On this episode, we’re joined by crypto veteran William Quigley to discus WAX’s integration into Ethereum as well as major crypto catalyst trends to watch.
Guest: William Quigley, co-founder of WAX and co-founder of Tether
WAX website ➜
WAX Cloud Wallet ➜
00:00 Intro
00:39 WAX updates + Sales volume
02:57 Roadmap
06:48 Blockchain solves A.I. & Fakes
09:29 Tokenized assets
15:24 Sports betting saves streaming
17:44 Decentralized Rideshare
21:03 NFT Ticketing
23:04 AR/VR
27:48 Microsoft = First mover?
31:00 Outro
#Ethereum #Crypto #NFT
~WAX Moving Into Ethereum🔥Crypto Predictions w/ William Quigley~
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[Music] All right today we're going to be diving Into some major crypto Catalyst that Could be impacting the markets in a Whole slew of areas that you guys are Going to want to pay attention to If You're looking at anything in blockchain This is the one to watch today my name Is Paul bar welcome back in Tech paath Joining me today is William pigley who Is the co-founder of wax and also tether Great to have you back on the show William thanks you good to be here yeah Good to see you so uh William let's get Into a few things first I want to do uh Is go into wax and kind of get some Updates give me kind of a a framework of What's happening with wax right now I Was looking at your sales volume looks As though it's declining slightly tell Me how you guys are and what you guys Are doing to maybe kind of correct these Kind of things uh so for uh those people Who may not know so wax was the first Blockchain that was purpose-built For nfts and video games right my Partner uh Jonathan Yantis and myself Co-founded wax together and we had spent Many years in various aspects of the Video gaming industry including uh video Game Virtual item trading which um Really took off with uh my partner's Invention of the idea of allowing people To trade video game Virtual items for
Real money and that would have been back In late 90s with a a video game that Probably been forgotten called Ultima Online and then with the Advent of skins Which are video game Virtual items that Have no have no uh in-game utility They're strictly for cosmetic purposes The market grewed almost 50 billion Annually and uh you can see there was Kind of a natural connection between Skins and Nfts we thought hey it would be great to Actually allow people people to freely Trade virtual items because video games A lot of times would block the usage and So wax was um born in 2017 we did the Ico 2018 we launched uh Initially we were working on a sort of a Layer two ethereum based consensus Mechanism but ethereum was too expensive As a lot of people eventually figured Out so then we shifted to what I think Is the best consensus mechanism which is Depos delegated proof of stake very fast Uh nfts obviously uh were really hyped So it was natural that they were going To fall off uh you know you saw that With every single uh uh area within Blockchain video gaming and nft Collections the nft Marketplaces uh so where goes those Types of of applications so goes wax Yeah well I think you know Market in General it's starting to see a little
Bit of Life coming back into it and We've seen so much advancements now in Terms of the projects being launched We'll get into all sorts of things that Could a could apply to What's Happening Here I was looking at your road map here In progress right now you've got a few Things the toomics update uh the Rebalancing system and the evm launch Those are new um talk to me a little bit About your road map how things are Coming sure so uh uh first on the Tokenomics uh it it turns out that uh Having fees associated with each Transaction while normally we hear People say I hate paying fees the fees Have a very good purpose which is they Create a a profit Bucket from which People can participate and if you you Look at the biggest chains like uh Bitcoin and an ethereum you know they Have uh billion doll plus fee income on An annual basis which allows for a lot Of people to take an interest Particularly entrepreneurs so when we Were pulling off of ethereum and Launching our own layer one on wax uh Our thinking was well particularly in Video game item trading and then Ultimately nft and blockchain video Gaming uh those consumers would prefer To have much fewer fees in doing what They do but what we eventually figured Out was um people actually don't mind
Small amounts of fees and as I said they Create an opportunity for other Entrepreneurs to come in and offer Products so our tokenomics changed from No fees what you would do with our Blockchain is you would stake a certain Amount of tokens and then basically be Able to do transactions the more Transactions you wanted to do the more You'd Stay St we Chang that to just a Per transaction fee model which is um I Think more in line with how the industry Has evolved and so far it looks like a Lot more people would prefer that so That's why we changed the tokenomics Okay all makes sense in ter in terms of Evm uh that's ethereum virtual machine That's basically the the logic that uh Runs smart contracts on ethereum but as Uh probably a lot of your audience knows Many other chains have adopted a an evm Compatibility a lot of the wallets are Evm compatible and that simply is useful Especially when you want to bridge from One blockchain to another and you want To be able to maintain the same Capabilities you have on your chain on Ethereum because ethereum is the number Two blockchain it still has the largest Number of let's say nft transactions nft Dollar volume and so forth so um Becoming evm compatible seemed like a Logical place since Interoperability is an ongoing theme
