Marketing Meets Web3 by Step3

Web3 Simplified: New Perspectives with Toby Rush, CEO of Deem

October 18, 2023 Alberto Mera and Nick Casares Season 1 Episode 23
Web3 Simplified: New Perspectives with Toby Rush, CEO of Deem
Marketing Meets Web3 by Step3
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Marketing Meets Web3 by Step3
Web3 Simplified: New Perspectives with Toby Rush, CEO of Deem
Oct 18, 2023 Season 1 Episode 23
Alberto Mera and Nick Casares

Ever wondered why Web3 feels so complex? Toby Rush, co-founder and CEO of Deem, takes us on his entrepreneurial journey to demystify this enigma. From his initial foray into biometrics for mobile banking, to his current mission to make Web3 accessible to all, Toby offers a refreshingly straightforward perspective on this technology. He encourages a shift from focusing on speculative use cases to creating an experience phase where Web3 becomes part of our everyday lives. With Toby as our guide, prepare to have your perception of Web3 reshaped and simplified.

Navigating the future can be risky business. But what if you could balance the risks and rewards of handling digital assets? Toby shares his thoughts on making Web3 more user-friendly and the challenges it may pose for businesses. He also introduces an intriguing idea - using phone numbers as a more secure form of authentication than biometrics. The conversation takes an exciting turn as we delve into the potential of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and their role in bridging the gap between physical and digital experiences. So, are you ready to unlock the future with NFTs and Web 3? Don't miss this enlightening chat about the thrilling possibilities that await us in the digital world.

If you like this episode, do not forget to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

Today's guest was Toby Rush. Find him on Twitter

You can follow Nick Casares on Twitter

This content is for informational purposes only.

Do check our sponsor Step3 if you want to learn more about how Web3 can help companies create better communities for their users.

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Ever wondered why Web3 feels so complex? Toby Rush, co-founder and CEO of Deem, takes us on his entrepreneurial journey to demystify this enigma. From his initial foray into biometrics for mobile banking, to his current mission to make Web3 accessible to all, Toby offers a refreshingly straightforward perspective on this technology. He encourages a shift from focusing on speculative use cases to creating an experience phase where Web3 becomes part of our everyday lives. With Toby as our guide, prepare to have your perception of Web3 reshaped and simplified.

Navigating the future can be risky business. But what if you could balance the risks and rewards of handling digital assets? Toby shares his thoughts on making Web3 more user-friendly and the challenges it may pose for businesses. He also introduces an intriguing idea - using phone numbers as a more secure form of authentication than biometrics. The conversation takes an exciting turn as we delve into the potential of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and their role in bridging the gap between physical and digital experiences. So, are you ready to unlock the future with NFTs and Web 3? Don't miss this enlightening chat about the thrilling possibilities that await us in the digital world.

If you like this episode, do not forget to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

Today's guest was Toby Rush. Find him on Twitter

You can follow Nick Casares on Twitter

This content is for informational purposes only.

Do check our sponsor Step3 if you want to learn more about how Web3 can help companies create better communities for their users.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back everybody to another episode of Marketing Meets Web 3. Today we are joined by Toby Rush, the co-founder and CEO of Redeem. Toby, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3:

Awesome. Thanks, guys, excited to be here.

Speaker 2:

Well, to dive right in, Toby, can you give us a little bit about your background story and how you found your way into Web 3?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know I've always been kind of pretty entrepreneurial, so kind of a software engineering background. Sort of way back in the day with Accenture got into a software, you know a startup back late 90s, early 2000s and just fell in love with kind of the fast pace and high trust, high execution environments, ended up doing my first company actually I'm three now, because that makes me a little bit of a masochist, because I just love the pain of keep doing these from scratch. All of them had kind of a theme of you know pretty advanced technology but around simplicity and convenience. So the first company we put cameras on forklifts so that forklift drivers could really be race car drivers, because that's really what they want they want to drive as fast as they can. And we did all the data collection and they could drive as fast as they wanted.

