Shout out to Stakwork for their help in getting our twitter spaces transcribed weekly.
Voltage – 00:00:06:
Alright, well, looks like we’ve got Jared, Jake and Nick here all up top from Mash to kick this off. Really excited to have you guys here and really pumped to share what you guys are doing with the world. I know you raised some funding recently, and what’s super fun to me about what you guys are doing that I love is just the kind of frame this conversation, how I’m thinking of it. And then love for you guys to just share everything about what you’re doing. But I know one thing users tend to do is we subscribe to everything nowadays and we’ve got all these bills and we just don’t have time to use them all. I think of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, all these subscription services, and what you guys are doing is making it to where businesses can just collect payment for what is used the most is what I’m understanding. And I love that because it really serves consumers and it really gives businesses insights into what people truly love. But I’m going to let you guys just kick it off, tell us a little bit about what you’re building Mash how you guys are viewing this and we’ll take it from there.
Jared Nusinoff – 00:01:17:
That sounds great. Maybe I’ll do a quick intro and then maybe a little bit about myself and then let Nick and Jake maybe add on if that’s all good with you. And yeah, sure. I think how you describe it is definitely one of the things that we’re trying to tackle, you shouldn’t have to always subscribe to something to enjoy it, but just maybe take a step back. Our mission is to remodel the majority of the Internet right now. If you look at how things are monetized, you have these weird incentives and these structures that don’t really help the creators and builders of amazing experiences. So your option one is to try and monetize ads. So get millions of people. So it needs to be like a very generalized product or piece of content. Have them do it, and then hopefully be in a niche where they can click on some links and buy something somewhere else. And that’s nothing to do with the quality of what you’re providing. It’s an SEO game or an Arbitrage game where Disinformation gets funded by the winners or Google and Facebook, not the people who create the content or the apps or the experiences or the consumers, all of us who try to enjoy and find quality stuff. It takes forever. Now the other side is what you were describing, which is the subscription model, the big upfront payment model. And you need to really love that thing. Like it needs to have tons of stuff that you understand, that you really enjoy and you use it every day. It needs to be a newsletter writer that you are fanatic about their content. But there’s these episodic things, these little tools, these experiences. This person who writes something less frequently that is still high quality, should be monetized and should earn their value so people can spend their time developing and turn them into a full-time job and so we’ve developed an approach using bitcoin and Lightning, only to say it should be pay as you enjoy or tip as you enjoy. It shouldn’t be these minimum big purchases. In that way, we can help enable a value-for-value economy online. So that’s for, like, the preamble, I guess I’ll do a quick intro for myself. I’m Jared. I’m from Toronto. I’m half an outdoor adventure person. I love going on canoe trips, so think about hiking, but instead, it’s with canoes on remote rivers, and other than that, the tech guy focused on bitcoin and Lightning. Now, previously, I was at Google for about seven and a half years and had the, I guess, opportunity, fortunate and unfortunate of watching the display ad system and work the way it did work and then working in content for running mobile for Google Fiber and maybe Nick or Jake if you guys want to jump in.
Jake – 00:04:11:
Yeah, I think Jared did a great job of kind of outlining what our mission is and just giving an intro for myself. I’m Jake. I’m one of the founding engineers. Yeah, the only other thing that I have is I think Jared may have coined this. I don’t know who’s credited with it. But we kind of like to refer to Mash as we’re trying to turn the Web into an arcade. Kind of as Jared was alluding to. Like letting these kinds of creators and builders who have these feature experiences that normally you wouldn’t want to pay a subscription for. You just want to maybe it’s just a few sats here and there enabling those sorts of experiences to be monetized as well and kind of allowing consumers or people that are enjoying these experiences to kind of hop around the web and pay for these things. Is really what we’re doing. I’ll let Nick give a little intro as well.
Nick Johnson – 00:05:14:
Cool. Yeah. My name is Nick. Just another engineer here at Mash. Yeah, I think just, like, one other view of what we’re doing from more of a technical side is we’re kind of building a suite of tools that allow earners to kind of, like, tailor this great experience for the consumers, which just hasn’t been before possible with bitcoin and Lightning. I think we’ve covered a lot there.
Voltage – 00:05:44:
Awesome. Well, I appreciate the breakdown and everything. So as far as this goes, I kind of shared the most common example. We think of all these services we subscribe to that are at a really corporate kind of level, but there are all these different ways that people are monetizing, whether it be the popular, Onlyfans or Substack. How are you guys approaching this? Where do you see the need for what’s that you guys are bringing just in the world as of today?
