Online to Onchain: Becoming a Digital Maverick | Debbie Soon and Jessica Rossman

hello hey so hi everyone I'm Jessica and I spent the whole weekend reading my friend Debbie soon's new book digital Mavericks which I absolutely loved and we're going to hear about it today so Debbie why don't you start us off by introducing yourself tell us who you are and what you're doing oh my gosh well it is such a pleasure to be here at e Denver this year and thank you so much Jessica for pouring through my book it means a lot I have to say it feel surreal today even when I see somebody holding a copy of my book uh in their hands but yeah who I guess who am I I feel like everyone to some extent has almost forgotten themselves when they entered a crypto space so one thing I like to ask everyone is you know who were you before crypto and that was me you know at age five uh growing up in Singapore uh really had no idea what I wanted to do uh but after that I feel like I've had a lot of different lifetimes since um before coming into crypto one that started off with Finance I was an equity investor uh I worked for the sing plus serign wealth fund I had the great opportunity of meeting Kobe Bryant at an investa day I founded a fitness studio I then went on to work for a mix marshs promotion and so it's feels like I've done a whole bunch of crazy things and so you may be wondering what on Earth am I doing in crypto uh but I guess three years ago when I moved from Singapore to the US in the middle of the pandemic I decided I had no way of meeting people in person the only way I could do it was to dive into internet communities and that's exactly what I did I ended Discord um which is funny because I don't use Discord anymore but I entered Discord and I basically posted a message in the beginning of 2022 just saying that I love everything that I've learned so far about crypto I love how the technology empowers people I love how is making it easier for creators to monetize your work uh I just want to be a part of this Cutting Edge Revolution even though I knew next to nothing about it and before I knew it I met my co-founder Randy Zug yes D Zuck buug uh sister Mark uh in a Discord server as you can see I wasn't even using my real name uh behind a random Avatar uh those emojis actually behind seph NOA were partt of a yacht I don't know who around here had a yacht domain URL uh but anyway I went on to become the co-founder of an onchain creative community and Marketplace called hug uh We've grown to over 35,000 users across 180 countries our mission has been to empower creators to become entrepreneurs uh through education through technology and and to really get them to embrace using blockchain as a way to better monetize their Creations as well as uh you know connect with your audience um and you know from there we did some great things again went on I feel like sliding into people's DMS or just showing up in in random internet spaces as well as in person uh opened a lot of opportunities for me and that was my DM to O shiny if anybody knows who he is I simply reached out No Agenda um few months later him together with okx Ventures and L'Oreal ended up funding our leading our seat round uh and we've grown hug ever since um not just the numbers that I stated before but we've also distributed $350,000 of scholarships and grants to help creators um really take their work to further places we've educated thousands of creators and onboarded them to new protocols um where it's the RAR chain to lens protocol teaching them how to collaborate with stability a I uh and all of that has finally culminated into a successful acquisition at the end of last year by the do art domain registry uh which is the biggest TLD operator for the Arts and creative industry so excited for this new chapter for hug and uh and essentially what a do art team is going to do they have they have some great blockchain verification tools that will allow arst to better track their work aset changes hands aset Changers ownership and really facil itting uh that that part of the journey and so that's a long answer to who I am and why I'm here but that's been the joy of I guess of of writing this book and diving into it um I love that and I love how serendipitous that whole story is um so I don't know how you possibly had time to write a book in between all that but I would love to hear um yeah like what possess you to write a book and what this book is about why don't you tell us about that yeah so the book in a nutshell it really is 50% accessible guide to crypto so I feel like talking about it at Eve Denver probably you know it's a little bit like preaching to the choir I should be out on the street sarch by the way I I uh told my Uber driver about it yesterday and I G even gave him um my MCH pack so hopefully he does go uh check it out but it's a 50% uh accessible guide to understanding crypto um if you are already in crypto it's really about how to stay sane I know a lot of us uh with the ups and downs especially the markets sometimes gets to be a lot and even though we don't want to admit it to ourselves it's really about how do we tune out the noise and really focus on what we're here to do um and 50% of it which is personally my favorite uh 13 indepth features of these great digital Mavericks uh so people that I've come to know and respect people like Jesse Pollock who obviously created a base uh people like kmo deichi who is a pseudonymous art art collector who may or may not be Snoop Dog I mean he's not Snoop Dog but you know know um as well as a bunch of amazing artists like AI collaborative artists um class silver uh so you know tons of incredible stories and really just about how they even entered a space so similar to how I gave that rather long- winded explanation on how I entered crypto day two have had an incredible life story and this bit about entering crypto is really just the new chapter just like every one of us I love that so much and one of the things that really stuck out to me as I was reading it was about the glow stick moment um I think that's just such a fun way to put it but could you explain for everybody what a glow stick moment is what maybe what your glow stick moment it was and more about that yeah I think it's funny because um so I'm you know I'm probably the first time I invested in crypto myself was 2019 so it's early for some people late for some people I don't know it depends on on how you how you look at the Timeline uh but ironically the crypto that I bought then was xrp which is um hilarious because then it got hit with an SEC lawsuit and then I was like well this is all a sham like you know I'm never going to put cry money into crypto again um it's been pretty funny since obviously recently it's been one of the better performing coins and I still have that bag of xlp by the way so I have round tripped it around the Moon and back and