Week 28 of Coffee with Captain is in the books. The news for this week was all over the place. We had some early VeeCon talk, thoughts on web3 businesses, conversation over BAYC, a review of $BLAST token and discussion over onchain gaming. Don’t forget about an interview with the blockchain infrastructure provider, Upnode.
In case you missed any of the shows, below is a small recap of each day with links to the podcast on Apple and Spotify. Links to other streaming platforms can be found on our buzzsprout page. Check out the timestamp if you want to catch the specific interviews.
Monday
VeeCon FUD, BAYC vs Doodles & ThreadGuy’s Arc
This is year three of VeeCon and the conference is being held in Los Angeles, California. This location has drawn some criticism from the web3 community after year one in Minneapolis, Minnesota and year two in Indianapolis, Indiana. The first two years had a smaller community feel, but many are worried that LA will lose that. Not to mention it’s extremely expensive to move through LA. There are still Coffee Crew members who are excited and it’s sure to be a good time for those who can attend.
ThreadGuy’s interview with Andrew Tate is set to release, which people have mixed feelings about. By the time this article is released, the interview will have already been out. Personally, I was only able to watch the first 12 minutes before deciding not to watch it all. However, I did watch several snippets from Macki’s post. You can make your own judgment.
Lastly, a discussion developed on branding, awareness and culture sparked from a post Happy made. How does Doodles and BAYC compare when it comes to brand awareness? The reality is good IP is difficult. Creating good IP may be more difficult than building a new business, and most businesses fail.
Check this episode out on Apple and Spotify.
Tuesday
Building in Public is Fake + Upnode Interview
Blast has a new gold distribution and it seems to please the Blast network maximalists. Projects like District One got the boot and will likely fade into the ether. It was easily one of my least favorite dApps. Projects such as The Colony and IKB got hefty, well deserved gold allocations. These are the types of projects that will help drive onchain activity for Blast.
Steve made a post with the question “Is floor price the only metric that matters for NFT PFPs?” This got a variety of responses from members of the NFT world. The Coffee Crew gave some of their opinions on the show. Does floor price matter? Absolutely. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. What are the other metrics that matter though? Honestly we don’t know. Captain is convinced that “building in public” is a meme. There are no financials, PnLs, etc. There’s a lot of consistency in the way companies communicate in web2 while it’s widely variable among web3 companies
On Tuesday, the Coffee Crew is joined by the Upnode team to discuss the infrastructure provider. Upnode is a L6 chain built on Ethereum with trillions of dollars in TVL. With Upnode, you can delegate to the validator, you’re not being charged a fee and their uptime is really high. Staking with Upnode, on Celestia specifically, is the highest yield one can earn. Upnode is also entering onchain gaming with Turbo, which is revolutionizing gaming with low-latency Edge P2P gaming without a single central server. Gamers won’t notice they’re playing a fully onchain game as the experience is identical to Web 2.
Check this episode out on Apple and Spotify.
Wednesday
Advice on Starting a Business + BAYC Cope
We’re halfway through 2024 and it’s still BAYC against the world. People are hating on the BAYC socks because Moonbirds received so much backlash from BAYC holders on their sock drop. The cool thing has been to hate on BAYC as they fall from grace. How will holders within the BAYC community behave if they return to glory?
What is the benefit of being in the Bored Ape Yacht Club? The motivations matter. If you’re genuinely interested in participating in the ecosystem, then you have a better chance at being successful. It doesn’t matter if you’re a new holder or a long term holder. BAYC always says the club is full of builders, but what does it take to create a business? Finding the right cofounder matters when creating the business. You need chemistry. Honestly this review doesn’t do the episode justice. Joe drops some heavy business knowledge on the episode, so it’s best to check it out for yourself.
Check this episode out on Apple and Spotify.
Thursday
Is the Blast Token Ready to Breakout?
Messi and Ronaldhino are famous soccer players with social media accounts promoting a scam token, $WATER. What in the world happened? It didn’t seem to be a hack based, but it did bring into question athletes and their management. Who controls these social media accounts?
The Blast Foundation announced BLIP 2, which will result in double points for all Blast token holders. Is the bottom in for $BLAST? We talk about the pros and cons of buying at these prices. Users will have to consider $USDB being stable and the chances $BLAST outperforms ETH. The reality is that Blast needs better dApps and there just aren’t really that many right now. The L2 competition will make this more difficult.
Ethereum NFTs seem primed for a comeback. Blur farmers appear to be at an all time low since the beginning of Blur. Farming inventory still needs to be bought up, but at face value it looks good. Will there actually be another NFT bullrun? It’s hard for me to imagine, but I’ll hold on to hopium.
Check this episode out on Apple and Spotify.
Friday
Can Onchain Gaming Succeed?
In Steve’s absence, we’re joined by a special co-host, Phil. What is the purpose of onchain gaming? In 2021, projects struggled with tokenomics and the P2E model. It wasn’t sustainable. We need games that people enjoy playing because “farming” a game always has an end point.
We had two sides of the interoperability coin. On one hand, interoperability of skins likely won’t work because gaming studios would need their games prepared for the potential assets from a variety of games. That’s an unrealistic expectation. What are the assets that gamers want to be immutable? On the other hand, assets should have linkability regardless of blockchain and/or currency. We should be moving closer and closer to a cross chain future, but blockchains are still in PVP mode.
Check this episode out on Apple and Spotify.
Wrap Up
That’s all for week 28 of Coffee with Captain. This week had a little bit of everything, which is always fun. We always want to give a shoutout to those of you who listen on X spaces, the podcast and/or read the Coffee with Captain Recap. You’re the reason we keep doing this. Steve is taking a much deserved break next week with his family. We’ll miss him, but now Captain will have to be both the captain and cruise ship director. If you missed week 27, make sure to check it out here.
Be sure to check out:
- The Everything Token: A Book on Web3 and NFTs
- Making Coffee: Our Official Coffee Partner
- Pepecoin: The Original Pepe
- ENS: Ethereum Naming Service