Jared Nusinoff – 00:06:21:
All right, I’ll guess I’ll go. I want to hit a bunch of different ones, and then maybe Jake and Nick want to jump in, feel free to interrupt me. So let’s take the example of Only fans. Let’s say you’re not doing Onlyfans, we’re doing something else, and you want to sell high res imagery, mods, and little templates that you’ve built. How can you charge 25 cents? You can’t and so imagine you just had little widgets that you could charge for a PDF, charge for a page, charge for a chapter, or charge for access to a piece of content and video that you control, and that you’re not going to get censored on for any amount. That’s one example. Let’s say you have, like, a little game, like, I don’t know if you all know Drosos or code names. Some of these little games that people play with their teams, don’t really have a monetization model unless people play them all the time. But they could easily add a premium feature if you have more than five teammates, throw in ten cents, and then you can remove all of the ads. They can actually use it or add special features or different maps for different games. You can do usage-based pricing. So there’s all these sorts of highly granular payment experiences that can allow them to earn and not just sort of be stuck without having a business model and so part of what we’re doing is we want to make it as easy as possible for them to just layer in this way to earn for what they’re creating or building. Whether it’s a video and pay by time or written content and access some of it. Or a book or serialized content or education. And you just wrap it with a few little pieces of code. And then you can charge the model that makes sense for you. Without us being in control, they can just kick us off. It’s about them owning their content, choosing their pricing, their relationship, and their model, and us just helping them do it.
Nick Johnson – 00:08:30:
Yeah, kind of extending on this just a bit. But once you start thinking with these primitives that we’re building, you start to see examples all over your life. I’m down in San Diego, and I get to surf pretty often, and something that I use is there are actually people who write these really good specific surf reports for the spots that you go surfing at. It’s just another example where they’re constantly asking, hey, guys, can you buy me a coffee? Or something like that and you just know that no one’s paying these people, but what if I could pay them a dime every time I read a surf report every day and stuff like that and so you just start to notice all these different use cases, like, throughout life here?
Voltage – 00:09:13:
Yeah, absolutely. This kind of leads me before I worked in Bitcoin, one side of me was just thinking about like, someone who’s done marketing for like, ten years is I should build my own website and start creating content videos, do consulting, like build a presence on, let’s say, Twitter and TikTok or whatever, and just really establish my foot in one or two areas and I know this is incredibly common for people, and one thing that takes me to think about is obviously YouTube has done a great job of censoring people. Twitter has done it and people really are focused on their personal brand nowadays, and that’s becoming more popular. And I’ve seen a lot of YouTubers who begin to monetize and sell things on their own website. That’s kind of where my mind naturally goes. It’s just true independent content creators versus. let’s say, larger brands. Like, is that really the quickest use case here, if I’m understanding correctly?
Jake – 00:10:13:
Yeah, I think that’s kind of Danny, at least for these initial sorts of use cases that we’re targeting, there’s definitely some products and services out there that kind of try to do this right. So if you think about, like, Patreon for, like, YouTube creators specifically, a place for them to offer bonus content and that sort of thing. But there are obviously issues with that, right? For 1 second you’re on YouTube watching a video, and in order to support this person fully, you kind of need to leave the site and go, that’s a huge friction point and so one of the things that we’re trying to solve is how do you enable those sort of experiences where people can support the creators that they love, where they’re already enjoying their content on their websites, in their apps, and just really lowering the amount of friction, if at all, that people have normally when they want to contribute? That’s definitely one of our goals. So I think, yes, specifically for this kind of independent, smaller creators is definitely where we’re focusing right now. I don’t know if Jared or Nick.
Voltage – 00:11:29:
Awesome, now when it comes to these specific use cases and users, obviously, a lot of people have really taken being an independent content creator and running with it because there are so many arms of a business. You could have your creative side, where you do blogs, you manage your social, you create video content, maybe you do consult, you have affiliate marketing, obviously, and then more beyond that. What’s the biggest gap? Like, your target customer right now maybe does not see and understand that you’re looking to really clear if there was that 62nd elevator pitch that maybe a lot of these leaders who are making $200,000, $600,000 because you can make a ton of money, like building your own brand. What’s the missing link that bitcoin and Lightning really solve for them?
Jared Nusinoff – 00:12:23:
I almost want to ask you to pick us almost a creator builder to make the pitch for, because the products and the use cases that we’re enabling, vary for each one, and they have to be highly targeted for that person or for their business. Let’s say we take and I’ll just make one up and let’s say we’re taking an educator that teaches people how to code, like something like Khan Academy, and they have a solid following on YouTube and they’re not that big. Let’s say 50,000, 100,000 people following them. Most creators make $20,000 $50,000 after four-plus years of going through it. They can then say. Oh. You know what. I have a bunch of premium and advanced deep dives. And I’m going to enable Pay As You Enjoy. Where you can try the first ten minutes of my advanced experience. And then it’s $3 an hour. But you only pay per minute. And if you don’t like it. You stop paying and now they can start having premium experiences rather than saying, oh, buy my full education suite for $25 or $50. They now can let people they don’t have to focus on the presale. They can focus on the quality experience that keeps people going. They can then layer in, oh, fill out this quiz. If you get above 80%, the next chapter is free or half off, so they can start doing things like this. On top of it, you can think of interactive experiences saying they can go to their audience and say, hey, what should we do a course on next? Vote for it. But you have to pay the vote. Each vote is five cents. And then they’re getting prepaid support to actually decide what to build, which is in many ways, like a really compelling model. They can also do community unlocked. There’s not like a minimum purchase, like five or $10 into your credit card. Huge rich barrier. The other thing that they can do is say, oh, I have all this content that I’m sharing. I’m monetizing the ads. I’m still monetizing with all these affiliate and brand deals I’m going to, later on, a microchip button that people can spam click and just support me as they like things. And then I’ll find out where they actually liked the experience on my page so I can make it even better. So there’s like all these little things that you can layer on that just have never really been possible. It’s just been a one-time really buy the whole thing model and we’re taking it back to another model. The comparison I’m going to rant about here. So Nick and Jake, please interrupt me any time. But I almost think of what’s the comparable which is think like, how long was it 10, 15 years ago when the App Store came out on with iOS? Right? You sort of had a bunch of basic apps that were charged charge $2, $5, $10, $20. And that didn’t work because you didn’t know what you were buying. So they went to like, freemium models, but were heavily restricted. But it still became a large purchase and people didn’t do it. So what model actually worked with in-app Micropayments, where you’d buy tokens for a game, you’d say, I got to buy Candy Crush tokens, but it didn’t really work for anything else because no one had enough content? But there’s still that minimum purchase barrier. About to get this much love for this thing, to buy this many tokens. That is like your air miles, right? They’re Chuck E. Cheese tokens to use in that one thing. Imagine a world where you just have, oh, I have money and it’s in my pocket, but it’s not in my pocket, it’s just on the Internet. And I don’t have to type anything. I can click stuff, scroll to stuff and send money that way. To experience it, you sort of change that minimum love for something to be able to start contributing to it and start enjoying it. So you can turn everything into freemium.
