Transcript
(00:00) foreign [Music] [Music] all right all right all right we’re getting getting down through the end of day two I look like I got a little brother a brother from another mother here nice shape man and this and the hoodie and the rug he’s totally ready not even got the PIN and the pin I got the pin too look at that on the background ah I got it actually I got the rug but it’s at my dad’s house in the U.S I gotta get
(01:04) one here um but uh yeah I think a lot of you know Alex you you popped in with Miguel earlier um you know you’ve also a YouTube channel the content over I remember over the years and you uh your um today it’s gonna be a fun little journey discussion about you know Finding handshake and to into merch and uh and and maybe a little bit of Cosmos and some you know basically your journey and uh and and I’m I’m looking forward to this um I know you’ve been or contributing so much in various ways here so I’m gonna for the effort of time
(01:39) get out of the way and let you take it from here thank you Alex or mix make machine awesome all right these are these are fun we’re gonna yeah we’re gonna do them um so first of all I mean thank you thank you everybody this is awesome Mike and behind the scenes everybody else uh this is uh it’s pretty incredible so uh today I I’m gonna go in all sorts of directions hopefully you guys enjoy it um hopefully it’s valuable for you it’s not going to be the same as some of the other presentations you saw it’s going
(02:07) to be a little bit unscripted so we’ll uh we’ll Dive Right In let me share this all right all right so hello uh first of all super happy to be here um my name is Alex right I have a website it’s called nfts are stupid.com I do not think nfts are stupid I think nfts are pretty cool uh but I thought it was a catchy name and I found the TLD on name base for 10hs and I said why not so uh nfts are stupid.
(02:39) com or just dot nfts are stupid if you’re a beacon user um first yeah my name uh so Alex miglarini right um I go by mig’s machine in a lot of places why am I telling you my name again uh this is something I learned from Stephen Mackey a while ago there’s a lot of people in the decentralized web crypto Twitter right all these places and they they choose to Shield their identity and I don’t think that that’s a bad thing right I think they must have good reasons for doing so um and I think it’s great that they choose to do that but there’s also this
(03:05) other side of it right if we want to give legitimacy to the space and we want this space to be real right um we’re going to need to be people sometimes right so I I figured it was a small thing I could do is to try to identify myself I I have no problem with it um and uh yeah so I think I’m going to be putting nfts or stupid on my LinkedIn so um let’s see I’m based out of selling California I have lived um in China for uh study abroad I’ve lived in Argentina Argentina was a big deal we live in
(03:31) hyperinflation you learn a lot about what value means but currently in Southern California um I’m a finance sales professional so I in summary I sell money I sell money in exchange for assets uh not too different than what I do with tlds uh so it’s something that uh that I do I do it in the residential Finance space because I find Residential um you know money that people use to buy their homes it’s the most personal kind of money you can possibly spend at least in my opinion so that’s that’s my background that’s what
(03:59) I’ve been doing for the last few years I’ve also been an entrepreneur my whole life uh so ever since I was 11 and I could start my first Lemonade Stand um I was just doing stuff to try to you know get my freedom uh by by making my own money it’s been really fun and I’ve learned a lot um I’m the son of an engineer so that’s that’s kind of how it started right I think we all think we’re very different from our parents I’m I’m not in retrospect my father moved to the United
(04:22) States uh to work uh with technology he was very he was gifted and you know I asked him the other day honestly Point Blank like why did you you know work in medical technology your whole life and he said it’s it’s I love the tech I just wanted to be close to the tech I was willing to move 5000 miles to be closer to cooler tech and you know thankfully your mom said yes so that’s how we got here um I joined handshake in April of 2020.
(04:47) it was completely by accident I had a friend who said hey buy coin coin’s gonna go up you buy it on this website it’s called name base it looks a little weird but just do it so I did that for a few weeks and uh coin did go up it was pretty cool um one day just type my last name into the search bar a couple ten days later got an email from name base confetti everywhere and I was like what uh I own.
