Move to Earn

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The coin Bureau Podcast is a production of I Heart Radio.
I think perhaps the big threat that the problem that
these apps face is one that you know, lots of
lots of kind of play to earn and and other
crypto projects themselves faced, and that is that the only
way that they're going to grow, that the only way
that they're going to keep you know, being a thing,

(00:21):
is to is to attract new users. And there is
that kind of you know, there is I hesitate to
use the word, but there is that kind of Ponzi
scheme element to it, because you know, in order to
in order to keep the users that they have engaged
and in order to keep being able to reward them
for the activity that they're doing, they need to attract

(00:43):
new users into you know, into the ecosystem, new users
using the app, buying n f T trainers or you know,
minting and spending sweat coins and all this sort of stuff.
So you know, there is that there is that difficulty.

(01:09):
Welcome everyone to the coin Bureau Podcast. My name is
Mad Mike notewait my keep it in some keep it in,
and my name is Guy. Well you can you can
tell it's been a few weeks, can't you. Yeah, sure,
why not, Let's let's keep it like that. My name
is mad Mike Mooch and his name is Guy. Welcome

(01:31):
to the Coin Bureau podcast. Um, it's been a few
weeks since since we last got together, but here we are.
So I thought we'd talk about We talked about a
little crypto niche one that I think is a very
interesting one to to look at. It could well be
one to look out for in the future. So, Mike

(01:52):
are you Are you basically ready to talk about move
to earn? Sure, let's do this. This is something I'm
not a hundre cent familiar with. But there was something similar.
I downloaded an app where you would you'd have to
do I think it was during the pandemic. It might
have been just before the pandemic, where you had to move,

(02:15):
you had to walk and if you walked or step
coin or something like that coin steps or something like that,
sweat sweat coin, sweat coin that was it? Is this
the same thing that's one of the projects we're talking
about today. Yeah, we'll see again. I'm a pioneer and
I didn't even know it. I'm like, uh, is there

(02:38):
some pioneer who discovered something didn't know Columbus. He was
trying to find India and found America or or the
Caribbean at Yeah. Um, I'm like less less genocide. Um
yeah he uh yeah. So I was on this ages
ago um, and I tried to attach my phone to

(02:58):
my dog so that it would be constantly moving. But
he is quite a small dog and I had quite
a big phone. Um. And it seemed like quite a
lot of effort. It was quite good. Um. I don't
think I earned anything or claimed anything from it, but
I quite like the premise of it, which was move
your fat ass and if you move enough, you will

(03:20):
you will get rewarded with some tokens or some some
sort of thing I didn't realize as crypto. Thank you
very much everyone for listening to the Coin Bureau podcast.
That is that was moved to earn next week. That

(03:41):
was a beautiful, a beautiful summation of the entire move
to earn genre. Yeah, get off your fat ass and
start moving around. No, don't attach it to the dog.
Don't try that. That's that's interesting. I was. I was
reading up on on some of these projects, and like,
there are crypto projects, you know, doing this sort of thing.
And you know, putting in certain safeguards so as people

(04:03):
can't literally attach them to their dogs. And I remember
when I was reading about that, I was like, surely
no one would do that, would they would? I mean, look,
there's a whole there's a whole um niche of people
out there whose main objective is just to cheat the system.
Now I'm very very loosely involved in that, but because

(04:25):
I'm also lazy, but I know some friends who will
will expend serious amounts of energy and time just to
to to screw over some sort of offer and get
the most out of it. You see these people, like
these coupon collectors in America who and they're making big
bucks by doing this. They scour and collect coupons and

(04:48):
some of the coupon deals. It's not like in England
where it's like you can only use this coupon not
in conjunction with other offers. In America they don't seem
to have that. And it's kind of like if you
get enough for these coupons, you're basically getting products for free.
And there's these um normally housewives or but you know,

(05:11):
anyone can be a coupon collector who dedicate their time,
go to websites about it, trading coupons, all sorts of stuff,
and I'm making not making millions, but saving big, big bucks.
And they've got you know, warehouses full of just you know,
washing detergent and different cereals. They're like preppers, but just

(05:33):
and it's it's that, it's that bit in your brain
where you you know, it's it's it's a game. Okay, cool,
I've got to beat the system. I've got to get
the coupon. I'll click the points. We've got to click,
you know, complete the loyalty card stamp and and you know,
and and and get my free tide pods or whatever
it is. Yeah, it's it's an interesting parallel to draw

(05:55):
actually between between that and games, because I think that's
a big I think that's a big part of it. Um.
I remember seeing you know, Charlie Brooker over and back
in back in the UK. I remember he did a
run down of some of you know, the greatest games
in history or something like that, and like he covered
the more you know, Zelder and Mario and Gold nine,

(06:16):
all these sorts of things, and then like for number
one he had I think it was Twitter and it
was like what, and then he sort of explained it,
like all the kind of gamification kind of metrics that
it uses, and like you know, Instagram uses and things
like this, you know, the sort of loot boxes thing
and the dopamine hits and all that sort of stuff.