Voltage – 00:16:22:
Yeah. I really like this because what I’m hearing is it really gives not only consumers flexibility, but it gives businesses more than just data and analytics insight. They see where the money flows and where the attention goes, and it just really gives an additional layer of clarity to the businesses. So they can just offer a better experience and it’s awesome. Nick, Jake, what do you guys have to share, if anything else?
Jake – 00:16:49:
Yeah, just to build on what you said, there is nothing else out there right now. Really lets you measure. How good your content is or your app or whatever as to if you think about getting paid for something and if we’re lowering the kind of amount that needs to be contributed to these things, then it can be easier for people to contribute and you can imagine that. The hope is that we will be able to enable these creators and builders with being able to see these signals on things that they’re creating that I couldn’t really see before. Right. Think about like clicks on Ads and that sort of stuff. Everything is all proxy metrics, but in this case, if we have enough people using the platform, we’re going to have kind of real signals on what it is that people really value because they’re literally paying for it. So that’s just to kind of build on what you mentioned, there’s something that we’re particularly kind of excited about.
Voltage – 00:17:48:
That’s great. Nice. What’s next for you guys? I know recently, I believe in the last couple of months, you guys have gotten some funding. Like if you’re open to talking a little bit about what you guys are really wanting to execute and do over the next year. So please share.
Jake – 00:18:09:
I can jump in quickly on this one. So one of the things that we’re focusing on building out is just making it a lot easier for builders and creators that want to use Mash to monetize their stuff. Just making it a lot easier for them. So we’re currently building out kind of a suite of tools, and guides, and dev docs and all that to just make it super simple to integrate and, start making money with Mash. So that’s kind of one of the main things that we’re hitting on, at least right now. I don’t know if Nick starts to hit on something else that we’re kind of looking at.
Nick Johnson – 00:18:48:
Yeah, that’s what we’re focusing on in the short and medium term and something that we’re just always keeping in mind and will be for the long term. Here is how do we keep making this platform and suite of tools that we’re building interoperable with the rest of the Lightning ecospace here. We’re taking heavy advantage of open protocols like LSat, WebLN, and LNURL, and this allows earners and consumers to use whatever parts of our platform make sense to them and not for other platforms, and allows us to click in with the rest of the space here. So it’s just something we’re always focused on.
Jake – 00:19:32:
Cool.
Voltage – 00:19:33:
I remember a week or two ago, whenever we scheduled this with you guys, I just went and got into your website for an hour and I found some really kind of fun, like, it seemed like example use cases. Do you guys want to maybe share any of those with people who have not interacted with them just so they can get an idea of how some of that works?
Jared Nusinoff – 00:19:57:
I feel like I got to go look at the website now. It’s been a while since we did that, but Libby, I’ll start with maybe some of the primitives. We want to enable people to charge and pay for things in any amount using Lightning really seamlessly, but also provide pricing tiers so you can have different types of content experiences with different prices and categorize them. We want to let you provide freebies so you can get free access to different things each month so you can try things before you buy them. And they can always do things that are always free. And then the last piece is having a maximum spend amount on an experience. So almost think of it like a pre-subscribe, so that way no one’s concerned about it, oh, I can’t believe it, I spent $200 on this one site because I wasn’t really paying attention. And then the other side is, for a consumer who wants to pay and enjoy something, there are a few things they have. One is they have the option to set a budget which does two things. It means I won’t be interrupted all the time to ask me to confirm, just to start enjoying things, whether it’s by a scroll, by a click, by a vote, et cetera, while also not being concerned about how much money they’re going to spend on that site or experience and then other things as they can always send their money off the platform. They can receive money from other sources. So that’s the high level of how we sort of structured things. But then there’s a lot more in terms of what are the use cases. What are you charging for? What are you doing? And maybe I’ll stop there if Jake and Nick you guys want to jump in and it’s 20 seconds of silence I’ll pop back on.