It's still not perfected we can talk About that but it's it's more and more Needed since there really isn't anybody Who uses blockchains who only uses one Blockchain right yeah I would agree with You I think this uh this cross chain uh World that we live in today has pretty Much been magnified obviously with What's happened with ZK evm we've seen So many different technology updates Within blockchain over just the really The last 18 months lot of advancements I Want to go into some of the categories That are starting to be affected by Blockchain uh and I want to get your Opinion on a few of these because you Know with your experience with tether You know launching wax being very early In a lot of the developments that we are Now seeing as mainstream block chain um I feel like you can you can identify These things blockchain solves Ai and Fake so this is a problem we're having In media right now it's a big issue You've got Fox and polygon now with Verifi verify tools for news articles This is most likely going to continue to Be a big problem we'll probably see Something like this in the election this Year causing major issues of fake news And uh everything from AI generated um You Know news and and other aspects video Audio Etc first of all what is your
Thought on this do you feel like this is Fairly well accepted in terms of an Advancement or do you think this has Still got a long ways to go before we See some real progress so let me just Say this what so Blockchains are the worst possible way To do virtually everything right so I Want to just mention that as an Aside Because in the area of verifying content However that is one of the areas where Blockchains are fabulous when it comes To an area where a blockchain is ideal That is in Authenticating whether something is the Genuine article and I don't believe There's anything uh that does it better Than a blockchain and so you which is Why money uh and and tokens are are such A a good use case for it I don't know of Any other technology on Earth that Allows you to do that so that is a an Extremely useful aspect of a blockchain With a random piece of content let's say From Fox News that's where you kind of Get into um uh uh how good it's actually Going to be somebody could spoof the Site where you're supposed to go to Verify if a piece of content is real so You're on a fake site that's saying yeah It's real but you know it never actually Touched a blockchain yeah but if we can Solve some of those those issues then
Yeah using the blockchain to stipulate Is this real was this really produced From the original content creator that's The whole nature of why nfts work then It's a fabulous application Yeah I'm looking at you know just Tokenized assets is another major Category obviously we've already seen That you're one of the I would say one Of the Pioneers in this area and this Has already started to really accelerate We've seen everything from Nike what They've done with artifact obviously we Saw pudgy Penguins a great success on The digital side where they created the Fital physical and the digital asset Starting to move forward do you see more Brands going in this direction or is it Still just early stage early adopters What are your thoughts on tokenized Assets it is as you said we literally Invented this concept from the consumer Product side of taking a a physical item And tokenizing it and allowing people to Trade the tokenized or digital version Of that item while the physical item Resides somewhere else and can be Redeemed on demand when the person Holding the token would like to actually Receive physical good and having said That uh it has taken longer than I Thought it would so we did that about Seven years ago when we talked to Artifact before they were artifact we
Had said hey guys this is how you should Actually do this and they're like oh Okay that makes sense that sounds cool Let's see if anybody cares no one really Cared to be honest when we went with the Artifa guys to E3 which is a big video Gaming show in La each year I think that Was 2019 could have been 2018 2019 we Had a boot set up almost no interest Right but then the nft CRA hit and People thought it was a clever extension Of nfts where it's not just a a digital Representation it's a physical one um I Have been surprised at uh the fact that It has not ramped in popularity yet um These are still very nichy things uh There's a whole bunch of benefits that Extend Way Beyond just uh the benefits Of trading uh that make Tokenizing uh consumer products really Useful one is simply that many times the Individual purchasing the consumer Product isn't the enduser of it that's Often the case and in that case if you Could send the person who you want to Give it to Uh a token and then they can decide Either when to redeem it or if they Don't actually want it or they have a Duplicate of that item and they would Prefer just to trade it for something That they do want there's a ton of um of Uh truck rolls and just physical Movement of things that take energy uh
