NFTs, blockchain, Web3 & the future of creativity industry.

Transcript:

Emma Alexander 0:05

Welcome and thank you so much for joining us for this this really special session all of our NF T's with web three technologist and website creative technologist and web three expert ash beach. Brought to you by Wisern. We're gonna dive headfirst into NF T's blockchain web three cryptocurrency and really what this means for you know creators for artists and the creative industry at large. Why isn't is a career development platform if you don't know already connecting creatives to industry leading experts on demand for one to one specialist advice to help you kind of to grow your career to reposition yourself or to pivot and I'm joined today wonderfully by NFT expert ash beach. Thank you very much for joining us. Ash is a creative technologist and the co founder of the decentralised creative agency, this is bullet and Ash has been living and working in crypto for well over 10 years, and apparently speaks 14 programming languages fluently, just to kind of ramp up your super geek. credentials. Thank you so much for joining us. It's really really lovely to have you with us. Do you want to explain a little bit better than me? Just really quickly, kind of how you came into this space and, and why it's so exciting for you.

Ash Beech 1:26

Yeah, so my background has always been creative. And technology, and I worked in banking, FinTech originally coming up with ideas for the future of finance. And then Bitcoin came along and I looked at Bitcoin. I thought this is the future of finance. And I tried to put that to banks that you know, Bitcoin could work in like this and I was able to come up with all these creative solutions to banks, but they didn't want to hear about cryptocurrency or Bitcoin or anything like that. So then I went headfirst into cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and Ethereum and all that stuff and just exploring it that way. And ever since then, I've just been experimenting building projects and today, kind of everything is exploding at scale. So I'm in the middle of it all.

Emma Alexander 2:20

Absolutely. Well, I want to I want to go we did a poll a few months ago, and a surprising number of people, smaller people, but a surprising number. People actually had no idea what an NF T was. So I want to start with the kind of cutting through the jargon originally, at the very beginning. What what isn't NF T and you know why? Are they special? Why should we care as creatives

Ash Beech 2:44

So NFT stands for Non Fungible Token and it is a unique reference to something digital online. So that you can prove that you own so an NFT really is about proof of ownership of digital ownership. And when you plug that into the internet, you can then do do interesting things at scale. And we have for the first time digital scarcity, where we've never had scarcity in the digital realm before. So that's why an NFT is valuable.

Emma Alexander 3:14

We're having quick chat beforehand and for me this word fungible means nothing. Maybe it's just my limited vocabulary, but it's only when I looked up the word fungible to work out why a non fungible token meant anything important that that that all kind of really clicked into place to me and this idea of fungible being replicatable. You know, you gave a really good example about a 10 pound note is is a fungible thing because it has the same value, and there's so many of them. I think it's

Ash Beech 3:42

changeable. Yeah, exactly interchangeable, whereas an NF t is just one off and it can't be interchanged with another one.

Emma Alexander 3:49

Perfect, whereas the idea of it being non fungible, it's actually really, really genuinely unique. It's coded into the file that it cannot be copied, it can't be shared, that it's completely traceable. That's super exciting. And that, to me, this feels like it's completely gonna blow the art world apart in terms of where we are with ownership.

Ash Beech 4:09

For sure, yeah, I mean, plugging that into the internet at scale. Yeah, it's never happened before. And I'm really we're just getting started. So I mean, there's, there's examples where you know, NF T's have caught fire and it becomes like a phenomenon and people poopoo it but the technology itself is not going to be going away. It's going to eat the middle person in pretty much every industry going and especially for creatives. The thing that I like about the technology, and the value it's going to have for creatives is that it's going to allow creatives to do away with middle people and so they can actually get get the value the audience get that can get the value from the creative and the creative and get paid fairly. So that's what nfts promises, I think.

Emma Alexander 4:53

Amazing. So tell us about the other bits in this process, Blockchain web three, and obviously by default crypto. So, explain to me what blockchain is. What is the blockchain and are they, is it just one thing?

Ash Beech 5:06

Blockchain simply is a spreadsheet is a spreadsheet is the way that I find people who don't technology technologically savvy, it's a spreadsheet that gets duplicated around the world. So in many different places that are all independent of each other and then they all validate the same copy of the spreadsheet independently, so that when a new row honest on the spreadsheet happens, it has to be validated by everybody on the network so that it will be deemed as valid and then can be verified for everybody at the same time as well. So it's just a spreadsheet of information that then when a new row gets added to that spreadsheet, the whole network must validate that that the same everybody has the same copy of that spreadsheet. So that's the most simple probably where I can explain it.

