An introduction to NFTs

Ian Paget: So, Tony, something I've always really admired about you is how you talk about NFT so comfortably. This podcast is primarily for logo designers and most of the guests I do have come on here are from the graphic design space. But, I know you through an NFT project, something that I'm really interested in, which is a Doctor Who project. And, I thought I'd get you on and we can talk about NFTs, which I haven't discussed on the podcast so far. I think probably as an initial question, since the audience might not be aware what an NFT is, would you mind answering the question? What is an NFT? We'll start there. We'll start right from the beginning.

Tony Pearce: It stands for non-fungible token. Let me tell you how I got into this and how I got to know NFTs. I'm going to come at this from the games industry. My background is video games. I go back 25 years into Saga, Nintendo, PlayStation One, and then mobile gaming back when it was black and white handsets. And then, into Facebook gaming. And then, in 2017 we were creating an augmented reality combat game and we called it Reality Clash. That game actually is live now on both Google and Apple app stores. Just generally, it's a super fun AR game where you can go outside. It's like Pokemon Go meets Call of Duty. You go outside, you meet your friends and you defend certain areas.

At the time, we were looking at the blockchain and what benefits it could bring to games. The obvious one... Or, what wasn't obvious, actually. But, the one that stuck out that we thought, "Wow, this is incredible," is tokenizing in-game items. That means when you buy them, you actually own them. Therefore, you can now trade them or, in the future, they become interoperable and you can use your sword or your gun in other games. So, once you own them from us, that's it.

What made that stand out, and this is where you, I suppose, get what NFT is, is the games market last year revenue-wise was probably... I think it was like $180 billion. 90 billion of that is through mobile games. And, 99% of mobile games are free to play. So, you kind of go, so $90 billion was made out of free games. Well, how does that work? It works because games companies allow you to download the game for free, and then they charge you when you want to purchase an in-app item. So, you might play the game for free. And then, at some point, it's going to tempt you by going, "If you want a better gun because you're getting stuck, it's going to cost you two pounds 50. That's how they make their money.

And, Fortnite, which I'm sure you're familiar with, Fortnite last year made $4 billion selling in-game items and the game is free to play. That's why it's quite incredible. However, you, as the owner, actually haven't bought anything. You don't own anything that you bought in Fortnite or any of these games. You just have a license to use that gun or that sword or that avatar or that skin in that game only. I've always found that bizarre when kids or anyone can spend hundreds of dollars a month on buying in-game items, but you don't own it. So, if that game company went bust, you would lose all of your items. They just disappear. The reason they disappear is because those items are stored on the game's company's database. Everything that you buy through Fortnite is logged within Fortnite's database.

Now, what the blockchain does is it allows me to store the items that you buy on a decentralised database known as the blockchain. When you buy items from us that are tokenized, it doesn't log in our games company database. It logs outside on the blockchain and it's authenticated by the miners on that blockchain. And, it turns into an NFT because now you actually own it. It's irreplaceable. It's one of a kind. If I went bust, your sword still stays in your wallet. It doesn't disappear. Hopefully you can take that sword and use it somewhere else.

So, when we came across the blockchain and tokenising in-game items, the word NFT didn't even exist. We were just going, "This is a game changer." Excuse the pun. This is an absolute game changer for gamers, because finally they are actually spending money on something that, when they finished or are bored with the game, can then go and sell it and make their money back. Or, in some cases, make a profit because you might be lucky enough to get a really cool, limited edition NFT that could be worth a lot of money. Or, I can take it into a different game, or I can just keep it in my wallet and I might use it again another time.

But, you know there's a value there. You know you can get it back. It's just like buying a t-shirt from eBay. If I want to resell it, I just go back onto eBay and sell it. Well, this is the same thing. That's why we knew that this was something that potentially could change the way gamers play games. Four years on, we are starting to really see this happen. And, that's why we're so excited about it.

Ian Paget: Oh, yeah. Especially, since Zuckerberg has gone down the whole metaverse route. One film that comes to mind is Ready Player One. This type of thing could... You see all of the things coming together. How there are obviously companies like yours, where you are creating these items, tokenised items, and games that you can withdraw and put into somewhere else.