(05:10) mglarini uh it was super exciting and I’ve been hooked ever since so that was my that was my handshake built um I might be the least technical user in handshake so I don’t say that to uh embarrass myself or make fun of myself I say it to make it a welcoming kind of community the whole point of this presentation is to show that you know you can be a little bit different right and still contribute to um so contribute to the ecosystem and then one thing that really defines me I hope it doesn’t offend anybody but you know um I love calling out if
(05:39) something does not add up to me um I’m going to ask why it’s my favorite thing to do it’s my barometer my compass for kind of making sure that I’m in the right place at the right time around the right people something’s off I want to find out why and if it doesn’t make sense you know maybe it’s not the place for me and that’s something that I’ve applied to handshake ever since the very first day I’ve tried to find reasons why this you know shouldn’t work and I just
(06:01) can’t so um until I can I’m gonna be around and that’s the intro so why should you care uh that’s a very very fair question um should you should you care well um let’s see I want to give my perspective on handshake uh just in general if nothing else just as a guy who’s been you know kicking around tlds for the last 35 months um for me one of the most influential talks about blockchain that I ever attended was the first handicon somebody named handshake Jesus now rebranded his handshake Institute
(06:38) um who has a background psychology gave their perspective on getting into Bitcoin getting into handshake and what it was going to mean now my perspective’s not the same but I’m hoping that by sharing it right it’ll spark some sort of idea or something for you and give you some sort of trajectory or be you know valuable in some way shape or form so first I want to say like I don’t think that handshake is just for Builders coders d-gens or Scholars right these people are massively important and
(07:04) influential particularly now while we’re in this infancy phase right and development is so crucial so I want to be clear and I’m not taking anything away from them um but I do believe that handshake as an idea needs to be just as or more decentralized socially than it ever needs to be as a network right Believers make Believers and to believe something you kind of need to understand it first right so so that’s my that’s my logic this place there’s a lot to do right even if you’re not technical like
(07:36) myself foreign technology right everyone here is very friendly right but but it’s it’s you know handshake’s doing a big thing right in some way or another what the founders of a handshake set out to accomplish is to extend um a modern fundamental human right to the world right through the internet right so which is identity so identity um kind of as far as civilization can reach using Code it’s um literally right I’ve seen Matt Zipkin talk about like clients I don’t know how to configure
(08:09) one but I get the idea right you can you can run this pretty much anywhere or access it pretty much anywhere I’ve even heard JJ say that he wants to I think we’re on a node um on Windows 97 which would be quite the spectacle I don’t know if he’s uh if he’s done that quite yet but um yeah I mean being able to have a parallel DNS system that’s worldwide that anybody can access is not small it’s also not infinitely logical right and in this space you know logic wins a lot um but this concept extends
(08:37) far beyond like a blockchain or or you know a name service or an address book right and it’s going to come with inherent challenges the same types of challenges that anything or anyone that’s trying to change hearts and Minds is going to face right it’s going to come with a lot of friction so as someone that’s clearly an outsider from the fundamental development of handshake I see this whole other side of handshake that may require a whole other category of people right that are going to start joining us right and they’re
(09:07) going to need to kind of pick up the torch and carry it further right to advance the fundamentals of handshake to the masses if you will right so that’s why I believe that the collective Community is the single most valuable part of handshake right that’s all of us everybody that is here today right are very important um given the time in which we chose to get involved it I think it’s still very early but you’re also going to be very influential in the advancement of the protocol myself included in a way right
(09:35) so our behaviors our projects our Creations our influence right um the next wave of users right they’re going to take from that and it’s going to probably help them decide how they’re going to behave right we can’t actually control their behaviors but we can set the tone so um you know I think we should we should operate under that premise um knowing that that is going to come and being kind of prepared for it because they’re going to help Define the next chapter of handshake so that’s you
(10:05) know a little bit about my how I got started I mean you know to be honest it was it was name based it was a lot of really friendly people on crypto Twitter that were very you know welcoming that’s that’s kind of how I got started but more importantly I want to share what I’ve learned right in my perspective over the time that I’ve been here um now I want to get into kind of my my uh what I think oh and the last thought on this is that like I think that a lot of the time the community is so small we’re
(10:30) so small we don’t realize how small we are and we think like if we introduce these other people it’s going to be a problem or these people are different so it’s going to be a problem I think that’s probably not a sustainable way of thinking I think that the more people we see the more diversity we see the more directions that people try to take this chain the better that you know the better that it’s good the more it’s going to grow right in time we always talk about adoption you gotta let