Emma Alexander 5:54

I like this idea that actually it's many people owning sorry many people validating that's quite interesting. This, again, this evolution of the of the internet, as being kind of community led and community driven, just call so blockchain isn't one blockchain. Obviously we hear a lot about Aetherium and different you know, Bitcoin and different what what are they in terms of obviously a theory or as a Bitcoin, as a bit of theory as a blockchain? How many different block chains are there? And when you crave go and bring it back to NF T's Do you does it go across all the blockchain or do you make your NF T's sit on one blockchain? How does this work? What does this mean?

Ash Beech 6:34

Yeah, so essentially, the technology will be the same. So if we're talking about NF T's NF T's apply to that I apply to Bitcoin, they just apply to chains like Ethereum or polygon, which is like a fork. They've already gonna get technical a fork of Ethereum. So basically blockchains that there are many blockchains and a lot of them are just clones of Ethereum. But do things that Ethereum doesn't do so well, but they focus on doing something better, but they all will have smart contracts, which are the things that allow you to run NF T's but there are many basically there are many blockchains. But there are only a few top ones that most people will use, but they'll all essentially have the same underlying value proposition that you can have proof of ownership of a unique token. So that's the that's the common denominator across those blockchains

Emma Alexander 7:29

Cool, so then my question is, you know, Ethereum, to me, is a cryptocurrency. So where does blockchain and cryptocurrency how do they fit together? Are they the same thing?

Ash Beech 7:41

So Ethereum is, is the name of the blockchain? Ethereum runs so Ethereum is is is like a is like a computer like a world computer that you can run programmes on top of, and one of the one of the programmes happens to be that you can run fungible tokens and they are called that and a token can be called Ethereum. So Ethereum fungible token is a programme that runs on the blockchain. And that is what you think of when you think of Ethereum and the price of Ethereum. And all that sort of stuff. It's it's tokens that are running on Ethereum that allow people to do interesting things with that token. And it's the same thing with non fungible tokens, you will run a programme on the Ethereum blockchain, that will then create your tokens, your non fungible tokens, your fungible tokens, and allow you to do interesting things with it. So it's just like a world computer that allows you to do things that you've never been able to do before. That this is this is decentralised technology. And it's, it's beyond what centralised servers can do. And so we can run currency on top of these blockchains because no one can stop it. No one can censor your transactions, because blockchains their biggest value proposition is censorship resistance, so no one can stop you from doing the things that it's trying to do on the computer. If that, if that explains it.

Emma Alexander 9:06

Sort of I can't find clearer or more confused. Now that does make sense. I know you've worked with a theorem before. Do you find that you tend to find one block to think this really works? What I needed to do? Would you work across several.

Ash Beech 9:19

So I personally work across several. Again, essentially it's just about proving ownership on top of the blockchain. So I work mainly in Ethereum because it's the most popular and I want to be where the most attention is where the most user base is. So I will use Ethereum as a preference. But there may be time so I'm working with a games company at the moment and they they want to have very cheap transactions. And so we're using a chain that has very cheap transactions but exactly the same value proposition as Ethereum would have in like proof of ownership and stuff like that. So people can still access tokens and stuff with their wallet. But the transactions are much cheaper. So you choose chains based on what you want to do with it. But Ethereum is usually the preference.

Emma Alexander 10:09

Amazing Okay. So let's get into the meat about what everyone actually wants to come for. What can you sell as an NFT? What Yeah, what what can you convert into a token?

Ash Beech 10:22

I mean, in theory, it could be anything, the things that are most the work best at the moment. Is anything that's digital, because you can tie anything digital to the unique. So the way an NF T works is that you have a unique hash, which is just a string of letters, letters and numbers that then you own in your wallet. So we all have we have wallets, we own this hash in our wallet. And that that we can tie that hash to anything digital. And then that means that permission-less Lee trust lessly we can then do interesting things with that ownership of that hash tied to something digital. But then when you want to I the way that I see the future is that most everything is going to become tokenised. whether that'd be non fungible, fungible, things like real estate, you know, houses, they're going to become tokenised everything is gonna get tokenised eventually but the easiest, the lowest hanging fruit at the moment is anything that's digital, and then things that are not digital are going to become tokenised as well in the future, but we're still early so

Emma Alexander 11:32

to say, I know we've I think everyone's read about the sale of you know, Twitter's first tweet, all that kind of thing. I've never seen the NBA are also selling kind of key basketball moments like those key dunks and all that kind of went on in the history you can actually own those moments which is quite mad. Actually a physical passing of time that was captured and then you can technically own that that's quite that's quite mind blowing. But I guess from from a practical point of view, and from a creator point of view, I guess, digital artworks, you know, film, audio animation, that's the kind of thing that really is going to be most tangible at the moment.