(06:37):
And it's like, actually, yeah, if you if you can
add these kind of gamification elements, you can really you
can really suck people in. You know, they really get
they really get involved with it more. I introduced a
loyalty card at the comedy club I run, and we
see people who you know that they come down and
then they're almost more excited to get the stamp than

(06:59):
they are toist see the show. And that's not an
indication of the level of the show. That's just how
how they are keen to to to sort of you know,
complete the stamps and and and win that that little
game in their head. And I do it as well.
I I m I started a subscription PREP subscription, which
I believe they've also got in America. Uh, and you know,

(07:22):
you get five coffees a day. And because of that,
I went to PREP four times at least a day
in order to get that. I was just like you
know what, I'm going to get another free coffee because
I want to make sure they're earning as little from
me as possible. I mean, admittedly, when I'd go in there,
I'd buy two sandwiches and a chocolate bar and completely
was unaware that I'm the one who's been exploited, not them.

(07:44):
But that's it's just that psychological game that that you're playing.
And I suppose this is probably what the sweat cooin
thing is, but I don't understand. I mean, I know
you've sent me the notes and obviously haven't read any
of them, and I don't want to derail this too
much more than usual. But how does sweat coin make money? What?
What is the purpose in it? Is it a government

(08:05):
incentive to stop us being fat? Is it? Is it
they're tracking our data and finding out where we are going?
And is that where they're making their money? Are they
just making sure we're out the house? And are they
robbing us while they're away? How does it make money?
Why are they paying us to move? I think, and
I think in large part it's it's about advertising, because
you know they've created this platform whereby you know that

(08:28):
they have a lot of they you know, it's about
getting people engaged. And again it's the gamification aspect of
it that I think keeps a lot of people coming back.
And therefore, you build a you know, you build a
platform and you build a community around that platform. And
then the I mean, you've you've used sweat coins, so
you'll you'll know that there's kind of a you know,
sort of in in in app marketplace where you can

(08:51):
trade these sweat coins for like you know, it mostly
seems to be earbuds and things like that, but you know,
that's I think. I think the big draw there is
is people is eyeball is eyeballs basically, and you know,
therefore you can you can build this kind of marketplace,
you can advertise within that marketplace and all that sort
of stuff, and that I think is is how they

(09:12):
make you know, a lot of their money fair enough,
fair enough. Well, when you say it like that, that
makes complete sense. Maybe they aren't robbing people while they're out.
Maybe they are, but who knows, who knows? Your your
explanation makes a bit more sense. Okay, well that's good.

(09:32):
I mean, I do my best, but no, it's an
interesting it's an interesting thing, you know, it's it's interesting
the way these projects work, and obviously crypto puts a
different kind of money making angle on it as well. Um.
But yeah, I mean, well, I'm glad you're sort of
I'm glad you're kind of familiar with sweat coin because it's, yeah,

(09:52):
it's it's one of the ones that we're it's one
of the ones that we're sort of going to talk
about a bit um and that and another project and stuff.
But um, you've been it's been a while since since
we've we've had a pod together, me and you. It
has been a long time, hasn't it. I have been,
I have been very well. I've I was on holiday

(10:14):
in Zanzibar a couple of weeks ago, which was very nice,
highly recommended. Um, and then I came back and just
had so much kind of work and sort of stuff
piled up that I just didn't have time to to
prepare for a podcast. But but now fortunately kind of
you know that thing where you go on holiday and

(10:36):
you're like, oh, I'm just going to relax for a
week and you have a lovely kind of relaxing time,
and then you get back and because you haven't done
any work for a week, everything is absolutely mental and
you you know, you spend like the next two three
four weeks kind of catching up on everything you missed
whilst you were away, and you don't feel like you've
had a holiday at all. No holidays are it's just

(10:59):
a complete miss. No, like the stress and of organizing one,
and then the travel stress. Then when you get there
and it's like, okay, cool, is it living up to
my expectations. I never stopped working and and my I've
always got something on my mind and I enjoy my work.
So I'm just working in a new environment that's costing
me more money. And then it's the travel back. And

(11:20):
then also at on top of that the arguments because
I've not really been relaxing and spending time with my family,
I've just been working in a hot place. Means that
I don't like holidays that much. I must say, I'm
kind of with you. I Like we we went away
and like we were really sort of strict about like

