Animoca Brands: Building an NFT Portfolio with low investment on Sandbox, Axie Infinity and more!

So first of all, when it comes to portfolio, if you want to just get into the space, there are many ways of doing it, whether it is on Sandbox, whether it's Axie Infinity, F1 Delta Time. I would basically first pick a community that is closest to you, because when it comes to NFT and gaming, it is very much the community in the world that you're most comfortable with. If you like motorsports, go to REV Racing, go to F1 Delta Time. If you are looking to join the largest community that has the most liquidity, maybe join Axie Infinity, and they've got some great games there as well. If you are comfortable with the concepts on real estate and that's a world that you were familiar with, Sandbox, and building out those experiences. The space is young. My general view is that if you go with the mature players, it is difficult to not have some value. And if it's a thousand dollars, at worst you'll have a great education, but at best you'll probably be able to make a return, because I view the space like buying real estate wherever you are living today 30 or 40 years ago. You look at the macro: there's 2.7 billion gamers, there's 4.5 billion people online, there's like eight to nine million people, nine billion people in the world, and there's maybe one and a half million people that have NFTs. The gap is huge. So unless you believe that NFTs is going to be simply limited to a max audience of 10 million people, which by the way some people think it's a fad, so there is that. But if that's what you believe, then maybe you shouldn't invest at all. But if you do believe that digital property rights is important and that non-fungible tokens represent that, then really you are still at the earliest of stages, and they can grow. If you look at the legacy of things like CryptoPunks and now Bored Apes, and genesis ones like Meebits, these are ones you know who built it, what's the background. I think of it almost as a sort of art from the Renaissance. Not everything is going to be the Mona Lisa, but if you're able to get some pieces of art even from obscure artists from that era, it will accrue value because it was such a pivotal time. So that's kind of where we are right now. That's obviously not going to be there forever because the market matures, and so I think we're still at this stage. So the key is just to make sure that when you buy NFTs, you buy it with credible projects with credible teams, because it's very hard for a new person to determine the credibility of a project in and of itself. The tools aren't there for laymen to know: is the metadata right? Is it on IPFS? All these things. So following the groups and organizations that have the best reputations or recommended reputations, who do they follow, who are their signals? It's a study as well. If you wanted to buy art, you don't just go buy the first thing that comes out from Sotheby's, you study it. I tell people about entering the NFT space: it's like buying a car. People don't just walk into a store and buy a car like candy. Maybe some do, but most of us don't. We think about it: what's the utility? Does it have value? Is there a resell mechanic? Can I sell it to someone? What's the service support? Who's here to help me when the car has a problem? Can I easily change the tires, or do I have to wait three months to be delivered from Italy? These are all things that you come into thinking when you research the purchase of a car. I think NFTs are exactly the same. You have to study it. Maybe you don't need to make money from it, but it's still a conscious, purposeful decision, and that value process is more valuable than the thousand dollars you put in. In that time, you know how many people learn about the ins and outs of a good car before they buy the car? Suddenly they know about the engine, suddenly they know about what's comfortable, suddenly they know everything, and then they can make an informed decision. That's the path, and I recommend this for everyone. It's not even the money.

In terms of children, this is the future. In the time when we were very focused around edtech, I was one of the most focused. I've co-founded some meta companies and I'm on the board of a number of schools, because that's still something that I feel passionate about. It's just so hard to make money there, but anyway, that's a different story altogether. I sometimes joke about the fact that I make money in one industry and I spend it all on edtech. I still do that. I still spend on education, I still fund companies because I think it's important, but I won't ask anyone to invest with me because it's such a tough area. But anyway, going back to this point: parents ask this question to me a lot because they're like, 'Oh, I don't want my children to be playing games,' and whatever. What I tell them is that the world in which they are in, this is their world. It's a space we don't understand. There's an interesting study, I forget who cited it, but basically they were saying that 91% of all kids play games. That doesn't surprise us, probably. For me, it's more surprising the 9% that are not playing games. What are they doing? But what's interesting is that juxtaposed against how many parents play games with their kids, it's like 10%. But you take replace games with another kind of game, which is sports like basketball, and the number changes way high, it's like 70 or 80%. And even if I'm not able to play with you, I'll watch your basketball game, I'll watch your swimming, I'll watch your football game, so I have an understanding. I see what's happening. But with games, you're in a screen, I'm not there, I can't see it, and so it's alien to me. So the only thing I see as a parent is a person who's looking at a screen. And then here's the other thing I tell them: parents say, 'Oh, it's dinner time,' but right at that moment in time, he's probably in the middle of a match, he's probably playing with five of his friends. And when someone comes and turns off the computer because they're mad because they didn't come in for dinner, what happens is you let down your community, you let down your friends, and then you're supposed to sit on the dinner table and be happy and smile, and no, you're ill-tempered because of the games. But actually, of course, if he was playing a football game and he was in the middle of a match, maybe with 15 more minutes to go, nobody would say dinner time. So to me, it's not a question of the digital aspect, it's still a human aspect. It's just that we lack the generational understanding because we're not in their world. And I think the other thing is with technology, size and experience and traditional aged skill doesn't matter, because the fact that I am taller makes no difference in the video game. So as a young kid, I can be really good at basketball, I can be good at football vis-a-vis my children, so we can have a relationship where you can still gain from that. But in video games, chances are most parents are going to be pretty bad at it, and in fact it's the children who will lead them. In my own experience, if parents are open to create pure relationships with their children, I think it's very empowering for children. Of course, as parents, the relationship I have with my mom in particular is really more hierarchical because of the way that we were raised. It's not one that I think we should have with our children today, it's not one I aspire to have, because we live longer, life is different, and that means we have to be more open to our vulnerabilities. We can't be best at everything, we can't know all the answers. In fact, we shouldn't, and we can't. I think that's something that we're not as comfortable with because of the way that we were brought up. But with the virtual world, that all is the case anyway. They're going to be better at it if they're not already, so you need to be willing to be in their hands as opposed to them in yours.

Yeah, no, it would be a pleasure. Thank you. I think one of the things that we would love to do is, as we educate the space, we do feel that we need to evangelize the space and we need to inform people about it. So maybe one of the steps could be going deep diving into maybe the mechanics or why it matters. There's a lot of stuff here that is beyond philosophical, that has real purpose and meaning.

I think we'll cover more videos, but for everyone who's watching, there's so much to learn, so much to explore. So go to animocabrands.com, follow the socials, and just be involved. And really learn, it's really about learning and getting hands-on with NFTs.