Ash Beech 12:10

I mean, again, you're the lowest hanging fruit. And the thing the use case that is probably most easy for people to understand and then to be able to get into and for it to spread throughout the internet as like a phenomenon. It's things like trading cards, because everybody understands how the trading cards work, you know, Pokemon cards, and how they're, you know, rare and they can be fungible or non fungible and they can be traded around so people understand these concepts behind things like trading cards, like the NBA top shots, or you know, pieces of art, they can understand that those can have value and that can be traded around and so really, it's, we're still early and people are just getting their heads around what this means and how they can use it. And trading cards and art is just the very lowest hanging fruit at the moment.

Emma Alexander 13:03

Easily accessible. Yeah, so what what is selling because we've obviously seen I think a lot of people have seen in the news, again, stories of you know, stuff just sort of blowing up or $50 million, or whatever for, I don't know, the spinning cat or whatever stuff like that. What is actually selling? Where are people really making money at the moment? What are the kind of trends that we're seeing start to emerge in this market?

Ash Beech 13:26

Yes. So the big trend really is about culture and culture. Again, most relevant on the internet, whatever is most relevant on the internet. So whether it be people sharing, whether the art that is part of an NFT collection, it could be that it is profile picture, so it makes a very good profile picture for people to then use as their avatar across their social media. And then it's almost like you're signalling to other people that I so if you're part of board apes, you're signalling to other people that you own this board eight and that you can prove that you're part of the culture that is bought apes, whether you want to be a part of that or not. It's just that there's this culture around a collection. And that culture catches fire because of the internet. And anything on the internet just exponentially is scalable. So it's about culture.

Emma Alexander 14:21

And I spoke to someone else about this recently and they said the same thing. This this profiling was a really important part of what what's, you know, what's coming out and being successful? What were the sort of to know what surprised runaways have really been

Ash Beech 14:37

so so whatever bought out means the people who owns it, they can verifiably prove that they are part of that culture. And it just so happens that there's there's a way for them to spread that via because it's all about tension, just the same as you know, everything before where we are now. It's always about tension. So you get attention by having a profile picture of the thing of the ape that tells other people that you're part of this culture. So

Emma Alexander 15:05

clarify for people who don't know, board 848 Yacht Club is a essentially it's the same, almost like I guess it's like a car again, you know, same image and people have drawn this so it's customised. This, this picture of this ape in really different ways. They're all slightly unique. It's the same, clearly identical, identifiable image, but really, really unique. Go and have a look board apes board a yacht club, so is what it is, and it's really interesting, you know, and there will ever so slightly different. So like I say, there's a really immediate tie in to actually I'm part of this club. I think what's also interesting about that example, in particular is that it's not when you buy the NFT the benefit isn't just owning the file and being able to, you know, put it use it in whatever way you want. It's actually allows you to so it gives you membership to to their club as well. So you have added benefits that come with it. And I think that's another really interesting about entities, what would you get from owning it? Well, actually, you can embed things in it because there's a you know, because there's that code element, you can actually give things I don't think we're good example, but you can actually embed things into the file and add benefits. Benefits

Ash Beech 16:18

membership so is is like membership of a club, as one example. But the thing is people can then build because of the internet and everything is code and we're talking about digital ownership, people could then code apps that do something we haven't even thought of yet. But the fact that you're you're have ownership over this unique thing will allow you to access that thing that we haven't even thought of yet, but it's yeah, it's going to it's going to explode further and further and further.

Emma Alexander 16:46

And I'm not gonna get into this now because it's uh, it's further away but you know, you can do like nested NF T's you can put NF T's inside NF t. So you buy one and there's something out you can hide, essentially cryptocurrency hide, you can put crypto inside NFT as well. So there's loads of opportunities beyond just by you know, creating this singular file that you can get really creative with how you then send this out into the world. That brings us quite nicely on to the idea of royalties, then we've talked about digital scarcity. We've talked about ownership. But actually, how do you make money from this? Well, you know, traditionally when people were sold your images or taken your images off the web, and actually that's probably the most poignant thing for most people on this call. That idea of, you know, IP, IP theft, people taking your work, and then using it without consent. And if he's flips that idea of copyright and ownership kind of on its head and creates this really, really super clear unchallengeable, breadcrumb trail, how does this work? How's the royalties work? How is it gonna benefit? The creative community?