(11:42):
we're going to we're going to relax, we're not going
to do anything and stuff, and it was really nice
for about twenty four hours and then it was sort
of like ah, yeah, and then but we did have
a relaxing week in the end, but there was you know,
there was sort of stress at the back of your
back of my mind. And then on the final more
like we were leaving at really early in the morning,

(12:02):
we had to get a taxi from our hotel to
the airport, which was about an hour and a half
drive away, and the taxi just didn't turn up, so
you know, we were getting into worried about missing our
plane territory, and you know, fortunately managed to rustle up
another taxi from somewhere and I just like, in that
sort of frantic taxi ride to the airport, I was like, okay,

(12:26):
well that's all the relaxation from the holiday just melted
away in this slight past hour and a half of
pure and liquid stress. Okay, cool, this is going to
cost me a lot of money in rebooking a flight,
gonna get another hotel, got to kill a taxi driver
and hide a body in Zandibar, And yeah, it's it's

(12:47):
a lot of things to sort of take on board.
But also when you have kids. If you have kids,
it makes even worse because it's kind of like just
traveling with just a ball of explosive pooh that that
cries and needs to be fed and doesn't know what's
going on a plane. Um, and then there's the baby

(13:09):
as well, So you know, professional professional comedian. It's just seamless,
just seamless. What has happened since we last talked? What
was the last since we last podcast? That was to
three weeks ago, maybe longer. I think it was about

(13:30):
a month ago. Yeah, month ago. It was about a
month ago. A lot has happened in the last month.
It's been. Yeah, it's been sort of more kind of
classic bear market going on. I think, well, one of
the more one of the kind of more interesting things
to happen, certainly in the last week or so, has
been the has been this Twitter takeover. Elon Musk is

(13:53):
now is now chief chief Twit came into Twitter headquarters
with a sink yeah, And I'm not sure was that
all just an elaborate pun, because he then tweeted out
let that sink in. Yeah, I just bought Twitter. Let
that sink in. And I remember that's a lot of

(14:16):
effort for a poor bit of wordplay, for for a
pretty cheesy pun. Yeah. I remember watching that and thinking
if I was a Tesla shareholder, I would be really
concerned right now on just so many levels, Like this

(14:38):
is the man, this is the man running the company,
and here he is kind of gooning around with his
new company, which is clearly going to going to take
up a lot of his time and energy. It's like,
what about all the other companies that he's supposed to
be running, Like what about the massive car maker. You

(14:59):
know that is like a multi multibillion dollar company. Why
aren't you surely that that would take up most normal
human beings time. I just like, I don't really understand
why he's doing it. I think it's kind of cool
in a lot of ways that he's doing it, but
or that he's done it. I mean, it's it's just

(15:21):
to me why he's doing it. You know, like you've
got to have some sort of like look at all
the big players in that he's the richest man in
the world. And if you've got the like a media mouthpiece,
if you are a Rupert Murdoch and you own half
of the newsplapers and and sort of TV channels, then

(15:42):
you've you've got a lot of power and ability to
sway people's perspectives and positions. Now, if you are a billionaire,
richest man in the world. Um, that is something that
and the world is has become mean, you know, there's
a great sort of disparity between the richest and the poorest,

(16:04):
and you need to keep your pr up so that
the peasants don't revolved and eat you. It's it's in
your favor, it's in your interest to have a mouthpiece
that you can manipulate. And and you know, coerce what
is being said. I know he's saying it's all for
free speech and all of that, which may be true.
I'd love for that to be true. But maybe the
billionaires got alteriat ulterior motives. I don't know, ask asked

(16:28):
Mark Zuckerbook what what his motives are by changing his
company named to Meta is it? Is it? You know,
is that a big land grab and making sure that
matter is associated or the Meta versus said with the
old Facebook or I don't know. I mean, it's it's
it's all. I don't take anything at face value. But

(16:49):
also I do quite like Eaton because he is a
bit of a rogue. But then also he's a bit
of a rogue, so I don't like him. It's very much. Yeah,
I I find My opinion of him sort of very
much varies depending on my mood. Like if you wake
up and you're in a bad mood, you just like
Elon Musk again, please can we just stop? And then

(17:12):
other times it's like, wow, this guy is you know,
this guy is crazy, but you know he's making stuff,
He's making stuff happen like that. There really is never
a dull moment when he's around. But yeah, I'm just
like I just kind of feel like you just just
just stick to the five companies you already run, like,

(17:34):
you know, because obviously he's got Tesla, He's also got
the SpaceX. He's also Stylink, Neuralalink, the boring company, you know,
and now Twitter as well. It's just like, I just
wonder how many Elon Musks there are, Like has he
has he cloned himself? Because it's quite it's quite possible