That wouldn't have to be done uh I Consider it sort of putting a pause Button on the Logistics chain for Somebody right right at the tail end to Decide when and where they want that Thing delivered to them I think it's a Great concept but I come to believe that It's also a quite a leap in capabilities Over how people work today and I think It's just not been been uh adopted in People's day-to-day Behavior as a result Of that where I see that might play into It is With something that might be more on the Collectible side of say wine now wine is A different thing because it can be in a Wine seller and it's often not seen and It's something that could be sitting Over in a a a massive wine seller that Never has to deliver to me as a Collector and I own the nft which now Gives me the you know the verification Of it and I can trade that and then sell That without ever moving that bottle you Know right out of that I could see that Going with that kind of direct same Thing with art some cases Yeah we did try wine maybe five years Ago uh I've tried every category uh Handbag sneakers watches wine um Physical post think which one do you Think will will maybe get the legs under At First trading cards people there were a
Lot of people who liked trading cards There's a lot of trading card people if I know which one was going to uh ramp I Would be doing it you know we're 133 Years into blockchain And um you know it's tens of millions Not uh hundreds of millions or billions So it's been much Slower yeah but I would say I would Argue that a minute uh in the sense that Maybe blockchain going back to the Origin of Bitcoin sure yes we have 13 Years 10 years plus but when you really Look at the core of what's happening With smart contracts and and kind of the Evolution of web 3 obviously what we're Seeing right now in Collectibles and Gaming I feel like this is just really Really young you know much like because I was around in Silicon Valley during That era when the internet was being Born and that that's era between 97 and 2000 D bomb that was a lot like what We're dealing with right now a lot of New innovation a lot of Blue Sky you Know which is what we are seeing today Even and then it was very slowly and Then boom all at once and then that's When we saw you know these massive Adoption Cycles my mobility and crypto Is still Not you know well done for a whole bunch Of reasons one of which for many years Uh the the app stores were were um were
Not very supportive of crypto-based apps And that's relaxed a little so that Could help yeah for sure I want to we're Taking a lot of time here I want to go On to uh a couple other areas sport Betting uh safe streaming this is Something that's happening right now Disney ESPN bet is happening got TV uh Apple TV with uh soccer or excuse me Yeah soccer and then you've got Netflix Uh world you know wrestling Etc Amazon And NASCAR lot happening right now and You've got DraftKings moving in the Space all sorts of things that could Lean into what's happening with uh Blockchain then if you look at the data This course this is Fox Sports just Showing the the sports betting size and The potential growth here up to 2030 This is going to be a big Market what Are your thoughts on how blockchain Might play into this betting is a Fantastic application of blockchain Because uh you do know with certainty When Someone uh Wagers that bet that that Dollar amount they've given you is Genuine and can't be pulled back Uh when you run a betting site and you Take credit cards in um you will get Flooded with with stolen credit cards And then a massive chargeback problem Yeah if you don't uh restrict when People can actually gain access to the
Funds they've deposited from their Credit card so that's why when you go on A site as a new customer and you put in Your credit card some sites make you Wait days some sites uh give you a very Small amount of money to use initially Right which because it costs so much to Acquire a customer in the betting space You'd like to let them bet as much as They can but you can't because of fraud So that's an area where crypto is Fantastic you cannot do a charge back And once the company gets that that Crypto it can't be taken back so we'll See if if these uh betting sites uh Adopted part of that's going to be a Regulatory issue The Regulators have to Accept that as a form of payment yeah Well I think once we see stablecoin uh Regulation that will get us into the Right framework at least for something Like this for betting I want to jump Over to ride share and uh what's Happening there Uber of course they just Lost a huge uh case in New York uh Basically stealing money from drivers uh Not not a good look for Uber um the idea Here is is decentralized this other logo Here that I'm showing on screen is a is A project it's a decentralized ride Sharing project called teleport rides on The salon blockchain the idea is to give The the drivers the ability to Communicate with the customer without