Ash Beech 17:52

value proposition for creatives is the fact that they're going to be able to bring value to their audience and their audience. is going to be able to pay them directly. And it's going to get rid of any middle people at the moment that creatives feel like are in the way or that they have to go through. So it's all about being able to interact with your audience and get even closer to them and drive revenue for yourself. That you don't have to have a third party anymore. You can just use perhaps the royalties from your NF T's collection that you sell. But the other thing Yeah, royalties. I mean, you can access royalties via selling collection on the marketplace, but there will be other ways in future that will allow. So you think about things like ice stock, or stock websites. In future they're all going to be they're going to be running on completely on NF Ts and you're going to be able to they're going to plug AI into that which is then going to be able to analyse images across the Internet and say whether the image that you created as a creator originally came from yourself, and it's going to have your wallet address tied to that creation that you've made, and it's going to automatically just give you the royalties for the use of that image across the internet. So everything is going to become automated. And it's going to allow you to be able to track the copyright of your original creation. So there's actually a product that I'm working on currently that is going to allow people to upload their work as an NFT for their pitches as creatives pitching to agencies. And so when they go into a pitch, they can upload their work, and their work will become a reference on the blockchain. That will be immutable, that will be indisputable in as this moment in time, but then you can go back and say, Look, if if an agency if an agency goes and steals or client goes and steals your work, then you're going to be able to go back and say look here on the blockchain. My pitch was here. This is all the work it was for this client and then automatically, you're gonna be I have be able to have this copyright proof that is indisputable and verifiable. That is amazing,

Emma Alexander 20:01

Actually. Yeah, that for me is very exciting because I know those are creatives have gone and done that exactly. That gone into pitch ideas. You know, you give them everything because you want to win that work and your salon room. And then six months later using your work by someone else on a billboard you think and then of course, you know, you feel like you have no leg to go and argue that she was involved. A couple years ago in a in a campaign called Protect the creative talking specifically about this. So that's really, really interesting. Actually. Another thing I heard which I thought was really amazing when you when you create, and I guess this comes down to one minute how you actually meant them, but when you create your entities when you meet them, you can put a chain of royalties in so you know you get X percent as the creator, but actually you can credit other people is that correct? So you know someone who is in that a model or whatever it is on artists with the audio, you can actually then split roles has been your team. Is that right?

Ash Beech 21:04

Absolutely. Absolutely. So you would put you could assign each individual that you want to pay royalties to they would just have a web three wallet, and that was that's gonna have an address and then you would just assign addresses to the different people that you want to give royalties to in the future or maybe even between a certain amount of time or it can be all programmatic. So there's the use cases and things that you could do are kind of endless. So it's just your imagination that is the is the limit.

Emma Alexander 21:36

Amazing. So let's go on to obviously how you actually make How do you bring these things into life? How do you how do you actually mint NF T's how easy is it to mint an NF T

Ash Beech 21:46

is it's almost too easy. It's always too because the thing is so I'm kind of I'm thinking I'm being brought back to how I felt in 2010 when it was kind of a craze of people wanting an app for their business or for their individual like as an artist, they wanted an app and they didn't know why and NF T's is kind of similar to that where people have heard that about NF T's and they just know that they should have it, but they're not quite sure why. And so minting has become so easy. There's just a click of a button, but people don't really know why they're doing it and so it's it's more about being thoughtful about why you want to Why do you want to make your artwork ownable Why would people want to prove that they own your artwork and it's about being more thoughtful because currently NF T's is just so easy that it's like an ocean. So I guess one thing is don't expect to just because minting is very very easy. Don't expect somebody making millions from it.

Emma Alexander 22:53

Okay, is it procure to pay? Is it free? Can you just like throw stuff up there? Or do you have to pay for the process? How does it How does that part work?