Speaker 3:

The company came across a professor using iBased biometric. I'm like, wow, that's fascinating. They thought immigration, military and airport that's terrible. Why don't we do like passwords on smartphones? But at the time there were no biometrics on smartphones. Everybody's like, well that's, if that's such a good idea, why doesn't Google and Apple do biometrics on smartphones? And it was back in 2011, and we got lucky, so we started that company in 2012. Apple came out with Touch ID in 2013. Apple Pay in 2014. And that kind of really just opened the doors for us. We had 60 banks up and running in production Wells Fargo, citigroup, rsa Security really doing kind of an iBased biometric in production for a mobile banking. So they come into Alibaba and so spent in the Alipay specifically kind of the payments banking app. So it's been a couple of years over in all over Southeast Asia, china, india, indonesia, kind of standing up kind of biometric and identity.

Speaker 3:

And then they asked me to move over to the investments team with a specific focus on blockchain. So back in 2018 and 19, during China board apes and cryptocurrencies are not a thing right, and so it's just a very different environment. But they are very bullish on blockchain as a technology that makes business better, faster, cheaper, stronger, more trust, better transaction speed, and so that was kind of always my initial focus, kind of coming into blockchain and Web 3 was less the speculative crypto side, more around hey, how does this help us do business better? Ruled off of Alibaba late 2019, the small project with private equity then started looking again at Web 3 and was fascinated by, in particular NFTs right and more.

Speaker 3:

The Web 3 side of things are not speculative NFTs where I'm hoping to buy something and it goes up in value, but this idea that I can hold a little piece of digital information about me, something I like, something I enjoy, and that can unlock all sorts of other interesting use cases, whether that digital asset is a ticket or some sort of membership card or a fan for a brand or an artist, it could be insurance cards.

Speaker 3:

I think we're going to have certificates, credentials, all these things that are purely digital, but they can unlock things for me if I can simply prove that I own them. But I can do that in open ecosystem, and so that concept I still think is incredibly powerful and we're very scratching the surface around. But the user experience has been just horrendous. Right, the idea that the average person is going to understand a lot of the technical underpinnings of what we would know as blockchain and decentralization and Web 3, like they just want the benefit, they want the experience and so really kind of the idea around redeem is how do we simplify and accelerate that path to experience by linking a phone, a phone number and blockchain wallets.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, you've given the whole story from background to what you are doing currently and I want to maybe touch on a few of these points because I think the background is going to lean easily into what we're doing today. So, to begin here, what is the status of Web 3 for you today?

Speaker 3:

With my perspective of the market of Web 3?.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, what is Web 3 for you today? Where are they at?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So I think the concept of Web 3, again is idea of allowing purely digital things to live in open ecosystems is a foundational shift and what we're going to be able to do. I think we've spent way too much time on use cases that I don't think are all that relevant or important, that being buying JPEGs that we hope go up in value. Right, that is a use case, but really it's a fairly small. Collectibles are a thing in the real world and the digital world, but it is not the big use case, and so I think we've distracted a lot of the world in that anytime there's a new technology, there's going to be a lot of fraud, there's going to be a lot of Ponzi schemes. Clearly there are those. Unfortunately, they have gotten the lion's share of the news.

Speaker 3:

I still think we are super early. I think we'll know that we're getting real traction when we stop calling them NFTs and we stop calling it Web 3. It's simply, it's better, right, it's a new experience, a better experience. It's a more engaging way for brands to connect with consumers or artists to connect with their fans, people showing up at live events. So I'd say we're still super early, very much in the technology development phase. I think we need to focus more on use case and ablement phase, move out of the education phase into the experience phase.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and so, you know, I think, along that adoption curve. Then there's always a matter of is it easy enough to use? I know, toby, that you recently wrote an article about a need for better UX in the space. Can you dig in a little bit more on the challenges that you see in terms of the user experience and do you have any ideas on how to make that easier for the normal person? I mean, you mentioned a couple of things like simplifying terminology. You're getting rid of that stuff. Also, you know Redeem is doing some cool things, but what do you think needs to change to make this space a lot easier for people?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know it's fine. I'll share a little story, kind of from one of my previous companies. We're actually talking to PayPal at the time and we had this really cool biometric and it was super secure and we could reduce fraud and I had all this kind of cool cryptography and I was going in and meeting with these some fairly high-up books at PayPal and so, yeah, toby, we get all that. We've got our fraud numbers kind of baked in. Can you help me double the number of transactions we're doing with PayPal? Can you help me make it so easy for people that they would always use PayPal? Right, in fact, if you left my fraud exactly the same, but help me increase the number of transactions of people that are able to access the PayPal wallet and be able to use PayPal, that would be far more valuable. And so there's really this mental flip of like it's got to be easy, it's got to be convenient, like brands and consumers carry far more about how easy is it and how convenient is it versus how secure is it, right? So I don't think people really care about decentralization, right? So we spend all this time talking about decentralization and the cryptography and all these like so what is the benefit, right. So we would have stopped talking about features and start talking about benefits.

Speaker 3:

And so I think, from kind of the Web 3 and the UX and the experience, we need to reduce every friction point and every mental model shift or behavioral model shift and just get them to the experience and if they love the experience, eventually they'll learn, if they need to learn, if by the time they won't, what's happening underneath, right? So our thought on kind of the UX piece is you know, people don't understand this new concept of a blockchain wallet and ownership and well, it's decentralized and what chain am I on? I've got to have extra tokens in my wallet just to access this site and all the signing of the transactions and highly secure but horrible user experience. So I think we've got to find a way to, you know, get that kind of below the line, right. So those are important things.

Speaker 3:

But everyday consumers, kind of the Joe Aberde, joe Main Street man we can't expect them to have both complete mental model shifts, much less the behavioral change that we're forcing everyone to go through. So I think we've got to be able to get to a place where, you know, consumers can use existing behaviors, existing mental models, get directly to the experience of the benefit of decentralization and high trust transaction and all these really cool things that Web 3 and Blockchain can provide us consumers. Frankly, they don't care. I wish they cared, but they don't If.

Speaker 2:

I learned anything over my time.

Speaker 3:

They cared about convenience and experiences.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I spent my early career in user experience and couldn't agree more.

Speaker 2:

I mean, at the end of the day, people just want the benefit, the value, like they don't want to jump through hoops. One of the things that we're seeing and we're actually thinking about a lot at step three is custodial wallets and how those enable a much easier onboarding process for people Because they can often with connect with Google, connect with Apple, they can use an email address and they're just into the experience and they can start getting some of that value upfront. There is, of course, I think, for businesses, particularly on the legal or the compliance side. There are concerns around taking custody of people's digital assets, because this is a new way to think of ownership, even if the consumer hasn't quite gotten there with the rental model at some level, if a digital asset is accruing value whether that's speculative or not and a brand or a business is custodying that asset on their behalf, there is potential risk there. How do you think about that, or do you have any thoughts about the risk reward trade-off for businesses in the current environment?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, especially with the SEC. Yeah, they're lost suit every week. They're throwing out this. There is a long-term risk, but long-term right now we've got tons of wallet worth. There's tons of really great companies. Eventually we're going to get down to three, four, five wallets. People will eventually learn how to use them.

Speaker 3:

So, short-term, I think most folks are going to do some sort of custodial or custodial-like approach that will eventually allow folks to either own those own wallets really like what kind of the Ethereum 4337 abstracted wallet lets you kind of transition from more of a custodial to more of a non-custodial. That makes a ton of sense. I think we'll see more solutions like that. So in the short-term, I would focus more on the value and the benefit.