The middleman which has been Uber and if You look at that as a potential because This could go into food delivery all Sorts of things for for a decentralized Future for the gig economy you feel like Blockchain is going to be one of major Tech use cases you can get degrees of Decentralization but you can I don't Know If we know how to create something fully Decentralized if we say if if we maybe Call it a a Cooperative right the Concept of a Cooperative is by by Pulling Resources and sharing them and Eliminating the need for that Cooperative entity to make a profit it Only needs to generate a as much fee Income as necessary to operate it then We all the people using it can Presumably be better off yeah so if if Drivers around in a given City uh Created a cartel you know of sorts and Said uh we're going to appoint a group Of people who going to represent us and They're going to build and maintain this App blah blah blah it would work well That sounds a lot like a union and one Of the things we know about unions is Union bosses extract a lot of the money Union bosses play favorites and so I Just don't know how it gets done I I Mean there's a way for it to get done But I don't think we're there yet and
That is taking what Uh uh used to what we used to call Dax and uh which is a purely software Owned managed entity no humans are Involved right that can work as long as The software continues to do the bidding Of the people who originally created it So that's where we kind of start to Merge into the AI space and that's Potential so yeah if you merge Ai and You can create a daak or or dowo a real One the problem now is the word dowo has Been hijacked by people who are running Private companies masquerading as Dows The Dow yeah right but if we could Rename those and maybe maybe we'll just Have to call them AIS to make people Understand it very promising I would say For what what we talk about kind of Loosely as decentralized applications The AI move movement is is a promising Direction for that becoming possible I Want to go to ticketing ticketing is a Big deal we're starting to see some Movement in this space obviously we've Seen uh issues with Ticket Master we're Also seeing things around travel that Could come into this here's a tweet Right here travel X now one of the Blockchain projects out there for nft Ticketing and you kind of see the growth Right here this was December of last Year and that Spike right there bam so You've got a great opportunity here of
Nfts being utilized in the ticketing World um you feel like that has legs Going forward only if and and I say this To all the entrepreneurs I work with in Blockchain only if the incorporation of Blockchain in ticketing so making Tickets nfts which means they're Tokenized as opposed to digitized right Only if you then take one step further And say which allows the end user to do Something so what is it you would like To allow the end user to do the obvious Thing is to be able to trade it right y Y and then maybe if you wanted to um uh You were worried about counterfeiting Right uh so for instance at Coachella I Have personal experience with that Having purchased a counterfeit ticket um Uh which is so hard to detect that I Actually got through uh three or four Days of it you know before somebody was Like well wait a minute this thing looks Fake so um yeah for for preventing Counterfeiting I think it could be a a Useful use case but it really requires Them as a business to want to change Some of their terms and conditions And so that to me is going to be where It either takes off or it doesn't Speaking of that you you talk about some Of the leaps forward that have happened Meta of course made a huge one you know Really a big bet in 2021 when they Changed their name and immersive
Experiences when you look at that and Then just some of the data here's coming In from medaquest this is looking at Their historical sales most likely we're Going to see that uh after hour show by The time we publish this uh but it's It's earnings week for meta It's very possible we could see the Biggest sales period ever by meta in Terms of these Hardware devices this all Leans into the potential of immersive Experiences and back to your point you Know the opportunity of things like Augments this is a good one right here Meta will bring augments to Quest three Again this gets into where you're Talking about in-game assets that Potentially could be traded down the Down the road this should be high on Your list of approval uh in terms of Areas what are your thoughts in terms of Uh immersive experiences like this I Will have to edit my thoughts because They're too numerous to mention in this Podcast but yeah I absolutely love the Uh both AR and VR AR seems to be in my From my frame of Reference uh far more valuable in the Long term sure however uh the issue is In the hardware a huge percent of the Population refuses to uh wear uh any Kind of device it's a it's a friction Point and if you if you simply look at All of the uh the headsets that have
Come so far uh the battery issues the uh Heat Dissipation yeah uh all of these things Are Enormously big issues for for adoption And they are not trivial problems to Solve so I don't think we will See widescale consumer Mass market Adoption of VR or ar until the hardware Is is optimized which means you know Really really small batteries Longlasting life minimal heat Dissipation uh I think it's 2040 where you see Mass market adoption This is what I call uh web four web four Is the hardware element you need Advances in the science of Battery Technology advances in um uh Graphics a Lot of advances in Silicon and then even Things like Um uh like the monitors and the glasses All of those things require it's not Just engineering it's actually like real Research and Development so right now no I'm not Terribly optimistic in the next five Years and if I'm wrong amazing yeah Amazing yeah it' be a good wrong well I Think you know some people would look Back at that in you know in the era of Blackberry and the tro the Palm Pilot You know you know those and the Advancements that we saw in terms of the Leap forward that Jobs made with the