Ash Beech 23:01

It depends on the blockchain that you're using. But I guess if we're talking about the most popular way of so if somebody who wasn't even technical wants to go and mint, their artwork, they would go to a marketplace online called Open see. And they would go and just hit an upload button so they'd upload their work and press mint and it would mint that piece of artwork onto a blockchain likely Ethereum. And then that artwork would be minted and people could own it. But would be the approximate version of other just images that have been uploaded. And it's more about thinking, why am I making this collection to be digitally ownable and how am I going to get attention onto it?

Emma Alexander 23:43

So do you find that as a whole that you still need to promote? I guess you still need to market your your own worth. You still need to build your audience.

Ash Beech 23:54

Definitely. I mean the that's that's the thing. I mean, just because you're adopting a new technology like NF t's the bar for being able to mentor the getting lower and lower just does hasn't changed the game of attention, which we've had forever. So you want to make sure that your brand is straight. If your brand is strong and you have an existing audience already, then it's definitely going to be easier for you to make money to have a bigger impact with whatever you're going to be minting as an NFT or collection.

Emma Alexander 24:26

Actually, I guess, was in the news here Damien Hirst minted custom how many was how many of his variations of his dots pictures I guess, he has a really strong brand behind him. And people know he's a he's a businessman, you know, he's he wants to make, you know, a very money so yeah, obviously for him, it kind of makes complete sense that he would go and do that. So

Ash Beech 24:49

the reason his work would be popular is because people want to prove that they own a Damien Hirst so that they want to be part of his brand. So they want to slip into his brand and be able to digitally prove that they're part of his brand, and that they own stuff of his. So that's just a good example of like, yeah, that's kind of how it would work.

Emma Alexander 25:08

Interesting. Actually, I was talking to someone recently about this and they were saying the exactly what you said actually, that this this idea of understanding why you're doing it is really, really important. So we're not just making more white noise, you know, like, yeah, throwing things out on social media and kind of throwing more blogs out there. There's more stuff. So how do you make it really work and and he was saying three things for him to look out for was the community. So who, what community sits around you that could be artists following but also, you know, I guess what, what networking opportunities that LMFT might offer you so what is the community around it? What is the benefit the utility, the benefit of owning your entity? Does it give you access to anything else, other than just the status thing? And also the team, the project who's behind the work and why is the work being made. He was saying the idea of projects was so important to have a context behind it and even though you can look at board open so it's just you know, loads of multicoloured apes, there is still an idea behind it, it does create this unifying sort of idea of community and, and the NFT unlocks more of that sense of community. So someone was said about that collections were better than individual images. Is that correct? You feel like having a collection allows you to establish yourself as an artist. With a certain look and feel or what's your thoughts on that which are most successful?

Ash Beech 26:27

I would definitely say the reason you want a collection is because then other people can be a part of that collection. So as in if it was just a one off image, then only one person can go hey, look, I've got this image and other people would go well, I can't I can't really own it. So I can't be part of whatever the image stands for. And so when you have a collection, then the community you can, you can grow a community within the owners of that collection. So just like with board eights, there, they have meetups and things like that, because you know, it wouldn't be a great meetup if it's just a meet up of one and there's only one board eight, so

Emma Alexander 27:06

I will be literally about eight. Yeah, that was really interesting, isn't it? It goes back to this idea of why we why we collect you know why? Why things become viral. Where does it Where does interest and drive come from that idea of similar but different, you know, I want something unique, but he also wants to be part of you know, wider, wider fashions and trends come in. Interesting. So, how can you elevate your visibility within the space so that you know if you need to build your audience, I know this is more of a brand building question. But I guess what I'm asking is more. I feel like NF T's and this the blockchain kind of world web three worlds sits a lot on Twitter. But traditionally, creative artists settle on Instagram. And I'm getting very detailed now but how how can you you know elevate your audience. Sorry to elevate your profile to the audience who are actually going to buy your products. And does that sit within Twitter more binary? Well,

Ash Beech 28:03

I again, I think it's just the same attention game that it's always been and you can use any. Basically you want to be wherever the audience is. And to grow that audience wherever that audience wants to be. So whether that's on Instagram, and that's where your audience is, and that's where perhaps the application of your artwork is best viewed, then that would be the place to do it. So it's basically traditional methods is the way to do it. So you know, you create a YouTube channel, put videos on there. And just keep buying out the content and people start to get interested and then you release an NF T collection. That's like so you you've released the channel, the YouTube channel, the Instagram account to hype up. Why what I guess it's about building brand isn't it like getting attention building a brand, it's about cultivating an audience around the same values that your work embodies. So you know, you have values that you see in the world and you recreate that in your your artwork and you gather an audience around it, and then you allow people to own part of your brand and what that brand means via NF T's. So that's how I would see how it would work.