There's obviously going to be this point where you can buy a car. There's already VV making Back to the Future cars and KITT from Knight Rider and stuff like that, like 3D models. You can imagine that eventually we'll get to this point where all of these different companies, you can take it out and then put it in somewhere else, which is really exciting. When you buy a gun in a game or something in Pokemon Go, I bought Pokemon balls and stuff in Pokemon Go just because I ran out and I needed them and I wanted to play it.

It's nice to be able to physically own those and take them where you want. Okay. I think we probably need to go back and explain a couple of things. Because, I think probably a lot of the podcasts that you are on are NFT crypto related. The people listening are probably aware of some of the terms being used. But, I think it's probably worth being aware that there will be people listening that probably don't even know what blockchain means. Do you mind explaining what a blockchain is?

Tony Pearce: Yeah. It's a database. It's a decentralised database that isn't owned by anyone. It's owned by the miners. This is where it gets a bit complicated. Because, it's stored in people's computers. There's many different blockchains. And, quite often people get confused on that. Because, the original blockchain was the Bitcoin blockchain, which was the one that is used for mining Bitcoins. And then, the Ethereum blockchain came out, which is the one that most companies use for NFTs because it allows you to create a smart contract, which is the code that sits behind the item that you've just bought. That gives it a serial number and says what that item is. An NFT is something that's unique. It's a one of one, it's a one of a kind.

So, just to explain that. If you give me a 10 pound note and I give you a 10 pound note back from my wallet, that's fungible. I can swap one thing for another, but it has the same value. An NFT means it is one of a kind. As another example, if I bought a plane ticket to Spain and I get the paper ticket through, and the ticket has my name on it and the seat number, and you are on the same plane, I could not swap it with your ticket because your ticket has your seat number and your name on it. But, it's the same value and looks the same. But, they are actually non fungible. Your ticket is one of a kind. Only you can use it because it's yours. It has your seat number on it. Anything that is unique, that cannot be made again, or look the same, is an NFT.

Now, again, where people can get confused is they can go, "Well, in Doctor Who you've got many cards that look the same," this is one of our trading card games. Every card is an NFT. But, what makes this an NFT? Well, it's because they come with a unique serial number. The card, the frame might look the same, but there's 10,000 frames that look the same, but you've got 001, where someone else has got 0100. Someone else has got number thousand of it.

Think of it as a limited edition art. When you get one of a hundred and they sign them and you've got number 10 of 100. It's exactly the same. But, by putting that serial number on it, makes it unique. The image might look the same. But, the serial numbers that are worth more money or the early mints, the ones. Or, if it's James Bond mint, you might get one that's got 007 on the serial number. And, suddenly, that's got more value than something with 99 on it. So, NFT is something that is totally unique and cannot be swopped for the same thing, unless you agree to it.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's worth adding in terms of blockchain, you mentioned it's a database. I think it's worth adding that it's basically an unhackable database.

Tony Pearce: That's right.

Ian Paget: Once it's on there, it's impossible to hack it because you would have to hack every single block simultaneously all at once in order to change all of it. I can probably add some links in the show notes if people want to learn more about it technically. But, I think what you've explained is really useful. And, in terms of what you said then about the collectible stuff, I'm obviously a bit of a geek. Anyway, I know the podcast is called Logo Geek, but, in general, I've got comic books and signed autographs and collectable toys and stuff like this. How I see it and why I've always been...

Well, why I was excited about it when it first came out, is that I've got comic books and some of them I have as 9.8s. So, they're in the slabs and got their little stamps and stuff like this. You can't actually ever read the comic book. You just have it because, part investment, part because you like owning it. I know when NFTs first came out, I'm like, "Oh, this sounds interesting." I had an interest in crypto related stuff anyway. I'm a graphic designer. It's like, "Oh, this is interesting. This could be good." My first NFTs were the Doctor Who ones which you mentioned. And, something that really surprised me was how you have the exact same sentimental attachment to an NFT as you do with a comic book. I do, anyway.

