FinalEdit

[00:00:35] Droste: Hi, I'm Droste and welcome to another episode of Making Bank. Today's guest is Allyn Bryce, known by many or most online as Liquidiot. Allyn is a man of many talents. He's a voiceover artist, audio engineer, photographer, video editor, occasional English teacher, and a father of two.

[00:00:53] Liquidiot: I do wanna make a quick note. I have three kids, not two, don't tell my third one. Yeah,

[00:00:58] Droste: I'm gonna have to record rerecord this. Three. I don't know why I thought you had two kids.

[00:01:05] Liquidiot: I have two that are very close together, and then a third one that just showed up outta nowhere. I don't know what happened. Just on my doorstep. Where'd you come from?

[00:01:12] Droste: Showed up on the doorstep. All right, I'm gonna do it again. Today's guest is Allyn Bryce, known by many or most online as Liquidiot. Allyn is a man of many talents. He's a voiceover artist, audio engineer, photographer, video editor, occasional English teacher, and a father of three.

[00:01:32] In Web three, he's using his talents working on media projects at Bankless DAO, as well as several spinoffs like The Rug, a Web three satire publication, and its sister podcast Under the Rug. He's also got a few personal projects brewing.

[00:01:46] It's a fun episode with a good friend. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

[00:01:50] And with that, welcome Allyn Bryce or Liquidiot to Making Bank.

[00:01:56] Liquidiot: Hey, how's it going?

[00:01:58] Droste: So I was curious. We've both been with Bankless DAO since about the beginning. Didn't you join it at Genesis back in May 2021?

[00:02:08] Liquidiot: I did, I actually looked into this because Discord recently started letting you check when you joined a server. So it says when you joined Discord and when you joined a server. And, I joined in in May May 5th, I think it was.

[00:02:21] Droste: Yeah, that was the day.

[00:02:22] Liquidiot: Yeah, right in the beginning. Sure. Yeah. I was kind of reserved. I, I got the airdrop and I found out about the Discord, and then I was like, well, I'm gonna check this out.

[00:02:30] I had a story, like we got that airdrop and I told a friend and I were, cause when I first got into crypto, I was looking at more like being a trader, which was a mistake. I knew vaguely about the technology, but I thought, oh man, this would be an easy way for me to do something that I could kind of get my head around and try to make some money.

[00:02:48] So we were trying to chart and kind of wade our way through that and make some quick turnarounds. and I had been listening to the Bankless HQ podcast and it was, I think it was April? It might have been April, literally. I said, well, you know, I've gotten a lot of value from this podcast. $22 is a, is a big ask, but for what I've gotten in return, I think it's worth it.

[00:03:11] So why not, I'll just subscribe, get the premium content and just see how it goes. And like a week later they did the actual airdrop of the Bankless DAO token. So I just snuck in there cuz it was only to people who had been premium subscribers. So I got that airdrop of, with the 35 or what? I think it was more than that for some various reasons.

[00:03:30] And it was like, at the time it was like five grand or something.

[00:03:32] And my friend said, you should sell it

[00:03:35] Yeah, you should sell. I was like, yeah, you know, I, they're gonna do something with this. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna ride this wave and see what happens. And then sure enough, the DAO opened up and those of us that had the prerequisite amount got to be level ones.

[00:03:48] And I joined up and I was just kind of hiding in the corner for about the first month I would say.

[00:03:55] Droste: You and I both hid in the corner for a while.

[00:03:57] Liquidiot: Yeah, well you were, you were much more out there than I was becauseyou became a level two quite quickly, you know, when that was all happening. And then I kind of looked up to you and I remember when I first got started in the

[00:04:11] Droste: That was a mistake.

[00:04:12] Liquidiot: that was your first mistake. When I was trying to get more involved in the AV Guild I approached you, from memory to start doing the POAP distribution for you.

[00:04:20] Droste: It all

[00:04:20] Liquidiot: Cause I it

[00:04:20] Droste: it starts with POAPs..

[00:04:21] Liquidiot: yeah, that's how, that's how I got involved issuing PAFs. That was my gateway drug, I guess.

[00:04:28] yeah, I wanted to take some of that work off your plate.

[00:04:30] Droste: I appreciate that.

[00:04:31] Liquidiot: yeah, so that's kind of how I got my start. I, I started joining in some conversation trying to add my opinion but not be overbearing on what was happening.

[00:04:39] Cause I have a tendency to do that. So, yeah, it was a slow start, but I was there in May along with the small handful of us, I guess. And it's just really blossomed from there, so to speak.

[00:04:50] Droste: you and I had been doing guild coordination stuff, treasury, trying to, to onboard new contributors, things like that. And then we both got involved in other projects. And

[00:05:00] Yeah.

[00:05:01] Liquidiot: I guess when we were all kind of in starting trying to figure out structure. There was a lot happening around guild and project-ization. Initially there wasn't really much in the way of guilds.

[00:05:12] I mean, there was some at the very beginning, but it was all very much just nebulous. That's just kind of floating around. And then we started to kind of develop our own structures and uh, the AV Guild was very much growing alongside the Design Guild because they had a lot in common. And over a period of that time, there was like a lot of talks of whether those should be one or two separate things.

[00:05:33] Initially, I was involved in a lot of the roles and kind of structuring of those guilds. Gosh, I might have completed that Bingo card, I'm not sure. Cuz I was a guild coordinator, I was involved in treasury at one point.

[00:05:46] What other roles did we have? There wasn't a lot of us at the beginning.

[00:05:49] I think

[00:05:49] Droste: between you and me, We kind kind of rotated among them.

[00:05:51] Liquidiot: Yeah, we were bouncing around between 'em from season to season and some of 'em carried over from, oh, a talent coordinator. I did that. that was kind of one of the last roles I did that I really honed in on.

[00:06:01] We were sharing roles. there was a a time when three of us were kind of doing the secretarial role, just sharing that and getting ready to kind of hand that off. And I was also involved in the genesis of the podcast hatchery at that time cuz obviously the AV is involved in in podcasts and a lot of those people were the same faces, yourself as well, wanting to get involved in that.

[00:06:23] I was involved early on in Bankless Academy, because there was some AV work needed there, as you know. At that time it was very much like we were putting together a skeleton of what that project would eventually be. I mean, it was all, again, very much like experimental phase.

[00:06:43] A lot of these projects is like, we know we want to do something, we know this is the theme. We're just not quite sure how to get there, so let's just start making stuff and going from there.

[00:06:53] So yeah, my, my main involvement was the AV Guild, the podcast hatchery a to a smaller extent, Bankless Academy from the very beginning. But I was mostly in the AV Guild.

[00:07:04] Yeah, and then you, you started gravitating to, to other projects. Was the rug one of the first things that came outta that? or No,The Rug was one of the first projects I was in. I mean, the podcast hatchery was kind of a, a project. I was very involved in the AV Guild at that time. So it was very hard for me to have the bandwidth to commit to projects, but then I slowly focused in on a particular role in the AV Guild.

[00:07:26] And then the way our governance was set up at that time, you could only have a role, I think three consecutive seasons? I did talent coordinator for three seasons, and then at the end of that,

[00:07:37] I figured this would be a good time to pursue other projects.

[00:07:41] And I was doing The RUG at that time as well. But we were growing over there at that same time. And we kind of set berth from the port and became our full fledged separate project. Ooh. Again, it was another experiment. We were just making stuff in within a single channel in the DAO, and then like, this is picking up some steam, we needed to spread our wings a bit. And we ended up in our own server.

[00:08:06] Droste: you know, it's funny cuz you and I worked together a lot in AV Guild before and I had no idea how involved you were with The Rug. I mean, you are like core there. You produce Under the Rug.

[00:08:19] and I know that's one of your main projects.

[00:08:22] Liquidiot: I got into that by chance when it was still called Top Signal Satire site. I don't know if anybody remembers that.

[00:08:26] Droste: Oh yeah, Top Signal.

[00:08:28] Liquidiot: I had a couple of joke ideas just with stuff that was happening. I was like, I'll just pop in here and say a couple things. and I made a couple jokes and then there's a, there's only like a handful of people at that time like, oh, you should join.

[00:08:39] and that's when we kind of started The Rug. And then we had maybe 12, 13, 14 people and we produced that first N F T, which was amazing. I loved what we did.

[00:08:47] Droste: MW was involved, right?

[00:08:49] Liquidiot: Yeah. Yeah. He was one of the head people originally.

[00:08:52] So he was kind of core to starting that up. It was him and Frank America and Perchy and a handful of other people at the beginning. so yeah, we produced that N F T It was fantastic. I liked the newspaper style of it, and then we did a series of that and along the line we're like, we're kind of wanting to move this into a more serious direction. So then we kind of started our server, and, and I was involved in setting that up.

[00:09:16] So, yeah, I, I guess I'm one of the core members. There's a couple of us that kind of keep the wheels turning over there on the daily.

[00:09:23] And then of course, one of the other projects I started, gosh, two seasons ago? was the recap video series, which I do weekly and put up on YouTube with the assistance of a few others, yourself included.

[00:09:37] So between the RUG and the Weekly Rollup Recap video series, those have kind of been my main points of focus within the DAO space, aside from like personal projects.

[00:09:51] Droste: now I'd like to just clarify. When you say serious, you don't mean being serious, you mean operating seriously with a Discord server and admin and things like that.

[00:10:04] Liquidiot: Yeah. We, we needed more.

[00:10:06] Droste: Yeah. You're still funny.

[00:10:07] Liquidiot: Yeah. One channel wasn't enough for all of the laughs that we had, so we had to, we had to bust out into our own server just so we had a little more space to work. It's been going great over there. We're producing a lot more now. You mentioned Under The Rug, which is a podcast we do monthly, which is kind of behind the scenes about our writing and our jokes and that kind of stuff.

[00:10:26] So we have a, a small stable of writers and designers and a couple hype people and we mainly operate out of Twitter. We mint articles on mirror, on optimism for about the price of a cup of coffee. We do our newsletter. we're starting up NFTs again. so we're putting out a lot of content there.

[00:10:45] And I love comedy.

[00:10:48] Like I mentioned earlier, I was kind of the class clown. I'm a smart ass, ask my wife. I'm sarcastic, which is to my detriment most of the time.

[00:10:55] I was in the principal's office quite often,

[00:10:57] let's just say that. Um, so it really clicked like, like the voiceover. And, and the comedy thing. So that's kind of where I put my focus. And, and The Rug is probably one of the most fun things I do in this space. Cuz a lot of the things that happen are just completely absurd.

[00:11:14] And you know, we're there to be able to, to kind of, you have to be able to laugh. It's medicine. Yeah. You have to be able to laugh at yourself and how ridiculous stuff is and what you're doing. Cuz you know, it's, it's much needed. And I hope everybody enjoys what we're doing over there and we're not trying to laugh at people.

[00:11:34] We're trying to laugh with people cuz there's, there's just so much funny in the world and particularly in this space and since it's such a, a nascent or like young thing, it's growing up and we're kind of growing up with it and there's a lot of comedy to be had within that.

[00:11:49] So. It's a lot of fun.

[00:11:51] Droste: Oh,

[00:11:51] Liquidiot: of fun.

[00:11:52] Droste: Some of these jokes write themselves. Are you kidding? Jeez.

[00:11:54] Liquidiot: We don't even have to do anything. We just have to put up a picture on it. It's already there.

[00:12:00] Droste: one of the first things that popped into my head with S B F when the whole thing blew up was, God, this guy's going to prison. And you know that bank man's gonna be fried. I

[00:12:12] Liquidiot: Yeah.

[00:12:12] Droste: just writes itself.

[00:12:14] Liquidiot: Yeah, yeah. We had a couple good jokes about he had his get outta jail free card from his Monopoly set, which is pretty funny. he got arrested because he forgot his bribe payments. He, he missed a deadline on bribes, so they brought him in for that. yeah, just with, with him the culmination of this with what happened previously with Three Arrows Capital and, The Terra thing.

[00:12:35] It's just like, man, this is just compounding comedy gains, I guess. This is, it's almost getting like, okay, we need to have something else to make fun of.

[00:12:44] There's just so much happening with this one thing.

[00:12:46] Droste: because it's already got bad press.

[00:12:49] Liquidiot: Yeah. All in our writer's room, we're like, oh, okay. Are we gonna stop writing about SBF? I'm getting tired of it.

[00:12:53] It's like, well, it's, is hilarious and absurd stuff going to stop happening anytime soon? Because if not, we're just gonna keep, keep writing about it, you know?

[00:13:02] Droste: Yeah. I mean, it bleeds, it leads.

[00:13:05] Liquidiot: Yeah. If it's, uh, funny, it's money I guess.

[00:13:09] I think that's what, I think that's what, Frank, I stole that from him,

[00:13:13] but you gotta follow the narrative and if that's where the narrative's at, we gotta be there to capitalize on the comedy, you know?

[00:13:20] Droste: Yeah, yeah. Comedy is not easy and it's not pretty.

[00:13:23] Liquidiot: Yes. It is not, it is not. But it, I enjoy it.

[00:13:27] I've fallen on my face several times, but

[00:13:29] Droste: yeah.

[00:13:29] Yeah.

[00:13:29] Liquidiot: for the weekly roll up that you just mentioned, that ends up being

[00:13:33] Droste: about an eight to 10 minute thereabouts summary every week,

[00:13:38] video summary with graphics brought in and, week's current events and it's scripted and, uh, a lot of visuals and I was just, wanting to

[00:13:47] givepeople a sense of what it takes to put something like that together.

[00:13:50] How much time does it take you to put together an eight minute video summary every

[00:13:55] week?

[00:13:55] Liquidiot: Yeah. All right. I'm just gonna disclaimer, I'm not the most proficient video editor. I mean, I have some skills, those aren't like the most professional of things, but I don't feel they're intended to be. I'm kind of recapping a newsletter that's already out there. I'm not necessarily selling a product per se.

[00:14:15] so just disclaimer, fyi, for any of those of you who have seen that.

[00:14:20]

[00:14:20] The newsletter team puts together the weekly rollup, which is a fantastic newsletter and it sums up the week in the DAO. And then I saw an opportunity, a few others saw it too, to kind of turn that into a bite sized video format type of thing, trying to stay like sub 10 minutes and just summarizing that newsletter, just to kind of expand the reach of it and offer a different medium, experience that content. The video series always points back to the roll up cuz if you want the full stories, all the hot action and hot takes, you, you really need to check out the newsletter.

[00:14:53] But this is just a way to kind of dip your toes and have some fun and see what the DAO's up to in just a short form video. So it's a small team. It's WinVerse, and I and yourself. Um, you are my, my quality control person. making sure that I cross my T's and dot my I's at the end of the day.

[00:15:10] and then, uh, win verse.

[00:15:12] Droste: I usually catch it a little late,

[00:15:14] Liquidiot: Yeah. Well tis the, the nature of working in completely different time zones, but we're, we're doing the best we can. uh, win verse does the scripting. He takes the actual newsletter and condenses it into a script for myself. And also handle some of the YouTube descriptions.

[00:15:29] I take the script that he provides and then I add my own script changes, usually very minor. I tend to change things a little bit to how I would speak them versus how it's written and add, I guess, injecting some of my own comedy.

[00:15:45] Not always, but sometimes. Yeah. so I take that script and then I have to kind of break it into chunks that would make sense for the video, just for my own purposes.

[00:15:53] So, these videos, although they're short, they're about two days to make. So the first day I'm going over the script, reviewing it, making notes, changes, putting in my own personal kind of sections, timestamps, if you will. Pulling assets from various locations based on what's in the newsletter, recording screen caps, working on any new transitions that I'm gonna put in there.

[00:16:16] Basically getting all the pieces together for the actual video itself. Before I start recording, then the next day, the following day. Cause that usually takes most of the day to get through all of that stuff. The next day I record usually in the mornings, and then I spend the entire day editing.

[00:16:34] I will start a, around, this is probably boring, but I'll start around eight or nine in the morning. usually after my kids are in school and then I'm not done until five or six that night. It's a full day, maybe seven. I remember the first couple videos we were doing, we had a lot of technical issues, a lot of audio sync problems cuz of how I was recording and

[00:16:54] it's like, yeah.

[00:16:56] And I was like, I would upload it. It's like, no, you're like, this is outta sync. I was like, oh my God, so I'd do it again. And it was like, I think the first video, first two or three videos, it was like 11 at 12 at night. Midnight, one o'clock in.

[00:17:08] Droste: like midnight 1:00 AM for you, and I'm just getting up and it's 6:00 AM or something. I'm like, uh, You need, you've, your audio's outta sync, and you're like, oh, no.

[00:17:16] Liquidiot: I know, but I was like, I committed to getting these out on a certain day and I wanted to hold myself to that cuz I didn't wanna let it slip once cuz then it would start slipping more. So I've been pretty diligent in getting those out with your help. But yeah, the first couple of videos took forever. Um, I've kind of locked in a flow a little bit, but even so, even on a good day, I'm still, just for an eight minute video, it's at least a day and a half two working days, I guess would be a, a good way to say it.

[00:17:43] Anybody who edits video or is in that world kind of knows what I'm talking about.

[00:17:47] Droste: Oh, yeah, yeah. yeah. I, I'm nodding and I'm like, oh yeah, sure. Yeah.

[00:17:52] Liquidiot: that is still relatively short. if I increase the production value, even a smidge higher, you're, you're adding just keeps more time and that

[00:18:01] yeah, that adds up. I mean, you see a finished product.

[00:18:04] People take for granted what a finished product looks like, and you're like, oh, that's you.