Jake – 00:21:40:
Yeah, just to plug you mentioned the demos that we have up, so if you want to check out just some examples we have. Mashingmonsters.com is like an avatar creator, kind of poking fun at NFTs. So rather than basically just letting you generate avatars with Lightning and, then another one that we have is bitcoinprohpecy.com, which kind of is a similar thing. It’s like a magic eight-ball for predicting the price of bitcoin on prophecybitcoin.com. I messed it up there. Those are two of the demos that we have out there. If you want to check it out. If you haven’t kind of seen it in action yet.
Voltage – 00:22:30:
Yeah, that was the one I had toyed with, was the Mashing monsters. And then I was like, oh, bitcoiners making NFTs. I thought it was kind of like being playful, kind of making fun. And it was actually really interesting because it was kind of like, hey if you want to customize your character further, you’ve got these Asics things. But if you want to add these, there’s an associated cost. Go as deep as you want or settle with what’s free and I really like that simply because users have that optionality, they have the freedom to do what they want, and it really just lends itself to an overall better user experience. And obviously, there are tons of insights for the businesses. So your website and just the product, the way it’s tailored in the messaging is really for the content creator or the business that starts to build, create, and develop with no large upfront fee for their users. But as far as like, the maybe second or third order effects, if you will, like what this actually does for consumers, how are you expressing that to these businesses that are considering using you guys? Like, what additional value do the consumers get? Maybe that is not just thought of immediately by the target customer.
Jake – 00:23:50:
Yeah, just one point here one thing that kind of we wanted to make really easy from the kind of get-go from the consumer’s perspective. You don’t have to download or install anything. You just land on the site if you’re already logged in. So maybe I went to Mashmonchers.com, I logged in, I did some avatar stuff, and then I landed on a video site. And they’re also using Mash. I’m already logged in. I have the funds available that I have across all the sites and that’s kind of it. And it works. I can see in my little bubble that floats at the bottom of the screen that you’re familiar with, you can see the pricing and all this, and then it’s just kind of just the way you go. So from the consumer’s perspective, that’s one thing that we’re really trying to enable is just like no friction. You arrive there, it’s already there, and you’re already logged in even better. So that’s definitely one of the things that we’re kind of focusing on. Sorry, Jared, I’ll let you jump in there.
Jared Nusinoff – 00:24:48:
Yeah, that’s great. Sorry about that. I think there are also a few downstream things that might not directly help consumers, like help the rest of the Web. So if you think about how untrustworthy and lots of sites are, how many sites and tools and apps are underdeveloped or just not built, what we’re doing is now providing them a way to earn with a new business model. So it’s less of, let’s take something that’s super successful, makes sense for a subscription, and shift it over. It’s like this little tool that takes a bunch of code and converts it into something else. It’s this image editor. Someone built an app to explore the bitcoin time chain or blockchain and starts to do a bunch of stuff. Maybe they have a few premium things that you explore, and now you contribute while you’re using it. Now that person gets enough money to invest their time to build even more features and more experiences. Maybe they now can quit their job and they now have a business model that decision to rely on people who use it every single. And so the goal here is you now have experiences that people want and desire actually earning more because people are valuing it and they’re actually getting paid on the value, then they can build even more out. I’ll give you some examples. I don’t know if this makes sense in everyone’s country, but I sometimes get lots of random phone calls and I occasionally want to look up who is actually calling me. I don’t want to pick this up. Imagine you’ve had an automated reverse phone number lookup tool that actually worked. It didn’t take you to 20 different pages to then find out it was 29 95 and it was a scam, but it actually just worked. And then apply that to tons of these little experiences that people want. There just hasn’t been business models for them and so I think we can help enable or even the how to guides or the affiliate farming reviews. Imagine the person who explores speakers all day long and actually knows what they’re doing. If you’re hard born to speakers, like, that was me three months. And you found trustworthy stuff online and so that sort of, we think, the downstream effects. It’s not like now you have to pay for the syndicated news content from Reuters. The low quality stuff won’t shift over. It’s about the high quality stuff being supported and proliferated.
Voltage – 00:27:21:
Great. Nice. Well, what’s new? What else do you guys have to share? It can be challenging to even wrap your mind around, like, what you guys are building. I know there’s probably I see you’re taking the lead flow right now, allowing people to start putting this into action. But what’s coming down the pipe like into the end of the year for the Mash platform and what people can expect.
Jake – 00:27:50:
Yeah, so just to kind of hit on some of the other things that we’re building out, we kind of have the base of this platform running, some demos up and so we’re kind of in addition to making it easier for these earners to onboard the system, we’re exploring some different experiences that kind of work out of the box. So we’re looking to build out a suite of widgets basically that is like kind of pre-built ways of monetizing your content. So you can imagine if you have an unlisted YouTube video and you want people to contribute if they want to, to be able to find that video. We have kind of pre-built widgets for that. Maybe you have like an article and you want the first paragraph to be free to read and then the rest is to pay. It is basically building out these components that are super easy to install on your site and kind of work out of the box with Mash. That’s one thing that we’re doing. And then also this kind of different DIDs of ways of contributing. We have this idea, we call it a Boost button. Basically, this little floating button that lives on your site that people can I think we call it Slap. You can spam the button and donate and basically show appreciation for the site and the content. So basically just exploring different ways that we can now leverage the platform that we’ve built and letting her know to get funds in different ways that maybe they couldn’t previously or if they already have content, making it super easy with this kind of like a widget gallery that we’re building out.