I guess the main difference for me is that a comic book is on paper. It's printed, it's on paper. If you was to have the first ever printed Star Wars comic book or something like that, I would know that would be hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be extremely rare. There's only one of its kind in existence. And, it's significant. Personally, I don't know if other people feel the same way, but other people that are in the Doctor Who: Worlds Apart Discord, they have the same feeling that once they bought a few, it's like, "These are mine."

I've had this weird experience where I've sold a card of mine and I bought that card back and I know it was mine. It's really strange because it's an electronic thing, whether that's a 3D model or a flat image or whatever. There is that real sense of ownership. Even though I know there's going to be people listening to this that probably feel like, "Why the hell would you want an NFT?" I've bought things in the Doctor Who: Worlds Apart store that I plan to keep. They're not just investments. They are things I actually like and I actually want. I can very much see how NFTs is very much the future of collectibles. Yeah, I think it's something very exciting.

Tony Pearce: Yeah. I think there's an age group that will never understand why you'd want a digital image as opposed to a physical picture where I can see it on my wall and I can look at it. Why would you want a digital version of that? It is down to the fact that the Gen Z's and the Millennials, they just want everything to be digital. If you go to just the artwork, the screens that Samsung are coming out with now, the NFT screens where you've got your digital wallet on your phone, you open it up, there's all your NFTs, click a button and bang it's instantly on the screen. Where the screen looked... The quality.

I saw one the other day that was like a Kindle. So, it's like black and white screen. It was like I was looking at a real picture, hand drawn on the wall. But, it was an NFT that had beamed straight from your phone. I'm starting to see, not just about the people who want the digital proof of ownership in their wallet, but you can now show them on these screens if you want to beam them to your wall.

That's one part. The other part is we like an NFT that has a utility. I think games is where there is a real utility of where you own something like a Doctor Who trading card, or like a sword or whatever, and it can be used. And then, you can bring it back and use it again at another time or sell it. That digital ownership and the ability to trade and sell, I think's really, really key.

And then, the third one, which I think is just going to be huge... Already is huge, is the generative art NFTs. I'll give an example of the biggest one right now, which is Bored Ape Yacht Club. If anyone's not familiar with it, Bored Ape Yacht Club, if you Google it and look at the images, are cartoon pictures of apes. That's it. It's a picture of an ape. Some of them are really funny. They've got sunglasses on. They're smoking cigars, whatever. What happened with that is they sold... There's a minimum of 10,000. So, they can only ever sell 10,000 images.

And, it's called generative art, which means you as the user, when they went on sale, there were seven base characters of apes. Of the seven you had to choose from, one was a different colour, one was smiling, one wasn't, one had blue eyes, one had brown eyes. Well, when you decided to click on one, the system behind the scenes generates a unique Bored Ape Yacht Club image of the style you've chosen. But, it'll be slightly different, which gives it its uniqueness. The eyes might change colour or something will change. I now own one, and I've paid $250 for that when it first launched. They sold out in 10 seconds or whatever. And then, last week, one sold, I think it was at Christie's, for $3.2 million.

People go, "What? Why are pictures of apes selling for $3.2 million? What is going on?" This is where people don't understand what owning one of these does. Because, what it does is it gives you access to a club. It gives you VIP access to a membership club that only you can join if you own one of these generative arts. But, hence why it's called Bored Ape Yacht Club. There are only ever going to be 10,000 people in this club, because there were only ever 10,000 of these images made.

So, I've owned one of these. Since it launched, there's a roadmap of parties, clubs, events, things that you can do that you can only get to if you own one of these Bored Apes. So, Justin Bieber, I think Snoop Dogg, Gwyneth Paltrow, a load of famous people, now own one of these. I think Snoop Dogg's just announced that he's going to do a concert in New York and you can only get in if you own a Bored Ape.

It's not about the picture. It's about the access that owning one of these NFTs give you. Adidas have just joined Bored Ape. So, if I've got an image of a Bored Ape that's got orange hair, Adidas will send me, in the post, because the blockchain proves that I'm the owner. That's how they know. They can see that I am the actual owner of this art. They will send me in the post, a unique pair of trainers in the colour of my Bored Ape's skin. That's the PR bit. The real bit is you get a digital copy, which you can put on your avatar in the metaverse. It's no different from someone owning a Rolex watch and showing off and going, "Look at me. That's my status symbol."