[00:18:08] That's easy. But when you're actually in there turning the dials, you quickly realize like, oh man, this takes a lot of time. Unless you're just like recording a phone video and just doing some simple cuts and posting it to your feed, like anytime you try to do deliberate editing, it takes a lot of time.

[00:18:26] Droste: I wanted to go through that because I think, I think sometimes people oversimplify if they haven't done it themselves and, and all the demos look like everything's so easy, you know, a couple of clicks and boom, you're done.

[00:18:37] And especially with all the, the breathless talk around, uh, AI right now, it's like, oh, come on.these things don't just pop out automatically and look great and sound great and are edited properly and all of that, and it takes a lot of time.

[00:18:52] so those are projects that are really related to Bankless DAO, DAO space. So the rug spun out from Bankless DAO and it is funded by, by Bankless DAO, as is under the rug, as is the, weekly roll up. And, but then you've also got a number of personal projects that you're working on. And, um,I've seen some of your writing on, is it on paragraph?

[00:19:13] Right. And I also saw that -- I did not know you play guitar.

[00:19:18] Liquidiot: Oh yeah. I kinda, I sold my guitar a couple weeks ago. I think I wrote about, did I write about that? No, two or three weeks ago I sold my guitar just after saying that. I had an acoustic guitar. Um, yeah, I, I purchased a guitar in the first couple years I was here. I'm really into acoustic, guitar music. I like, I like when they take rock and do the acoustic sets.

[00:19:45] Um, one, one of my favorite albums of all time is um, a Nirvana m t v live set. It is fantastic. I just love that. Uh, it was an unplugged series. Yeah, I, I'll listen to that at least once a month I'm on that album. It's, it's phenomenal. But I always like that vibe. That kind of stripped down, kind of deconstructed, you know, just a few guitars and, and maybe some percussion.

[00:20:07] Um, so yeah, I bought an acoustic guitar. I was writing a lot. I wrote like 50 songs or something, most of 'em incomplete. Um, I had a bunch of recordings and I think what maybe you're alluding to is I minted an N F T recording of one of my early songs. Uh, yeah, free mint. I was like, because I needed to test, I wanted to test out this, uh, cuz there's so many minting platforms, it's like, I don't know what to do.

[00:20:33] I don't know where to go. Um, I, I, until I try these out, so I minted that song on highlight and there was a pretty big issue with it populating the metadata directly, and I contacted them. We got all sorted out, but I was glad that I went through that process. So yeah, I have a, a song up there. There's only 25 available.

[00:20:53] I think only five have been minted. Um, but that's a free mint. It's, it's not timed or anything. So, If you know where to find that, you can pick it up. It's, it's not good, but it's not horrible. You'll put it that way. I was never, I'm not a good singer. but I liked to learn how to play guitar and I was like, well, I need vocals.

[00:21:11] Nobody else is gonna sing for me, so I should do this. I liked song writing. I liked writing lyrics. Um, but I was never, I'm a horrible singer. I'm just gonna put that out there. Another disclaimer.

[00:21:22] Mm-hmm.

[00:21:23] Droste: but it's not bad. I mean, your, the guitar playing was

[00:21:27] Liquidiot: Yeah. And

[00:21:28] it was, it was fun and, and like within. With an N F T, making. An n f T I know it's not like great, and I'm not like out here trying to sell musical talent, but it's like I was able to take this thing that I, you know, I put a fair amount of work into at that point in time when I recorded it and I minted it as an N F T.

[00:21:44] So here's like a permanent record of this thing that I did on the blockchain, and I think that's really cool. Um, I may, you know, lose the hard drive that it was recorded to, but then it's always there as that N F T on Polygon that I can go back and revisit and say, yeah, you probably shouldn't have recorded that and put that out there.

[00:22:05] But there it's kind thing.

[00:22:09] So a timestamp of my life, put it that way.

[00:22:13] Droste: yeah, there's a certain amount of comfort in being able to delete things that,

[00:22:17] Liquidiot: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:18] Droste: no,

[00:22:18] I, I like that you put your work out

[00:22:19] Liquidiot: there.

[00:22:19] But also like having a, a record of it. Yeah.

[00:22:21] Droste: that you actually did it. Yeah. Yeah. No, so that's a, that's a cool thing. I, I like to bring up stuff like that because it is, you know, as you mentioned, there's all these, these NFT platforms and, you know, um, no code tools and stuff and,

[00:22:34] Liquidiot: Yes. Oh my gosh. I'm, I'm recently, I've been, I've been on, I've been looking at zora, I've been on Foundation, I've been on Manifold. I've been looking into OpenSea's native tools. Uh, I've been on highlight, I've been looking at mirror. There's like all of these platforms serving the same purpose. And then I'm like thinking, well, this is the type of mint I want to do.

[00:22:54] This is how I want it to roll out. This is what I want to provide. Do I want to airdrop? Do I wanna sell? Do I wanna do an auction? there's so much stuff going on. And then also, it's not like the stakes are free. You're, you're getting charged each time you experiment. I mean, I guess you can do the testnet stuff.

[00:23:11] Fair enough. Yeah. And I have done that, but at the same time, like if you wanna put this out there for actual people to consume or possibly purchase or, or trade or, or have available, or just even token gating a community, which is what I'm working on right now. You're gonna have to put up a, at least a little bit of gas, you know?

[00:23:31] Droste:

Pink Sink

[00:23:31] Droste: Where does Pink Sink come from? What's the, what's the origin of that name?

[00:23:36] Liquidiot: All right. Um, first I wanna back up just a tiny bit. You said I am involved in a number of personal projects. I would say I'm involved in like one or two personal projects with a, a hell of a lot going on at the same time, kinda thing. So it looks like I'm involved in many projects.

[00:23:52] Droste: yeah. On your personal projects between photography and, and Deliver your content on a web three platform and learn how to build that yourself.

[00:24:00] And man, I don't know how you find time to do all that when you have three kids and,

[00:24:05] Liquidiot: yeah. That's the other piece right there. So, Pink Sink I guess this will

[00:24:09] Droste: Does Does your wife see you ever? Does, do you like go out and wave to her once in a while?

[00:24:13] Liquidiot: Yeah, we both work from home, so she sees me a lot. Her office is right around the corner. Usually it's me yelling out the door at her, it's, Hey honey, you wanna go get a coffee and take a break? She's like, yeah, let's do that. She doesn't sound like that, by the way.

[00:24:24] It's much more beautiful voice, but that's my

[00:24:25] Droste: right? That's

[00:24:26] Liquidiot: poor personation on her. Yeah. Well it's weird. We see each other a lot, but we don't see each other. If that makes sense. And then it's like five o'clock and it's like, well, our kids start rolling home around three and we gotta pick up the young one at five. Anyway.

[00:24:39] Uh, Pink Sink, yes. Um, people have asked me about that name. I was going to do a, blog post about that, and I still will. But I guess I can give a little bit of Alpha for our listeners here. There's like two things happening at the same time. I'm very involved in Web three. And I love what's happening here and it's just a, a fantastic experiment.

[00:25:01] It's a lot of fun. There's a lot of stuff happening but at the same time, I'm trying to kind of sort through my own life still. You know, as a middle-aged dude, still trying to figure out which direction his ship is pointed. Um, but there's kind of like this need, maybe it's like my version of a midlife crisis, but it's like I'm really wanting to simplify my my life. Focus in on what's important, be ruthless with the things that are not important, and kind of remove those from my life.

[00:25:29] So it's like these two things are happening at the same time and I'm very interested in where they can cross. Uh, and I've talked about this in other channels, like web three stuff and blockchain is all like very, the most web three and blockchain, cuz you're always hearing about very technical stuff or financial stuff or scams. All this, you know, that's what the, the conversations and, and all the building, which is fantastic.

[00:25:55] But it's like, well how is this applicable to just average person wanting to live their life? And you know, we're starting to see some of the hints of that, but it just hasn't really happened, like clicked. It's very much like when I was growing up, only a few people had access to what we would consider the worldwide web now because of lack of hardware and dial up connections and that kind of stuff.

[00:26:17] We're not talking about the internet. I'm talking about more of the worldwide web kind of thing. But then there was this moment we're just kind of clicked or it happened over time, but it felt like it was all at once, right? And then everybody just kind of was online and you didn't think about it.

[00:26:29] It was just happening in the background. I'm really curious to see where that's going to happen with blockchain. Blockchain in the background, as it were. So that's kind of what Pink Sink is. It's, it's me trying to experiment with just improving my life and focusing on what's important, but also experimenting with various aspects of Web three, you know, uh, how can I integrate that into what I'm doing?

[00:26:54] And it's all very straightforward and rudimentary to a point, I guess right now. Like I, I talked about like N F T gating a community, but I think it's about identity and it's about ownership and it's about, you know, digital property rights. And I'm really curious to see where that goes. And I wanna be there when it happens. So I'm trying to dip my toes as much as I can.

[00:27:15] So, back to the name, Pink Sink. There is a reason for that. My house was a previously owned home. I did not buy it new, have it built. In my kitchen I have a pink sink. And when we were touring the house, I was like, this has got to go. It's more of a salmon color, but salmon sink.

[00:27:33] Salmon sink doesn't have the, the nice ring to it doesn't rhyme. So I was like, I was like, look at my wife. I was like, I can't, no, I can't do this. Like, our cabinetry is red, the sink is pink. I was like, oh my gosh, this is just not, I'm not feeling this.

[00:27:46] Droste: no.

[00:27:47] Liquidiot: But at, at some point it's like, You can, you can sit here and bitch about this sink or you can do something about it.

[00:27:52] Right?

[00:27:53] And the two things you can do about it is you could change it, get a new sink, or you could just move on with your life and just keep going and doing you. So that's kind of what pink sink is.

[00:28:02] For so many years. It's like, you know, I should do this. I should change this about my life. I really want to pursue this thing.

[00:28:09] And I just, I just fucking bitched about it a lot. To myself. And then, you know, sometimes out loud to other people. And I know some people in my life were like, just, they never said it to me, but they're like, you just, you gotta stop doing, talking to me about this. I know every time we meet and we have a few beers, you talk about this, just do something.

[00:28:26] So that's kind of where

[00:28:27] Droste: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:28] Liquidiot: pink sink came from, it's kind of representative of, you know, put up or shut up, I guess. Start doing something about it or just move on with your life. And I'm, I'm kind of doing both at the same time.

[00:28:37] I still have the sink, but I'm not worrying about it. Again, uh, ties into like, I have these things I want to do and instead of just talking about removing the sink, talking about the things, I'm actually gonna do the things.

[00:28:48] And that's of what Pink Sink is. That's what it represents.

[00:28:51] Droste: Well, I'm glad I asked. I never would've guessed that.

[00:28:54] Liquidiot: That was a five minute explanation to, to a ten second question. I'm sorry.

[00:29:00] Droste: Well, but it's got a backstory. Right?

[00:29:03] Liquidiot: It does,

[00:29:04] Droste: And Pink Sink is an art project, and all art projects have to have a backstory.

[00:29:09] Liquidiot: Yeah. It's my, my origin story.

[00:29:12] One day a man bought a house with a pink sink.

[00:29:14] Droste: I like it.

[00:29:17] I'm wondering what the sequel will be.

[00:29:19] Liquidiot: if it's a Japanese movie title, it'll be Pink Sink the Revenge Two, because usually you have to put the number in the, the movie

[00:29:30] Droste: We've never really talked about this before. obviously you do really fun voiceovers, and for me it seems like you're more than a hobbyist, you're more of a professional.

[00:29:40] and it's kinda like the difference between a photographer and a gwc or a guy with a camera.

[00:29:48] Liquidiot: Uh huh. Yeah.

[00:29:49] Droste: Have you done that professionally and is that, have you had some background there? Is it just a kind of a hobby you've been working on, on this side? You know, maybe picking up a gig here and there? Specifically voiceover, cuz you're kind of known for that and voices you do. But I kind of wanna talk about the other video stuff too, cuz you're pretty skilled with that as well.

[00:30:09] I was kind of curious about that.

[00:30:10] some people know this, many do not. I'm an only child. my parents both worked quite a bit. We owned a small grocery store growing up, mom and pop grocery store. I spent a lot of time there. but they were very busy during the week, running a business, and I had a lot of time alone.

[00:30:27] Liquidiot: So I used to do voices to entertain myself. I guess just not even thinking about it, but just kind of naturally I gravitated towards that, having conversations with myself just out loud and trying to play the different parts. We all have conversations with ourselves from time to time. and then I just got kind of known for, I was the class clown, voted by my peers in high school.

[00:30:51] probably as part of that, I used voices and comedy as kind of a defense mechanism of sorts. In junior high school, I started to grow out more than I grew up. and that kind of had, a lot of that put me in a interesting spot as far as like, you know, being picked on and made fun of. so I used voices and comedy as a way to cope and a way to deflect and a way to take attention and redirect that, and that kind of turned into to voiceover.

[00:31:19] So in college, I, I didn't do anything in college at all related to theatrics or theater or voice or anything like that. But, after I graduated, I moved to Seattle and there's a lot of opportunity there. And even before that, I was in a, a smaller town called Spokane, and I got into some theater stuff there.

[00:31:36] Uh, did a couple shows. I did a play that was like, I forget the name of it. It's not, it's a reading play where you're not, like, there's not like scenes and you're not like dressed up. Everyone's just kind of in a line, and I forget the term for that. but you're all just reading your lines in front of a, a, a crowd.

[00:31:50] It's very deconstructed, and stripped down. I did a couple auditions.

[00:31:54] Liquidiot: during that time I was doing improv as well. I was with a couple improv groups.

[00:31:58] Droste: mostly just doing like, I don't think I'd call it understudy, but they do like programs, right? Like three or six month programs.

[00:32:05] Liquidiot: And I did one in Spokane with a group called SPO Comedy. I think was the name of the team. And I did some improv there. We had a class and that was a ton of fun. And then when I moved to Seattle, I believe the group was called Jet City Improv because of the whole Boeing thing. They were called Jet City.

[00:32:25] So in addition to the voice acting and some of that other stuff, I was doing improv comedy. I never wanted to be a standup comic, cuz that's, to be honest, that scares the shit outta me. I don't, I have a big fear of public speaking.

[00:32:41] but if I was kind of like part of like an improv group or somebody performing as a team, I always thought that would be interesting. Cuz I, I also really, really, really from a very, not super young age, but I, I would say like junior high, high school, I thought like the coolest job in the world would be to be part of Saturday Night Live, one of those players. I watched a lot of, like Upright Citizens Brigade as well. Uh, a lot of those, uh, Canadian comedy goofs were always very fun to me as well. maybe they have less stress, I don't know.

[00:33:18] Droste: That could be.

[00:33:21] Liquidiot: But, uh, yeah, that was kind of a big influence in my, in my life too. Around that time I was watching a lot of, and I've mentioned this in other channels, I was getting into SNL kind of in the late eighties, early nineties, especially around the time of like Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, that kind of era that really had a big impact on me.

[00:33:41] And then almost immediately after that was kind of like the, the Will Ferrell era. And those were, yeah, very big points in my, in my, I guess my comedy youth and kind of influence and, and how I kind of present myself today.

[00:33:57] I had an agent, I did some, background stuff on some films, but I never had any formal training. Until I moved to Seattle and then I was like, I want to see what I can do.

[00:34:07] And I found an acting coach, specifically voice acting. he did both. He was fantastic. His name was James Coburn, and he had a nice space, a nice stage. And within that he had a, a vocal booth, an audio booth. So, for two years while I was living in Seattle, every week on Thursday, I would go downtown near the Space Needle and study voiceover.

[00:34:27] He would give us some prompts and we'd each have our time in the booth, which I loved opening that door to that like whisper room. Basically just a closet, fully padded. You had your, your light in there, you had your stand, your, like your music stand style to put your script up there. you had your headphones, he was on top

[00:34:43] Droste: And like the control booth or

[00:34:45] Liquidiot: he had this kind of huge construction like platform.

[00:34:47] He was like way up there cuz it was also used to produce the shows that they would do. And you would just, you'd put on your, your cans and you were just in a different world. It, it was like, there was no camera there, but I was, I was on camera. I was in it. Yeah. And it was amazing. Just every week I look forward to, and there was a, there was a group of about eight of us in my class and we would all share booth time.

[00:35:07] Droste: and, what, what and I'm sorry.

[00:35:08] How old were you?

[00:35:09] Liquidiot: This was after I finished university.

[00:35:11] I was on the five year plan because I, I switched majors midway through.

[00:35:14] I

[00:35:14] Droste: did the five year plan too.

[00:35:16] Liquidiot: I don't regret. It was fun. this was probably, uh, early twenties when this happened. So yeah, I, I studied voice acting for a couple years there. And then I was starting to look for work and I got a couple jobs, but around that same time I decided to travel and that's when I moved to Japan.

[00:35:39] Droste: Ah, and the rest is history.

[00:35:41] Liquidiot: Kind of. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. we can go into more just I guess real quickly, I completely stopped any kind of voice acting and acting when I first moved here. I've been here for almost 17 years. In the middle I got some, I was in some commercials. I sat on a bus. Um, I was in a, a medical film. I did some textbook audio stuff, but I didn't really get into it. I was thinking about it, but the proposition of trying to find an agent in a different language was difficult for me. And then along came Bankless DAO and I found an opportunity to kind of use those skills again. But also during that time, I had taken up photography.

[00:36:26] I was a semi, I guess you could say semi-professional family photographer, children and family photographer. I was paid. I don't know if I'd call myself professional, but I did paid work and that's where a lot of my camera equipment came from. And it has been since repurposed for more video work.