(10:53) anybody adopt it that’s that’s just my thoughts um cool so I wanted to give a thesis here sorry if this is wordy I’ll read it out loud for us so my thoughts and this is leading into leading into the merch right um humans have emotions right feelings are tangible while emotions are or could be considered to be deep and complicated the idea that feelings are tangible basically means right that they could be more sensory or less intellectual and uh like intellectual and deep so emotions are more powerful than feelings they can
(11:28) also trigger the human intellect the difference between feelings and thoughts is that feelings cause feeling right or stimulation and can be complex intellectual well thoughts could be unconscious or complex right thoughts are more logical feelings take over your body right and they make you do things um so what could it mean for emotion to be powerful would it involve physical touch you know um or physical stimulation can also be deep or shallow emotional or intellectual but if the feeling something like physical touch is
(12:00) intellectual then it could also be emotional um or it could also be tied to sensory feelings say when you touch something what I’m referring to here is the association that people make to to tangible objects is actually very very strong particularly if they are seeing that tangible object as a representation of their emotions right and and that leads into kind of the way that I thought that I could help handshake with uh with merch so how did we get to the merch um well uh why is it that every time something
(12:32) goes mainstream we see it on t-shirts posters hashtags tattoos right why isn’t just the concept or ideology or the event not enough on its own why doesn’t that hold enough weight why do people need to um complement it with physical things right I would argue um I would argue that uh it’s not enough right just an idea isn’t enough people do need it like they there’s an inherent Global Association that people make with with you know with physical items and what they what they kind of believe or
(13:02) what they’re you know what they’re a fan of so um what I mean like people will prize physical things little prize locations um they’ll prize physical things in association with physical locations um and you know and they’ll coordinate those things uh in an intermingled way so that they can you know be associated with each other um it could be a flag right that flag could be cherished across an entire country even if most of the citizens haven’t ever left their Province or their state um you know that that will happen it
(13:31) could be it could be a specific place like a burial ground right like the person’s not there why do we why do we hold so much association with it um it could be a championship ring right the championship was the was the win why is the ring relevant right why does the trophy matter um because it commemorates that event it commemorates the emotions that that person felt right when they were going through that experience so the point is that we naturally seek to you know to associate certain emotions with symbols
(13:56) and to Encompass them so uh that’s why I say that merchandise is uh powerful right uh turning a thought idea or emotion into something tangible with Association has the power to completely change the way that somebody thinks about it uh completely right they might actually only associate with the thing and not really the idea um so this process attributes meaning to the thought right and and it gives something it gives something very real that comes out of it so it’s not really a complex thing that I’m sharing here right it’s not rocket
(14:30) science I didn’t submit a poll to a GitHub or anything like that it’s just something that I that I feel and that’s what led me to make my very first rug which was actually meant for me um I’ll show you where that rug ended up in a moment but uh yeah I made the first handshake rug I told uh I told a girlfriend at the time that I wanted to make one and she said that’s a great idea maybe it’ll shut up about handshake if you do that it didn’t work but I did get a rug out of it so um so I made my first handshake rug and
(14:56) the reason I’m so confident right I was so confident about the about the rug and the way that people um you know that that maybe you would it would catch on is that I’ve seen this whole thing play out before um so I have this uh Theory right that crypto was punk rock and punk rock is crypto now handshake is My One True Love Don’t tell the other chains that but um you know so really handshake is punk rock right and punk rock is handshake and what I mean by that um you know I used to be in the punk rock scene so that’s why I say I speak
(15:29) from experience and you know um I had long hair I had a bad attitude I wore far too much black I had a blatant misunderstanding for the world or my place in it and it was kind of awesome at least I thought so right I had a I had a great time I had friends I had like-minded people I had a place to hang out um I thought I looked a lot cooler than I did so uh there was that too but um but the point is that um what I the association I’m trying to make here is that in this world you have a bunch of bands or you have a bunch of
(16:01) groups and it’s people that are trying to extend kind of their passion their idea through through something that is expressive to them right and they it’s you know it’s always good and it’s not always bad sometimes it’s in the middle but what what happens is that you start to formulate followings right so you you have bands and those bands kind of turn into Brands right and then you have the fans and the fans want to celebrate the brands and so they celebrate the brands by putting them all over the place right