Speaker 3:

So it is a risk. It's a relatively small risk in the near-term, especially if you're not trying to acquire assets that you hope go up in value, that you can sell in the future for profit. That's the risk, right, yeah, your customers, these assets that the SEC might say are securities of some kind. Well, if these are just their tickets or their membership cards or their credentials or that, it's again. It's all these other types of things which don't have that risk. I think it's much less of a short-term risk and long-term, in these early markets, we're going to figure out how to do really easy custodial wallets and non-custodial wallets. Eventually, people say I need to be able to own this kind of thing myself and then it won't be an issue for the brands. Yeah, makes total sense.

Speaker 4:

You've mentioned that users do not see value in this enthralization and I would agree with that. It's something that I guess in abstract everybody likes, but then they don't really go out of their way to find it. But do you see risks? Talking about risks, do you see risks coming from centralization, in making Web 3 in general more simple to use?

Speaker 3:

There is some. So again, when I think about the power of Web 3 is allowing little pieces of data to live in open ecosystems. Like I said that before, as I ran, lots of companies can engage with me as a consumer because I hold a little piece of data that is what has to live in the open eating system. I think there will be tooling and pieces, kind of third party components around that that might be somewhat centralized, like so for redeem, our approach to how do we make this simpler is your phone number. There are 6.8 billion smartphones in the world. They're all tied very tightly to a pretty secure piece of hardware that you never leave home without.

Speaker 3:

Right now, technically, phone numbers are ran by telco companies which are centralized, but that's a pretty strong unique identifier. The chance that telcos are all of a sudden going to not allow you to get a phone number is a pretty far stretch. So allowing me hey, I'm going to use my phone number to link into a traditional MetaMasker rainbow or a traditional non-custodial wallet to me feels like a little bit of the best of both worlds. I'm going to use my phone number, which I've had for literally two decades. I will likely have for many decades to come, because people assume, hey, this is a number that is going to live with me effectively forever and there's not that concern, but it's linking to a again, a non-custodial wallet that has all these other pieces.

Speaker 3:

That is on the blockchain. That's where this assets lives. So I think the digital assets need to live in the blockchain. The way we engage or interact with those, I think, is where we're going to see some of the UX and that onboarding ramp that will live a little bit of a put in both camps. There are web too, because, inherently, phone numbers you're at are owned by telcos and which is a centralized entity, but I do feel like I own my number. I feel that I'm letting that bridge into web three and do a wallup that holds my digital assets, which then unlock experiences. Again, we're as we bet the company on it. It is a perspective.

Speaker 4:

When you were talking about this, this story came to me about Jeff Bezos. When he was starting Amazon, he tried, or he thought about trying different avenues and he thought of maybe doing music city rooms and things like that, because also had like an extensive library, but eventually he decided to go with books, also similar. It looks like better, did you so you went for mobile phones? Did you consider maybe doing it in a different way?

Speaker 3:

You know. So I believe it yes, I did actually believe it or not? So, again, because my background is so deep in biometrics and identity, one of the use cases that I looked at before launching redeem I looked at a couple of different ideas. One of them is doing kind of a buy in the biometrically bound Identity on the blockchain right, and I came up with what I thought was a pretty cool and pretty interesting novel way to do that very secure, very, very grounded, very decentralized. And then I began to remember all of these scars and the PTSD.

Speaker 3:

I had to try to sell Security to people who, frankly, don't really care that much about security and like there's no way I'm not gonna go do this again and so actually gonna put that off to the side, just because I realized, like, again, people don't value, especially when the the upfront friction is oh, I've got to download something new or I've got to do this new kind of Biometric and where does that live? And I've got to educate them. Okay, this is what NPC is like way too much education, it's actually completely put it off on the side. And look at a bunch of other ideas that were more NFT utility, but I came back to like man. This experience is so bad.

Speaker 3:

I actually started to go to the market, say I bet someone has found a way to use phone numbers and phones to make this easier, right into my initial lectures Okay, who's doing this? Like started looking all over like no one is doing this. This feels really easy, almost obvious and so kind of really I did actually consider more the traditional biometric. But the amount of education, behavior change and mental model change you mean like not gonna work. That doesn't matter how good the technology is and how secure it is, the average person isn't going to do it. Yet when I go to my mom, literally did the mom test right like mom, do you know any 10 digit numbers off the top of your head?