The status symbol here is I own a pair of Adidas digital trainers in the colour of my Bored Ape. And, I can use it in the metaverse and people can see that on my thing. Just by having that, you will get, overnight, a hundred thousand people follow you. To own one of these is an incredible validation. It's showing off. And, that's all it is. You've gone from, as I say, owning a Ferrari to Rolex watch, to now owning a digital version that is incredibly expensive to buy now because there's a roadmap of stuff, big brands are getting in. And, it validates you as a cool person. That's the difference. I think people just don't understand how the way that you will show off online...

At the moment, you are showing off online because your image or your profile picture might be quite cool. Now, if my profile picture is a Bored Ape, and it's proved that I own it on the blockchain, that's the most... This hierarchy of... To anyone that follows this market, wow, you are one of them. What happens is the developers of Bored Ape, because you own one, they will start sending you things. When I mean sending you things, it's digital. They know your wallet address because it's attached to the blockchain and they can see where your Bored Ape sits. And, every month they will send you something which has value.

It could be a ticket to a concert. But, you have to show your Bored Ape with a barcode. It could be something else. Two weeks ago, they launched an Ape token and you can buy those tokens from any exchange, like a Bitcoin. But, if you had a Bored Ape, they airdropped you 10,000 tokens. And, the token price at the time went up to I think it's $29. They gave you hundreds of thousands of dollars for free, basically. Just because you own it. It's just incredible, the passion behind having one of these. Bored Ape is just one of many. I don't know if you've heard of Thunderbirds, but Thunderbirds...

Ian Paget: Yeah. Who hasn't heard of Thunderbirds.

Tony Pearce: We're doing a generative art drop for Thunderbirds. There'd be 10,000 Thunderbird characters. Well, there'd be seven base Thunderbirds. All the main characters from the Thunderbirds program. But, when you buy one of those, it will generate and look slightly different. So, you own it like a Bored Ape. Now, by owning a Thunderbirds NFT, of which there's only 10,000, there's going to be a ton of stuff over the next two years that you will get that no one else will have, to the point where it will turn you into a 3D avatar of the character.

Could be Tracy, you know the pilot for Thunderbird One. You walk around the metaverse as him. In the colour of the generative art that you've bought. There's a game at the end of it, that you are the only one that can play the game. You can only enter it if you have one of these characters. There's merch that comes out. As I say, it's not just about the initial drop. It's about what this gives you access to in the future. I find that stuff really, really exciting. I think that's just going to be massive.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I agree. I didn't actually know any of that stuff and I volunteered to be a moderator in the Thunderbirds Discord. I'm looking forward to getting one of those. When are they actually due to come out? Because, I don't know any details.

Tony Pearce: I've probably told a bit too much. Actually, the press release comes out later this month. We're in March. We then have... This is really cool. We're working with seven very famous digital artists that create NFTs. Each of the artists has... The smallest one has 50,000 followers on Twitter, upwards to hundreds of thousands. They're very well known digital artists. Each of them have taken a character or a rocket, like Thunderbirds One or Two, and drawn it in their style. If you follow any of these artists, they all have particular styles. Some of them are just brilliant. It's taken the 1960s puppet characters into the NFT art world. They look absolutely fantastic. But, they're one of ones. And, they're artwork.

It's not generative art. They're single arts. So, if you're a super fan of Thunderbirds, you could get one of these. They go on sale... I think they go on sale mid-April. If you own one of those, you get guaranteed access to the generative art. They call it white listing. So, you don't have to queue up. These things sell out in seconds. So, if you're not quick enough, you miss it. If you own one of these really cool bits of art, you're guaranteed to be in the generative art drop. The generative art job will be three months after that. If you're helping our Discord, thank you. Yes, there's three months of building up the roadmap, the hype. And then, it will likely drop, I think, it's July, that sort of time.

Ian Paget: Okay. I keep an eye out for that. I tend to always follow the Doctor Who: Worlds Apart stuff, and every single pack drop, I am there as soon as it comes out. And, you get the serial ones, if you're there when the packs drop.