(17:54):
he owns a cloning company as well and has just
cloned himself several times, And you know that would be
would that even surprise you if that came out? I
don't think it would. I don't think it would mean No.
I mean, he it's it's a weird, weird, weird, weird
family isn't it. And he's like he named his child

(18:18):
an equation, His baby mama is Grimes. It's it's we
are living in a simulation because it is the only
way that any of this can really be happening. It's
so bizarre. It makes less and less sense the more
you read about it, isn't it? Well, you say his

(18:39):
Grimes is a baby mama. I mean, I think he's
got several because he's like, he's really worried about population declines,
so he's literally taking it upon himself to try and
singlehandedly reverse that. Him and Boris which yeah, him and
Boris Johnson are between them trying to repopulate the earth,
which I mean, you've got to, You've gotta hand it

(19:01):
to them. But I mean that that that itself is
going to take up a lot of time. I just
I just don't know how he has. I don't know,
when you become a billionaire, do you just get an
extra few hours in the day. So I don't know,
I'm not sure, but but you know, maybe we should
reach out to him and ask if if if he

(19:22):
would lend me some money or come on one of
the two. I think it'd be interesting. So what this, uh, this,
I suppose we should probably talk about the topic that
this part is. It's about I think that could be
a good idea. Um, And we've touched the net because

(19:46):
I sort of just jumped and skipped ahead because I
have a d h D. But I'm going to let
you talk about this because you're going to explain it
and probably a little bit more of a clear linear
way rather than me just blurting out things that have
happened to me in my life. But it's very entertaining, Mike.
I mean, you know, if you want to if you

(20:07):
want to pepper pepper Today's Conversation with sort of anecdotes
from your life, then feel free and I'll just make
sure that they get removed in the editor. They always do.
Normally we submit about about sort of four to five
hours of material to our editor, which he then manages

(20:28):
to cut down into an hour and a half. But yeah,
mostly it's just Mike rambling away about things that have
happened to him, people that have people that have wronged him,
budges that he holds all. Here's another list of all
the people. So, yeah, I thought we'd talked about move

(20:51):
to earn, which is a kind of growing category of
crypto projects that looked to basically reward users for moving,
hence the name basically, and I guess before we get
to before we get too into the details of it,
it's probably best to frame this particular niche in the

(21:14):
kind of context of Web three. Okay, because we've talked
about Web three a bit before, haven't we, And you
might remember that I sort of framed it as basically
Web one, which was the kind of early days of
the web being basically read only. So people people would

(21:35):
put up websites and other people would look at them
and that was that was about it, and people would
send each other emails, and you know, a picture would
take half an hour to load, all this sort of stuff.
Then Web two came along and kind of changed the
game completely, and that became sort of Web two was

(21:55):
more kind of read right, So not only was their
loads you loads more content to look at, but us,
the users were also creating that content to a very
large extent. So and this was the This was when
platforms like Facebook obviously kind of sprung up and really
became the kind of behemoths that they are today and

(22:19):
basically made made money off us because we you know,
we shared, if you like, we uploaded all this information
about ourselves, and then Facebook and others found ways of
taking that data and selling it, selling it to advertisers
and making money off it. And this has been kind
of very much the story of of Web two, if

(22:43):
you like. So Web three has now come along and
this is this is something that gets talked about a lot,
and I guess the simplest way of putting it, or
thinking about it perhaps is Web three is read, write, earn.
So the ethos, if you like, what it's trying to
achieve is basically to kind of take some of that

(23:05):
power back away from the big companies that made, you know,
that made web too what it was, and give it
back to users. And crypto obviously plays a big part
in that. Because users of Web three, you know, they're
using crypto. They're able to exchange value over the Internet
with each other peer to peer. You know, they don't
need an intermediary like a bank or a payment process

(23:27):
or or you know, a social media platform or anything
like that. You know, so Web three is, you know,
it is very much this idea that people that people
are kind of taking taking making getting more from their
time on the web and not necessarily just kind of
funneling information and profits towards kind of big, big centralized

(23:49):
companies like Facebook and others. And you know, a lot
of it is is a lot of it is about
having sort of control over over your personal data, for example,
and there are kind of projects out there that are
looking to you know, whereas now these big centralized companies
sell your data web three, the future could be like you,

(24:12):
you might choose to sell your data or you might
choose you might choose to decide who to whom your
data is sold. And this is a big part of
you know, of kind of funneling control and you know,
also value back to the actual users of the web,
the people who kind of make it what it is

(24:33):
so and also you know, it's things, it's it's also
about this idea of of the time that you spend
on the web as well. You know, there are there
are lots of projects. The Brave browser is one that
we've talked about before as well. You know, you should
be rewarded for the amount of time, for the amount
of attention that you that you give to two pages
on the web. And again, as I say, crypto is