Emma Alexander 29:12

So it's not an easy path. The easy path we

Ash Beech 29:16

think it's gonna be if you enjoy that work, I mean, that's the thing. If you if it's something you love to do, then it allows you to directly interface with your audience and have a value for value transaction without any third parties.

Emma Alexander 29:33

Something I couldn't talk about NSCs and not touch on the topic of sustainability. So I know there's been an awful lot of talk, you know, controversy about the real the real cost of NF T's energy consumption. You know, so as as a vegan yourself and someone I know who who is climate conscious. What's your What are your feelings about this?

Ash Beech 29:57

My feelings are that a lot of it is misunderstanding around the energy usage, which is perpetuated by articles in the media that don't quite understand the value proposition behind the technology, or just haven't done the research, most blockchains that we're going to be using to do NF t's on in the future. They're going to they're going to be carbon neutral in the future, which is something which is something that they're actively as the community is working towards, because the thing is, this is all code and when it comes to code, it just becomes more and more efficient, and we adapt it to meet wherever the needs of the people one and one of the things is sustainability. And so we want to get more efficient and blockchains are becoming more efficient, but you know, the media and articles and people who have a different take on it. Maybe haven't done the research misunderstand that seems to be left behind as the code adapts. So every day that goes by these blockchains get more efficient and get more sustainable. And that's where it's all going. So it's not it just feels like it's not a worry being

Emma Alexander 31:08

powered. It's where it's all going. So surely things are being powered. Not a worry. So for surely the things being powered by computers. Computers are obviously consuming energy. I know you're saying it becoming more efficient, but this is a global thing. So obviously, we can't can't assume that everybody is using renewable resources. You know that there's that there's a heat element to like these database data farms are pumping out phenomenal Alpha heat. Surely, that's that's going to have an impact. I mean, you can obviously you can buy carbon offsets, but you can't buy yourself out of you know,

Ash Beech 31:43

out of carbon. This is one of the misunderstandings. So, I mean it depends on what the blockchain is, is how it works. So, the two main types of blockchain, the way that they are secured, is one of them is proof of work, which is the one that you're thinking about where you think of these massive data centres with the miners producing all this heat. That's proof of work and one thing that proof of work is doing is offsetting the energy grid in a way that has never been possible before. Where normally, you know, gas and these these places where they come and what the term is exactly, but they have. So the energy grid has times where it's, you know, low that where people aren't using the energy, but they still have to produce the same amount of energy. And so that energy just goes to waste. I think it's like 17% or something goes to waste. But now that 17% can be stored as energy within these proof of work blockchains and then used again, elsewhere. So it's almost like a kind of energy storage. That's proof of work. So basically, it's one of the things it's doing is triggering a sustainability technology revolution where people are pushing to the cheapest energy they can possibly get in order to be able to mine these cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. And it means that people are innovating technology to become more and more efficient in that direction to wherever the energy is cheapest and also being more energy efficient in the storage from these grids that normally would go to waste. So that is just proof. of work but proof of steak, which is what, which is a different type of securing a blockchain network where people stake tokens and it uses way less energy and it's actually so there's there's a chain called polygon which this year is going to is touting that it's going to be completely carbon neutral. And as it scales as well, still gonna be carbon neutral and allow people to do exactly the same things as they do now, just way more efficiently. So it just comes down to what how are people innovating to make these things more efficient and what is the chain using and and at the moment, we're still kind of early and it's still just it's pushing in the right direction. But I mean, the to me the misunderstanding with with energy usage, and and the thing that people seem to think about is that the any any energy usage is bad and I think a race to the bottom in energy usage isn't the place to be. I think energy, energy usage isn't a bad thing. It's just what are you using that energy for and in what direction is your energy use to try and make things more efficient? So that's where I am at the moment. At the moment,

Emma Alexander 34:27

Amazing that makes complete sense actually. Makes me feel an awful lot better. So in short, you can create NF T's sustainably.

Ash Beech 34:36

You can Yeah, absolutely. Today, you could do that on Polygon network is touting carbon neutrality.

Emma Alexander 34:44

Amazing. And I guess there's also an argument for actually taking responsibility as well. And showing that your own energy provider is 100% renewable as well. Taking those rights back. Yeah. Like I wanted to ask you I'm going to wrap things up now because we I think I could talk forever. But when I ask you, you are obviously available. On rhizome, as one of our experts. Gonna be talking about NF T's web three and I'm blockchain. Why have you decided to join Wisern?