(16:30) and that usually starts with merch it can go as far as tattoos um anything can happen so so I myself went to hundreds of punk rock shows um and a lot of them weren’t good and a lot of them I knew weren’t going to be good before I even went there but there was still a reason you went there you went there to hang out with like-minded people to see the way that they were going to dress to see the way that they were going to act and even if you hated the whole show right the second busiest place in the venue would always be
(16:59) the merch table right um and that would be the place where everybody would hang out you would go and you would get something that commemorated the fact that you were there right you could even if you knew that show was going to suck you told your friends you were going to go over the weekend you had to show up on Monday with a t-shirt or did you even really go right um that was that was something that I picked up and that was my Association once it clicked that you know this crypto space is just one big mess but
(17:23) every you know everyone’s just trying to have fun and kind of you know rallying around what they like I was like this needs this needs merch so that’s that was kind of how that started um well it’s been it’s been a journey now I think my first rug was probably made about two years ago um and people have been been pretty receptive uh this is the very first rug that I made uh Chango uh spoke earlier today I’m a big fan of Tango she overlaps in the cosmos and handshake space she runs um she does uh she does a
(17:55) lot of YouTube right and probably gives some of the best interviews um in crypto so interchain FM I highly recommend uh the podcast uh if not or or the YouTube channel but um yeah Chango saw the rug on Twitter she wanted it and I was like yeah I’m gonna give it to Chango so that’s uh that’s where the first rug went and then it just kind of went from there I worked with Mike on the flamingo sunglasses uh these are too cool for me not to have a pair he offered to to let me throw a couple on the shop so we did made a rug
(18:25) for the shake which was one of my favorite projects so far and it just went from there uh we auctioned off some rugs on Flamingo handshake uh we got we got dogs on rugs this one is coming coming to us from Texas pretty sure that’s ATX uh we got Miguel who I was with a little bit earlier today Miguel and I are working on a project uh doing uh well Miguel is running a domain registrar and he has h s rugs which is the TLD that I won back in the day and we’re looking to try to you know start the association of these nfts or domain
(18:57) names with physical tangible items which I think is going to be the next step here to make it more fun we got my dad who I’ve pretty much hired to help ship out all these rugs to you guys um we’ve shipped them out to India Australia everywhere um I got Stephen Webb who was a super cool supporter he got the third rug uh here’s this tweet saying he’s proud of it and then I’ve also been able to collaborate with other people that are creating cool stuff um so there’s um there’s a guy named Alex I don’t know if
(19:23) I haven’t seen him this year but he was making the handshake socks he gave he was definitely a sparker of the idea and then there’s Irwin who owns dot pins in Australia he uh he won one of the rugs on the auction he was very patient and I think three months it took to get there hopefully it doesn’t happen again and he sent me a few pins and we have them on the website so so I guess what I’m saying is that um I think I think the merch is fun I think that the the space can enjoy it um I think it it allows us to you know when
(19:52) there’s up markets down markets it’s just a it’s a distraction you know it’s something to put in your house and just associate with uh with your with your thoughts and ideas and um that’s that’s really it on a on a base level um I am more than happy to answer any questions if there if there are any oh is up uh maybe you can start to model some of your show us closely or some of your uh merch yeah yeah just uh just one second so the I can I can definitely take these down um so this is the obviously this is not
(20:40) a Bitcoin uh conference but I think that with handshake being a fork right um and being inspired I thought the Bitcoin rug would be would be a lot of fun this um this one does get some traction kind of uh online like in places outside of crypto Twitter which is uh which is pretty interesting but the thank you so these are about two feet um two feet tall they are relatively thick I tried to make sure um that the quality would stick right and then people can uh pretty much put them up anywhere I don’t usually put
(21:14) them on the ground personally but I know that some folks do um and uh and it’s also led me you know I think I know that we are here to talk about mostly handshake but um handshake is a very personal project right being that you buy your own name right that’s usually what gets people involved in it and so people have approached me from all over the the cryptosphere and they want to put their own they want to put their own different projects on rugs and spend a lot of fun that’s something I’m doing right now
(21:42) partying the chat dot X is asking for the X rug I think in the Q a legit is asking for legit rug um yeah Kirk will be sharing later um yeah and then uh seems like the feedback we’re getting is make your own custom rug um maybe even yeah I mean hand shakers like you see a lot of us I I kind of call handshake a B2B communities More Than A B to C because I think the way it works is you get a TLD and then you got to go out and get your own sld customers which are different communities than handshake itself personally so
(22:24) um so I think maybe like the feedback I’m called even just just right now um just let people maybe have their own design and you could make the rug for their design I don’t know how it might be pretty hard it’s not as easy maybe as it sounds but uh I actually I agree with you 100 so I’ve started doing that and um and been getting a lot of a lot of orders there’s a lot of chains in the cosmos world that they want their their own rugs or their own specific nft um on a rug or I’ve been really playing