(24:56):
a big part of this enabling this kind of this
this kind of transfer of you without intermediaries. And we're
also seeing a little bit dangerous though, isn't isn't so
like there's a certain limit on you know, are we
going to see you know how you see these gambling adverts,

(25:17):
which is like gamble, gamble, gamble, gamble, gamble, don't forget
gamble responsibly. And now now it's going to be like cool,
be online, be online, be online, be online, will pay
you to be online, but don't be online too much?
Is it? Is it not sort of rewarding something that
is not necessarily healthy in large sort of quantities. You know,

(25:40):
I'm spending twenty hours a day online in the metaverse
is not going to be healthy? Absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, And
I think that I think that is certainly one of
the one of the dangers of it. And yeah, we
talked about this a bit when we talked about the
metaverse a few a few weeks ago, didn't we. It's
like this idea of yeah, of being constantly have been

(26:03):
constantly online, of there being kind of no escape from this,
from this virtual world, and yeah, that's that's definitely that's
definitely a dangerous dangerous thing. And I guess, you know,
Web three projects, if they're going to do, if they're
going to do this sort of thing, well, you know,
I guess it becomes about I guess it becomes about

(26:24):
having a balance as well, doesn't it. You know? And
it's like, how do you how does web three kind
of navigate those waters? How does it make it sort
of worth your time to be on the internet but
also a heavy lifestyle that's balanced. Is that what Sweatpoint
is trying to do? Is it like, okay, cool, look,

(26:46):
get out, get get the headset off, get your phone off,
put it in your pocket and walk about. Is that
how this move to Earn stuff? Is that what it's about?
Or is it more just being on your phone and
having that app open while you're moving around? No, I
think certainly the way that these the way that these
move to Earn projects have kind of positioned themselves is yeah,
all about getting people more active, and that means yeah,

(27:10):
walking about you exercising and going out out and about
in the great outdoors, but also using the you know,
using this technology that we all carry around with ourselves
in our pockets, you know, use making use of that
to also you know, kind of incentivize and and reward you.
Um and I think before we look, you know, before

(27:31):
we dive into into the actual move to phenomenon, it's
also worth looking at kind of play to earn which
which came before, and is this idea that again, like
you know, people play computer games all the time, people
are always you know, this is a big This is
a big way that a lot of people spend their
leisure time. So why not be able to make you know,

(27:53):
why not be able to make some money off of it?
Why not be able to you know, to extract value
from it for you, for you the user. And you
know we've seen this as what this is. This is
something that's not necessarily unique to web three in a way,
like there are plenty of game you know, Fortnite and
Roadblocks and things like that. Are these sort of games
that you can you know, you can earn by playing

(28:14):
and you earn these in game currencies that they have.
I mean, is it is it Fortnite has has v
bucks or something like that, Roadblocks as a roebucks something.
You know that there are these kind of in game
currencies and you know the idea of sort of acquiring
things as you go through a game is nothing new,
it's just you know, it's just trying to find a

(28:36):
kind of more monetary angle to it. And so play
to Earn has has become sort of a fairly big,
a fairly big niche and is something that a lot
of people think is going to be a kind of
cornerstone of the future of web three. You know, as
more and more of us spend our time online, as
more and more people play video games to unwind. It's like, again,

(28:59):
if there's a way that you can that they can
earn from it, if they can extract value, then that
could incentivize them to also play more. So you can
you can sort of see you can sort of see
it being positioned as a as a win win for
both sides. Yeah, I'm not sure I believe that, you
know that. I don't buy that this whole move to

(29:19):
earn thing. I know. I'm just going back to that
is is for your benefit, you know what I mean.
I don't think that's why these things are created. Don't
get me on. There's a lot of great projects in
crypto which are you know, do have origins of goodwill,
But I don't know if this is one of them
because it's it's okay, it's there's there's an other it's

(29:41):
a good way to get people moving. But I think
it's one more way of of of of us giving
them data, do you know what I mean, Like it
is tracking our movements. There's there's these big scooter and
bike share ride companies which are pumping loads of money
into these um sort of cycle shares and scooter share companies,

(30:06):
and they're not making very much money, not very much
money at all. But there's still people queuing up to
throw money at these projects. And it's not because they
want to get people moving and and make things greener.
It's because they want the data and understanding how we
move and what's going on around there, because that is
what's valuable. And I think, just off my initial thoughts

(30:30):
in this pod that this this move to Anthon is
exactly the same sort of thing. But they don't even
have to buy a mopad or or a bike and
put them into a city only for for someone like
me to throw in a river. They've managed to They've
managed to cut out the whole expensive hardware aspects. There's

(30:52):
an interesting fact that Manchester is the only city in
in the world where they've they've of discontinued this bike
share scheme because of the number of bikes that they
just hooyd into canals. Um. Yeah, and no, you make