Speaker 3:

She's like no, I don't know any 10 digit numbers Like do you know your phone number? Like, yes, toby, I know my right. And Do you have I put up this little QR code? You know what to do this? Qr codes, yeah, I point my camera at it and I click on right and I know she texts all the time. She doesn't, in fact, hardly ever emails, it's always texting. So she has all the basics there. I know how to text, I know how to scan a QR code, I'm comfortable on my phone. I feel like my phone is me and it's personal right, and so our onboarding experience is if you want to claim an NFT, you click on a link or scan a QR code that pops up a single text message and you hit send. That's it. There's only one device in the world, your unique phone number, can send us that text message. So we'll either spin up a wallet or ask you do you want to use an existing Kind of a third-party wallet? Put that in a team to the wallet and then send you a link back and then Redirect you. And so, nick, you mentioned something earlier.

Speaker 3:

I was gonna come back on it how Google and Facebook are they using OOF to make it really easier people to log in. We're effectively turning your phone into an OOF provider. Right, so you actually can now log in with your phone and phone number. Right, so it's not a Google service, it's your phone, right? So the bunch of really cool benefits are your phone we know if it's a virtual number versus carrier issue.

Speaker 3:

Right, so it's an AT&T rise and T-Mobile vote of telephone or go a vote of phone versus Google voice. So when you're trying to stop bots or trying to stop fraud, you get effect of pretty close to proof of humanity. You don't have to have a capture, you don't have to send a bunch of text messages like hey, I'm possessed my phone and my phone has tons of security around it that carriers have already made available to me via API. We're taking a wrapping all of that, providing an existing kind of an OOF brand work to our customer, to our Software companies are working with, but to a consumer it's oh, I send one text message and that's it.

Speaker 4:

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, it's a great approach and I think it also, you know it's interesting because the telcos, they have a different profit motive In providing, you know, consistent, reliable cell service versus you know, some of the platforms that have different profit motivations that are often typed to things like data privacy, advertising, things that could very quickly, maybe not even intentionally, but get kind of out of hand when the data gets, you know, into the wrong hands or into the wrong advertisers hands. So, really, really interesting approach. Kind of pivoting a little bit on the conversation, we've been talking about tokens quite a bit and Well, tokens being NFTs, digital collectibles, assets, whatever we're going to call them, but this idea that they're in the future will be many more use cases for these types of digital assets. What does the future look like to you when we have a lot more tokenization in the world? It's like can you, can you walk us through the picture in your head a little bit? Yeah, I use the digital asset a little bit.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and I even think about me. How many of the things in our life already are very digital, but if they were more open, we unlock new use cases, right? So the key to my car I can use my phone to open my car and start it like that is a digital token that's bound to my phone that opens my car. I do the same thing with my buildings. I could do the same thing with my house. If somebody wanted to know, did I actually get a Certification? Right? That passes certification to think more blue-collar workers or even white-collar workers Of who are you like? Do you actually work for this company, right? Did you get this HVAC certification? Do you have this technical certification? Are you married? Did you go to this school? There are all sorts of things about me. Or am I a fan of this band? Did I really go to this event, did I? You know all sorts of things that I want to selectively let others use again, but I can control, but unlock other experiences where each of those entities don't have to go back and Do a one-to-one integration with the, the original issuer of that data. You know you can go to. You know you're a title to your car, a title to your house, insurance policies, I'm all sorts of certificates and credentials, but you know we're not going to call them NFTs, right? I don't go say, hey, nick, let's go listen to an MP3. You, I don't say, now, bertha, you want to go watch an MP4, right? Or amov file, right, you know, let's go watch a movie. So we'll contextualize a lot of these purely digital things, but it'll be something different. So, as I do think that the Metaverse, ar, vr, these experiences going to blend more and more, but I think again, we need NFTs and Waze to open an open platform, like one of the examples that is a pretty cool use case of working with a partner on is they're working with brands.