(22:59) around with the idea maybe I can get some feedback here of making a generic TLD rug right so you type in the TLD and it’ll make a rug out of it we can throw the slash at the end of it um and you know everybody can kind of personalize their own um their own type of identity I think that would be fun I also have a couple tlds that that I would like to put up for sale at some point if I can find like the appropriate owners for them and have a rug that comes comes along with it in terms of sizes and Designs I can
(23:27) do literally any size you want and any design that you want I can hit almost any Pantone that’s possible um so great yeah a bigger bigger size okay yeah yeah I’ve done I’ve done several uh uh I think uh like 12 12 feet is the biggest one I’ve done so far but yeah I do agree I do agree um I do agree so you know merch or physical product with a digital products or you know domains like you said punk rock I’m on the same page you know people want to you know wear it you know uh but I feel like you know it’s similar
(24:09) like handshake and nfts or communities want to have like you know early is you know he’s in a chat who’s giving you great feedback but yeah he’s helped me get this set up and obviously a lot of us are wearing his pins um but yeah I mean seeing it wearing it in real life is is a different kind of connection than than on the screen right like physically having something is still more powerful I have a feeling than than looking at it on your screen yeah somebody okay I think that’s what that’s what you see I
(24:44) think that people uh a lot of the times that it’s almost like we can’t attribute enough value to some of some of the things that we see online because because we don’t because we don’t physically see it in front of us right and so um so I so I agree with you it’s it’s yeah I mean that that is that is the thesis I think that whenever whatever I think is exciting I wanna I wanna celebrate it in some capacity whether that be art or or apparel um or something or something else right um so uh and I did I did also work uh
(25:15) with DOT X on on a rug which was which was a lot of fun so that was uh that was I think my first custom uh h s rug that might have been the first TLD rug um so thank you uh I’m glad uh I’m glad that you uh that you enjoy it in terms of uh in terms of where they’ve gone you know handshake is truly decentralized they’ve gone to Australia they’ve gone to India they’ve gone to Spain um Canada and uh several states in the United States um also uh Argentina um honestly I haven’t seen it during
(25:45) in the loud in the lounge too earlier even last year uh our our our friend Johnny was sending out the hoodies to all the speakers and he said over 50 percent was International for outside the U.S um I think it’s I think it’s more than 50 this year we have to look into that um yeah but uh but yeah it’s really cool it’s really cool what you’re doing um so how can people support we got a couple more minutes we’re gonna take a break after we got a few more sessions today how can people uh of course buying
(26:20) buying you know makesmachine.com you know like what are some ways so I’m on uh so nfts are stupid.com is the marketplace I made the switch because it allowed me to help kind of more get to more people um and accept crypto which is pretty fun um so so there’s that but um but really you know the rug the rugs aren’t the major Money Maker for me uh they’re they’re an opportunity for me to meet a lot of different people so bring on bring on the creative projects if you got challenges I know we want to get h s
(26:51) on some exchanges all cold call people I got no problem with that whatever whatever um exciting ideas mostly on the networking and marketing side that I can uh that I can help out with I’m happy to do that I’m going to be at namescon uh in a couple months um so I’ll definitely I’ll have a big backpack of rugs but I’m mostly there to learn uh and just help collaborate collaborate with folks but um Twitter Twitter and the website are definitely the the two best places to go okay sorry but I got it nfc’s stupid.com
(27:19) okay clear clear clear um I think where we covered it I mean it was it was uh it was a great time and yeah um I don’t know if you connected with Daniel yet um but Dad it would be great to get some listings too um but that’s a separate topic but thanks for everything you do and yeah let’s keep uh let’s keep on helping each other building building up our community of uh decentralized Builders and creators right and we’re in this crazy different merch around yeah Kirk I want some legit merch too so
(27:57) we’re gonna have to do an exchange my friend you guys yeah awesome oh yeah I got one I got I got the legit hat right here it doesn’t fit with the glasses that’s the yeah you got too much when coupon code coupon code’s already it’s already out uh so rug me you want yeah yeah coupon codes uh rug me will be your 15 off um on the site if you want anything custom though just let me know um happy happy to help last thing um I am more than happy to do uh any more like a YouTube interviews people have told me I should try to do
(28:38) some sort of uh some sort of talk uh with the nfts or stupid name but if anybody wants to you know talk about their brands I’m happy to happy to do whatever helps get it get the word out great great you know maybe my daughter needs to collaborate with you I was I don’t know if I she’s uh she’s an artist I remember it yeah she she painted this in her class for me she knows daddy does the flamingo stuff so that’s amazing that’s crazy right yeah wow all right all right so congrats on everything with the with the event Mike
(29:16) it’s been really awesome to watch everything it’s also the speakers the content it’s it’s really I mean just taking all this amazing stuff that’s happening and showing every showing the world right so yeah you’ve been doing it for four years man awesome yeah try to go to the lounges and uh and networking and make some friends connect with people and uh we’ll see you in the next session [Music]