Nick Johnson – 00:29:29:
Yeah, another way to say that too is we’ve been focusing a lot on our API and the kind of JavaScript SDK that we built on top of that, but that requires owners to know JavaScript if they want to integrate right now. But we’re now just focusing on pushing up that substack and making it easier and having much fewer requirements for earners to hop on board and start earning.
Voltage – 00:29:55:
Nice. One thing that comes to mind, is I know everybody probably knows who Mr. Beast is. He’s like one of the, if not the number one YouTuber in the world. Like someone like him who has such buy-in from his community and followers, he can launch a chocolate bar or like a Burger Shack or his own TV show and it just immediately just skyrockets to success? Are you guys actively reaching out to any big or key content creators, just getting them to maybe consider this? Because what I’m envisioning is people are going to use the legacy platforms because they’re consistent, they’re easy, they’ve got a workflow and a process for it. But I can imagine there’s got to be some people who are on the edge that really might come over to using Bitcoin and be like, a great case study for this. But has there been anyone or have you guys reached out to any great content creators and well-known people who might be open to testing this and using it and letting the world see what Bitcoin and Lightning Network is capable of?
Jared Nusinoff – 00:30:58:
So we’re not focusing, let’s say, at that level of the creator in terms of awareness and the amount of money they’re already making through a variety of different revenue streams right now that’s a little bit further downstream and also where we fit and provide such a differentiated use. Mash probably isn’t there just yet. So we’ve basically just started a proper go-to market now. Like, our team is we were three engineers, a designer myself for about a year and we just added two engineers to the team and we’re working on adding sort of a chief of Slapsalegotomarket person to work with me on this. But I think the example of, let’s say someone we go after is I don’t know if you all know cracking the crypto. It’s like one of the use cases I like to talk about now. I probably put up an email like a year ago. I had a bunch of email exchanges to see what they cared about. But we’re going to start kicking up more in a more formal sales approach now that our platform is there. But they do YouTube videos that explain the hardest Sudoku or Sudoku. I always forget the pronunciation puzzles like World Champions and Puzzling. They have five apps they try and charge $10 for, right? Like they’re a book, but they could do pay as you enjoy for the Sudoku games and turn them into web apps. They could have their premium features on the Sudoku that has a few clues and no numbers on the board. If you guys haven’t seen those ones, that are absolutely insane, and right now, if you look at it and I did the math, probably they have, like, a book, they have a Patreon, they’re all their apps. They have their YouTube channels. Like, maybe they’re making 100 and year and some of their videos are getting millions of views. It doesn’t make sense to them. They should be earning way more. There’s just no way for anyone, really to support them or for them to charge for premium stuff. So that’s like the level of where we’re looking at until we harden things out and we have more of a crystal clear proposition for the Mr. Beast of the world, cracking the cryptic folks is just a much more natural fit.
Jake – 00:33:10:
I think that’s a great idea. I’ve done enough. Shameful Mr. Beast burger orders that I think he owes it to me at this point to at least check out my so I think that’s a great idea.
Voltage – 00:33:21:
Yeah, he’s like, the easiest example that comes to my mind. But, yeah, you’re absolutely right. I’m sure this is like, motivation for your guys’ product, but one of the things is a lot of these large organizations, they’re killing small businesses and one thing we’re also seeing is an uprising of individual content creators. You can go to YouTube and almost get a college-level education. I know you guys are not trying to disrupt education, but it seems like that very well could be the thing. Like, say a professor gets removed from school and they’re like, hey, I want to teach on my website. And they have that reputation. They could absolutely leverage Mash, give away, like, a one-on-one course, and people love it, and then they pay for the rest of the value they bring. I mean, that’s a complete reality.
Jake – 00:34:14:
Yeah, I think that’s definitely that realm is somewhere that we’re thinking about for sure. One of the use cases that we’re exploring right now is monetizing, like serialized content or books and that sort of thing. So you can imagine.
Jared Nusinoff – 00:34:32:
If that sort.
Jake – 00:34:33:
Of content that you’re hoping to monetize. We’re definitely kind of exploring that world. Yes.
Jared Nusinoff – 00:34:42:
And a lot of what we’re doing right now is we have, like, explaining, I guess, a bunch of the little widgets or tools that can be composed together into a full experience. But it’s really about working closely with the creators or builders or folks, creating APIs, providing content, and helping them integrate directly, making sure that we have worked exactly for them and how they envision it, and then hardening those features out and letting anyone use them as building BlockFi and then sort of packaging them up into solutions that people can use. I want to say, like, here’s a full suite for X, but the creator and the builder, and exactly what they’re providing, what they’ll want is going to be across the board. So we’re just sort of going and working really closely with folks to get this out the door and learn from there.