[00:36:44] But I started out as a stills photographer. I did that for like five or six years.

[00:36:48] Yeah.

[00:36:48] Droste: Okay. I, for whatever reason, I felt like, I've seen some of your work and it, it seemed to me that like you had been doing this for longer.

[00:36:57] Liquidiot: Which part?

[00:36:59] Droste: That's a compliment.

[00:37:00] Liquidiot: Thank you. Oh,

[00:37:02] photography. Uh, yeah. I picked up photography in university. I had a an S L R film camera. Which was an interesting concept to a lot of people now. Like if you're old enough to remember film cameras, which a lot of us are, you know, you had your roll, you had to pick your ISO and you had a set number of shots and you didn't know what you got until you got it developed.

[00:37:22] And it really, you know, taught me to take my time with framing and, and lining up a shot and thinking about, you know, the composition. And then, I actually got a nice camera for my wife for one of our anniversaries, thinking that it was something that we could enjoy together. And then I ended up just kind of running away with it, so to speak, cuz I got really into it.

[00:37:43] She's like, yeah, this is all right. I was like, ah, this is amazing. So I got super into it. I was trying to teach her about it and that kind of taught me more about photography. And then I got, I started taking like a lot of photographers, I started taking pictures. People were like, "these are really good. Can you take pictures of me?" And then I started doing some of that work and then I got into like, family photography. I guess all in all, I did that for about. well, you know, I guess I've been doing it. I haven't stopped. I don't do paid work anymore cuz I'm quite busy with DAO stuff. But, I, I probably started taking photos seriously, maybe 10 or 12 years ago.

[00:38:16] Droste: Cool. Cool. Now you take comedy seriously.

[00:38:19] Liquidiot: Hey, I, we, yes, yes. We take money seriously as well.

[00:38:25] Droste: and money. Yes. That's actually the line, not comedy.

[00:38:29] Liquidiot: Yeah.

[00:38:29] Droste: I blew it. it. See, it just proves it wasn't rehearsed.

[00:38:35] Liquidiot: there you go. I'm sorry. Does that, does that answer some of your que I, I ramble and

[00:38:38] I

[00:38:39] Droste: great. I've been meaning to have that conversation with you anyway. We just never get to it.

[00:38:45] Liquidiot: Yeah, so I, I've managed to amass a fair amount of equipment through my photography work and then wanting to get back into my voice acting cuz I really love, I love acting, but I hate being on camera. And some people might find that odd because I've started doing a video series for the DAO recently, but part of that has been like me trying to conquer a fear of being in front of the camera because, I, I love putting myself into a role or acting or being a different person.

[00:39:13] but I hate having the spotlight on me directly. And I don't know if that, maybe some people can click with that and that makes sense. But that's kind of how I feel and that's kind of what's directed me to what I'm doing now, I guess.

[00:39:25] Droste: More of a supporting character.

[00:39:27] Liquidiot: Yeah, I tend to like being behind the camera and that's why I got into photography in the first place.

[00:39:32] I.

[00:39:32] Droste: to "fucktography"?

[00:39:33] Liquidiot: "Fucktography." That's a different, that's um,

[00:39:36] that's for a different podcast. Sorry, I didn't, I got my notes confused here. Yeah.

[00:39:40] Droste: different platform.

[00:39:41] Liquidiot: Different platform. Yeah. Different way, different way of life over there.

[00:39:45] Droste: So, yeah, I didn't realize you were doing that just right before you got into DAO stuff. So yeah. DAO stuff. yeah, you've really gotten plugged into a variety of things and you've probably avoided getting rugged by doing The Rug.

[00:39:58] I found that, that a lot of the work I do at Bankless DAO, I've, I was kind of lamenting, or probably mid-year and actually actually was in 2021 when everything was going up and I missed all these opportunities cuz I was working.

[00:40:13] I'm like, damn it, I, you know, if I wasn't doing all this work for the DAO, I I would've caught this opportunity. Well that opportunity was, was a very sharp knife that was falling or was going to fall.

[00:40:25] Liquidiot: You miss catching it?

[00:40:28] Droste: Exactly. So, you know, sometimes life works out and,

[00:40:32] Liquidiot: Right.

[00:40:33] Droste: and so, you know, all the time I've spent with the DAO and I don't regret any of it.

[00:40:37] Liquidiot: I guess, yeah, to speak to that I got in, uh, like a lot of people that got in around that time, there's just so much happening all at once. And again, you didn't wanna miss out it's seriously that FOMO thing, there's economic opportunity at, at every corner.

[00:40:49] And just like, it was just so interesting as well, like, what's happening over here? What's happening over here? Um, maybe I can help out. It was real easy to get yourself over extended, which is kind of what I did. I mean, you and I were heavily involved in the AV Guild doing multiple roles at the same time because we just didn't have enough bodies.

[00:41:06] And, and then getting involved in other guilds, guilds and other projects, and it, it was, I don't regret any of it. And it was amazing and I was glad I was able to help out where I could. But it's almost like after I established myself and kind of figured out what it was I wanted to do and where I could provide the most value, um, I started shedding a lot of thoseresponsibilities or, or those involvements just because it wasn't productive.

[00:41:30] Like if I wasn't able to devote myself more to that, I was preventing maybe somebody else from being able to do that instead of myself.

[00:41:38] Droste: Exactly. I kind of felt that way myself. I mean, I had been guild coordinator in various roles for a few seasons and I just felt like, geez, I shouldn't just keep putting my name up there cuz people vote for you cuz they recognize your name. even if, whether you're doing a good job or not, I feel like I probably did a pretty decent job.

[00:41:57] Liquidiot: I would agree with that.

[00:41:57] Yeah.

[00:41:58] Droste: Thank you. Well, it's not fishing.

[00:41:59] Um,

[00:42:01] You also want to try new things too, right?

[00:42:04] Neo logos is the one that approached me. I think it was like, uh, late July of 2021 when he said, Hey, he DMed me. And he said, Hey, have you thought about being a guild coordinator? Putting your, raising your hand for that? And I'm like, uh, not really. I don't, what do I know? And so yeah, he kind of got me into that,

[00:42:23] Liquidiot: I think, well, I think everybody, probably has a similar story where there was one or two people, it was kind of like the gateway for them to get really involved in a particular area. I mean, the, the tendency is to join the DAO and then just, get every single tag you possibly can.

[00:42:38] And I've seen people do that. They're a part of every single project and guild.. and that's fine if you're trying to figure out where you want to go. But I would just say be careful with that cuz it's, it can be, that fire hose is no joke. So when you can find where you fit in, well, I would say just direct your focus towards that.

[00:42:56] That doesn't mean you can't do other things, but you really need to, be deliberate with a lot of your actions. Otherwise, you know, we just kind of go in circles. And I think you do find somebody that's kind of like that, that role model or that crypto mentor or that shepherd that just says, "Hey, you know, you seem like you'd be good at this thing, or you wanna help me out over there?"

[00:43:15] And then you just kind of, you find your place and you find your people. I mean, we're all our people in this space, but I think, you know what I mean, where you could kind of really direct your focus and really feel like, oh, this is where I belong, kind of thing.

[00:43:29] Droste: yeah, yeah. One of the things that's always been hard for me to do is ask for help.

[00:43:34] Liquidiot: Right.

[00:43:35] Droste: It's always been hard, but People are willing to help and, um, Like you, it's, I said yes to too many things. And it was getting late in 2021, and I'm just like, I am spending so much time on this stuff and I am not doing my best work, frankly.

[00:43:51] Liquidiot: uh huh

[00:43:52] Droste: And, uh, I felt like I needed to shift a little bit. But sometimes you don't know what you don't know or you sign up or you wanna say yes.

[00:44:02] Liquidiot: Right.

[00:44:02] Droste: because they need somebody to do it. anyway, I don't know. I just thought, you never know. And, I don't regret anything. Sometimes you feel like you're spinning wheels though, you know, projects that maybe you try to spin up and they don't go anywhere.

[00:44:14] But I feel like you learn stuff from it. You learn new ways of working together; what you thought you wanted to do, and maybe you don't enjoy that much. Or you suck at and it's too hard to get good at it.

[00:44:29] Liquidiot: Yeah, well, I, with some of the most valuable skills I learned, I guess, eventually. I had to come o come over that hill, but saying no, saying no is hard for me at first.

[00:44:39] And then also saying, I don't know, is very hard because I think humans have a tendency, especially when you're in, positions where you're sharing or giving information that you don't want to appear to be a person who doesn't know what they're talking about.

[00:44:51] You try very hard to be an expert in areas, at least me in the past, that I really am in over my head. So being able to say no when people ask for help, not in a rude way, but just upfront saying like, I do not have time for this. I would love to help you, but it's just going to be more trouble for you because I don't know if I can commit.

[00:45:10] So I'm just gonna have to say, "no, thank you very much for your consideration, or asking me or seeking me out, but no, I can't do this right now." And then also like, saying, "I don't know. I have no idea. I don't have the answer." Somebody comes to you instead of just saying like, well, yeah, uh, yeah, I, you're sure, sure.

[00:45:25] Like, like pretending that, you know, that's kind of like, I don't know. I don't wanna- see the big thing is

[00:45:30] I don't wanna waste people's time. Everything comes down to time. That is the only resource if you think about it. And I'm trying my best to not impose or waste other people's valuable scarce resource that

[00:45:41] we're all kind of chasing, Right?

[00:45:44] Droste: You can't know everything. And even if it's in your field, if you're a specialist, you still can't know everything.

[00:45:50] Liquidiot: Yeah, absolutely. It's just too much stuff.

[00:45:52] Droste: No, no. Anybody that tells you they are, you know, they're lying. But we won't talk about SBF.

[00:45:59] Liquidiot: Yeah. There, there are no, there are no experts. There's just people with a lot of knowledge and very strong opinions, cuz you can't really know everything. I think I might have stolen that from Jordan Peterson. I dunno

[00:46:12] Droste: Oh, what's the old phrase? If you can't something, something, baffle 'em with bullshit.

[00:46:18] Liquidiot: Oh, I thought you were gonna say, if you can't beat him, join him. That's

[00:46:20] Droste: well, there's that, but you know, there's scammers in, there's been scammers since the beginning of time.

[00:46:29] I just happen to have this extra TV in the back of my truck, and gosh, I just need to get rid of it.

[00:46:35] Liquidiot: Would you mind? That's gonna be, that's gonna be one of the most difficult, in my opinion, or in anxiety inducing things about being part of the space and the DAO. It's, it's trust, man. So if you can find people that you can trust and that you network and, and work with, that's probably one of the most valuable things you can have in this space.

[00:46:57] Cuz even people, you kind of know, there's just so many people and they're messaging you about stuff and it's like, I have to be careful cuz I don't, I don't know. I don't know a hundred percent who you are. that's probably what, yeah, one of the toughest things. letting yourself trust other people in this space because like you said, there are a lot of scammers.

[00:47:14] The motivations for people can be different. I mean, we're all, we're all looking for money. I mean, the technology is great. It's fun being here. I like building stuff. But anybody who says they're not looking for some kind of economic incentive is kind of lying.

[00:47:30] And then trying to figure out like what, what people's intentions are, what they really want here, what they're doing, what this link is.

[00:47:37] Don't click on this link! Your life will be over kind of thing. It's intense. It's intense.

[00:47:42] Droste: Man, it is.

[00:47:42] Yeah. And then opportunity cost, right? And whether it's this space or anything else, I mean, This is something I always have an issue with, with the educational system, is you're expected to make all these choices about a career path and then an an educational track that takes you on that career path without ever having explored the career to see if you even like it.

[00:48:08] Liquidiot: You have no idea.

[00:48:09] You have no idea.

[00:48:10] Droste: mean, I don't get that, that makes no sense to me.

[00:48:14] And then you get there and you're like, well, this, this sucks. And you just spent 12 years of your life learning

[00:48:18] Liquidiot: Yes,

[00:48:19] Droste: everything about it.

[00:48:20] Liquidiot: I was good at math and I was good at, and I liked computers, so they're like, you should be an electrical engineer, or a computer engineer. I said, that sounds good. So I went to university to be an electrical engineer. I did a year and a half of that.

[00:48:34] I was like, I don't like differential equations. I don't like linear Algebra. I passed, but I don't like this. So I was, I got into fitness at the time, and that's why I switched majors and became a dietician, which is fun fact. Yeah. That's why I was on the five year program. But yeah, it's, I, I feel you, like, you just don't know.

[00:48:55] You don't ha, you haven't had those experiences. So asking you to make a decision at that point in time is just kind of ludicrous in a lot of ways, right?

[00:49:03] Droste: Yeah. Yeah. It is. Yeah. Finding your passion and then being able to make a living from it.

[00:49:09] Liquidiot: Yes. I'm still, I'm still doing that. I'm still sorting it out. Like I love what I'm doing here, and I love this space and being able to make these videos and have conversations like this with you, but I'm not done. Like, I'm still on that path trying to figure out where I wanna point this ship. I think it's like a never ending journey.

[00:49:27] And that's, that's what, that's what part of life is. It's the adventure of trying to find where your ship is sailing, right?.

[00:49:33] Some people are lucky and maybe they find that very early, but yeah, for me, I'm still, I'm still on that journey.

[00:49:40] Droste: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:49:42] Liquidiot: and the waters have been rough recently. Let me tell you.

[00:49:46] Droste: They sure have been. I gotta say, I felt kind of stupid last year, kind of waving my arms around and saying, you know, be careful.

[00:49:56] Liquidiot: Is that how you did it? Did you have a sign, a sandwich board?

[00:50:00] You guys better be careful. There's gonna be danger! Soon, you better watch your backs! You gotta get, you're gonna be destroyed by the markets.

[00:50:08] I don't know what that was.

[00:50:09] Droste: You're doing a Conan O'Brien, right?

[00:50:10] Liquidiot: Yeah,

[00:50:12] Droste: Radio Tone News, see?

[00:50:13] Liquidiot: I Wish I, yeah, I wish I had his big, fluffy hair. Do I?

[00:50:17] Droste: oh, that pomp, he's great, but he's so funny. but no, I leveraged a number of years ago. I had, without getting into too many details,

[00:50:27] but I borrowed against a portfolio to do a real estate project and then the market imploded and I got a margin call from my broker. And they wanted a lot of money in 48 hours.

[00:50:39] Liquidiot: right.

[00:50:40] Droste: And they weren't joking.

[00:50:41] They don't joke.

[00:50:42] Liquidiot: Yeah. This stuff's rough. I, I was lucky I didn't, I didn't get any leverage positions or anything like that. I just lost a bunch when everything went down because I was trying to do yield farming. So it's like some here, some there, and now it's all like, lost 99% of what it was. And I guess, all right, I guess I don't have that anymore.

[00:51:04] I didn't get in a situation where I owed anybody money. I lost a bit in the, the Terra Luna thing just because I was invested in a protocol and part of their investment was Terra. It's like a stablecoin thing they were in. So I lost like 30% of that. But all in all, I, I would say like everybody's kind of down bad from that time into now, but I, I never ended up in a position where I, I had to get liquidated or owe anybody.

[00:51:34] I still have those tokens. They're just worth next to nothing

[00:51:36] Droste: They're sitting there.

[00:51:37] Liquidiot: Yeah. Collecting dust.

[00:51:39] Droste: but I, lesson learned, like I, I came out of it not as bad as some people. And you know, I'm not, we're not trying to make light of or, or

[00:51:46] Liquidiot: lessen the gravity of what happened. but for me now it's just like, yeah, I'm just watching eth and Bitcoin to a lesser extent.

[00:51:54] And just keeping everything simple. I've cooled down on my NFTs quite a bit. I amassed a lot of NFTs during that time. Not as much as some, but close to a hundred. I was like, how did I end up with all this stuff? Most of them, like people said, have gone to zero. A lot of 'em I bought because I enjoyed the way that they looked,even though they were kind of like profile picture type stuff. I don't regret any of that. It was a learning experience. A lot of the NFTs I still value very much just personally, but I've kind of cooled my jets on, again, same with DAO stuff, trying to be everywhere all the time. Cuz you hear about so much cool stuff.

[00:52:32] You're like, oh, I'm gonna go over there and see what that's all about. Oh, I'm gonna try to transfer something from this other thing just so I can put more into this thing. And it just becomes..

[00:52:41] Droste: Well, and then you don't even know where it is.

[00:52:42] Liquidiot: Like a personal house of cards, ba for me, basically. So.

[00:52:46] Droste: Well, you talked about simplifying, you know, we were talking about before we got started here, we were talking about simplifying our AV setup because everything get complicated and you change one thing and suddenly it's not working the way it should based on what you thought the settings were.

[00:53:01] And now you've got an event you're doing and it's not working right.

[00:53:06] it's like with anything else. And I'm finding too, with some of the, uh, the crypto stuff, it's in different wallets and different places and I don't know my cost basis and I don't

[00:53:15] Liquidiot: You're right. Like, oh, I forgot I had funds over here in this

[00:53:21] What was I doing?

[00:53:22] Droste: I had simplified things and now it's gotten complicated again.

[00:53:25] Anyway.

[00:53:26] Liquidiot: That would, that would, kind of be my, one of my biggest pieces of advice is try to, only as much as needed, find out what's enough, simplify, use what you got, and then work up from there slowly. And that's just like kind of a general thing, like with the DAO, simplify what it is you're working on.

