Engineers, founders, artists, and voices to help develop Web3 and the Dogepunks community.
We have officially reached 1,000 Dogepunk community members! The growth and support we have seen have been amazing. Thank you to all of our community members and we hope all of our Dogepunks airdrops have found new cozy homes! To celebrate our community, we got another big volume of Influential Dogepunks featuring: Ryan (founder of Bankless), Nick (founder of 1confirmation), and RedPhoneCrypto.
- Ryan (Twitter: @RyanSAdams)
Breaking up with your Bank might just be the new catchphrase of 2021. Ryan, the founder of Bankless, has been championing the vision for people to join the decentralized financial system of the future. If you have not been introduced to Bankless, the content and community is one of the best in Web3 and covers all topics across Crypto, DeFi, and NFTs. Bankless currently has over 35K followers on Twitter and recently celebrated their 1 year anniversary. We caught up with Ryan to get his thoughts on the growth of Crypto and Bankless.
i) What brought you into the world of Crypto/NFTs?
When I realized how big crypto was going to be. I was too young for the early days of the internet, there’s no way I’d let myself miss crypto.
ii) What do you do now?
I invest in crypto assets and create content to help people go bankless. I’m slowly breaking up with my bank.
iii) How has Bankless evolved over the past year?
It’s gotten 10x bigger! We’ve expanded into podcasting and video to reach more people. We’ve built a small team of content producers. So everything’s bigger, but the mission has stayed the same: to help people navigate crypto and go bankless.
iv) What has been your biggest learning experience while creating Bankless?
Memes > Marketing.
v) What would be your advice for people looking to learn more about Crypto/DeFi?
Start using it! Don’t make investment decisions based on second-hand information. Who cares what influencers and investors say? You’ll be more informed than all of them if you actually use DeFi.
vi) Where can people find you to learn more?
Newsletter — https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/
Podcast — http://shows.banklesshq.com/
Video — https://www.youtube.com/c/bankless
2. Nick (Twitter: @NTMoney)
Nick has been deeply involved in the Crypto community since the early days including when he worked at Coinbase. He is the founder and General Partner of 1confirmation, an early-stage crypto VC fund backed by individuals such as Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Mark Cuban. Nick has been featured in various publications such as WSJ and a16z’s podcasts to provide his vision and thoughts on Crypto and Web3. In 1confirmation’s portfolio, you’ll find major players in Web3 community including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Opensea, Coinbase, and many more. Check out our Q&A below:
i) What brought you into the world of Crypto/NFTs?
My first love is Bitcoin and shortly after I fell down the rabbit hole I joined Coinbase as one of the first employees in 2013. I love collecting things and bought a Rare Pepe back in Counterparty days then bought some Cryptokitties in 2017. Then I met Devin and Alex from OpenSea shortly after they launched it in 2018 and invested in the company and have worked with them closely since.
ii) What do you do now?
I run 1confirmation, an early stage crypto fund
iii) What inspired you to launch 1confirmation?
I loved my experience early on at Coinbase being supportive to the founders on business development, marketing, community building, etc. I wanted to take my experience at Coinbase and replicate it many times over by providing not just capital but also support to founders in the early days of company building.
iv) What are the projects you’re most excited about?
I’m biased but OpenSea and SuperRare are my two favorite projects in the NFT space right now
v) Have there been any challenges bridging the traditional VC playbook to Web3/Crypto?
Nothing major. I run my fund similar to how a non-crypto fund manager would run their early-stage fund. It’s just more liquid!
vi) Where can people find you to learn more?
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTmoney
https://www.1confirmation.com
3. RedPhoneCrypto (Twitter: redphonecrypto)
Although his avatar is scary, RedPhoneCrypto’s research is anything but scary. RedPhoneCrypto has dedicated his time and efforts to provide insights and education to the Web3 community with the neverending goal to generate alpha for his followers and substack members. RedPhoneCrypto has been an early community member and supporter and we were able to catch up with him to get his thoughts on the booming space of Crypto/NFTs.
i) What brought you into the world of Crypto/NFTs?
A fascination with the Silk Road and money as a collective delusion. Beyond that, I love art and collectibles. I started with baseball cards and comic books when I was a kid. Now it’s digital art. In my opinion, not much of a difference.
ii) What do you do now?
I explore the crypto wilderness. I crab-crawl into the gutters. The stranger and more experimental/forward-thinking the terrain, the more I like it. I try to inhabit the future and we’re seeing it build before our very eyes.
iii) What is your forecast for the next 5 years for crypto in terms of adoption? In December I said, we will see more people enter crypto in 2021 than the previous decade combined. Estimates on the actual number of crypto users are pretty shifty, but let's say we had 90 million-ish at the start of the year. That number grew by 15% in January alone to 106 million. What are the odds we end up at 180 million by the end of the year? Pretty f’ing good. I think we could possibly crush that number. We could be at 360 million, 500 million… who knows.
Five years from now, we could be into billions of users, though most people probably won’t realize they’re using crypto at all. We’re already seeing the earliest glimmers of people going into crypto without realizing they’re using it. NBA Top Shot is a good example of that. That’s going to accelerate. We’re also going to see crypto permeate the banking system. So, if you use a bank, you’ll probably be using crypto in some way, too. Within five years, we’ll probably see some popular web services that don’t store your personal information. Video games will use them. We’ll have a decentralized Twitter. Bigger picture, I think everything of value in all the world will be instantly swappable for any other form of value.
iv) Where can people find you to learn more?
Twitter: @redphonecrypto
Much Wow,
Dogepunks