Voltage – 00:35:37:
Absolutely. Well, if you guys are open, a couple of folks have raised their hand. Are you down to take some questions from the audience as well?
Jared Nusinoff – 00:35:47:
Ship it.
Voltage – 00:35:49:
All right. Oflow. What’s up, man? Others feel free to say, hey, give me a second. There you go.
Oflow – 00:36:06:
Yeah, hey, my name is Oflow. I’m one of the first artists to do a Bitcoin anthem in 2016. And I’m listening to your program. Actually came in a little bit late, but I thought that it was very interesting, the whole dynamic, if you guys looking to monetize content. And I was curious what type of approaches you guys are taking with music or the use of your system with music.
Jake – 00:36:39:
Yeah, I can talk a little bit about this one. So we don’t have a name built specifically yet for music. That’s something that we thought about and we’ve done some kind of proof of concepts internally with other types of content, like video and that sort of thing, where you can imagine paying like $0.10 every 20 seconds of a video or something like that. So we’re definitely thinking about eventually enabling those sorts of experiences with music as well. It might not be the same kind of nodes where it’s like per time or anything like that, but definitely, something that’s kind of on our radar. Yeah, definitely something that we’re thinking about.
Jared Nusinoff – 00:37:25:
Yeah, you could expand on that. So you could do time. So say listening over time, you could take let’s say you have a playlist and you want to wrap your when you look at SoundCloud explicitly if it’s possible, but we can do with other things, it should be fine where you can rap, let’s say, a SoundCloud playlist. If people have to pay to unlock it, you can have some freemium and some locked. We’re looking at all of these things, whether it’s pay per track or pay by time and just leverage it that way. Wherever is hosted, we’re not planning to be the go togetmashcommusicanddiscover.com and pay for it there. We don’t think that we’d rather people be in more control over their content experience and not try and recreate a discovery platform.
Oflow – 00:38:18:
Interesting. Yeah, it would be nice to stay connected with you guys and potentially in the future to see how we can collaborate. I am working on additional content in terms of just bitcoin adoption, but through the lens of music and artistry, and I think that technologies that you guys are developing, definitely can deal with that. Because I think at the end of the day, a lot of artists, even like some artists that have gone platinum, they’ve asked me questions like, yo, how do you utilize bitcoin with music? And everything like that. And there is an interest, but it requires the development of technology that is simple and any artist can use because most artists aren’t that technical.
Jared Nusinoff – 00:39:05:
I’d love to hear more about this. I don’t know if you want to DM me on Twitter and I can get back to you, or if you want to share more, like, what are they? Do they know what they’re asking for? Just maybe to hear the use cases that people are looking for bitcoin or we can handle it offline, whatever you prefer.
Oflow – 00:39:26:
Yeah, I did shoot to a message actually sent the anthem in the music video on YouTube, so you can check it out, the bitcoin OG anthem. But yeah, just to give you an example, I don’t know if you guys heard of the product wavelength.
Oflow – 00:39:48:
Yes, that’s the best example that I’ve seen so far of utilizing bitcoin. Just basically people are able to stream you satoshi’s for the listening of the music. And I think that that’s good. I’m interested in how that could be done on sites like your own site, but in more of a holistic, simple sense. Without an artist having to go through the whole dynamic of running their own nodes and everything like that. So based on what you guys are saying, if you guys are monetizing the content that people are creating, it’s not just solely on your site. Correct. People can do this in other sats as well. Right. Which utilizing your technology. Right, exactly.
Jared Nusinoff – 00:40:35:
It’s all on their own sites, so it’s not ours. I think there’s something that we could probably do or share that is worth exploring. I don’t want to over promise, but definitely something there in our wheelhouse, which is what we’re building for.
Oflow – 00:40:56:
I’ve told a lot of people this music has the easiest reach. It’s easier than books, it’s easier than written content. As a matter of fact, it’s so intrusive that you listen to music that you don’t even like on a daily basis. It’s definitely a powerful tool. And I think that is in the direction of hyper-bitcoin inflation. I think that music and Lightning Network, both work together and they can really push this forward. And even the basis that if you think about the fact that in the United States, a huge percentage of the population has access to a Lightning wallet, I’m talking about Mash. They don’t know it yet. So I think that there is an interesting direction there. And if we can combine the artistry with the Lightning Network and whatever layers that may come up next but I think that combining the artistry with bitcoin, which bitcoin is the basis of creativity, all the stuff that we’re seeing in crypto backed, it was an invention from Bitcoin. So I think just perfect marketing. A combination of artistry, Lightning Network, and obviously great marketing. And this could be, like, super major.
Jared Nusinoff – 00:42:16:
I’m just thinking, imagine. So you’re an artist, right? Or any artist. Let’s say they want to have early… I’m just making this up. I’m not saying this is the right answer, but they want to have an early release of their album on their site, only they’re charging let’s Sat Per song to listen or to unlock each song, a small amount. Then they have, let’s say, artwork that goes along with it, like the old vinyl artwork. And you want to get some of it as a background for something you pay to download. A small amount for each of the high-resolution versions of it. Or there’s like an unreleased track that if the community donates a certain amount that gets released to everyone for these. Those are all the types of things that we can enable, but then use your imagination well beyond that, and, we’ll probably find a way to do it. Really? Any action, any event you can add a payment of any amount to, and it’s just wrapping it in, like a little experience to make it possible.
