Mar 17, 2023

The day after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took control of Silicon Valley Bank, there were only 12,000 active NFT traders, according to DappRadar.

Video transcript

It's Culture Week at coin desk. And today's guest is delving into a few ways in which culture and crypto collide. But that's not all we're talking about the day after the FDIC took control of Silicon Valley Bank. There were only 12,000 active NFT traders according to DAB radar. And that's a number not seen since November of 2021. Joining us now to discuss is Anna Moab Brand's co-founder and executive chair, Ya Su Yeah. So single NFT trades total 33,000 just over 33,000 on that day and the lowest daily tally so far this year, the NFT market outlook in your view, what does it look like a amid all these banking concerns and blow ups in the crypto industry? Well, I mean, um you know, broadly speaking, when you look at, for instance, the number of trades that happened actually, when I look at the data at uh at crypto Slam, it doesn't seem to have indicated uh the same kind of drop. So right now, for instance, when we take a look for the last uh last couple of days, unique buyers and sellers roughly are at about 60 50 to 60,000, um, sort of, um, uh, unique buyers and it turns out volume hasn't dropped as much. So, I'm not quite sure, you know, maybe the operator is tracking some specific areas. But I think one other thing is if you take a look at the blue chips of the NFT world, like a or like the sewer passes, for instance, uh, you can actually see that those sale numbers continue to do quite strongly. So I think again, very similar to what we see, I guess a little bit with crypto and Silicon Valley Bank, uh circumstance of sort of flight to quality that could be one. Um But also one has to bear in mind that in the last couple of weeks, there's, you know, individual NFT projects in and of itself, some of them have had some weakness. So I don't think we should necessarily isolate particular projects themselves and then sort of make a make a statement broadly in the market. But anyway, if you look at the data on crypto slam broadly speaking NFT sales haven't really had the kind of drop that perhaps that is reporting. So there seems to be some inconsistency there. So now you're getting involved with, oh I'm sorry, Christine. Uh well, Anna Moka brands is known for contributing to the open metaverse through Gamification, Blockchain and entertainment. And you've also just announced the backing of N A which is Saudi Arabia's first NFT marketplace platform. So what is going on in Saudi Arabia? Well, I mean, first of all, I think the Mina region itself is perhaps one of the most exciting places in terms of the development of the whole sort of, let's call it web three or just broadly, even just in the general sort of digital entertainment space. Uh One little known fact, I guess is that gaming in Saudi Arabia is actually, I think in terms of a probably the second or third largest market in the world. Again, I think most people don't know that. Uh And, and the general gaming culture there is very, very large. Uh So then digital entertainment culture, uh NTA is the first NFT marketplace in the region. Uh And we view it a little bit like, you know, when we made the, our investment in open sea back in sort of, you know, like, uh like 2020 18, 2019, which was a while back. Uh you know, one of the reasons we made that investment was because we wanted to sort of help build the rails of that sort of um sort of NFT economy which back then was, you know, non-existent and today has become fairly meaningful and you need them in regional places as well. Uh So you have, you know, in many major markets, you do have regional NFT players like in Japan, you might have coin check for instance, right? Uh But the, the region doesn't have one and So how do we kickstart that is to basically back, basically uh sort of what we think could be, you know, the next open sea in that region to help sort of build that infrastructure. Uh What's also really interesting about the N is that uh uh the, this a very dynamic co-founder is a lady. Um And, and again, I think this sort of, some of the perhaps perceptions people have about the region is obviously um you know, had a lot of progress still needs a lot of progress. But it just goes to show that, you know, it's, it's a place where entrepreneurial dynamism doesn't just happen amongst men, but also is growing with women, particularly in the web three space, we're very excited about sort of supporting that as well. And it is, it is it involved is the government involved in it itself is, is that where the investment is coming from? So the, well the investment is all private uh and a brands basically led this particular round. So there's no government money. However, NTA did receive a from the ministry to operate with digital assets. So that's actually a key win uh which is also indicative of the region looking at supporting that. I mean, normally a lot of the attention around sort of the web three activity tends to be in the UEE you know, between sort of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. But now Riyadh and Jeddah basically stepping up the game there and saying, you know, they want to play as well. Yeah, I was gonna ask, is, is, is that on purpose? There are, is there some sort of rivalry, uh, on the peninsula there for, for the NFT market or is it just sort of like they, they just wanna, you know, have a, have a foot in the, in the door there? Well, I don't know that it's necessarily a rivalry in, in the classic sense because when you think about market economies and size, there is no um there is no comparison between UEE and Saudi just in terms of um economic sizes, I would say UAE is a gateway to an international uh world that has access to uh because it's just a smaller region. Um but obviously well capitalized and there's a lot of people in the work space that live in Dubai, for instance. Uh whereas I would say that Saudi is more to look at as a domestic market uh with access to the wider Meanor region, uh it has a predominantly young population, very active gaming population. Um And, and as an economy is large. And if you look at, for instance, Saudi's sort of 2030 vision strategy, it it tends to actually make the digital economy but gaming and digital sort of, you know, assets, you could say a key part of its economic pillar by 2030. So there's a lot of investment happening to help develop that trying to bring in talent just to, to give you an indication, I think Saudi is probably the only place in the world that has a sovereign gaming fund, uh, for instance, and is also, um, the, the only place that actually has a sort of, sort of, uh, sort of, uh, am of, uh, in, in Saudi, right. So that just in indicative of, sort of their ambition in the space. Yeah, kind of the opposite of what the United States, but they're, they're not fans of uh credit suisse at the moment. But what, while at NF Paris, you spoke about the importance of creator rights and royalties in the web three world. So how do you hope to improve that? Well, I mean, I think one of the things that we did was we issued um basically NFT licenses for creators uh so that they can have a legal way of protecting the royalty rights, as you may know, you know, in order to capture market share and marketplaces have basically reduced the royalty rights to low to almost zero. And that was basically intentional to basically capture market share and in response of other marketplaces did the same thing. And so obviously that actually is a problem for us. Uh because the reason why the these marketplace, um the reason why the NFT uh industry has grown to the way that it is and just, just for reference numbers like last year 2022 in a bear market. Uh There were, it was, it was close to $24 billion of sales that happened in NFTS last year right now. Just, just put that in perspective. Um That means that actually, you know, billions of dollars went to creators, but more importantly, a large, you know, in an even larger number went to owners um of the assets of these NFTS that fueled an industry that made it possible to create companies, you know, like blur or open sea or magic eaten. It also made it possible for, you know, companies to sort of create, you know, these products and services. And, you know, whether it's, you know, what, what you did, uh you know, by launching the other deed or whether it's something like, um what we see AKI launching or other or cool. And all of these innovations happened because of the fact that royalties were possible. If you remove that, then you actually end up sending the industry from our perspective backwards. You have basically a kind of free riding effect which will then we think lead into sort of the kind of tragedy of commons effect where people, you know, there won't be enough money in the ecosystem to support that. So we think of creative royalties and fees similarly to how sort of gas is sort of important to the Ethereum ecosystem. If we were to draw a sort of a very rough analogy, right? Uh Standing yet, thank you for joining us. That was Anna Moa Brand's co-founder and executive chair. Yet. Sue and don't miss yet. Speaking at Consensus 2023 in Austin, Texas. It's not too late to buy your tickets at consensus dot coin desk dot com.

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