[00:53:44] Cause you can't, you can't focus, you can't produce good work if you're everywhere trying to be everywhere all the time. You, there's, there's like no such thing as multitasking. You're just switching from thing to thing.

[00:53:55] Droste: Context switching and you lose focus

[00:53:58] Liquidiot: yeah,

[00:53:58] Droste: every time you do that.

[00:53:59] Liquidiot: try to simplify your investments, your involvement. Try to simplify the amount of things you're doing with the DAO.

[00:54:06] Try to simplify your setup. The, the end goal is just to make your day-to-day smoother, less to worry about, less to stress about, more time to focus on doing the actual work. Rather than spending all of your time doing admin on your life,

[00:54:23] Droste: Right.

[00:54:24] Liquidiot: you're in so many different places. Right?

[00:54:26] Droste: Yeah, admin on your life. Yes.

[00:54:28] Liquidiot: And feel free to ignore everything I just said.

[00:54:31] If you're listening, you're like, oh no, that's not gonna, you're, that doesn't work for me. I to each their own, this is just what I found. to simplify

[00:54:38] Droste: that kind of brings us back and think about why you're here. And it's easy to get distracted and then you watch things, we watch that rollercoaster too wee, and then it comes back down the other end and a year later. I mean, it's literally, if you look at a year and you see that chart,

[00:54:57] Liquidiot: it's

[00:54:57] Droste: like, what did I do this year?

[00:54:59] And

[00:55:00] if based on chart, you really don't have a whole lot to say for it. But if what you're doing, the chart is incidental and you're building, you know, we talk about building or you're doing what you love. So we talked before about when you first got into voice acting and you were in that, that sound treated room and it took you to another world.

[00:55:24] And now you're doing that in this space. It's bringing you back to your passion. it takes exploring some different things and meeting new people, quite frankly. And vibing with, like Zim says, Anthony Zim Teemo

[00:55:38] Mm-hmm.

[00:55:39] we're bands, man. You gotta find your band.

[00:55:42] Liquidiot: Yeah. There's gotta be a certain amount of pain along the way. I, people don't want to hear that. But without pain, you can't have growth.

[00:55:50] The manifestation of that pain is different for everyone, but you kind of have to have that, solve those problems for yourself, your life, work through that pain for yourself. and this was kind of all part of it, I guess.

[00:56:01] Droste: you know, you spend all that time, all that money. and sometimes you don't know what you care about. You think you care about these other things and it takes a cycle or maybe two cycles to come back and go, yeah, no, I thought that was what I cared about, but I don't.

[00:56:19] Liquidiot: Right. Well, very high level this space, crypto. All this for me is, this is gonna sound a little lame, but it's about, um, freedom. I said the F word. Yes. Freedom. I think David Hoffman, I think I've heard him say this quote, it's, crypto's not here to make you rich. It's here to set you free. And that's kind of what I'm looking for.

[00:56:40] I am wanting to have more freedom in my life. That is to be able to pursue things I enjoy, provide value, be compensated for that, but not worry about it and not have to deal with the existing financial systems and having third parties and everybody with their finger in the pie. And that's kind of where the freedom comes with me.

[00:57:01] Self sovereignty over my own financial destiny, taking my money with me, and pursuing the things that I enjoy. And then just not having to worry about it as much of the other stuff. I don't know if that kind of makes sense, but that's, that's kind of like what it comes down to me for

[00:57:16] Droste: it makes total sense and it's probably why you and I get along so well. it's a little bit of a secret. We don't care about the money that much. it's a tool. It's to live and, and you want to be able to do what you enjoy and not worry about.

[00:57:32] Liquidiot: It's, for me, it's stress relief. Money is relief of stress, and then it allows me to buy time. We go back to time. Money allows me to buy time to spend with the people I love and doing the things I love. And that's kind of what it comes down to. And I see crypto as a means to that end, like a way I can accomplish that goal for myself.

[00:57:55] I've told this to people. Nobody believes me. Like I could be airdropped a hundred million dollars tomorrow and I would still live a hundred thousand dollar lifestyle because after a certain point, I don't care. Cause it just doesn't, it doesn't interest me and it does other people and that's fine, but that's not what I'm pursuing.

[00:58:12] so yeah, it's, it all goes back to that idea of, of time and how you wanna spend it and who you wanna spend it with. And how you wanna manage your life and your finances. Cuz it is important. But again, I see this as a way to help me do that and to be able to be mobile and have, again, control my own financial future in a way.

[00:58:33] Right?

[00:58:33] Droste: Yeah. Some of these events as unpleasant as they are, bring clarity.

[00:58:40] Liquidiot: Right.

[00:58:41] Right

[00:58:41] Droste: Or they can bring clarity if it doesn't destroy you. Um, I know that sounds kind of ominous.

[00:58:46] Liquidiot: Goes back to that, that pain I was talking about. Yeah. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It really does.

[00:58:51] Droste: but you know, we've all been through a lot these past few years and

[00:58:55] Liquidiot: What did you learn is the question you gotta ask yourself when something goes bad, what can I take from this and how can I use that in the future to either A, make that not happen again, or have that situation be favorable

[00:59:07] Droste: Yeah.

[00:59:07] Liquidiot: for me in some way, you know?

[00:59:10] Droste: Yeah. So back to what you're working on and um,

(section moved to Rug section ~ 7:00-12:00)

[00:59:13] Droste: I have to do, I have to go to the mountains in Chiga for an English camp.

[00:59:18] Liquidiot:

Mountains of Shiga transition from part 1 to part 2

[00:59:19] Droste: We recorded the first portion back in December and you were a bit stuffed up then you were about ready to leave for an English camp in the mountains of

[00:59:31] Liquidiot: Shiga

[00:59:32] Droste: Shiga the mountains of Shiga

[00:59:34] Liquidiot: Yes. With a nose full of marshmallows. I was trying to see how many I could stuff up there. That's why I sounded so fantastic in that section.

[00:59:44] Droste: Well, you sound like you're feeling better today.

[00:59:46] And,

[00:59:46] you had mentioned that when you moved to Japan, about 17 years ago.

[00:59:50] and, but you didn't mention anything about the English teaching other than the fact that you were going to an English camp. are you a teacher? Were you a teacher or is that just something that you kind of picked up on the, on the side

[01:00:04] Liquidiot: Yeah. I guess I am a teacher, but I don't have any formal background or training in teaching. a lot of people that come to Japan "on the scene" kind of know that that's kind of a, a way to work in the country, is you come over as a language instructor, and that's how I came over here initially. I was a dietician in Seattle,a consulting dietician,

[01:00:25] working a full-time job for which I was hired for before I even graduated university. So I had a few job offers right out of the gate. being a male in that field is quite a minority, so let's just say companies were, um, eager to hire me, I guess. So I graduated on like a Thursday and was at my new job on a Monday.

[01:00:47] It was a very quick turnaround. And about two years into that, I was kind of looking around. I was like, oh shit, this is the next 40 years of my life if I don't do anything. So, so I was like, I want to travel. I never, I was very busy during university. I worked pretty nearly full-time to help put myself through school and I didn't really have a, a lot of those travel experiences that I've heard of other people having.

[01:01:12] And I was like, I, I really wanted to do something before I get too much older. What is the easiest way I can travel for more than a week and have somebody else pay for it? So I started looking into it and it seemed that teaching English abroad was kind of the, the most reasonable ways, at least in my opinion, to do that.

[01:01:27] So I applied to a few companies, a handful, and I said, you know what? If, if somebody hires me, then I'll do it. if not, then maybe it wasn't meant to be, and I'll just keep doing the next 40 years of my life, I guess, to where I was at at that point.

[01:01:41] I was sending out those applications around November. Had some interviews in December, and I was in Japan in April. So that was also a quick turnaround.

[01:01:50] Droste: Oh wow.

[01:01:51] Liquidiot: Um, so I initially landed here to teach English. was going to just do it for a year because that's what those visas are for. I ended up wanting to renew and somebody at the time said, just check the box for three years.

[01:02:04] It's kind of like a lottery, or at least it was at the time. So I checked that three year box. Lo and behold I got a three year visa. I was like, oh, okay. During that time I met my, my now wife, I got a spousal visa. and then that kind of rolled into a permanent residency. So, yeah. I wanted to travel. I did, once, and then I ended up not traveling very much anymore cuz I've just been in, I've just been in Japan the whole time.

[01:02:31] So I guess I kind of got there, but I didn't.

[01:02:33] Droste: Wow. Sliding doors. You never know.

[01:02:36] Liquidiot: I do still teach English from time to time as kind of like a supplement to my income and what I'm doing elsewhere across the interwebs.

eth Toyko

[01:02:46] Droste: this is completely off a different topic. I just remembered, um, I have not asked you about Eth Tokyo cuz you just got back from that and it was,

[01:02:56] what was it, two or three day event? Yeah, last week. And cuz we're recording this. This is late April. Talk about a delayed release.

[01:03:03] We did our first part in December and here it is April, to do part two. And and Yeah, you just got back from Eth Tokyo. Met some other Bankless, DAO folk there.

[01:03:12] any highlights from that?

[01:03:14] Liquidiot: Uh, no it was a blast. It was two events back to back. It was DAO Tokyo, and ETH Global Tokyo. They were originally going to be scheduled at different times, but the dates got pushed together, which is great cuz then you went to one, one day and then, uh, which was DAO Tokyo. And then the following three days were Eth global Tokyo.

[01:03:32] It was nice, like I had never been to any in-person Industry conference before, I mean like web three crypto kind of thing. And it was good. Uh, it was great actually. Um, meeting some people from the DAO was fantastic. meeting the Bankless Japan crew, which I'm in Japan and I haven't actually ever talked to them up until we were planning for that event.

[01:03:53] so DAO Tokyo was great. Um, it was just, you know, more of talk about, uh, about DAOs obviously. And then Eth Global Tokyo was fantastic, but the whole time I'm like, what am I doing here? In a way, like, I was just there to do some media coverage. Yeah. Well

[01:04:09] I just, like, I have never been to a hackathon and it was just a fun experience seeing everybody just kind of like trying to figure out problems that they set for themselves just like that, that week, right?

[01:04:22] You know, we're gonna try to build something right now, we have three days to do it, or two and a half days to do it. let's get it done. It very much reminded me of finals week in college, like, just sitting in the library or trying to find some space and just everybody else is kind of doing the same thing, just with their heads down.

[01:04:40] Trying to get as much done before the deadline is as possible. But it was like being at the library and university, it was kind of very communal in the same way. Not quite as noisy, but everybody's there doing the same thing, working towards a similar goal, even though their particular goal is somewhat different.

[01:04:57] that was a lot of fun. And then, uh, a couple times people came up to me and were explaining what it was they were doing, and it was just like, it's like, I don't know, I just, I just take video and tell jokes, man, dunno. And then they're, and then I kind of get like that awkward dog head tilt thing, like, they're confused. Like, then what are you doing here?

[01:05:16] No, it's a lot of fun. I gotta, I gotta record some interviews. Um, I got to eat some food. I gotta chat with some people. I gotta put some faces to some, web three names, cuz you know, you reel and, and and pseudonym. So yeah, it was a great experience. it was a great venue.

[01:05:33] Both venues were fantastic, especially DAO Tokyo's very representative of what you would think of Ja Japan being like. I guess so was Eth Global cuz it was very much, you had the old and the new juxtaposed against each other within the two events.

[01:05:47] Droste: Or wasn't it in that that, temple?

[01:05:50] Liquidiot: Yeah, yeah, there was the first DAO Tokyo was in a shrine and then, Eth Global was in, uh, high rise. I guess that's a high rise. It was in a very tall building. We were only on the fifth floor, but we were still in that building,

[01:06:02] Droste: It's still a high rise, even if

[01:06:03] Liquidiot: and

[01:06:04] Droste: the first floor of it.

[01:06:05] Liquidiot: yeah, I guess so. So I put up some, uh, actually put up some pictures on, uh, the pink sink of those venues kind of thing.

[01:06:14] So yeah,

[01:06:14] Droste: think that's where I saw the pictures. Yeah.

[01:06:17] Liquidiot: Yeah.

[01:06:18] Droste: Nice photos.

[01:06:19] Liquidiot: So yeah, it was great. It was a good experience for me. It was nice to be able to meet some people, and would recommend, that's my Amazon review. Five stars would buy again,

[01:06:28] Droste: would buy again. It's It's a free event though, isn't it? Free to go?

[01:06:32] Liquidiot: so DAO Tokyo was a prepaid event, I believe you had to buy tickets for that. ETH Global, uh, and I don't, I'm not sure if this is how all these ETH global events run, but it, you had to put up a certain amount of collateral to enter, after which you would receive back.

[01:06:51] Droste: Oh, okay.

[01:06:52] Liquidiot: And then, um, while you were there, kind of everything else that was provided, like the mentorships, the foods, the space that was kind of all I guess quote unquote free.

[01:07:02] But again, I was not participating in the prize pool. There was like, , was it like 275,000 or $375,000 prize pool? Yeah, it was quite large. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I was just, you know, getting stickers and eating little chicken burgers and taking videos, so that was kind of my path there.

[01:07:20] Droste: you know, I went to Eth Denver and it was kinda nice to wander around and just talk to people and just kind of see, see, who's got the energy, where, where the booth activity is,

[01:07:31] Liquidiot: it's like a weird.

[01:07:31] Droste:

[01:07:31] Liquidiot: Yeah, it's like a weird high school reunion for people that you never went to school with in a way, cuz it's like, oh hey, hey, long time to see. Like, I haven't actually seen you before, but like, yeah, I mean, I guess a lot of people see each other annually at these events, so yeah, it is kind of like a reunion of sorts for people.

[01:07:47] So, uh, I very much kind of had that vibe for me and I'm sure if I go again next year, it'll be that squared kind of thing. Plus one.

[01:07:58] Droste: Squared and plus one. Nice.

[01:08:00] Liquidiot: Yeah, I was trying to, I didn't know which one I wanted to say, so I just said 'em both.

[01:08:04] Droste: I'll put your parenthesis in the right place so the math works

[01:08:07] Liquidiot: Yeah. Carry the two.

[01:08:09] Let's

[01:08:09] Droste: All right. We covered everything, I think. We talked about pink sink. I now know that this is literally a pink sink in your kitchen.

[01:08:20] Really more of a salmon color, but,

[01:08:22] Liquidiot: Yes, heard it here first.

[01:08:24] Droste:

[01:08:24] Liquidiot: I'm excited about Pink Sink because again, that is me. It's kind of like a combination of, It's a mishmash of stuff. It's, it's like the photography. I'm gonna do videos, I'm going to do gated content. More like video diary stuff. Does anybody still do video? I'm gonna do a video diary type thing.

[01:08:41] Droste: Dunno.

[01:08:42] Liquidiot: And you know, here's the thing. People say, you can't do this, you can't do that. You can't, if you wanna have a successful business, you gotta, you gotta be putting out this at this here, there all the time. You gotta do this kind of content. You gotta have these kind of clickable links. You gotta have these thumbnails.

[01:08:55] And at the end of the day, like, I don't fucking care. Because again, with that authenticity, I wanna make the stuff that I wanna make. And if people wanna join me on that journey, they can. If they don't, that's fine. If they just wanna stop by every month, that's okay too. But I'm not going to just put out a deluge of content just to try to get you to clicky, clicky in the door.

[01:09:17] And that's kind of what's exciting to me about Pink Sink is this is just me making the stuff I wanna make. And it's, it may be wacky at times, it may be like off brand at times. It may be outta left field. But you know what, at the end of the day, it's me. so yeah, that's really exciting me right now. So if you'd like to join me on that journey, uh, please do.

[01:09:37] if it's not for you, that's fine as well, you know. So that's kind of where I'm gonna be, I guess, putting in a majority of my, my time moving forward. And I'm just gonna see what happens with that, what blossoms where that takes me. If I can continue to make those actions align with my values in that space, that space being my, my, my newsletter, the pink sink.

[01:10:05] Droste: All right. Well Liquidiot, Allyn, are you going by Liquidiot still? I noticed in, the bDAO, discord server. You've, You've, pulled Liquidiot off of there.

[01:10:13] Liquidiot: Yeah, yeah. I've kind of rotated stuff over to Allyn. but people still know me as Liquidiot and that's fine. If you, if you yell out, Liquidiot in a, in a crowd, my head will pop up. It was funny, like at DAO Tokyo I met, Tessa from Fight Club, and I introduced myself as Allyn and she says, I don't know, are you on a different handle? I was like, I used to go by Liquidiot. She said, oh, Liquidiot! Yeah, I know you! I was like, okay. Yeah. So it just depends. I've tried to I don't know, like be a little more serious in a way. So I've switched a lot of my, I mean, my Discord root name is still Liquidiot.

[01:10:54] but I've changed my server name in a lot of places. to Allyn Bryce. But either is okay.

[01:10:59] Droste: All right, Allyn. Well, thanks

[01:11:00] a lot. This has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you coming on the show. And,

[01:11:03] I'm happy to know the origin of Pink Sink and hopefully you'll be filling that pink sink with lots of amazing and fun content for people to collect.

[01:11:11] Liquidiot: Oh, thank you so much. It's always a, a pleasure chatting with you and thanks for having me on.

[01:11:15] Droste: All right. Thanks a lot my friend.

[01:11:18] And that's a wrap. Thanks for listening. This has been Making Bank a production of Bankless DAO. If you'd like to learn more about Bankless DAO, please visit Bankless dot community on the web for more information and how to get started. And of course, if you like what we're doing, please like, subscribe, and follow on your favorite podcast platform.