Tony Pearce: Exactly. Doctor who is very different from the generative art. Doctor Who is a classic digital card game, like Hearthstone or Magic the Gathering, but you own the cards. Therefore, you can trade them or sell them. I actually think... I don't know if you've seen today, the new board went out?

Ian Paget: Yes, I have. Yeah.

Tony Pearce: I think it's looking... This could be absolutely just the biggest game for trading card games ever. Because, this is the first real mass market brand that's come into NFT gaming. Trading cards, anyway, make great NFT games because that's how a trading card works. I want to trade my card with you, and this is how much I want to sell it for. It's the perfect example of NFT trading. The quality... Doctor Who, we've got the rights to every character back to 1963. We've hand drawn the cards, because what we didn't want to do was go to the BBC and just take archive photos.

We wanted these to be collectors items. Like you've just said, I love the look of these. I want to keep. It's mine. Therefore, each card is hand drawn. Everything is unique about that. It's hand drawn. It's been approved by the BBC. It's gone through those processes. But, you've got something that isn't out there apart from you own it. It is a real NFT. It's a unique, one of a kind card.

Ian Paget: What I really love as well is... And, I think this is really cool. If you can imagine card games, every time you play with somebody, there's obviously data attached to that. Who won? What did the card do? All this sort of stuff. Now, with a normal card, you don't know any of the data attached to it. Say if you was to buy a Pokemon card from 20, 30 years ago, it's a card. It's cool. It's in mint condition. And, it's great. But, I don't know when you guys plan to do this, but I know it's on the radar, is that the data from the game will be stored to the card and stored on the blockchain. Which is really cool.

Tony Pearce: Yeah, so you can tell how many times it's won, how many people have owned it, when it was first minted. Yeah. Everything is stored on the blockchain. Literally. So, you'll see real time stats. Of course, you might have a card that's never lost. Therefore, it gives it more value. Forget about the serial number. I think the gameplay stats when the game comes out will be an important part to the value of the card.

Ian Paget: I'm planning to keep most of my serial ones mint condition, as in unopened, as in never played with. Because, I think that's a significant thing and, yeah, I find that type of thing exciting.

Tony Pearce: Yeah. No. But, that's the great thing about this technology now. It allows you to do that in a digital form.

Ian Paget: Exactly. I've actually got a couple of questions. Because, I know one of the elephants in the room. I'm currently in a podcast about NFTs, I'm going to share this with my audience. I know for a fact that there's a lot of people out there that don't like NFTs for numerous reasons, one of them being their environmental impact. I know that this isn't necessarily the case. Would you mind sharing some of your thoughts on the environment or impact of NFTs, just for the people that might have strong opinions against them that might be listening now?

Tony Pearce: Yeah. Again, this is bad education and people following news that is wrong. An NFT is not a Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency is not an NFT. The problem that has arisen is that when minting a Bitcoin and the way that that works involves a lot of computer power. Because, the miners who bid to win the mint of that coin, because they get a percentage of it, have to answer a mathematical question. And, the faster they can answer it, the more likely it is they're going to win that mint. Therefore, they get more and more hugely powerful computers, and it is unbelievably bad for energy consumption and sustainability. That's a fact. That's true. It's bad. Mining for Bitcoins is bad.

NFTs are not Bitcoins. People have to understand that it's a completely different way of minting. We've built our own blockchains. It's a side chain. It's a fork off the Ethereum main blockchain. Whenever you buy a Doctor Who card, it's minted on a side chain as we have. So, there's no gas feeds. That's another issue. We will come onto that. It doesn't cost you anything to mint, and it's less energy than a visa card transaction. Minting NFTs, pictures, game NFTs, people are just miseducated. There's nothing wrong with it. To the fact that there are now other blockchains, I'll throw some names out there but probably always best to Google it. But, Solana, Polygon, Hedera, Wax. These are all blockchains that have been specifically developed with efficiency and sustainability in mind.