(31:12):
a good point there, and well not necessarily about Manchester,
but yeah, it's like this idea. It also ties in
with this kind of whole idea as heart of hardware
as a service and this this you know notion that
the World Economic Forum and people associated with it have that,
you know, in order to keep people consuming that it's

(31:35):
it's not about it's not about people buying things and
owning things, you know, because there aren't there aren't enough
new consumers because of demographic trends and things like that.
There aren't enough new consumers kind of coming online if
you like, to keep buying products. So a lot of
a lot of companies are now kind of looking towards
this idea of subscription services and things like that, where

(31:56):
you where you pay sort of constantly and then you know,
you can just have these things. You know, things just
get updated, but you keep paying, and that kind of
that's a way of kind of locking consumers into a permanent,
you know, cycle of consumption if you like. And yeah,
it's and Again, obviously data, you know, harvesting people's data

(32:19):
and things like that plays plays a big part in it.
So I think you're yeah, I mean, I think you're
right to sort of to to kind of look perhaps
look skeptically on on the whole sort of move to
earn thing, because yeah, I think it's it's a it's
a it's a right, it's a proper question to ask, like,
is this just another way of of tying people to

(32:41):
their phones, of getting people to reveal stuff about themselves
and how they move and where they go and what
they do and you know, what they spend and all
that sort of stuff and find you know, and use
that information to to monetize people more. Yeah, but they
get airbuds. It's not for free. You're going to get

(33:03):
some cheap Chinese earbuds sent to you in four to
six weeks. Yeah, I'm not I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
But at least people are moving at least. Yeah. Well yeah,
and I think that's a good point to sort of
start at as well. So you know, when talking about
move to earn, because well, let's i'll tell you what

(33:23):
we'll we'll kind of we'll look at what move to
Earn is all about. And then we'll look at the
two sort of biggest move to Earn projects in the
space at the moment, and we'll sort of drill down
to drill down into them a little bit and and
and examine them. And then you know, we can we
can see by the end if this is something that
you know, if this is a niche that may have

(33:44):
you know, may have a place in the future, or
whether it's just a or whether it's just a fad. Um. So, okay,
so we've talked about this idea of play to earn.
You know, this this kind of Web three notion of people,
you know, people being rewarded or the time and attention
that they spend you know, playing games or interacting with
apps or whatever it is. Um. And yeah, we all have,

(34:08):
as I said, we all have this technology in our
pocket that can kind of track our movements. So you know,
pretty much, I think most smartphones now they have they
have motion trackers, they have step counters, all these sorts
of things built into them. So basically, what the move
to Earn, what Move to Earn projects are doing is
is taking that technology that already exists. And I guess

(34:28):
if you like kind of gamifying really so adding sort
of incentives and you know, these these other kinds of
you know in incentives and sort of extra bells and
whistles if you like, which which includes crypto and n
f t s in order to you know, in order
to find a way to kind of make people engage with,

(34:50):
you know, with these platforms more and similar to how
you can make a monkey dance if you feed it peanuts. Yes, yeah,
we're the monkeys. And yeah, these apps are feeding us,
feeding us digital peanuts in the peanut peanut shaped n

(35:11):
f T s. Yeah. Yeah, Well, I mean let's let's
let's yeah, it's I'm you are surprisingly skeptical about it, Mikey.
But then and then and then again, you know, I
think that could make for more, you know, sort of
more interesting debate because I mean, let's let's first start off,

(35:32):
like sedentary lifestyles, you know, people's people's lifestyles kind of
sat down. You know, we all spend way too much
time in front of a computer for work, We all
spend way too much time watching TV for leisure or
playing games or whatever it is. You know, sedentary lifestyles
are a big killer, especially in yeah, especially in developed

(35:53):
in developed nations, you know, especially when people have like
a lot of leisure, a lot of leisure time, which
is becoming sort of more and more the norm for
you know, for more and more of humanity. So it
is a big problem and governments have to spend a
lot of money on the consequences of this, because as
we become more sedentary, we become more and more unhealthy.