FinalEdit

[00:00:35] Droste: Hi, I'm Droste and welcome to another episode of Making Bank. Today's guest is Allyn Bryce, known by many or most online as Liquidiot. Allyn is a man of many talents. He's a voiceover artist, audio engineer, photographer, video editor, occasional English teacher, and a father of two.

[00:00:53] Liquidiot: I do wanna make a quick note. I have three kids, not two, don't tell my third one. Yeah,

[00:00:58] Droste: I'm gonna have to record rerecord this. Three. I don't know why I thought you had two kids.

[00:01:05] Liquidiot: I have two that are very close together, and then a third one that just showed up outta nowhere. I don't know what happened. Just on my doorstep. Where'd you come from?

[00:01:12] Droste: Showed up on the doorstep. All right, I'm gonna do it again. Today's guest is Allyn Bryce, known by many or most online as Liquidiot. Allyn is a man of many talents. He's a voiceover artist, audio engineer, photographer, video editor, occasional English teacher, and a father of three.

[00:01:32] In Web three, he's using his talents working on media projects at Bankless DAO, as well as several spinoffs like The Rug, a Web three satire publication, and its sister podcast Under the Rug. He's also got a few personal projects brewing.

[00:01:46] It's a fun episode with a good friend. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

[00:01:50] And with that, welcome Allyn Bryce or Liquidiot to Making Bank.

[00:01:56] Liquidiot: Hey, how's it going?

[00:01:58] Droste: So I was curious. We've both been with Bankless DAO since about the beginning. Didn't you join it at Genesis back in May 2021?

[00:02:08] Liquidiot: I did, I actually looked into this because Discord recently started letting you check when you joined a server. So it says when you joined Discord and when you joined a server. And, I joined in in May May 5th, I think it was.

[00:02:21] Droste: Yeah, that was the day.

[00:02:22] Liquidiot: Yeah, right in the beginning. Sure. Yeah. I was kind of reserved. I, I got the airdrop and I found out about the Discord, and then I was like, well, I'm gonna check this out.

[00:02:30] I had a story, like we got that airdrop and I told a friend and I were, cause when I first got into crypto, I was looking at more like being a trader, which was a mistake. I knew vaguely about the technology, but I thought, oh man, this would be an easy way for me to do something that I could kind of get my head around and try to make some money.

[00:02:48] So we were trying to chart and kind of wade our way through that and make some quick turnarounds. and I had been listening to the Bankless HQ podcast and it was, I think it was April? It might have been April, literally. I said, well, you know, I've gotten a lot of value from this podcast. $22 is a, is a big ask, but for what I've gotten in return, I think it's worth it.

[00:03:11] So why not, I'll just subscribe, get the premium content and just see how it goes. And like a week later they did the actual airdrop of the Bankless DAO token. So I just snuck in there cuz it was only to people who had been premium subscribers. So I got that airdrop of, with the 35 or what? I think it was more than that for some various reasons.

[00:03:30] And it was like, at the time it was like five grand or something.

[00:03:32] And my friend said, you should sell it

[00:03:35] Yeah, you should sell. I was like, yeah, you know, I, they're gonna do something with this. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna ride this wave and see what happens. And then sure enough, the DAO opened up and those of us that had the prerequisite amount got to be level ones.

[00:03:48] And I joined up and I was just kind of hiding in the corner for about the first month I would say.

[00:03:55] Droste: You and I both hid in the corner for a while.

[00:03:57] Liquidiot: Yeah, well you were, you were much more out there than I was becauseyou became a level two quite quickly, you know, when that was all happening. And then I kind of looked up to you and I remember when I first got started in the

[00:04:11] Droste: That was a mistake.

[00:04:12] Liquidiot: that was your first mistake. When I was trying to get more involved in the AV Guild I approached you, from memory to start doing the POAP distribution for you.

[00:04:20] Droste: It all

[00:04:20] Liquidiot: Cause I it

[00:04:20] Droste: it starts with POAPs..

[00:04:21] Liquidiot: yeah, that's how, that's how I got involved issuing PAFs. That was my gateway drug, I guess.

[00:04:28] yeah, I wanted to take some of that work off your plate.

[00:04:30] Droste: I appreciate that.

[00:04:31] Liquidiot: yeah, so that's kind of how I got my start. I, I started joining in some conversation trying to add my opinion but not be overbearing on what was happening.

[00:04:39] Cause I have a tendency to do that. So, yeah, it was a slow start, but I was there in May along with the small handful of us, I guess. And it's just really blossomed from there, so to speak.

[00:04:50] Droste: you and I had been doing guild coordination stuff, treasury, trying to, to onboard new contributors, things like that. And then we both got involved in other projects. And

[00:05:00] Yeah.

[00:05:01] Liquidiot: I guess when we were all kind of in starting trying to figure out structure. There was a lot happening around guild and project-ization. Initially there wasn't really much in the way of guilds.

[00:05:12] I mean, there was some at the very beginning, but it was all very much just nebulous. That's just kind of floating around. And then we started to kind of develop our own structures and uh, the AV Guild was very much growing alongside the Design Guild because they had a lot in common. And over a period of that time, there was like a lot of talks of whether those should be one or two separate things.

[00:05:33] Initially, I was involved in a lot of the roles and kind of structuring of those guilds. Gosh, I might have completed that Bingo card, I'm not sure. Cuz I was a guild coordinator, I was involved in treasury at one point.

[00:05:46] What other roles did we have? There wasn't a lot of us at the beginning.

[00:05:49] I think

[00:05:49] Droste: between you and me, We kind kind of rotated among them.

[00:05:51] Liquidiot: Yeah, we were bouncing around between 'em from season to season and some of 'em carried over from, oh, a talent coordinator. I did that. that was kind of one of the last roles I did that I really honed in on.

[00:06:01] We were sharing roles. there was a a time when three of us were kind of doing the secretarial role, just sharing that and getting ready to kind of hand that off. And I was also involved in the genesis of the podcast hatchery at that time cuz obviously the AV is involved in in podcasts and a lot of those people were the same faces, yourself as well, wanting to get involved in that.

[00:06:23] I was involved early on in Bankless Academy, because there was some AV work needed there, as you know. At that time it was very much like we were putting together a skeleton of what that project would eventually be. I mean, it was all, again, very much like experimental phase.

[00:06:43] A lot of these projects is like, we know we want to do something, we know this is the theme. We're just not quite sure how to get there, so let's just start making stuff and going from there.

[00:06:53] So yeah, my, my main involvement was the AV Guild, the podcast hatchery a to a smaller extent, Bankless Academy from the very beginning. But I was mostly in the AV Guild.

[00:07:04] Yeah, and then you, you started gravitating to, to other projects. Was the rug one of the first things that came outta that? or No,The Rug was one of the first projects I was in. I mean, the podcast hatchery was kind of a, a project. I was very involved in the AV Guild at that time. So it was very hard for me to have the bandwidth to commit to projects, but then I slowly focused in on a particular role in the AV Guild.

[00:07:26] And then the way our governance was set up at that time, you could only have a role, I think three consecutive seasons? I did talent coordinator for three seasons, and then at the end of that,

[00:07:37] I figured this would be a good time to pursue other projects.

[00:07:41] And I was doing The RUG at that time as well. But we were growing over there at that same time. And we kind of set berth from the port and became our full fledged separate project. Ooh. Again, it was another experiment. We were just making stuff in within a single channel in the DAO, and then like, this is picking up some steam, we needed to spread our wings a bit. And we ended up in our own server.

[00:08:06] Droste: you know, it's funny cuz you and I worked together a lot in AV Guild before and I had no idea how involved you were with The Rug. I mean, you are like core there. You produce Under the Rug.

[00:08:19] and I know that's one of your main projects.

[00:08:22] Liquidiot: I got into that by chance when it was still called Top Signal Satire site. I don't know if anybody remembers that.

[00:08:26] Droste: Oh yeah, Top Signal.

[00:08:28] Liquidiot: I had a couple of joke ideas just with stuff that was happening. I was like, I'll just pop in here and say a couple things. and I made a couple jokes and then there's a, there's only like a handful of people at that time like, oh, you should join.

[00:08:39] and that's when we kind of started The Rug. And then we had maybe 12, 13, 14 people and we produced that first N F T, which was amazing. I loved what we did.

[00:08:47] Droste: MW was involved, right?

[00:08:49] Liquidiot: Yeah. Yeah. He was one of the head people originally.

[00:08:52] So he was kind of core to starting that up. It was him and Frank America and Perchy and a handful of other people at the beginning. so yeah, we produced that N F T It was fantastic. I liked the newspaper style of it, and then we did a series of that and along the line we're like, we're kind of wanting to move this into a more serious direction. So then we kind of started our server, and, and I was involved in setting that up.

[00:09:16] So, yeah, I, I guess I'm one of the core members. There's a couple of us that kind of keep the wheels turning over there on the daily.

[00:09:23] And then of course, one of the other projects I started, gosh, two seasons ago? was the recap video series, which I do weekly and put up on YouTube with the assistance of a few others, yourself included.

[00:09:37] So between the RUG and the Weekly Rollup Recap video series, those have kind of been my main points of focus within the DAO space, aside from like personal projects.

[00:09:51] Droste: now I'd like to just clarify. When you say serious, you don't mean being serious, you mean operating seriously with a Discord server and admin and things like that.

[00:10:04] Liquidiot: Yeah. We, we needed more.

[00:10:06] Droste: Yeah. You're still funny.

[00:10:07] Liquidiot: Yeah. One channel wasn't enough for all of the laughs that we had, so we had to, we had to bust out into our own server just so we had a little more space to work. It's been going great over there. We're producing a lot more now. You mentioned Under The Rug, which is a podcast we do monthly, which is kind of behind the scenes about our writing and our jokes and that kind of stuff.

[00:10:26] So we have a, a small stable of writers and designers and a couple hype people and we mainly operate out of Twitter. We mint articles on mirror, on optimism for about the price of a cup of coffee. We do our newsletter. we're starting up NFTs again. so we're putting out a lot of content there.

[00:10:45] And I love comedy.

[00:10:48] Like I mentioned earlier, I was kind of the class clown. I'm a smart ass, ask my wife. I'm sarcastic, which is to my detriment most of the time.

[00:10:55] I was in the principal's office quite often,

[00:10:57] let's just say that. Um, so it really clicked like, like the voiceover. And, and the comedy thing. So that's kind of where I put my focus. And, and The Rug is probably one of the most fun things I do in this space. Cuz a lot of the things that happen are just completely absurd.

[00:11:14] And you know, we're there to be able to, to kind of, you have to be able to laugh. It's medicine. Yeah. You have to be able to laugh at yourself and how ridiculous stuff is and what you're doing. Cuz you know, it's, it's much needed. And I hope everybody enjoys what we're doing over there and we're not trying to laugh at people.

[00:11:34] We're trying to laugh with people cuz there's, there's just so much funny in the world and particularly in this space and since it's such a, a nascent or like young thing, it's growing up and we're kind of growing up with it and there's a lot of comedy to be had within that.

[00:11:49] So. It's a lot of fun.

[00:11:51] Droste: Oh,

[00:11:51] Liquidiot: of fun.

[00:11:52] Droste: Some of these jokes write themselves. Are you kidding? Jeez.

[00:11:54] Liquidiot: We don't even have to do anything. We just have to put up a picture on it. It's already there.

[00:12:00] Droste: one of the first things that popped into my head with S B F when the whole thing blew up was, God, this guy's going to prison. And you know that bank man's gonna be fried. I

[00:12:12] Liquidiot: Yeah.

[00:12:12] Droste: just writes itself.

[00:12:14] Liquidiot: Yeah, yeah. We had a couple good jokes about he had his get outta jail free card from his Monopoly set, which is pretty funny. he got arrested because he forgot his bribe payments. He, he missed a deadline on bribes, so they brought him in for that. yeah, just with, with him the culmination of this with what happened previously with Three Arrows Capital and, The Terra thing.

[00:12:35] It's just like, man, this is just compounding comedy gains, I guess. This is, it's almost getting like, okay, we need to have something else to make fun of.

[00:12:44] There's just so much happening with this one thing.

[00:12:46] Droste: because it's already got bad press.

[00:12:49] Liquidiot: Yeah. All in our writer's room, we're like, oh, okay. Are we gonna stop writing about SBF? I'm getting tired of it.

[00:12:53] It's like, well, it's, is hilarious and absurd stuff going to stop happening anytime soon? Because if not, we're just gonna keep, keep writing about it, you know?

[00:13:02] Droste: Yeah. I mean, it bleeds, it leads.

[00:13:05] Liquidiot: Yeah. If it's, uh, funny, it's money I guess.

[00:13:09] I think that's what, I think that's what, Frank, I stole that from him,

[00:13:13] but you gotta follow the narrative and if that's where the narrative's at, we gotta be there to capitalize on the comedy, you know?

[00:13:20] Droste: Yeah, yeah. Comedy is not easy and it's not pretty.

[00:13:23] Liquidiot: Yes. It is not, it is not. But it, I enjoy it.

[00:13:27] I've fallen on my face several times, but

[00:13:29] Droste: yeah.

[00:13:29] Yeah.

[00:13:29] Liquidiot: for the weekly roll up that you just mentioned, that ends up being

[00:13:33] Droste: about an eight to 10 minute thereabouts summary every week,

[00:13:38] video summary with graphics brought in and, week's current events and it's scripted and, uh, a lot of visuals and I was just, wanting to

[00:13:47] givepeople a sense of what it takes to put something like that together.

[00:13:50] How much time does it take you to put together an eight minute video summary every

[00:13:55] week?

[00:13:55] Liquidiot: Yeah. All right. I'm just gonna disclaimer, I'm not the most proficient video editor. I mean, I have some skills, those aren't like the most professional of things, but I don't feel they're intended to be. I'm kind of recapping a newsletter that's already out there. I'm not necessarily selling a product per se.

[00:14:15] so just disclaimer, fyi, for any of those of you who have seen that.

[00:14:20]

[00:14:20] The newsletter team puts together the weekly rollup, which is a fantastic newsletter and it sums up the week in the DAO. And then I saw an opportunity, a few others saw it too, to kind of turn that into a bite sized video format type of thing, trying to stay like sub 10 minutes and just summarizing that newsletter, just to kind of expand the reach of it and offer a different medium, experience that content. The video series always points back to the roll up cuz if you want the full stories, all the hot action and hot takes, you, you really need to check out the newsletter.

[00:14:53] But this is just a way to kind of dip your toes and have some fun and see what the DAO's up to in just a short form video. So it's a small team. It's WinVerse, and I and yourself. Um, you are my, my quality control person. making sure that I cross my T's and dot my I's at the end of the day.

[00:15:10] and then, uh, win verse.

[00:15:12] Droste: I usually catch it a little late,

[00:15:14] Liquidiot: Yeah. Well tis the, the nature of working in completely different time zones, but we're, we're doing the best we can. uh, win verse does the scripting. He takes the actual newsletter and condenses it into a script for myself. And also handle some of the YouTube descriptions.

[00:15:29] I take the script that he provides and then I add my own script changes, usually very minor. I tend to change things a little bit to how I would speak them versus how it's written and add, I guess, injecting some of my own comedy.

[00:15:45] Not always, but sometimes. Yeah. so I take that script and then I have to kind of break it into chunks that would make sense for the video, just for my own purposes.

[00:15:53] So, these videos, although they're short, they're about two days to make. So the first day I'm going over the script, reviewing it, making notes, changes, putting in my own personal kind of sections, timestamps, if you will. Pulling assets from various locations based on what's in the newsletter, recording screen caps, working on any new transitions that I'm gonna put in there.

[00:16:16] Basically getting all the pieces together for the actual video itself. Before I start recording, then the next day, the following day. Cause that usually takes most of the day to get through all of that stuff. The next day I record usually in the mornings, and then I spend the entire day editing.

[00:16:34] I will start a, around, this is probably boring, but I'll start around eight or nine in the morning. usually after my kids are in school and then I'm not done until five or six that night. It's a full day, maybe seven. I remember the first couple videos we were doing, we had a lot of technical issues, a lot of audio sync problems cuz of how I was recording and

[00:16:54] it's like, yeah.

[00:16:56] And I was like, I would upload it. It's like, no, you're like, this is outta sync. I was like, oh my God, so I'd do it again. And it was like, I think the first video, first two or three videos, it was like 11 at 12 at night. Midnight, one o'clock in.

[00:17:08] Droste: like midnight 1:00 AM for you, and I'm just getting up and it's 6:00 AM or something. I'm like, uh, You need, you've, your audio's outta sync, and you're like, oh, no.

[00:17:16] Liquidiot: I know, but I was like, I committed to getting these out on a certain day and I wanted to hold myself to that cuz I didn't wanna let it slip once cuz then it would start slipping more. So I've been pretty diligent in getting those out with your help. But yeah, the first couple of videos took forever. Um, I've kind of locked in a flow a little bit, but even so, even on a good day, I'm still, just for an eight minute video, it's at least a day and a half two working days, I guess would be a, a good way to say it.

[00:17:43] Anybody who edits video or is in that world kind of knows what I'm talking about.

[00:17:47] Droste: Oh, yeah, yeah. yeah. I, I'm nodding and I'm like, oh yeah, sure. Yeah.

[00:17:52] Liquidiot: that is still relatively short. if I increase the production value, even a smidge higher, you're, you're adding just keeps more time and that

[00:18:01] yeah, that adds up. I mean, you see a finished product.

[00:18:04] People take for granted what a finished product looks like, and you're like, oh, that's you.