Speaker 3:

Right now, you walk into a store and you open up initially, scan a QR code, open up a little web app and it scans the store for different kind of AR things, right? So it could be an AR object. Your hand can reach out, kind of in front of the camera, grab it, pull it back towards your device, right? Which then what we're doing is like we actually then simply add that to your wallet, right? So from a consumer's standpoint, they've now grabbed something in the AR. It has created a digital NFT. It redirects them into the brand's app where they're logged in with the wallet and the NFT for different engagements. Like hey, they just picked up this thing and they might have other NFTs in their wallet, give them more context. And they've never even had to spell NFT, they haven't had to think about Web 3. They went straight from oh cool, I scanned a QR code, I now look for things in the store, I can use my hand, grab it. And now I'm launched into a website with a unique personalized experience. Like that's cool.

Speaker 2:

It's kind of like playing real world Pokemon. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 3:

So I think we'll see again. I mean, I think Apple's stuff is really cool. That's still a year or two away, that's until most mass market, but that is the direction that we're heading. So how do we blend kind of the kind of AR, VR, digital physical, all those components of consumers, like they just want the experience?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you know it's interesting. I think you and I may have talked about this in the past, Toby, but this idea that the metaverse you know, in the beginning we've talked about a lot about going to the metaverse. Right, we're all going to go into the future, into the metaverse, into this virtual world, when in reality, I think it's going to be a lot more of what you're talking about the metaverse coming to us and that is us bringing a digital layer of assets or experience into a physical realm, into our IRL experiences, so that we can start dissolving that wall between the physical and the digital and it starts to feel a lot more fluid. I also, you know there are a bunch of use cases, I think, for NFTs, and we could probably spend a whole episode just talking about that. But with Redeem in particular, and your time in the space, do you see a particular use case that could be a potential unlock for adoption?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So I think there's two or three that we're kind of focused on and there's a little bit because of the kind of the technology they were using. So any kind of live event activation. So how does someone prove they had received something digitally, ie a ticket, and make it really seamless to gain access when, simply possession of my phone, right. So Apple kind of does that with Apple Car or their Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, but making those NFTs so that it's even more accessible, not just at the event, because then you get pre-event and post-event engagement Right. So we're taking isn't just now getting me in the door. So we really like live event, whether that be festivals or arts or sports or Even just brands doing any kind of live event activation.

Speaker 4:

Gaming.

Speaker 3:

I there's a part of me and maybe it's the little geek inside of me loves a gaming use case where in game, assets can live and Outside of the game, but not necessarily because I want to go buy and sell them and not because I want to go use them. I have a game. I want to activate consumers to go play a game by saying hey, everybody, if we're watching this podcast, anybody who watches podcast, click on this link and it will give the effect of what's gonna do is gonna give you an NFT. On the back end it's give you a loot box and when you and then redirect you into the game, ready to play with an NFT that unlocks something in the game, or if all three of it did at one time, we all be launched into the same place. So it's a way to kind of activate from IRL or digital to in-game experiences. Or conversely, I do something in game and I get an NFT that I can go exchange at my local restaurant, right go to Wendy's, I can. You know, there's way of going in and out of a game.

Speaker 3:

Like NFTs are really powerful Transport tool and then just rewards and loyalty. I mean there's a tons of stuff brands can do. I think a lot of folks are now looking at Starbucks and Nike and Adidas and Reddit and others now and so, for better or worse, I think brands are slowing down a little bit. I'm trying to figure out are these securities or not already in trouble, legal and looking towards some of these really big folks on Can, what? What are they gonna do? So I think it will come when it does. They won't be called NFTs, but I think brands and loyalty. I think it is a massive opportunity as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we tend to agree.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, we've mentioned that the name of the company a few times already. Redeem, can you? Can you give us the pitch for what you are doing? And also how? How are you finding the the adventure of pitching it to two or three companies, or what three users?