Oflow – 00:43:19:
Yeah, this definitely sounds amazing, and I’m totally interested in this. Yeah, this is really great to see that you guys are creating interesting technology and building on the Lightning Network. Because I’ve been saying here and there that the future of music is the Lightning Network. And I think that people are going to catch on at a certain point. It may not be today or tomorrow, but I think that it’s only realistic if the adoption of the Lightning Network, according to the statistics, is going to be a billion people by 2030. I think that artistry definitely is the means to get it to that and obviously, Lightning being a payment network, it does work as that, but there’s so much more that can be done with it and the way that we do micropayments. So, yeah, I’m definitely interested. I’m definitely going to be researching even more into your product and definitely seeing how we can build and collaborate with each other. My personal goal is to help a billion people against bitcoin by 2030. It’s a very ambitious goal and I think the only way that it happens is by collaborating with awesome people such as yourself and creating, and building.
Jared Nusinoff – 00:44:32:
I really appreciate that. I’m going to say let’s get a billion people. What year is it by 2026? Let’s go. Real ball here. But also I will say Jake is in a band, so one of the founding engineers on the team, and half of those ideas were probably his that I was saying. He just doesn’t promote his band. So I figured I’d throw him under the bus a little bit. If he wants to talk about his.
Jake – 00:44:58:
Music career, we won’t get into that. But I’ll just say, as a Discord user, there are so many layers, from people screaming on Spotify to that money entering your bank account. Wouldn’t it be amazing if, as the songs are being streamed, the money was going right into your wallet? So, as someone who’s both building this product, and kind of familiar with the woes of making money. As a musician, I think it’s definitely top of mind, for me, at least. I’m definitely planning on experimenting with Mash for some upcoming releases. So, yeah, definitely interested in kind of taking on you more about that, for sure.
Oflow – 00:45:44:
Yeah. My question is, how are you guys monetizing with Mash? Because obviously, the Lightning Network is ridiculously cheap. How do you guys monetize with that?
Jared Nusinoff – 00:46:00:
Right now, we’re not charging anything. We’re just getting adoption and learning how to make the software and the product work really well and seamlessly. But eventually, you will have to be some sort of percent on the funds that are flowing to the system within it, just because it’s a little different than you can put on the Lightning stuff, like a QR node, have people scan it. But what we want to do is provide the most seamless and easy-to-use experience that is that much better than anyone else, that it’s worth, whether a few percent not the 45% or 50% that Twitch charges, but something that’s reasonable given our goal is to help people make, depending on the vertical, 20, 5100 and 10,000 x more than the alternative.
Oflow – 00:46:48:
Okay, interesting. So do you guys have any concept of how to do this in a manner that is noncustodial as well, or is this just going to be 100% custodial?
Jared Nusinoff – 00:47:02:
We have a really cool demo that I’ll share with you and anyone else if you pay me, that shows how we can actually make the whole service work fully decentralized without even touching or effectively invoices where we’re just coordinating. So the goal here is that we’re a coordinator and a software coordinator and we’re less so than a managed wallet service.
Voltage – 00:47:34:
Oh, one idea I think would be cool, like with your connections in the music industry, and it sounds like the influence you have is some of these independent artists. I think there’s like a learning barrier. A lot of people do want to be an independent artists, but we all know Spotify, Distro Did, YouTube, et cetera. It would be really interesting to have an artist, let’s say, that has 20 to 100 and fiat thousand followers who have done well to leverage get Mashing to use Mash, then on their website create maybe like an educational course or set of videos that is kind of pay with stats to engage. And they could teach people the playbook of being an independent artist and how to pivot from the legacy system to manage it all yourself. Not having these intermediaries and how to use Bitcoin, they could teach and use Cash App, then that’s a playbook for every other artist to kind of do the same thing. And they could do exclusive releases like Jared was saying. But I could imagine there’s a big opportunity there to create awareness and share what you’re expressing.
Oflow – 00:48:36:
Yeah, I totally agree. I think that Lightning when it comes to Lightning Network adoption, we’re super early. And I know everyone says we’re always early, but I think Lightning is you could almost say it’s too early due to the fact that the majority of people don’t even understand it. And I think that the way I like to compare it is like Bitcoin in 2012. I think that’s what Lightning Network reminds me of. It’s just starting to kick off now and I think that in the next few years, that’s when we’re going to see a high level of adoption of it, because it’s not like people don’t have there aren’t any wallets. Like everyone in the USA with Mash has Lightning. And I know it’s custodial and everything like that, but they have it so they have access to the Bitcoin. They have access to Mash. Now it’s just about creating a high level of content and the movement content-wise that’s going to attract people to utilize this technology. And I’ve been saying it since 2016 until all the rappers are rapping about Bitcoin as the money that they’re holding, we haven’t made it yet. Hyperinflation isn’t here yet, but I’m very confident that that’s going to be happening in the future.