[00:18:08] That's easy. But when you're actually in there turning the dials, you quickly realize like, oh man, this takes a lot of time. Unless you're just like recording a phone video and just doing some simple cuts and posting it to your feed, like anytime you try to do deliberate editing, it takes a lot of time.

[00:18:26] Droste: I wanted to go through that because I think, I think sometimes people oversimplify if they haven't done it themselves and, and all the demos look like everything's so easy, you know, a couple of clicks and boom, you're done.

[00:18:37] And especially with all the, the breathless talk around, uh, AI right now, it's like, oh, come on.these things don't just pop out automatically and look great and sound great and are edited properly and all of that, and it takes a lot of time.

[00:18:52] so those are projects that are really related to Bankless DAO, DAO space. So the rug spun out from Bankless DAO and it is funded by, by Bankless DAO, as is under the rug, as is the, weekly roll up. And, but then you've also got a number of personal projects that you're working on. And, um,I've seen some of your writing on, is it on paragraph?

[00:19:13] Right. And I also saw that -- I did not know you play guitar.

[00:19:18] Liquidiot: Oh yeah. I kinda, I sold my guitar a couple weeks ago. I think I wrote about, did I write about that? No, two or three weeks ago I sold my guitar just after saying that. I had an acoustic guitar. Um, yeah, I, I purchased a guitar in the first couple years I was here. I'm really into acoustic, guitar music. I like, I like when they take rock and do the acoustic sets.

[00:19:45] Um, one, one of my favorite albums of all time is um, a Nirvana m t v live set. It is fantastic. I just love that. Uh, it was an unplugged series. Yeah, I, I'll listen to that at least once a month I'm on that album. It's, it's phenomenal. But I always like that vibe. That kind of stripped down, kind of deconstructed, you know, just a few guitars and, and maybe some percussion.

[00:20:07] Um, so yeah, I bought an acoustic guitar. I was writing a lot. I wrote like 50 songs or something, most of 'em incomplete. Um, I had a bunch of recordings and I think what maybe you're alluding to is I minted an N F T recording of one of my early songs. Uh, yeah, free mint. I was like, because I needed to test, I wanted to test out this, uh, cuz there's so many minting platforms, it's like, I don't know what to do.

[00:20:33] I don't know where to go. Um, I, I, until I try these out, so I minted that song on highlight and there was a pretty big issue with it populating the metadata directly, and I contacted them. We got all sorted out, but I was glad that I went through that process. So yeah, I have a, a song up there. There's only 25 available.

[00:20:53] I think only five have been minted. Um, but that's a free mint. It's, it's not timed or anything. So, If you know where to find that, you can pick it up. It's, it's not good, but it's not horrible. You'll put it that way. I was never, I'm not a good singer. but I liked to learn how to play guitar and I was like, well, I need vocals.

[00:21:11] Nobody else is gonna sing for me, so I should do this. I liked song writing. I liked writing lyrics. Um, but I was never, I'm a horrible singer. I'm just gonna put that out there. Another disclaimer.

[00:21:22] Mm-hmm.

[00:21:23] Droste: but it's not bad. I mean, your, the guitar playing was

[00:21:27] Liquidiot: Yeah. And

[00:21:28] it was, it was fun and, and like within. With an N F T, making. An n f T I know it's not like great, and I'm not like out here trying to sell musical talent, but it's like I was able to take this thing that I, you know, I put a fair amount of work into at that point in time when I recorded it and I minted it as an N F T.

[00:21:44] So here's like a permanent record of this thing that I did on the blockchain, and I think that's really cool. Um, I may, you know, lose the hard drive that it was recorded to, but then it's always there as that N F T on Polygon that I can go back and revisit and say, yeah, you probably shouldn't have recorded that and put that out there.

[00:22:05] But there it's kind thing.

[00:22:09] So a timestamp of my life, put it that way.

[00:22:13] Droste: yeah, there's a certain amount of comfort in being able to delete things that,

[00:22:17] Liquidiot: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:18] Droste: no,

[00:22:18] I, I like that you put your work out

[00:22:19] Liquidiot: there.

[00:22:19] But also like having a, a record of it. Yeah.

[00:22:21] Droste: that you actually did it. Yeah. Yeah. No, so that's a, that's a cool thing. I, I like to bring up stuff like that because it is, you know, as you mentioned, there's all these, these NFT platforms and, you know, um, no code tools and stuff and,

[00:22:34] Liquidiot: Yes. Oh my gosh. I'm, I'm recently, I've been, I've been on, I've been looking at zora, I've been on Foundation, I've been on Manifold. I've been looking into OpenSea's native tools. Uh, I've been on highlight, I've been looking at mirror. There's like all of these platforms serving the same purpose. And then I'm like thinking, well, this is the type of mint I want to do.

[00:22:54] This is how I want it to roll out. This is what I want to provide. Do I want to airdrop? Do I wanna sell? Do I wanna do an auction? there's so much stuff going on. And then also, it's not like the stakes are free. You're, you're getting charged each time you experiment. I mean, I guess you can do the testnet stuff.

[00:23:11] Fair enough. Yeah. And I have done that, but at the same time, like if you wanna put this out there for actual people to consume or possibly purchase or, or trade or, or have available, or just even token gating a community, which is what I'm working on right now. You're gonna have to put up a, at least a little bit of gas, you know?

[00:23:31] Droste:

Pink Sink

[00:23:31] Droste: Where does Pink Sink come from? What's the, what's the origin of that name?

[00:23:36] Liquidiot: All right. Um, first I wanna back up just a tiny bit. You said I am involved in a number of personal projects. I would say I'm involved in like one or two personal projects with a, a hell of a lot going on at the same time, kinda thing. So it looks like I'm involved in many projects.

[00:23:52] Droste: yeah. On your personal projects between photography and, and Deliver your content on a web three platform and learn how to build that yourself.

[00:24:00] And man, I don't know how you find time to do all that when you have three kids and,

[00:24:05] Liquidiot: yeah. That's the other piece right there. So, Pink Sink I guess this will

[00:24:09] Droste: Does Does your wife see you ever? Does, do you like go out and wave to her once in a while?

[00:24:13] Liquidiot: Yeah, we both work from home, so she sees me a lot. Her office is right around the corner. Usually it's me yelling out the door at her, it's, Hey honey, you wanna go get a coffee and take a break? She's like, yeah, let's do that. She doesn't sound like that, by the way.

[00:24:24] It's much more beautiful voice, but that's my

[00:24:25] Droste: right? That's

[00:24:26] Liquidiot: poor personation on her. Yeah. Well it's weird. We see each other a lot, but we don't see each other. If that makes sense. And then it's like five o'clock and it's like, well, our kids start rolling home around three and we gotta pick up the young one at five. Anyway.

[00:24:39] Uh, Pink Sink, yes. Um, people have asked me about that name. I was going to do a, blog post about that, and I still will. But I guess I can give a little bit of Alpha for our listeners here. There's like two things happening at the same time. I'm very involved in Web three. And I love what's happening here and it's just a, a fantastic experiment.

[00:25:01] It's a lot of fun. There's a lot of stuff happening but at the same time, I'm trying to kind of sort through my own life still. You know, as a middle-aged dude, still trying to figure out which direction his ship is pointed. Um, but there's kind of like this need, maybe it's like my version of a midlife crisis, but it's like I'm really wanting to simplify my my life. Focus in on what's important, be ruthless with the things that are not important, and kind of remove those from my life.

[00:25:29] So it's like these two things are happening at the same time and I'm very interested in where they can cross. Uh, and I've talked about this in other channels, like web three stuff and blockchain is all like very, the most web three and blockchain, cuz you're always hearing about very technical stuff or financial stuff or scams. All this, you know, that's what the, the conversations and, and all the building, which is fantastic.

[00:25:55] But it's like, well how is this applicable to just average person wanting to live their life? And you know, we're starting to see some of the hints of that, but it just hasn't really happened, like clicked. It's very much like when I was growing up, only a few people had access to what we would consider the worldwide web now because of lack of hardware and dial up connections and that kind of stuff.

[00:26:17] We're not talking about the internet. I'm talking about more of the worldwide web kind of thing. But then there was this moment we're just kind of clicked or it happened over time, but it felt like it was all at once, right? And then everybody just kind of was online and you didn't think about it.

[00:26:29] It was just happening in the background. I'm really curious to see where that's going to happen with blockchain. Blockchain in the background, as it were. So that's kind of what Pink Sink is. It's, it's me trying to experiment with just improving my life and focusing on what's important, but also experimenting with various aspects of Web three, you know, uh, how can I integrate that into what I'm doing?

[00:26:54] And it's all very straightforward and rudimentary to a point, I guess right now. Like I, I talked about like N F T gating a community, but I think it's about identity and it's about ownership and it's about, you know, digital property rights. And I'm really curious to see where that goes. And I wanna be there when it happens. So I'm trying to dip my toes as much as I can.

[00:27:15] So, back to the name, Pink Sink. There is a reason for that. My house was a previously owned home. I did not buy it new, have it built. In my kitchen I have a pink sink. And when we were touring the house, I was like, this has got to go. It's more of a salmon color, but salmon sink.

[00:27:33] Salmon sink doesn't have the, the nice ring to it doesn't rhyme. So I was like, I was like, look at my wife. I was like, I can't, no, I can't do this. Like, our cabinetry is red, the sink is pink. I was like, oh my gosh, this is just not, I'm not feeling this.

[00:27:46] Droste: no.

[00:27:47] Liquidiot: But at, at some point it's like, You can, you can sit here and bitch about this sink or you can do something about it.

[00:27:52] Right?

[00:27:53] And the two things you can do about it is you could change it, get a new sink, or you could just move on with your life and just keep going and doing you. So that's kind of what pink sink is.

[00:28:02] For so many years. It's like, you know, I should do this. I should change this about my life. I really want to pursue this thing.

[00:28:09] And I just, I just fucking bitched about it a lot. To myself. And then, you know, sometimes out loud to other people. And I know some people in my life were like, just, they never said it to me, but they're like, you just, you gotta stop doing, talking to me about this. I know every time we meet and we have a few beers, you talk about this, just do something.

[00:28:26] So that's kind of where

[00:28:27] Droste: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:28] Liquidiot: pink sink came from, it's kind of representative of, you know, put up or shut up, I guess. Start doing something about it or just move on with your life. And I'm, I'm kind of doing both at the same time.

[00:28:37] I still have the sink, but I'm not worrying about it. Again, uh, ties into like, I have these things I want to do and instead of just talking about removing the sink, talking about the things, I'm actually gonna do the things.

[00:28:48] And that's of what Pink Sink is. That's what it represents.

[00:28:51] Droste: Well, I'm glad I asked. I never would've guessed that.

[00:28:54] Liquidiot: That was a five minute explanation to, to a ten second question. I'm sorry.

[00:29:00] Droste: Well, but it's got a backstory. Right?

[00:29:03] Liquidiot: It does,

[00:29:04] Droste: And Pink Sink is an art project, and all art projects have to have a backstory.

[00:29:09] Liquidiot: Yeah. It's my, my origin story.

[00:29:12] One day a man bought a house with a pink sink.

[00:29:14] Droste: I like it.

[00:29:17] I'm wondering what the sequel will be.

[00:29:19] Liquidiot: if it's a Japanese movie title, it'll be Pink Sink the Revenge Two, because usually you have to put the number in the, the movie

[00:29:30] Droste: We've never really talked about this before. obviously you do really fun voiceovers, and for me it seems like you're more than a hobbyist, you're more of a professional.

[00:29:40] and it's kinda like the difference between a photographer and a gwc or a guy with a camera.

[00:29:48] Liquidiot: Uh huh. Yeah.

[00:29:49] Droste: Have you done that professionally and is that, have you had some background there? Is it just a kind of a hobby you've been working on, on this side? You know, maybe picking up a gig here and there? Specifically voiceover, cuz you're kind of known for that and voices you do. But I kind of wanna talk about the other video stuff too, cuz you're pretty skilled with that as well.

[00:30:09] I was kind of curious about that.

[00:30:10] some people know this, many do not. I'm an only child. my parents both worked quite a bit. We owned a small grocery store growing up, mom and pop grocery store. I spent a lot of time there. but they were very busy during the week, running a business, and I had a lot of time alone.

[00:30:27] Liquidiot: So I used to do voices to entertain myself. I guess just not even thinking about it, but just kind of naturally I gravitated towards that, having conversations with myself just out loud and trying to play the different parts. We all have conversations with ourselves from time to time. and then I just got kind of known for, I was the class clown, voted by my peers in high school.

[00:30:51] probably as part of that, I used voices and comedy as kind of a defense mechanism of sorts. In junior high school, I started to grow out more than I grew up. and that kind of had, a lot of that put me in a interesting spot as far as like, you know, being picked on and made fun of. so I used voices and comedy as a way to cope and a way to deflect and a way to take attention and redirect that, and that kind of turned into to voiceover.

[00:31:19] So in college, I, I didn't do anything in college at all related to theatrics or theater or voice or anything like that. But, after I graduated, I moved to Seattle and there's a lot of opportunity there. And even before that, I was in a, a smaller town called Spokane, and I got into some theater stuff there.

[00:31:36] Uh, did a couple shows. I did a play that was like, I forget the name of it. It's not, it's a reading play where you're not, like, there's not like scenes and you're not like dressed up. Everyone's just kind of in a line, and I forget the term for that. but you're all just reading your lines in front of a, a, a crowd.

[00:31:50] It's very deconstructed, and stripped down. I did a couple auditions.

[00:31:54] Liquidiot: during that time I was doing improv as well. I was with a couple improv groups.

[00:31:58] Droste: mostly just doing like, I don't think I'd call it understudy, but they do like programs, right? Like three or six month programs.

[00:32:05] Liquidiot: And I did one in Spokane with a group called SPO Comedy. I think was the name of the team. And I did some improv there. We had a class and that was a ton of fun. And then when I moved to Seattle, I believe the group was called Jet City Improv because of the whole Boeing thing. They were called Jet City.

[00:32:25] So in addition to the voice acting and some of that other stuff, I was doing improv comedy. I never wanted to be a standup comic, cuz that's, to be honest, that scares the shit outta me. I don't, I have a big fear of public speaking.

[00:32:41] but if I was kind of like part of like an improv group or somebody performing as a team, I always thought that would be interesting. Cuz I, I also really, really, really from a very, not super young age, but I, I would say like junior high, high school, I thought like the coolest job in the world would be to be part of Saturday Night Live, one of those players. I watched a lot of, like Upright Citizens Brigade as well. Uh, a lot of those, uh, Canadian comedy goofs were always very fun to me as well. maybe they have less stress, I don't know.

[00:33:18] Droste: That could be.

[00:33:21] Liquidiot: But, uh, yeah, that was kind of a big influence in my, in my life too. Around that time I was watching a lot of, and I've mentioned this in other channels, I was getting into SNL kind of in the late eighties, early nineties, especially around the time of like Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, that kind of era that really had a big impact on me.

[00:33:41] And then almost immediately after that was kind of like the, the Will Ferrell era. And those were, yeah, very big points in my, in my, I guess my comedy youth and kind of influence and, and how I kind of present myself today.

[00:33:57] I had an agent, I did some, background stuff on some films, but I never had any formal training. Until I moved to Seattle and then I was like, I want to see what I can do.

[00:34:07] And I found an acting coach, specifically voice acting. he did both. He was fantastic. His name was James Coburn, and he had a nice space, a nice stage. And within that he had a, a vocal booth, an audio booth. So, for two years while I was living in Seattle, every week on Thursday, I would go downtown near the Space Needle and study voiceover.

[00:34:27] He would give us some prompts and we'd each have our time in the booth, which I loved opening that door to that like whisper room. Basically just a closet, fully padded. You had your, your light in there, you had your stand, your, like your music stand style to put your script up there. you had your headphones, he was on top

[00:34:43] Droste: And like the control booth or

[00:34:45] Liquidiot: he had this kind of huge construction like platform.

[00:34:47] He was like way up there cuz it was also used to produce the shows that they would do. And you would just, you'd put on your, your cans and you were just in a different world. It, it was like, there was no camera there, but I was, I was on camera. I was in it. Yeah. And it was amazing. Just every week I look forward to, and there was a, there was a group of about eight of us in my class and we would all share booth time.

[00:35:07] Droste: and, what, what and I'm sorry.

[00:35:08] How old were you?

[00:35:09] Liquidiot: This was after I finished university.

[00:35:11] I was on the five year plan because I, I switched majors midway through.

[00:35:14] I

[00:35:14] Droste: did the five year plan too.

[00:35:16] Liquidiot: I don't regret. It was fun. this was probably, uh, early twenties when this happened. So yeah, I, I studied voice acting for a couple years there. And then I was starting to look for work and I got a couple jobs, but around that same time I decided to travel and that's when I moved to Japan.

[00:35:39] Droste: Ah, and the rest is history.

[00:35:41] Liquidiot: Kind of. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. we can go into more just I guess real quickly, I completely stopped any kind of voice acting and acting when I first moved here. I've been here for almost 17 years. In the middle I got some, I was in some commercials. I sat on a bus. Um, I was in a, a medical film. I did some textbook audio stuff, but I didn't really get into it. I was thinking about it, but the proposition of trying to find an agent in a different language was difficult for me. And then along came Bankless DAO and I found an opportunity to kind of use those skills again. But also during that time, I had taken up photography.

[00:36:26] I was a semi, I guess you could say semi-professional family photographer, children and family photographer. I was paid. I don't know if I'd call myself professional, but I did paid work and that's where a lot of my camera equipment came from. And it has been since repurposed for more video work.