Speaker 3:

sure, yeah, so can really the. The one liner is we accelerate and simplify the path to web three experiences, right. So how do we make it really easy to get to the experience, to get through engagement? Can I simplify and accelerate? We do that by again linking a phone number To a phone, to blockchain wallets, right. That's kind of really fundamentally, and so now that you have an API or scaffolding around a phone and it could for consumers is really seamless kind of a bridge into web three.

Speaker 3:

You know the the feedback has been honestly phenomenal. They're like oh my gosh, that makes it so easy. We don't care who wins the wallet war, because we can connect to any wallet. So if you can sign a message with MetaMask on your device, we now know that your phone is on this phone. If phone number is on this phone and you just signed a message with MetaMask, you own this MetaMask public address and so if we want to give you an NFT or do token gating, that's really simple, like so basically all you need is your phone to do really simple token gating. But I think the the feedback has been really, really positive.

Speaker 3:

I think the if I were to summarize kind of where the market is at, if everyone is focused on two things. One, it is the user experience, but the other is what is the value on the other side? Because for a long time the value was by this and it will go up in price, right, I think we kind of move on. So now we're on to call it web, web 3.2, 2.0, nft 2.0, of hey, what's the utility, what is the value? And so we see a lot of folks really pushing hard, coming up with some pretty cool ideas around.

Speaker 3:

How do we Unlock new things? That has nothing to do with the price of the NFT. We're not trying to sell it, we don't expect to go up in value. So there's a bit of a transition for a lot of brands and folks that are working in that. But I think I've never been more bullish on a long-term industry, right. So this is not a fad, it is foundational. That means it also takes a while, but adding, yeah, I think brands and loyalty is a big one. Gaming and live events are probably going to be, and of three of the areas that we're gonna see first, that makes a ton of sense.

Speaker 2:

It's gonna be one quick question to close us out, and thanks again for hanging out with us today. Um, where do you see Web 3? Or how do you see web 3 changing marketing, say, 5 to 10 years down the road, as brands really start to get their hands around this and think you know this makes a fundamental shift in their marketing strategy. What changes?

Speaker 3:

Yes, I think, as we figure out. So I think we still have to figure out on blockchain what's public and what's private, right? So the idea that everything that goes in the blockchain is always public, I think there's no way. We people don't want that kind of Of, you know, being public, like they want some level of privacy. So if you find out the blend from a consumer though, for a lot of brands that I engage with, I'm okay with them seeing certain things who one am I a fan of.

Speaker 3:

Like you know, I like the chiefs. I'm in Kansas City, I like woodworking, I like a good bourbon, I like off right, you're gonna be able to give me a better experience and so allowing them to be able to see and engage with that. You know cookies are already gone and you know, on their way out, nfts are a self-selected Like I like this right, and so you're kind of opting in to something that you prefer. That allows brands then to engage directly with you around those interests. I think, as we begin figuring out, it's going to be a much more seamless and a much more curated experience for consumers Based on things that I've done that I like, that.

Speaker 3:

I've kind of risen my hand around that that lots of brands are going to be able to engage me. So, again, I'm bullish on the overall concept where we're heading. Gotta make it more invisible and and more direct. But I think, from a brand perspective like getting away from being a slave to ad tech platforms and running banners and finding facebook ads and being able to have a more direct path to engaging with consumers I think is a, you know, an incredible unlock for them, but it will take a few years to get there.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

Speaker 4:

That was. That was great and very, very good insights. Thank you, well, okay, to close toby. Where can people find you and find about redeem and?

Speaker 3:

what you're doing. No, I appreciate you. Redeem the xyz for company to buy us. Rush on twitter and telegram and linked in Reach out. We'd love to talk to you.

Speaker 2:

So be thanks so much for hanging out with us. Thanks, guys, appreciate it here you.

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