now it's like way up so I feel a little Vindicated yeah five years later um but I will say that for me wasn't a glow sck moment that wasn't a time for me where I looked at my investment into xrp and that wasn't a time where I really got it and the reason why I I use the phrase glow stick moment is because you know when you break a glow stick and it just lights up and all of a sudden you just can't unsee it and you can't unsee the possibility and sure maybe the light Fades after a little while but that is that moment that once you're broken it there's really no turning back uh and for me that moment really was when I moved to the US again from Singapore uh and I really kind of got my involvement heavily in nft space and a lot of that came from my consumer background even as an investor I looked at consumer and consumer Tech um at the Mixed Martial Arts promotion I was uh it was a very tangible product right like we were selling merchandise we were selling experiences and that for me I felt translated really easily into the world of nfts both as we're just really still selling digital goods for just doing it on in a different way on different payment rails and I think the aspect of how nfts really helped people connect with your audiences was truly kind of eye openening for me having spent you know three plus years trying to build direct relationships between athletes and your fans so cool and that's um actually touches on something that I find so fascinating about the space um which is the role of like blockchain and nfts in fan engagement and the connection between artists and their fans could you speak to um that a little bit yeah of course and I mean I think it's you know I work the most closely with creators I know obviously blockchain is a huge space this industry is huge I think as much as it is Niche it is also very broad you're going to have people that work solely in Defi and know everything about Defi and have no idea um who Sam Sprat is um who by the way is an incredible artist that is doing some crazy activation that should be all over Twitter if that is what your algorithm is is looking at he so work for millions of dollars and it gets people to write their own um interpretation of his work and it's all part of the blockchain right so that's kind of the art W which again like lives really separately and then you know we have people building in privacy and all of that is kind of like a you know a different um a different pot and so and think coming back to how nfts really help with you know owning your audience and owning that engagement there is this um creator that I love her name is Naomi or she goes by afro chicks as well uh she was actually one of the earliest members of um the hug community and we knew her because she was an artist she and her name was called AFR tricks because she Drew these really fun colorful illustrations celebrating um black women hair uh and what we then later came to find out was that she's actually a professional triple jumper um for Great Britain and she's currently training uh to be part of the Olympic team in 2028 that's the next Olympics yeah so she's currently training to be um part of the team GB for the 2028 Olympics and she has been posting her entire Journey putting it on Zora earning and you know Zora's had a big change um you know just recently and turning everything into coins but basically monetizing you know the effort that she's been putting in and the people that are there supporting her journey you know she could get a 100 likes on Instagram she could get 200 likes on Instagram this isn't going to pay for her training this isn't going to pay for you know um like the new equipment or the new shoes that she's going to use uh and so you know I think we've seen some really new and novel ways and obviously we're still at the early Innings of it but imagine how her community is going to feel when she actually does make it to the Olympics knowing that they were early on maybe the the tokens or the video that they had collected from her on chain is going to appreciate and value and all of a sudden there are align incentives between both the creators and the people that support them I love it I think there's so many really cool things that we're going to see happen in the space um but I think one thing that's on people's minds right now is that the market is kind of um interesting to say the least do you have any advice for staying sane um in this space yeah and I feel like to me honestly that is the that is the biggest thing about W Road this I'm not a technical person by any means so you know I didn't want to come in here and pretend to explain stuff that you know I wasn't entirely sure how things work under the hood but I think what I do know is having worked in startups well first of all having worked in finance where your entire renumeration and where your entire sense of judgment is completely live you know my bonus for every single year was determined by what the markets would doing um and I could see in real time what a judgment call I made say if I said let me invest in Nike at whatever price it is I could see pretty much immediately whether that was right or whether that was wrong and again a lot but then again whether it was right or whether it was wrong was also very dependent on what time Horizon you were looking at if it was within a week it might have been a crappy decision but then you know over the next year it ended up being an incredible investment decision um so I think a lot of that is you know being able to frame yourself in terms of what your goals are and I think that's why I have kind of number two here in terms of what is your why and understanding and holding on to your why for some people it's completely about making money and that's great um you know good for you for some people it's a little bit more than that for some people it's really about wanting to make a difference it's wanting to not be a passive participant uh you know I personally am of the believe that one day we won't even know that all of these things are running on crypto just like we never really un I feel like when the cloud computing came out I didn't even know like what that meant like I don't even know what servers are being used I don't know if this program is being on is on AWS on Google cloud and frankly as a consumer I don't care uh and you know I think as we progressively move towards blockchain adoption that is what we're going to see as well and so for me my personal why is really helping to play a part in shaping that shaping the future that I want to see being a part of great products and great companies that are doing all of that uh and I think by holding on to that it honestly doesn't matter whether the market is up the market is down yeah that that buying X up here at like 80 cents and see go down to 20 cents Hut like a yeah it did but it it feels great