[00:36:44] But I started out as a stills photographer. I did that for like five or six years.

[00:36:48] Yeah.

[00:36:48] Droste: Okay. I, for whatever reason, I felt like, I've seen some of your work and it, it seemed to me that like you had been doing this for longer.

[00:36:57] Liquidiot: Which part?

[00:36:59] Droste: That's a compliment.

[00:37:00] Liquidiot: Thank you. Oh,

[00:37:02] photography. Uh, yeah. I picked up photography in university. I had a an S L R film camera. Which was an interesting concept to a lot of people now. Like if you're old enough to remember film cameras, which a lot of us are, you know, you had your roll, you had to pick your ISO and you had a set number of shots and you didn't know what you got until you got it developed.

[00:37:22] And it really, you know, taught me to take my time with framing and, and lining up a shot and thinking about, you know, the composition. And then, I actually got a nice camera for my wife for one of our anniversaries, thinking that it was something that we could enjoy together. And then I ended up just kind of running away with it, so to speak, cuz I got really into it.

[00:37:43] She's like, yeah, this is all right. I was like, ah, this is amazing. So I got super into it. I was trying to teach her about it and that kind of taught me more about photography. And then I got, I started taking like a lot of photographers, I started taking pictures. People were like, "these are really good. Can you take pictures of me?" And then I started doing some of that work and then I got into like, family photography. I guess all in all, I did that for about. well, you know, I guess I've been doing it. I haven't stopped. I don't do paid work anymore cuz I'm quite busy with DAO stuff. But, I, I probably started taking photos seriously, maybe 10 or 12 years ago.

[00:38:16] Droste: Cool. Cool. Now you take comedy seriously.

[00:38:19] Liquidiot: Hey, I, we, yes, yes. We take money seriously as well.

[00:38:25] Droste: and money. Yes. That's actually the line, not comedy.

[00:38:29] Liquidiot: Yeah.

[00:38:29] Droste: I blew it. it. See, it just proves it wasn't rehearsed.

[00:38:35] Liquidiot: there you go. I'm sorry. Does that, does that answer some of your que I, I ramble and

[00:38:38] I

[00:38:39] Droste: great. I've been meaning to have that conversation with you anyway. We just never get to it.

[00:38:45] Liquidiot: Yeah, so I, I've managed to amass a fair amount of equipment through my photography work and then wanting to get back into my voice acting cuz I really love, I love acting, but I hate being on camera. And some people might find that odd because I've started doing a video series for the DAO recently, but part of that has been like me trying to conquer a fear of being in front of the camera because, I, I love putting myself into a role or acting or being a different person.

[00:39:13] but I hate having the spotlight on me directly. And I don't know if that, maybe some people can click with that and that makes sense. But that's kind of how I feel and that's kind of what's directed me to what I'm doing now, I guess.

[00:39:25] Droste: More of a supporting character.

[00:39:27] Liquidiot: Yeah, I tend to like being behind the camera and that's why I got into photography in the first place.

[00:39:32] I.

[00:39:32] Droste: to "fucktography"?

[00:39:33] Liquidiot: "Fucktography." That's a different, that's um,

[00:39:36] that's for a different podcast. Sorry, I didn't, I got my notes confused here. Yeah.

[00:39:40] Droste: different platform.

[00:39:41] Liquidiot: Different platform. Yeah. Different way, different way of life over there.

[00:39:45] Droste: So, yeah, I didn't realize you were doing that just right before you got into DAO stuff. So yeah. DAO stuff. yeah, you've really gotten plugged into a variety of things and you've probably avoided getting rugged by doing The Rug.

[00:39:58] I found that, that a lot of the work I do at Bankless DAO, I've, I was kind of lamenting, or probably mid-year and actually actually was in 2021 when everything was going up and I missed all these opportunities cuz I was working.

[00:40:13] I'm like, damn it, I, you know, if I wasn't doing all this work for the DAO, I I would've caught this opportunity. Well that opportunity was, was a very sharp knife that was falling or was going to fall.

[00:40:25] Liquidiot: You miss catching it?

[00:40:28] Droste: Exactly. So, you know, sometimes life works out and,

[00:40:32] Liquidiot: Right.

[00:40:33] Droste: and so, you know, all the time I've spent with the DAO and I don't regret any of it.

[00:40:37] Liquidiot: I guess, yeah, to speak to that I got in, uh, like a lot of people that got in around that time, there's just so much happening all at once. And again, you didn't wanna miss out it's seriously that FOMO thing, there's economic opportunity at, at every corner.

[00:40:49] And just like, it was just so interesting as well, like, what's happening over here? What's happening over here? Um, maybe I can help out. It was real easy to get yourself over extended, which is kind of what I did. I mean, you and I were heavily involved in the AV Guild doing multiple roles at the same time because we just didn't have enough bodies.

[00:41:06] And, and then getting involved in other guilds, guilds and other projects, and it, it was, I don't regret any of it. And it was amazing and I was glad I was able to help out where I could. But it's almost like after I established myself and kind of figured out what it was I wanted to do and where I could provide the most value, um, I started shedding a lot of thoseresponsibilities or, or those involvements just because it wasn't productive.

[00:41:30] Like if I wasn't able to devote myself more to that, I was preventing maybe somebody else from being able to do that instead of myself.

[00:41:38] Droste: Exactly. I kind of felt that way myself. I mean, I had been guild coordinator in various roles for a few seasons and I just felt like, geez, I shouldn't just keep putting my name up there cuz people vote for you cuz they recognize your name. even if, whether you're doing a good job or not, I feel like I probably did a pretty decent job.

[00:41:57] Liquidiot: I would agree with that.

[00:41:57] Yeah.

[00:41:58] Droste: Thank you. Well, it's not fishing.

[00:41:59] Um,

[00:42:01] You also want to try new things too, right?

[00:42:04] Neo logos is the one that approached me. I think it was like, uh, late July of 2021 when he said, Hey, he DMed me. And he said, Hey, have you thought about being a guild coordinator? Putting your, raising your hand for that? And I'm like, uh, not really. I don't, what do I know? And so yeah, he kind of got me into that,

[00:42:23] Liquidiot: I think, well, I think everybody, probably has a similar story where there was one or two people, it was kind of like the gateway for them to get really involved in a particular area. I mean, the, the tendency is to join the DAO and then just, get every single tag you possibly can.

[00:42:38] And I've seen people do that. They're a part of every single project and guild.. and that's fine if you're trying to figure out where you want to go. But I would just say be careful with that cuz it's, it can be, that fire hose is no joke. So when you can find where you fit in, well, I would say just direct your focus towards that.

[00:42:56] That doesn't mean you can't do other things, but you really need to, be deliberate with a lot of your actions. Otherwise, you know, we just kind of go in circles. And I think you do find somebody that's kind of like that, that role model or that crypto mentor or that shepherd that just says, "Hey, you know, you seem like you'd be good at this thing, or you wanna help me out over there?"

[00:43:15] And then you just kind of, you find your place and you find your people. I mean, we're all our people in this space, but I think, you know what I mean, where you could kind of really direct your focus and really feel like, oh, this is where I belong, kind of thing.

[00:43:29] Droste: yeah, yeah. One of the things that's always been hard for me to do is ask for help.

[00:43:34] Liquidiot: Right.

[00:43:35] Droste: It's always been hard, but People are willing to help and, um, Like you, it's, I said yes to too many things. And it was getting late in 2021, and I'm just like, I am spending so much time on this stuff and I am not doing my best work, frankly.

[00:43:51] Liquidiot: uh huh

[00:43:52] Droste: And, uh, I felt like I needed to shift a little bit. But sometimes you don't know what you don't know or you sign up or you wanna say yes.

[00:44:02] Liquidiot: Right.

[00:44:02] Droste: because they need somebody to do it. anyway, I don't know. I just thought, you never know. And, I don't regret anything. Sometimes you feel like you're spinning wheels though, you know, projects that maybe you try to spin up and they don't go anywhere.

[00:44:14] But I feel like you learn stuff from it. You learn new ways of working together; what you thought you wanted to do, and maybe you don't enjoy that much. Or you suck at and it's too hard to get good at it.

[00:44:29] Liquidiot: Yeah, well, I, with some of the most valuable skills I learned, I guess, eventually. I had to come o come over that hill, but saying no, saying no is hard for me at first.

[00:44:39] And then also saying, I don't know, is very hard because I think humans have a tendency, especially when you're in, positions where you're sharing or giving information that you don't want to appear to be a person who doesn't know what they're talking about.

[00:44:51] You try very hard to be an expert in areas, at least me in the past, that I really am in over my head. So being able to say no when people ask for help, not in a rude way, but just upfront saying like, I do not have time for this. I would love to help you, but it's just going to be more trouble for you because I don't know if I can commit.

[00:45:10] So I'm just gonna have to say, "no, thank you very much for your consideration, or asking me or seeking me out, but no, I can't do this right now." And then also like, saying, "I don't know. I have no idea. I don't have the answer." Somebody comes to you instead of just saying like, well, yeah, uh, yeah, I, you're sure, sure.

[00:45:25] Like, like pretending that, you know, that's kind of like, I don't know. I don't wanna- see the big thing is

[00:45:30] I don't wanna waste people's time. Everything comes down to time. That is the only resource if you think about it. And I'm trying my best to not impose or waste other people's valuable scarce resource that

[00:45:41] we're all kind of chasing, Right?

[00:45:44] Droste: You can't know everything. And even if it's in your field, if you're a specialist, you still can't know everything.

[00:45:50] Liquidiot: Yeah, absolutely. It's just too much stuff.

[00:45:52] Droste: No, no. Anybody that tells you they are, you know, they're lying. But we won't talk about SBF.

[00:45:59] Liquidiot: Yeah. There, there are no, there are no experts. There's just people with a lot of knowledge and very strong opinions, cuz you can't really know everything. I think I might have stolen that from Jordan Peterson. I dunno

[00:46:12] Droste: Oh, what's the old phrase? If you can't something, something, baffle 'em with bullshit.

[00:46:18] Liquidiot: Oh, I thought you were gonna say, if you can't beat him, join him. That's

[00:46:20] Droste: well, there's that, but you know, there's scammers in, there's been scammers since the beginning of time.

[00:46:29] I just happen to have this extra TV in the back of my truck, and gosh, I just need to get rid of it.

[00:46:35] Liquidiot: Would you mind? That's gonna be, that's gonna be one of the most difficult, in my opinion, or in anxiety inducing things about being part of the space and the DAO. It's, it's trust, man. So if you can find people that you can trust and that you network and, and work with, that's probably one of the most valuable things you can have in this space.

[00:46:57] Cuz even people, you kind of know, there's just so many people and they're messaging you about stuff and it's like, I have to be careful cuz I don't, I don't know. I don't know a hundred percent who you are. that's probably what, yeah, one of the toughest things. letting yourself trust other people in this space because like you said, there are a lot of scammers.

[00:47:14] The motivations for people can be different. I mean, we're all, we're all looking for money. I mean, the technology is great. It's fun being here. I like building stuff. But anybody who says they're not looking for some kind of economic incentive is kind of lying.

[00:47:30] And then trying to figure out like what, what people's intentions are, what they really want here, what they're doing, what this link is.

[00:47:37] Don't click on this link! Your life will be over kind of thing. It's intense. It's intense.

[00:47:42] Droste: Man, it is.

[00:47:42] Yeah. And then opportunity cost, right? And whether it's this space or anything else, I mean, This is something I always have an issue with, with the educational system, is you're expected to make all these choices about a career path and then an an educational track that takes you on that career path without ever having explored the career to see if you even like it.

[00:48:08] Liquidiot: You have no idea.

[00:48:09] You have no idea.

[00:48:10] Droste: mean, I don't get that, that makes no sense to me.

[00:48:14] And then you get there and you're like, well, this, this sucks. And you just spent 12 years of your life learning

[00:48:18] Liquidiot: Yes,

[00:48:19] Droste: everything about it.

[00:48:20] Liquidiot: I was good at math and I was good at, and I liked computers, so they're like, you should be an electrical engineer, or a computer engineer. I said, that sounds good. So I went to university to be an electrical engineer. I did a year and a half of that.

[00:48:34] I was like, I don't like differential equations. I don't like linear Algebra. I passed, but I don't like this. So I was, I got into fitness at the time, and that's why I switched majors and became a dietician, which is fun fact. Yeah. That's why I was on the five year program. But yeah, it's, I, I feel you, like, you just don't know.

[00:48:55] You don't ha, you haven't had those experiences. So asking you to make a decision at that point in time is just kind of ludicrous in a lot of ways, right?

[00:49:03] Droste: Yeah. Yeah. It is. Yeah. Finding your passion and then being able to make a living from it.

[00:49:09] Liquidiot: Yes. I'm still, I'm still doing that. I'm still sorting it out. Like I love what I'm doing here, and I love this space and being able to make these videos and have conversations like this with you, but I'm not done. Like, I'm still on that path trying to figure out where I wanna point this ship. I think it's like a never ending journey.

[00:49:27] And that's, that's what, that's what part of life is. It's the adventure of trying to find where your ship is sailing, right?.

[00:49:33] Some people are lucky and maybe they find that very early, but yeah, for me, I'm still, I'm still on that journey.

[00:49:40] Droste: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:49:42] Liquidiot: and the waters have been rough recently. Let me tell you.

[00:49:46] Droste: They sure have been. I gotta say, I felt kind of stupid last year, kind of waving my arms around and saying, you know, be careful.

[00:49:56] Liquidiot: Is that how you did it? Did you have a sign, a sandwich board?

[00:50:00] You guys better be careful. There's gonna be danger! Soon, you better watch your backs! You gotta get, you're gonna be destroyed by the markets.

[00:50:08] I don't know what that was.

[00:50:09] Droste: You're doing a Conan O'Brien, right?

[00:50:10] Liquidiot: Yeah,

[00:50:12] Droste: Radio Tone News, see?

[00:50:13] Liquidiot: I Wish I, yeah, I wish I had his big, fluffy hair. Do I?

[00:50:17] Droste: oh, that pomp, he's great, but he's so funny. but no, I leveraged a number of years ago. I had, without getting into too many details,

[00:50:27] but I borrowed against a portfolio to do a real estate project and then the market imploded and I got a margin call from my broker. And they wanted a lot of money in 48 hours.

[00:50:39] Liquidiot: right.

[00:50:40] Droste: And they weren't joking.

[00:50:41] They don't joke.

[00:50:42] Liquidiot: Yeah. This stuff's rough. I, I was lucky I didn't, I didn't get any leverage positions or anything like that. I just lost a bunch when everything went down because I was trying to do yield farming. So it's like some here, some there, and now it's all like, lost 99% of what it was. And I guess, all right, I guess I don't have that anymore.

[00:51:04] I didn't get in a situation where I owed anybody money. I lost a bit in the, the Terra Luna thing just because I was invested in a protocol and part of their investment was Terra. It's like a stablecoin thing they were in. So I lost like 30% of that. But all in all, I, I would say like everybody's kind of down bad from that time into now, but I, I never ended up in a position where I, I had to get liquidated or owe anybody.

[00:51:34] I still have those tokens. They're just worth next to nothing

[00:51:36] Droste: They're sitting there.

[00:51:37] Liquidiot: Yeah. Collecting dust.

[00:51:39] Droste: but I, lesson learned, like I, I came out of it not as bad as some people. And you know, I'm not, we're not trying to make light of or, or

[00:51:46] Liquidiot: lessen the gravity of what happened. but for me now it's just like, yeah, I'm just watching eth and Bitcoin to a lesser extent.

[00:51:54] And just keeping everything simple. I've cooled down on my NFTs quite a bit. I amassed a lot of NFTs during that time. Not as much as some, but close to a hundred. I was like, how did I end up with all this stuff? Most of them, like people said, have gone to zero. A lot of 'em I bought because I enjoyed the way that they looked,even though they were kind of like profile picture type stuff. I don't regret any of that. It was a learning experience. A lot of the NFTs I still value very much just personally, but I've kind of cooled my jets on, again, same with DAO stuff, trying to be everywhere all the time. Cuz you hear about so much cool stuff.

[00:52:32] You're like, oh, I'm gonna go over there and see what that's all about. Oh, I'm gonna try to transfer something from this other thing just so I can put more into this thing. And it just becomes..

[00:52:41] Droste: Well, and then you don't even know where it is.

[00:52:42] Liquidiot: Like a personal house of cards, ba for me, basically. So.

[00:52:46] Droste: Well, you talked about simplifying, you know, we were talking about before we got started here, we were talking about simplifying our AV setup because everything get complicated and you change one thing and suddenly it's not working the way it should based on what you thought the settings were.

[00:53:01] And now you've got an event you're doing and it's not working right.

[00:53:06] it's like with anything else. And I'm finding too, with some of the, uh, the crypto stuff, it's in different wallets and different places and I don't know my cost basis and I don't

[00:53:15] Liquidiot: You're right. Like, oh, I forgot I had funds over here in this

[00:53:21] What was I doing?

[00:53:22] Droste: I had simplified things and now it's gotten complicated again.

[00:53:25] Anyway.

[00:53:26] Liquidiot: That would, that would, kind of be my, one of my biggest pieces of advice is try to, only as much as needed, find out what's enough, simplify, use what you got, and then work up from there slowly. And that's just like kind of a general thing, like with the DAO, simplify what it is you're working on.