Jared Nusinoff – 00:49:56:
Didn’t what was it Tlaib and Nodes come out with a new album? And weren’t they doing something different with monetization that this would have been perfect for? Is that what I’m talking about?
Oflow – 00:50:08:
Or no, I haven’t heard about that, but I know that there is and I’m going to try and not say the words, but there is definitely a strong sense of the crypto space and the push that everyone’s doing. I can’t say NFPs basically there’s a strong push with that. But what I’ve been finding is all the artists I talk to, it’s not like they’re not interested, they’re actually very interested, it’s just they don’t know how. And Lightning is just getting to a stage where people are like, okay, we can utilize this. This isn’t too hard. Like, some artists, they hit me up the other day and they actually knew about Wavelake and it’s there, we’ve right sat the cusp. The whole thing is, and I’m going to be testing out your guys’ software and giving you some feedback, but if it’s simple enough, then the artist will utilize it. The whole thing is simplicity is key here and I think that if we’re going to get bitcoin to the next billion people, it has to be more simple I know that simplicity and being your noncustodial is tough, but once we can get it to that stage where it’s simple and you’re your own bank, there’s no way around it. But I think that the entire space right now is highly distracted and I think that this bear market is a great opportunity for us to keep on building while everyone’s running away from the market or ignoring it because of the fact that all the scams have taken place and everything. So, yeah, my question is, when do you guys think that you all are going to have this product? More like the alpha level where you’re like, okay, it’s done. Like, it’s set.
Jake – 00:52:07:
I think we’re at that point now, we’re kind of sat at a point where we’re experimenting with a bunch of different types of content. So, yeah, we’re definitely in that mode right now, so we’ll definitely be interested in kind of working with your did hearing if you have any ideas and seeing if there’s something that we can do there. Because the platform is at a point now where we can definitely start thinking about is that you’re monetizing your SoundCloud or whatever.
Oflow – 00:52:37:
Nice and let’s say that I have a company that does marketing and promotion and I have an entire marketing team that’s specifically dealing with artists and helping artists. Is there any type of way for me to monetize the bitcoinization of your software with these artists or yeah, that’s more the question that I have in mind now.
Jared Nusinoff – 00:53:06:
I think we’ve thought about it just because we’re not charging for early partners. We haven’t really built anything around it. But if you’re thinking about is there like, a management split because you’re managing this for them?
Jared Nusinoff – 00:53:18:
Sure is there like an implementation fee or there may be one day affiliate or referral fees yet. We don’t have a formal structure in place right now. The way we’re thinking about it to start is if we get so let’s use the example of you have one artist that wants to charge for songs, charge for the special music video and some artwork and do a bunch of stuff. This is sort of like tangential. We’ll be spinning up templates and structures that can then just be really easy to use for them. And then if it’s successful, we can probably figure something out. I just don’t know what that is because it’s so early. But we want anyone who’s working with us in helping the ecosystem and helping people earn way more get their fair share as well.
Voltage – 00:54:13:
Nice Oflow. I wanted to say thank you for the questions. Just wanted to give the guys a couple of minutes to wrap up in case they have anything coming up. Just at the top of the hour here, but Jared, Nick and Jake, I really appreciate you guys joining us, sharing a little bit about what you are building and just the possibility and just capability that it brings to the world. So thank you again for joining us today.
Jake – 00:54:40:
Thanks for having us. This is great. Check us out@getmatch.com or if you want to see an example, what we’re building matchingmasters.com. I think there’s a really great example, but yeah, thanks for having us.
Nick Johnson – 00:54:51:
Yeah, great to be here. Thanks, guys.
Jared Nusinoff – 00:54:54:
Yeah, it’s been a pleasure. Also, we use voltage for a bunch of our stuff, so if you don’t use voltage, you should it’s awesome. I figured I’d do like, an unsolicited shout out because it’s well deserved and there are great folks, so we’re a fully remote team, but we do offsite on sites and we’re actually, all of us heading down to Austin the week of BitBlockBoom. So if anyone here is going to be down there, it would be great to meet in person. Whether at the conference or beforehand. We’ll be strolling around town. I’m a big fan of Austin. If anyone is interested in trying something out with us, just shoot us a note. Like, we’re working closely and we’ll be honest of like, oh, we have something that might work or might not, or check this thing out, let us know what you think. And then it helps us think about what we can build out to help different people, whether we have it now or in the future. That’s really the stage we’re at is the hard platform builds sort of there. Now it’s on the let’s make it super easy for anyone to have something to use and make work.
Jake – 00:56:05:
Yeah, just to plug. I think it was shared recently on the voltage Twitter. We have a Voltage Cash App hour at BitBox Boom. So definitely looking forward to meeting people. Sat that.
Voltage – 00:56:21:
Absolutely. Well, thank you, guys and yeah, the happy hour at BitBox Boom. Stay tuned. We’re going to be announcing that within the next week or so. Come hang out, say hey. But we appreciate it, guys, and thank you for joining us. Tune in. Next Wednesday will be out. There will be no Twitter space, but the week after, we’ll be having one. So everyone have a great rest of the week. Thank you.