You use less power minting than turning on a light for two seconds. That's a fact. The new blockchains that are coming out are quick, efficient and super sustainable. In fact, working with the BBC, you can imagine that was a big part of asking us those questions, working with us, doing their due diligence, actually really looking at when a Doctor Who card is minted, what is the effect? Because of the bad press, they've then gone, "Okay. We've actually seen it. They're absolutely right." It's bad education. People think that NFTs are Bitcoins and they're not.

I think over time when people understand it and people look into it, they go, "Oh, yeah. Absolutely right. Don't know why... The world's not going to blow up." Right. They are still very efficient. The Ethereum blockchain right now, actually, is probably the worst out of all of them and probably the most used, which isn't a good thing. But, the Ethereum blockchain is going from proof of work to proof of stake. What that means is 99% of the energy consumption is now gone. The new Ethereum blockchain, they say, launches in Q4 this year. Once that happens, there's not one blockchain out there that is an issue.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Thank you for answering that question. This is why I asked you to come on the podcast. It's because there's a lot of people out there that generally overcomplicate this stuff. That's why people don't understand it. That's why people get confused. That's why they stick to what they believe in. Because, I do remember, as a graphic designer, when NFTs first came out, there were big names talking about the energy impact of NFTs and basically the effect of them.

It's just miseducation. It's misunderstanding. It reminds me of when the internet first came out. People didn't like it. When cars first came out, people didn't like it. They just didn't like it because they didn't understand it. With time, NFTs is going to just be a normal thing. And, if you are a creator of art, it will be normal that you can mint on a blockchain and sell it in the same way that you can real art. It's just going to be commonplace.

Tony Pearce: Yeah, well, it's not just art. I will tell you now, the next... I'm going to put 10 years on it. Everything will be tokenised. Your house will be tokenised.

Ian Paget: Houses. Yeah.

Tony Pearce: Your car. Everything will be tokenised. That's not meaning... It's just proving that you own it and it's logged on the blockchain. It's tokenised into a digital form that then is your proof of ownership. That's all it is. As you say, people have this image or have just read examples of, well, crypto mining, and assume this is the same thing and it's not.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I'm seeing... You know you say when you buy an expensive handbag or something like that, something that's really valuable. And then, they tend to get copied. I mean, the quality's not as good, but you see people walking around with copies of significantly valuable bags. One amazing way that you can prove the difference between one from the other beyond obviously inspecting it and seeing the quality of the material and stitching and stuff like that, is that you can do a blockchain version of this to show that this handbag is actually a real thing. Here's the thing on the blockchain. And, the fake ones won't be able to have that attached to it.

Tony Pearce: Exactly. You'd have a QR code on the bag. You scan the QR code. It immediately goes to the blockchain for verification that it's true. And, that's it. It's exactly that.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Interesting though. You could fake the code in the bag.

Tony Pearce: Yeah. But, it's just like people go, "Well, if you have..." If you have a picture on your wall, I could take a photograph of that and print it out and stick it on my wall. And, I could lie and go, "That's the original." But, it's only at the time that you come to sell it, yeah, well show me the certificate. Prove to me that it's original. It's the same with NFTs except it's a digital version. So, people go, "Well, I'll just screen grab it and I've got copy." Well, yeah, you can do that with a real picture. All it's doing is when you come to sell it has to be validated. And, the certificate is the blockchain, proving it. It's linking your wallet to the NFT, to the blockchain.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've got about 10 minutes left. I want to ask you a question. This might end up being a bigger question. See how this comes out. I haven't discussed NFTs on this podcast prior to this episode, even though I've been buying them and been excited by them for well over a year now. And, the reason is because this is a logo design podcast. And, for logo designers, I've never really thought of a way of how the technology will improve the current processes that are there.

Some ways that I have thought of is maybe it could be a way of proving copyright. Maybe it could be a way of improving the trademark registration process. But, there's already a very in depth process there and actually making any change. It'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on this. How do you see NFTs could maybe impact people creating logo designs and identities for businesses?

Tony Pearce: Well, you can still trademark an NFT. You can still trademark your brand. That won't change. All the NFT is doing is proving that it's one of a kind. That's all. So, I actually don't know how. I don't know.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Yeah. Because, I've put a lot of thought into it. Because, technically, the whole trademark registration process, to some degree, is when somebody applies for trademark and it's gone through the legal checks and all that sort of stuff, and it's put on some database, it's basically a database. But, right now, here today, that's not an unhackable database.