IPhone that was a uh a tan amount you Know leap because of the touchscreen Interface and it it really did change The world at the same time it was also a Lot of push back back to your point of People just accepting that so but this Is a little bit different because it's a Wearable you know I get that I want to Jump over Microsoft go ahead keep one Thing in mind Steve Jobs created the IPhone remarkable but he built that on The backs of trillions of dollars of Investment in the Telecom infrastructure And wireless infrastructure and Semiconductor Infrastructure you know what I mean it Was like this multi-trillion dollar Investment that allowed the iPhone to Work yeah uh and I think we need Something tantum onto that for this Digital overlay every day as common as You picking up your phone you will have Some sort of of of wearable device that Allows you to to tap into um this Metaverse yeah well that's where I mean If if we truly have a promise of AI Maybe that is where it does come in in Terms of Chip manufacturing advances Obviously we've already seen some big Moves from Nvidia that has kind of put Us in in a place that a lot of people Didn't think we'd be this early Microsoft first mover this is something That we have a theory on I wanted to get
Your opinion on this so this is a game Called po world it is a small Studio That launched and went viral uh on Xbox And I think on PC and in a very short Period of time they were able to really Advance in terms in terms of total Number of players Etc Microsoft comes in And actually uh starts to put a deal Together with poor a very small Studio Opportunity here for something like Microsoft to maybe step up because They're doing dedicated servers uh some You know some engineer in Resources with Them they announced this this happened Very fast mainly because of the adoption Of power world it just went viral very Quickly so what it looks at I look at This and I think web 3 gaming because I'm thinking all right small Studios a Viral potential game and now you have Microsoft doing this almost with the Blueprint of what could happen with a Web 3 if Microsoft were to adopt nfts in Game do you think that's coming with Microsoft is an adoption of nft Architectures inside Games no not in a near term here's what I think is going to happen uh and and so The history of video gaming has been Extremely consistent when it comes to Innovation you have an innovation the uh Incumbent video game companies ignore it Some independent game developers say What the heck might as well try have
Nothing to lose we don't we're not Trying to protect a game franchise that Thing takes off those companies become Huge um the Legacy companies a few of Them survive until the next Innovation Where the previous innovators now are The incumbent we saw this from arcades To PC PC uh to handhelds handhelds to consoles Consoles to to um browser then browser To to to mobile mobile to blockchain and Uh uh every single time the incumbents Poo poo ignored the The Innovation the New platform until they saw that there Was actually something there they're Going to have to to to get it approved In their higher up corporate structure And to do that they're gonna have to Point to something big companies there's Very little Innovation at big companies They wait to see a trend and then they Jump on it and I think so far you know What the most popular uh blockchain Based games remain farming style games Which are it's a subcategory within the Gaming space not terribly exciting so I Think uh it's useful for them to do that But we'll have to see I think a lot more For Microsoft to say we're going the way Of of you know blockchain integration on Every game we we release Le yeah for Sure William it's always fun talking to You because I always get great insights And you've got uh first of all great
Amount of experience in in the space That we cover pretty heavily so it's Always a great engaging conversation Thank you uh so much for stopping in Today we appreciate it great thank you Paul you bet all right so you guys are Maybe tuned in on the audio side of this Make sure and of course join us over Here on YouTube it's very simple search Paul Baron Network you will find us and We have a ton of videos on web 3 gaming Of course the primary Assets in Blockchain maybe you're just looking at Getting into blockchain and crypto for The very first time all you have to do Is jump over to YouTube get in on our Diamond Circle too it's our one place Where we do a lot more content that we Don't sometimes put here on YouTube all You have to do is visit our substack That's one of the best places to go very Easy just pbn 3. substack do.com and of Course if you guys want to catch me it's Out there on X at Paul bar we'll catch You next time right here on Tech [Music] Paath
