. Our primary sale is on our website, btcorigins.com, and the secondary market is mostly AtomicHub. We do a drop with every moment, usually on a Friday. It works like packs, but ours are blocks, like blocks in the blockchain. There are three sizes. A $20 block gives you one card. A $200 or $250 block gives you a couple of cards and some really special rare items. Then there's our highly coveted four-megabyte block, which costs $500. It comes with a number of cards and a block reward, and it goes for quite a bit on the secondary market. Each block carries different parts of the story, clues, redemptions and surprises that no one sees coming. We try to keep the community engaged with twists and turns because it gives people something to talk about. On the secondary market, hardcore collectors are trying to complete moments or sets. We just released the creation of Mt. Gox, which is really meaningful to a lot of people who were there. Moments like Silk Road evoke an emotional response, and each speaks differently to different people. Some collectors say they're never selling. They just want to own a piece of bitcoin history.

Ashton: How can people get involved in the hunt?▶ 12:40

Jeremy: A good way is to jump into the community. Our official Telegram channel is t.me/bitcoinorigins, and we'll open a Discord soon because there are so many layers to what we're doing. On hunt.btcorigins.com you can see where we are in the hunt and how you can jump in and help. The puzzles unlock new moments and hidden cards, and some have never been found to date. Some go back to moment two, and people don't even know about them until I just said it out loud. Some quests end up on Google Maps in the middle of Africa, where you're trying to find a hidden symbol on a building. So we take you around the world while educating people about the history of bitcoin and the history of money. We're taking you on a journey to help you understand fundamentally what bitcoin is about. It's about way more than just money. It's about community and trust, taking trust away from centralized governing parties and putting the power back in the hands of the people.

Ashton: What are the advantages and disadvantages of WAX compared with Ethereum, and do you expect them to merge?▶ 09:40

Jeremy: There are a lot of incredible technologies addressing the problems with Ethereum, and WAX is one of them. There are little to no gas fees, because you're paying for space rather than a transaction fee. Flow is another, and we're doing some work there too. NFT Genius is platform and blockchain agnostic. We want to build where we can provide really good experiences. WAX was our first go-round, and you'll see some big announcements soon on other blockchains like Flow. NBA Top Shot was built on Flow, and I think it has generated about $500 million. It had a $60 million day and just raised over $300 million at a valuation above $2 billion. People are getting the memo about what's possible. There's also a lot of controversy about sustainability and environmental impact on Ethereum, but on Flow and WAX that isn't part of the conversation. It's about putting out product. Say Drake wanted to release a song and a million people wanted it. Selling a million units in a few minutes isn't possible on Ethereum, which wasn't made for scaling. On WAX or Flow you can, and that's really exciting for us.

Ashton: Is there anything new you can share before we go?▶ 15:18

Jeremy: I haven't talked about this out loud before, but we are building a music NFT marketplace on Flow. It's going to be called Gaia. Because we're good at telling stories, this has attracted a lot of attention, and musicians are coming in in a major way. A lot of us on the team are musicians or past musicians. We want to create new, immersive experiences and help artists build closer connections with their true fan base, not just the crypto audience. We feel NFTs are the future of collectibles. We want artists and musicians to come in a thoughtful way, not just for the money grab, so that it's sustainable. You can sign up now for early access at ongaia.com. This is the first announcement of it, here on your show.