Ian Paget: So, technically, someone, if they had the power to, you could probably hack into that and stick their thing on. I don't know, that you can see that this is a risk. But, if that entire... I think one of the challenges with logo designs is that they need to be checked. It needs to go through an official process to make sure this logo, it doesn't infringe in all these different things. But, it would be really good if the current system was tokenised in the same way that NFTs are. Then it's more, I guess... unhackable.

Tony Pearce: But, I wouldn't say it's tokenised. It just uses the blockchain for verification.

Ian Paget: Right.

Tony Pearce: That works because anything that has a centralised database can be hacked. Or, it's owned by a company, the management can do something. It's a database that is owned by you. A decentralised database isn't owned by anyone. It's much harder to hack because it's logged on the blockchain. Blocks last for 10 minutes and that's it, and moves on to the next one. I can see everything that's centralised from a database point of view becoming decentralised. That would make it a lot safer and protect it more because no one owns it and no one can go in and change things. I suppose the actual image, the name and the logo, is the NFT, which proves that you own it.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I think it'd become a lot easier when it comes around to selling that. Because, it's like you just transfer that over and you don't need any middle person. It's why I'm personally quite excited about the idea of property sales being on a blockchain. Because, can you imagine that you own the house and the house is on the blockchain, that you could probably take a lot of solicitors and legal people and all this sort of stuff out of the picture. Because, it's like, "I own this. This is mine. There you go. I sent it over. You now own the house."

That's how the process will be. It will be pretty instant. You move out. Done. I do hope that... And, I think it will take a lot of time because a lot of these things like property sales and I think the trademark registration process is so ring-fenced by lawyers and legal people and all this sort of stuff, that I think it's going to take time. But, based on everything that you said, it just makes sense that that is going to happen eventually whether people like it or not.

Tony Pearce: Yeah. People will understand that minting NFTs is no different from paying on a visa card. That education and that thing will happen and people will go, "Oh, yeah. Let's move on. It's fine." What will happen in the background? You won't even know it's on the blockchain. It will just log it there. The technology isn't something consumers need to worry about. But, you know it's never going to be hacked or broken into.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Yeah. It's a good way of looking at it. Cool. So, we've got a few more minutes. I'm going to ask you another question. Something I've really admired about what you guys have done, with the Doctor Who project in particular, is NFTs in general are really complicated to understand. If you are going to buy something from Open Sea, you need a wallet. You need to buy Ethereum or whatever. You need to then go on there, you then need to purchase it.

It's quite complicated and the average, non-techy person, it's quite scary to need all this technology. There are a lot of scams out there. It is very much a wild west when it comes to anything related to crypto and NFTs, just because there's no regulations around it really. But, something I very much admire about what you do, and I haven't seen too many companies do it, is that you made it very much like buying from Amazon. You go on there, you top up your wallet with PayPal. You top up your wallet with your card. There's no gas fees. You mentioned about gas. Can you explain what gas is for people that don't know what gas is?

Tony Pearce: Yes. It's the fee you're paying to the miners to log it on the blockchain. And, the gas fee, that's how they earn their money. The gas fee can go up or down, depending on how busy the blockchain is or how quickly you want it to be minted. If you want to pay more then to go get it done in the next five minutes, it could cost you X. If you just want to let it ride and it'll happen when it happens, it could cost you pence.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Yeah. I've seen some entities come out and you end up needing to pay $50, a hundred dollars just in gas to actually buy that. I remember when those Bored Apes came out, I think you said, was it $250? Something like that. But, the gas fees, then, they went insane. And, they were gone. So, people probably paid... Some people probably paid thousands in gas just to actually get access to that thing. But, my point with Doctor Who: Worlds Apart, if something is 50 cents, and they are as cheap as that, if something is 50 cents, then you pay 50 cents for it.

Tony Pearce: Yes.