now this back at like 250 or whatever is at now but um but you know that at the end of the day wasn't what was going to keep me going and and and and you know waking up every single day excited to hit the ground running I love that I always like to say like all especially with mean coins like if I'm down you know what I'm having fun and that's all that matters um that's so cool um back to nt's favorite nft you purchased favorite nft purchased I have like favorite nft PES I mean I have Commit hated us that I did ow a moonbird and I feel like so sad to but I do kind of like the much I still have the socks like you know I think I actually like wearing death socks um but um favorite nft honestly I have commissioned a lot of work from ois uh so you know again again again this is kind of holding true to my wire right like a big part of my story too is that I grew up in Singapore very conservative Asian upbringing always felt like I had had a little bit of a creative stream stre to me but was you know I was in a choir I wrote poetry I made collagist I did all these things you know as a kid but never really got the opportunity to do anything with it or never was never even encouraged to pursue it so I think working with creators was a big thing for me and a big thing that motivated me and uh I saw as well even when I took this travel photography of myself that I had just uploaded on Instagram and cool I got like 200 likes and then I soed it as an nft for $50 and I mean it wasn't much but like that was $50 more than whatever I made from Instagram um and so I think a lot of my favorite purchases have actually come from me reaching out to an artist that I love um you know and saying that hey I have this idea of this really great piece that I want um I'm a massive football fan I approached this photographer who films with film who takes photos of film called Nathan Balman um he basically went to scout one of the football fields that I think it's just like a high school football field that is at the highest altitude it might even actually be somewhere in Colorado actually and just took this beautiful photo of just the grid iron um and and I love that piece you know it's so meaningful and the fact that he wed camera camera gear and now I own it as a print but I also own it on chain and so um that to me out of Priceless moments that um that you can replicate elsewhere I love that so much big fan of my crypto dick butt but you know football too we all love a dick butt who doesn't um I love it so do you remember the first time you learned the word fungible or heard the word fungible yeah um I mean I guess I knew it in you know in I was an econ's major so I knew it in that I I did think I do remember when hearing it in the context of like non-fungible token it did feel like I don't I don't mean I I don't even know what the alternative is like maybe it's just a token maybe it's something that's tokenized but it did feel odd um and I think part of it to it reminds me of this analogy that I always like to use is that and and obviously I'm dating myself but when you know we were younger and we used to I Don't Know download MP3s off Napster um I guess even though we was supposed to um and then you know we would turn to our friends and we would go what MP3s did you download last week or like what MP3s are you listening to and it's so I mean it's kind of ridiculous because you're not you're not that that's not that's just a file format that's just the way that you are receiving the music and the day is like what music are you listening to I don't even know if um uh you know the California DMV has already completed a pilot where uh the car title Deeds are on the blockchain so technically those are nfts but I'm not going to go around and be oh my car title deed is an nft like what about yours you know it's just everything tickets um so so yeah I think when you ask me about the what fungible um you know we're still going to use it has like an actual definition in everything right um but I think that the way that we approach and I feel like my publisher also made me put nfts in a title just for SEO purposes which I was like semi annoyed about but uh you know I think eventually it's again it's going to be one of those things that feels a little dated and we're probably not even going to refer to it anymore that's so funny well we're coming up on 2 minutes left here so just to round this out any last words or anything people should know about your book or where they can follow you where they can learn more and how they can get involved I know that you are a fan of just sling people DMS which I absolutely love um but yeah if you want to speak that I will say by the way I I talk one of my last points here is craft and commit to a ritual and uh when I was new in the space one of my rituals was actually kind of writing a Cod DM to one person at least one person every other day or like at least once a week um to build a connection and that's how I built my community uh but yeah in terms of what you guys could do I am proud of this moment I think it works um so I'm not a coder uh but thanks to the power of AI and I guess what we all Al call like Vibe coding um I coded my first kind of onchain app if you will um so it's just a personality quiz so uh but it's at quiz. digital mavericks. XYZ uh you would take a little personality quiz it's pretty fun um and then at the end of it you'll get your result you can share it and then you can collect one of these Comics that is essentially a condensed version of the story that was in my book uh the illustrator is this comic illustrator called Dana at oatmeal um and I will caveat and somehow I kind of feel like this is not a me problem but maybe a preview or mobile wallet problem but it works best if you do this directly in your mobile wallet browser or if you're doing it on desktop I highly recommend metamask or fantum um so yeah just do it it's fun it's free um also if you have friends and family who are not into crypto yet I also manage to incorporate pay masters so all transactions are sponsored you don't even need gas you just need an email address uh so yeah I I think it's really fun I love personality quizzes I love knowing what people's mbti are um so this isn't quite that but but yeah it's a lot of fun amazing well thanks so much I'm going to go take the quiz now and yeah have a Denver yeah and if you want to connect do on me on socials um my book is on um we're at an Onre event talking about traditional publishing so but it is on Amazon it's a bun of noble um I will be at the base boo on Friday 10: to 12 uh they have a bunch of books that they'll be selling on chain there as well uh and I'll be there signing it and I think I have one copy here so um that I'm happy to give to whoever wants it so if this is of interest just come find me um first come first of thanks so much thank you Jessica [Applause]