(36:16):
We develop fatter, lazier, we develop more diseases, you know,
things like this and these disease. This is this kind
of adds up to a net loss really because it's
lost productivity, it's lost resources in terms of in terms
of actual people doing work, all these sorts of things.
So I think there is definitely a there is definitely

(36:38):
a problem to be addressed, which is I think a
good starting point for well, for any kind of you know,
for any sort of endeavor. It's like, that's what if
you're starting a project, if you're starting a company or whatever.
You kind of have to identify your niche, don't you
have to. You have to identify a problem that you
are looking to solve. And I think physical inactivity and

(36:59):
it's consequent senses are definitely a big problem that needs
to be tackled. And I think as well, you know,
there's this notion that humans respond very positively to incentives,
you know, to rewards and incentives. So if you can
you know, so you have this problem. You you have
this idea, right, we need to get people, We need

(37:21):
to get people off the sofa, We need to get
people active. So how do we do that, Well, we
need to incentivize them. And you know, humans can be
quite sort of short term. And obviously the big incentive
really for for moving around and being active and therefore
being healthy is the fact that it will improve your
quality of life. Chances are you'll you'll live longer, you'll

(37:42):
be healthier, you'll be you'll be you know, you'll be
more attracted, etcetera, etcetera. Whereas if you if you just
spend all day long sat on your ass, you know,
doing nothing or looking at a computer or whatever, then
the problems pile up and you become bitter and unhappy,
and you know, you eventually spend all your time trolling

(38:02):
people on Twitter or whatever it is. So yeah, and
but that sort of long term incentive of oh, if
you're active, then you know you'll live a longer, healthier life.
That's it's quite difficult to motivate people like that, that's
too long term. But if you can find a sort
of short term alternas if it's like okay, well if

(38:22):
you if you're a bit more active, then you can
get a reward. And this, I think is what these
these move to ourn apps are looking to do. You know,
it's it's like looking to looking to give people a
sort of palpable reward, a sort of short term reward
for getting up and being active. And I think that

(38:43):
is I think that is a good thing. Leaving aside
for the moment, the idea of you know, any kind
of data harvesting or you know, how they how they
do it, or what they reward you with, I think
you you know, I think you can agree that that's
it is good to incentivize people in that direction. Certainly.
I think I think it's it's the carrot and stick
sort of argument here, and I think this carrot is

(39:06):
not really as much of a carrot as they it
should be. I think it should be a bit of
a mixture of both. So you know, look, if you
don't move, you won't be given this carrot. And that's
all you have to eat, and I think that's what's
going to get results. A bit more of a dictator
sort of sort of vibe to it, you know what

(39:27):
I mean, Like you will starve to death unless you move.
That sounds a bit bit bit slavey, actually, like that
sounds a bit too extreme. Maybe if we dial it
back a little bit. I was going to say, like,
if this is, if this is the start of your
pitch for your move to earn, like move to I've

(39:52):
got some I've got some questions you've got. I have
some concerns. I'm not saying I'm not interested. I just
have a few. There are just a few things that
we need. It's not the first company that's done something
similar to this, Like there is there's life insurance companies,
I think Vitality or something like that that they give

(40:13):
you an Apple watch and they kind of so if
you are doing this, if you're if you're exercising enough,
and what's called it reduces your premium because they go, okay, cool,
this this this idiot is going to live a little
bit longer and probably won't will be paying us a
premium a little bit longer before he eventually gets you know,
you know, cold and dies or whatever. Um, and it's

(40:35):
it's it's it's akin to the car insurance companies that
would fit a device into your car that would monitor
how you're driving and then give you a a monthly
sort of premium that would indicate you know, your you're
driving habits and behaviors and how fast and how long
and how much you're driving. Yeah, or I mean or

(40:58):
just you know there no claims bonus sort of thing.
It's like, if you drive safely and don't crash your car,
we will make your insurance cheaper, or don't claim for
your you know, don't claim for the damage when you
dial it all with all of it. Yeah, you're right,
And I think there are you know, there are certainly,

(41:18):
I mean some companies now are incentivized. I think there are.
I think there are tax breaks that you can that
you can get as an employer if you promote healthy living,
healthy choices amongst your staff. So if you if you
do something like include gym memberships as part of a
as part of an employment package, um, or you you know,

(41:39):
you promote healthy eating at work or something like that.
I think in some in some countries there are kind
of tax breaks that you can get for doing that
because governments are you know, governments are looking to YEA
to save money sort of downstream with with healthcare costs
when all you know, so it's it's there is, yeah,
these incentives. I think you can argue there are people

(41:59):
are already sort of separately incentivized. But I think what's
what I think is quite interesting about the sort of
move to earn thing is that that's kind of you know,
that's kind of taking it more back to back to
the individual again. It's like, Okay, you know, why don't
you know, take control of your don't don't you know,
don't leave it up to your company to incentivize you

(42:21):
and stuff. It's like, you can, you know, incentivize yourself.
Here's here's a step counter. Here are some coins that
you can earn for doing it. Now go off and
now go forth and and exercise and stuff. So I think,
you know, in order to in order to assess whether
this is like a passing fad or whether this is
something that can you know, can actually make a difference,

(42:42):
I think we need to look at the two sort
of big crypto projects in this in this niche. And obviously,
you know, there are there are other As you mentioned,
there are other sort of This doesn't necessarily have to
have anything to do with crypto, but obviously this is something.
This is a new kind of front that's opened up
in it and I think it's worth exploring. So shall