Ian Paget: And then, you can buy and sell it. If you have a founder's token, there's no transaction. I think if you don't have a founder's token, it's like 5%. Yeah. It's a lot easier than anything else. You've made it very accessible. So, I wanted to ask you, has that been a conscious choice to make NFTs accessible to the general public? Because, you are one of the first companies that I've personally seen have actually done this very well.

Tony Pearce: Yeah. So, we come from a games background. We come very much aware of the UX and the way that people interact with games. And, if there's a tiny bit of friction, people will turn it off. Literally, if it takes longer than 10 seconds to think about something, you've lost them. I am always very conscious of not wanting to lose a player because it becomes too difficult or they don't understand it. So, in any one of our products, the gaming-wise, we will always come at it to make it as easy and as friendly as possible to use. I go back to the point, behind the scenes, no one needs to know the technology that mints that card into an NFT, that puts it on the blockchain, that allows you to own it.

People don't care. They just want to know, how does it work? Oh, only. So, with Doctor Who, it was a very conscious decision to make this mass market. We don't even mention NFTs or blockchain on the Doctor Who website, unless you dig into the FAQs and want to know about the tech. You can. We can tell you. But, from the outset, this is a trading card game where you own digital collectibles. And, those collectibles are cards. End of story. You can buy those cards from us in the following way. Just like you do with an e-commerce, there's a basket. You can buy them with PayPal. You can buy them with credit cards. You can buy them with crypto if you want. We have our own loyalty token called Pandaks

Everything that we've done, people have seen before. And, apart from maybe paying with crypto, everything else is exactly the same. Now, because they're NFTs, you need a wallet. Because, they have to be stored in a wallet. When you sign up to Doctor Who: Worlds Apart, when you put your email and username in, your password, that's all we ask for. We actually create you an Ethereum wallet without you even knowing. So, your account, when you go into account where your cards are after you bought them, that's actually in a real wallet with a 26 digit number. But, you don't need to know that. Doesn't matter to you. It's just an account. When you go and trade them, it's all through our marketplace. It's just a typical marketplace where you trade in one card for another. The money goes from your account into someone else's account, depending on how much you want to pay.

It's all done on our side chain. It's all done really quick. It's all done smoothly. It shouldn't be complicated. Now, where you need to have some kind of crypto or blockchain experience is when you want to take them off of our website and take them to an external wallet or to Open Sea or to another secondary market. For those people who don't know what Open Sea is, Open Sea is the world's biggest eBay for NFTs. It's a place where you can go and you can trade NFTs. To get them from Doctor Who's website, from your account, and to withdraw them to Open Sea, you need to go to withdraw, and then there's a dropdown that says, 'These are the blockchains you can use to withdraw it." That's when you need some kind of understanding, because we offer you the Ethereum blockchain, Polygon blockchain, or Binance Smart Chain.

It's up to you to choose which blockchain you want to send it on to your external wallet. It could be because of the gas fees that each blockchain charges you. It could be because you are a fan of one of the blockchains and not the other. We're agnostic. You decide. In fact, we're going to add more blockchains on. We call them bridges. You now choose your blockchain. It then goes, "What's your wallet address? Your external wallet address?" Cut and paste. Withdraw.

And then, it takes it off of your account and sends it outside our website to wherever you've just sent it to. Because, as I say, we don't own it. You own it. It's your card to do whatever you want with. To play the game, you're going to have to bring it back to our website. Because, to play the game, you need to have it in your game wallet. But, if you want to take it outside and sell it somewhere else, we can't stop you. We make it very easy for you to do that.

Ian Paget: Brilliant. I think that's a really good way to wrap up the interview. Thank you so much, Tony, for coming on. Like I said, I've always admired the way that you talk about crypto, NFTs, blockchain, all that sort of stuff. I hope that the listeners who maybe don't know what this stuff is, they have a little bit more of an understanding. I like the fact that you are someone that's in gaming rather than just doing an image because you've helped to explain the potential of NFTs and what they can actually do. I'll add links to all the projects in the show notes for anyone that wants to check that out. But, Tony, thank you so much for coming on. It's been really great to spend this time with you.

Tony Pearce: Very good. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers, Ian.