Ash Beech 35:15

Because I want to help creatives tap into the power of technology in the form of NF T's be able to gain value from the audience without middle people. I want to get rid of middle people so that creatives can actually access the value from their audience directly. Without people telling them what they can or can't do, or you know, censoring them.

Emma Alexander 35:38

What advice would you give your younger younger self?

Ash Beech 35:42

I would say double down on whatever your gut says, and yet stick to it. I mean, it's like

Emma Alexander 35:52

No, not at all. If you could spend an hour with an expert with somebody who would it be

Ash Beech 36:00

A guy called Hal Finney. You want me to explain who he is? Yeah, yeah. So

how Finney was a an original Cypher punk. So he was some he was basically the guy who came up with the proof of work algorithm. And worked on Bitcoin in the early days. And I think he is Satoshi Nakamoto, who is the creator of Bitcoin, but he's a very interesting guy that I would love to pick his brain.

Emma Alexander 36:30

Amazing. That is so cool. Thank you so much, James. Where can we find you? Online to give you a follow up and keep absorbing your wisdom.

Ash Beech 36:40

So I'm Ash beach across social media, but we have a Twitter account. This is bullish, so you can follow me there and yeah, LinkedIn and we're starting a YouTube channel. But yeah, that's that's about it.

Emma Alexander 36:58

Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today and kind of scratching the surface, I think of what NFC is blockchain in there. And and web three really means for the creative industry moving forward, but if there's anything that you would like to expand on, you'd like to speak to ash, but anything that we discussed today, you know, you can find him at Wisern or if you want to talk about anything we haven't covered today, head to Wisern click on experts scroll down and ashes there. You can book a session with him straight away. And as I mentioned, we're going to be giving away two free sessions to the people who get in there first. So you want to go book a session. Use the code help me ash, help me ash all one word, and go and grab a free session with with us today. Or not today, wherever you want to go and go and talk to her and kickstart hopefully you mincing your own work. I'm going to take a couple of questions now. So I'm just gonna go bring up the q&a. We've had quite a few come in, so bear with me when I do this. Actually spit straight off the bat. Can you send an image as an NF T and keep selling it as a print in physical form? Good question. Good question.

Ash Beech 38:09

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the two things is a separate really doesn't stop you from doing anything. It's just the fact that you've created an image and you've assigned it to a unique hash on a blockchain which makes it unique and that can be traded around. So it's just another it's another form of media, I guess, if it is a piece of work you're producing, but I guess it makes it. I know it has. It has a different value proposition, I guess, and it's how you market it and things but yeah, no, you can totally do that.

Emma Alexander 38:38

And that's a really interesting question, actually, from artists as I'm coming out. With a photo book later this year. With portraits I've taken, how can NFT technology help to create a unique experience for book buyers? Why is

Ash Beech 38:52

interesting, so I guess one example might be a very good one example would be that each book itself could have a QR code on it that links to the NFT that somebody had in their wallet. So if someone would, when they buy the book, they get sent the NFT to their wallet, and then that wallet corresponds to something unique on the print of the book. So that's just a simple example.

Emma Alexander 39:18

Thanks. And finally, DigitalOcean Yep, perfect. I love that. And actually, someone's asked a question about smart contracts, actually, and we touched on that really briefly earlier, but we didn't really go into what that means. So it's how do I add a contract to an NFT? And what should it say? Are there templates available?

Ash Beech 39:42

Yeah, so this this can get quite technical. But a smart smart contract is the thing that emits an NF t. So anytime you mint an NF T there will be a smart contract, which is just a script, a load of logic in code that allows you to mint this NFT and put it on the blockchain and assign it different functions. So I guess the, the answer to the question is can be a bit too specific, I guess, because I'd need to know if the NFT already existed and what standard the NF T was and things like this, but it's probably something that we'd need to get into one to one on a session.

Emma Alexander 40:23

I see nicely outside of there. Like guys, thank you, Ashley. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was that was really think about guys, thank you so much for joining as well. We'll be back next month. We'll be talking about the art of balance and the self publishing which is a really interesting topic. But ash, thank you so much for joining me. Guys. You can watch this again. We'll send out the replay. Shortly. And as always, we'll see you soon. Thank you

END.

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