[00:53:44] Cause you can't, you can't focus, you can't produce good work if you're everywhere trying to be everywhere all the time. You, there's, there's like no such thing as multitasking. You're just switching from thing to thing.

[00:53:55] Droste: Context switching and you lose focus

[00:53:58] Liquidiot: yeah,

[00:53:58] Droste: every time you do that.

[00:53:59] Liquidiot: try to simplify your investments, your involvement. Try to simplify the amount of things you're doing with the DAO.

[00:54:06] Try to simplify your setup. The, the end goal is just to make your day-to-day smoother, less to worry about, less to stress about, more time to focus on doing the actual work. Rather than spending all of your time doing admin on your life,

[00:54:23] Droste: Right.

[00:54:24] Liquidiot: you're in so many different places. Right?

[00:54:26] Droste: Yeah, admin on your life. Yes.

[00:54:28] Liquidiot: And feel free to ignore everything I just said.

[00:54:31] If you're listening, you're like, oh no, that's not gonna, you're, that doesn't work for me. I to each their own, this is just what I found. to simplify

[00:54:38] Droste: that kind of brings us back and think about why you're here. And it's easy to get distracted and then you watch things, we watch that rollercoaster too wee, and then it comes back down the other end and a year later. I mean, it's literally, if you look at a year and you see that chart,

[00:54:57] Liquidiot: it's

[00:54:57] Droste: like, what did I do this year?

[00:54:59] And

[00:55:00] if based on chart, you really don't have a whole lot to say for it. But if what you're doing, the chart is incidental and you're building, you know, we talk about building or you're doing what you love. So we talked before about when you first got into voice acting and you were in that, that sound treated room and it took you to another world.

[00:55:24] And now you're doing that in this space. It's bringing you back to your passion. it takes exploring some different things and meeting new people, quite frankly. And vibing with, like Zim says, Anthony Zim Teemo

[00:55:38] Mm-hmm.

[00:55:39] we're bands, man. You gotta find your band.

[00:55:42] Liquidiot: Yeah. There's gotta be a certain amount of pain along the way. I, people don't want to hear that. But without pain, you can't have growth.

[00:55:50] The manifestation of that pain is different for everyone, but you kind of have to have that, solve those problems for yourself, your life, work through that pain for yourself. and this was kind of all part of it, I guess.

[00:56:01] Droste: you know, you spend all that time, all that money. and sometimes you don't know what you care about. You think you care about these other things and it takes a cycle or maybe two cycles to come back and go, yeah, no, I thought that was what I cared about, but I don't.

[00:56:19] Liquidiot: Right. Well, very high level this space, crypto. All this for me is, this is gonna sound a little lame, but it's about, um, freedom. I said the F word. Yes. Freedom. I think David Hoffman, I think I've heard him say this quote, it's, crypto's not here to make you rich. It's here to set you free. And that's kind of what I'm looking for.

[00:56:40] I am wanting to have more freedom in my life. That is to be able to pursue things I enjoy, provide value, be compensated for that, but not worry about it and not have to deal with the existing financial systems and having third parties and everybody with their finger in the pie. And that's kind of where the freedom comes with me.

[00:57:01] Self sovereignty over my own financial destiny, taking my money with me, and pursuing the things that I enjoy. And then just not having to worry about it as much of the other stuff. I don't know if that kind of makes sense, but that's, that's kind of like what it comes down to me for

[00:57:16] Droste: it makes total sense and it's probably why you and I get along so well. it's a little bit of a secret. We don't care about the money that much. it's a tool. It's to live and, and you want to be able to do what you enjoy and not worry about.

[00:57:32] Liquidiot: It's, for me, it's stress relief. Money is relief of stress, and then it allows me to buy time. We go back to time. Money allows me to buy time to spend with the people I love and doing the things I love. And that's kind of what it comes down to. And I see crypto as a means to that end, like a way I can accomplish that goal for myself.

[00:57:55] I've told this to people. Nobody believes me. Like I could be airdropped a hundred million dollars tomorrow and I would still live a hundred thousand dollar lifestyle because after a certain point, I don't care. Cause it just doesn't, it doesn't interest me and it does other people and that's fine, but that's not what I'm pursuing.

[00:58:12] so yeah, it's, it all goes back to that idea of, of time and how you wanna spend it and who you wanna spend it with. And how you wanna manage your life and your finances. Cuz it is important. But again, I see this as a way to help me do that and to be able to be mobile and have, again, control my own financial future in a way.

[00:58:33] Right?

[00:58:33] Droste: Yeah. Some of these events as unpleasant as they are, bring clarity.

[00:58:40] Liquidiot: Right.

[00:58:41] Right

[00:58:41] Droste: Or they can bring clarity if it doesn't destroy you. Um, I know that sounds kind of ominous.

[00:58:46] Liquidiot: Goes back to that, that pain I was talking about. Yeah. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It really does.

[00:58:51] Droste: but you know, we've all been through a lot these past few years and

[00:58:55] Liquidiot: What did you learn is the question you gotta ask yourself when something goes bad, what can I take from this and how can I use that in the future to either A, make that not happen again, or have that situation be favorable

[00:59:07] Droste: Yeah.

[00:59:07] Liquidiot: for me in some way, you know?

[00:59:10] Droste: Yeah. So back to what you're working on and um,

(section moved to Rug section ~ 7:00-12:00)

[00:59:13] Droste: I have to do, I have to go to the mountains in Chiga for an English camp.

[00:59:18] Liquidiot:

Mountains of Shiga transition from part 1 to part 2

[00:59:19] Droste: We recorded the first portion back in December and you were a bit stuffed up then you were about ready to leave for an English camp in the mountains of

[00:59:31] Liquidiot: Shiga

[00:59:32] Droste: Shiga the mountains of Shiga

[00:59:34] Liquidiot: Yes. With a nose full of marshmallows. I was trying to see how many I could stuff up there. That's why I sounded so fantastic in that section.

[00:59:44] Droste: Well, you sound like you're feeling better today.

[00:59:46] And,

[00:59:46] you had mentioned that when you moved to Japan, about 17 years ago.

[00:59:50] and, but you didn't mention anything about the English teaching other than the fact that you were going to an English camp. are you a teacher? Were you a teacher or is that just something that you kind of picked up on the, on the side

[01:00:04] Liquidiot: Yeah. I guess I am a teacher, but I don't have any formal background or training in teaching. a lot of people that come to Japan "on the scene" kind of know that that's kind of a, a way to work in the country, is you come over as a language instructor, and that's how I came over here initially. I was a dietician in Seattle,a consulting dietician,

[01:00:25] working a full-time job for which I was hired for before I even graduated university. So I had a few job offers right out of the gate. being a male in that field is quite a minority, so let's just say companies were, um, eager to hire me, I guess. So I graduated on like a Thursday and was at my new job on a Monday.

[01:00:47] It was a very quick turnaround. And about two years into that, I was kind of looking around. I was like, oh shit, this is the next 40 years of my life if I don't do anything. So, so I was like, I want to travel. I never, I was very busy during university. I worked pretty nearly full-time to help put myself through school and I didn't really have a, a lot of those travel experiences that I've heard of other people having.

[01:01:12] And I was like, I, I really wanted to do something before I get too much older. What is the easiest way I can travel for more than a week and have somebody else pay for it? So I started looking into it and it seemed that teaching English abroad was kind of the, the most reasonable ways, at least in my opinion, to do that.

[01:01:27] So I applied to a few companies, a handful, and I said, you know what? If, if somebody hires me, then I'll do it. if not, then maybe it wasn't meant to be, and I'll just keep doing the next 40 years of my life, I guess, to where I was at at that point.

[01:01:41] I was sending out those applications around November. Had some interviews in December, and I was in Japan in April. So that was also a quick turnaround.

[01:01:50] Droste: Oh wow.

[01:01:51] Liquidiot: Um, so I initially landed here to teach English. was going to just do it for a year because that's what those visas are for. I ended up wanting to renew and somebody at the time said, just check the box for three years.

[01:02:04] It's kind of like a lottery, or at least it was at the time. So I checked that three year box. Lo and behold I got a three year visa. I was like, oh, okay. During that time I met my, my now wife, I got a spousal visa. and then that kind of rolled into a permanent residency. So, yeah. I wanted to travel. I did, once, and then I ended up not traveling very much anymore cuz I've just been in, I've just been in Japan the whole time.

[01:02:31] So I guess I kind of got there, but I didn't.

[01:02:33] Droste: Wow. Sliding doors. You never know.

[01:02:36] Liquidiot: I do still teach English from time to time as kind of like a supplement to my income and what I'm doing elsewhere across the interwebs.

eth Toyko

[01:02:46] Droste: this is completely off a different topic. I just remembered, um, I have not asked you about Eth Tokyo cuz you just got back from that and it was,

[01:02:56] what was it, two or three day event? Yeah, last week. And cuz we're recording this. This is late April. Talk about a delayed release.

[01:03:03] We did our first part in December and here it is April, to do part two. And and Yeah, you just got back from Eth Tokyo. Met some other Bankless, DAO folk there.

[01:03:12] any highlights from that?

[01:03:14] Liquidiot: Uh, no it was a blast. It was two events back to back. It was DAO Tokyo, and ETH Global Tokyo. They were originally going to be scheduled at different times, but the dates got pushed together, which is great cuz then you went to one, one day and then, uh, which was DAO Tokyo. And then the following three days were Eth global Tokyo.

[01:03:32] It was nice, like I had never been to any in-person Industry conference before, I mean like web three crypto kind of thing. And it was good. Uh, it was great actually. Um, meeting some people from the DAO was fantastic. meeting the Bankless Japan crew, which I'm in Japan and I haven't actually ever talked to them up until we were planning for that event.

[01:03:53] so DAO Tokyo was great. Um, it was just, you know, more of talk about, uh, about DAOs obviously. And then Eth Global Tokyo was fantastic, but the whole time I'm like, what am I doing here? In a way, like, I was just there to do some media coverage. Yeah. Well

[01:04:09] I just, like, I have never been to a hackathon and it was just a fun experience seeing everybody just kind of like trying to figure out problems that they set for themselves just like that, that week, right?

[01:04:22] You know, we're gonna try to build something right now, we have three days to do it, or two and a half days to do it. let's get it done. It very much reminded me of finals week in college, like, just sitting in the library or trying to find some space and just everybody else is kind of doing the same thing, just with their heads down.

[01:04:40] Trying to get as much done before the deadline is as possible. But it was like being at the library and university, it was kind of very communal in the same way. Not quite as noisy, but everybody's there doing the same thing, working towards a similar goal, even though their particular goal is somewhat different.

[01:04:57] that was a lot of fun. And then, uh, a couple times people came up to me and were explaining what it was they were doing, and it was just like, it's like, I don't know, I just, I just take video and tell jokes, man, dunno. And then they're, and then I kind of get like that awkward dog head tilt thing, like, they're confused. Like, then what are you doing here?

[01:05:16] No, it's a lot of fun. I gotta, I gotta record some interviews. Um, I got to eat some food. I gotta chat with some people. I gotta put some faces to some, web three names, cuz you know, you reel and, and and pseudonym. So yeah, it was a great experience. it was a great venue.

[01:05:33] Both venues were fantastic, especially DAO Tokyo's very representative of what you would think of Ja Japan being like. I guess so was Eth Global cuz it was very much, you had the old and the new juxtaposed against each other within the two events.

[01:05:47] Droste: Or wasn't it in that that, temple?

[01:05:50] Liquidiot: Yeah, yeah, there was the first DAO Tokyo was in a shrine and then, Eth Global was in, uh, high rise. I guess that's a high rise. It was in a very tall building. We were only on the fifth floor, but we were still in that building,

[01:06:02] Droste: It's still a high rise, even if

[01:06:03] Liquidiot: and

[01:06:04] Droste: the first floor of it.

[01:06:05] Liquidiot: yeah, I guess so. So I put up some, uh, actually put up some pictures on, uh, the pink sink of those venues kind of thing.

[01:06:14] So yeah,

[01:06:14] Droste: think that's where I saw the pictures. Yeah.

[01:06:17] Liquidiot: Yeah.

[01:06:18] Droste: Nice photos.

[01:06:19] Liquidiot: So yeah, it was great. It was a good experience for me. It was nice to be able to meet some people, and would recommend, that's my Amazon review. Five stars would buy again,

[01:06:28] Droste: would buy again. It's It's a free event though, isn't it? Free to go?

[01:06:32] Liquidiot: so DAO Tokyo was a prepaid event, I believe you had to buy tickets for that. ETH Global, uh, and I don't, I'm not sure if this is how all these ETH global events run, but it, you had to put up a certain amount of collateral to enter, after which you would receive back.

[01:06:51] Droste: Oh, okay.

[01:06:52] Liquidiot: And then, um, while you were there, kind of everything else that was provided, like the mentorships, the foods, the space that was kind of all I guess quote unquote free.

[01:07:02] But again, I was not participating in the prize pool. There was like, , was it like 275,000 or $375,000 prize pool? Yeah, it was quite large. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I was just, you know, getting stickers and eating little chicken burgers and taking videos, so that was kind of my path there.

[01:07:20] Droste: you know, I went to Eth Denver and it was kinda nice to wander around and just talk to people and just kind of see, see, who's got the energy, where, where the booth activity is,

[01:07:31] Liquidiot: it's like a weird.

[01:07:31] Droste:

[01:07:31] Liquidiot: Yeah, it's like a weird high school reunion for people that you never went to school with in a way, cuz it's like, oh hey, hey, long time to see. Like, I haven't actually seen you before, but like, yeah, I mean, I guess a lot of people see each other annually at these events, so yeah, it is kind of like a reunion of sorts for people.

[01:07:47] So, uh, I very much kind of had that vibe for me and I'm sure if I go again next year, it'll be that squared kind of thing. Plus one.

[01:07:58] Droste: Squared and plus one. Nice.

[01:08:00] Liquidiot: Yeah, I was trying to, I didn't know which one I wanted to say, so I just said 'em both.

[01:08:04] Droste: I'll put your parenthesis in the right place so the math works

[01:08:07] Liquidiot: Yeah. Carry the two.

[01:08:09] Let's

[01:08:09] Droste: All right. We covered everything, I think. We talked about pink sink. I now know that this is literally a pink sink in your kitchen.

[01:08:20] Really more of a salmon color, but,

[01:08:22] Liquidiot: Yes, heard it here first.

[01:08:24] Droste:

[01:08:24] Liquidiot: I'm excited about Pink Sink because again, that is me. It's kind of like a combination of, It's a mishmash of stuff. It's, it's like the photography. I'm gonna do videos, I'm going to do gated content. More like video diary stuff. Does anybody still do video? I'm gonna do a video diary type thing.

[01:08:41] Droste: Dunno.

[01:08:42] Liquidiot: And you know, here's the thing. People say, you can't do this, you can't do that. You can't, if you wanna have a successful business, you gotta, you gotta be putting out this at this here, there all the time. You gotta do this kind of content. You gotta have these kind of clickable links. You gotta have these thumbnails.

[01:08:55] And at the end of the day, like, I don't fucking care. Because again, with that authenticity, I wanna make the stuff that I wanna make. And if people wanna join me on that journey, they can. If they don't, that's fine. If they just wanna stop by every month, that's okay too. But I'm not going to just put out a deluge of content just to try to get you to clicky, clicky in the door.

[01:09:17] And that's kind of what's exciting to me about Pink Sink is this is just me making the stuff I wanna make. And it's, it may be wacky at times, it may be like off brand at times. It may be outta left field. But you know what, at the end of the day, it's me. so yeah, that's really exciting me right now. So if you'd like to join me on that journey, uh, please do.

[01:09:37] if it's not for you, that's fine as well, you know. So that's kind of where I'm gonna be, I guess, putting in a majority of my, my time moving forward. And I'm just gonna see what happens with that, what blossoms where that takes me. If I can continue to make those actions align with my values in that space, that space being my, my, my newsletter, the pink sink.

[01:10:05] Droste: All right. Well Liquidiot, Allyn, are you going by Liquidiot still? I noticed in, the bDAO, discord server. You've, You've, pulled Liquidiot off of there.

[01:10:13] Liquidiot: Yeah, yeah. I've kind of rotated stuff over to Allyn. but people still know me as Liquidiot and that's fine. If you, if you yell out, Liquidiot in a, in a crowd, my head will pop up. It was funny, like at DAO Tokyo I met, Tessa from Fight Club, and I introduced myself as Allyn and she says, I don't know, are you on a different handle? I was like, I used to go by Liquidiot. She said, oh, Liquidiot! Yeah, I know you! I was like, okay. Yeah. So it just depends. I've tried to I don't know, like be a little more serious in a way. So I've switched a lot of my, I mean, my Discord root name is still Liquidiot.

[01:10:54] but I've changed my server name in a lot of places. to Allyn Bryce. But either is okay.

[01:10:59] Droste: All right, Allyn. Well, thanks

[01:11:00] a lot. This has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you coming on the show. And,

[01:11:03] I'm happy to know the origin of Pink Sink and hopefully you'll be filling that pink sink with lots of amazing and fun content for people to collect.

[01:11:11] Liquidiot: Oh, thank you so much. It's always a, a pleasure chatting with you and thanks for having me on.

[01:11:15] Droste: All right. Thanks a lot my friend.

[01:11:18] And that's a wrap. Thanks for listening. This has been Making Bank a production of Bankless DAO. If you'd like to learn more about Bankless DAO, please visit Bankless dot community on the web for more information and how to get started. And of course, if you like what we're doing, please like, subscribe, and follow on your favorite podcast platform.