(43:03):
we take a quick break and then look at look
at a couple of these projects. Sounds good. I'm going
to go activate my swork coin account and I'm going
to run around the block for five minutes so I
can earn a few more little coins. Okay, good that
you see. There you are. You're incentivized right here. Welcome

(43:37):
back everyone to part two. My name is still mad
Mike Mooch apparently, and his name is still guy. Okay,
so let's take a look at these two big move
to Earn projects, shall we. Now these are just the
two biggest ones by market cap, and this is a
growing crypto ny stir about. I guess about a dozen

(43:57):
maybe more move to earn crypto project x out there,
but these two are the ones that have, as I say,
the largest market caps, and also I think have received
the kind of the most kind of attention in not
just the crypto media, but the media in general. So
let's start off with the largest one, the most well known, perhaps,

(44:18):
which is a project called Stephen and that is spelled
st yeah st e p n Steppen. And this, now,
this is a this is a bit of a newcomer really.
This was launched back in December one, so less than
a year ago, um, and it has grown pretty quickly

(44:39):
since then. It generated a lot of hype over the
last year or so. UM. Now, a quick bit of
background about Stephen. It's built on Salana, which is as
you'll as you'll probably know, is one of these rival,
if the rivals to Ethereum. It's a Layer one blockchain,
but it's famous for being one of the if not

(45:01):
the fastest cryptocurrency blockchain out there when it actually works,
which it doesn't quite a lot of the time. Is
Salana is sort of notorious for having these outages, which
which we might touch on later. Anyhow, so step and
launched on Salana. It had about sort of five million

(45:22):
dollars in initial funding, and at first you could only
sort of re you know, you download an app and uh,
and you have to have at first, I think you
had to have an activation code. And these activation codes
weren't sort of freely available. I think you had to
go into you either had to find them from the
project's Twitter or through its through its discord. And yeah,

(45:44):
they were. They weren't always the activation codes weren't always
that easy to come across. Now I'm I think this
may have served two purposes. I think one it may
have given the project kind of this air of exclusivity.
You know, it's like, oh, it's not just like you
know you have to be you have to be. You
have to follow it on discord, you have to follow
it on Twitter or whatever like that. You know, you
have to be in the know and not just anyone

(46:05):
can join, which obviously makes more people want to join UM.
And I think perhaps it was also actually perhaps quite
a clever way of making sure that they just onboarded
users in a sort of timely manner, because sometimes sometimes
with these especially with cryptocurrency blockchains that you know, are
still very much in development. And we saw this with

(46:27):
Cardano when it when it looks sort of launched, smart
contracts and DAPs became available for the first time night,
so many people were clamoring to use it that they
that the network just couldn't handle the number of people.
So um, I think maybe this was a sort of
duel way of kind of generating exclusivity but also kind
of managing to one board the it was all able

(46:51):
to work. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now stepan kind of works
like this, and this is this is the very simple
This is the sort of elevation to pitch if you like.
This is a kind of simple way because it gets that.
There are quite a few kind of extra add ons
and stuff which will touch on in a bit, But basically,
you download the app and then you have to in

(47:11):
order to start playing, you have to buy a pair
of n f T sneakers trainers as we call them
in the UK, the pair of NYT sneakers. And once
you once you have these sneakers and you start sort
of walking around, then obviously the location tracking app in
your phone it makes a note of how much you're walking,

(47:34):
and then you're rewarded in one of the apps in
game currencies GST, which stands for Green Satoshi Token. So yeah,
so I mean that's that's kind of fairly straightforward, isn't it.
You buy an n f T, you know, in the
form of these n f T trainers, you start walking around,
you earn crypto. Now, Unfortunately, I think this is I

(47:58):
think this is one of stepping limitations in a way
in that it kind of gets a bit more complicated
from that because there are there are sort of all
these upgrades that you can make to these n f
T sneakers. There are sockets, there are gems. You know,
each pair of each pair of sneakers is slightly different,
so you know, some have different naturally a bit like

(48:19):
and you know, a bit like top trumps or something.
You know, some have when you're when you're choosing a
car in a racing game. Some have got better accelerations,
some have got better turning, some have got better you know,
fuel consumption or whatever. And they're all slightly different and
and and sort of make up you know, make it
a bit more interesting. Yeah, yeah, And I think yeah,

(48:40):
that's a fair point. It does kind of you know,
it does kind of add more elements to the game.
And you know, I refer to it as a game,
because that is very much how Stepan kind of refers
to itself. You know, it's it's a game. It's something
that you play. Um And again it's this this idea
of kind of gamification I think is a big part
of you know, how you get people, how you get

(49:01):
people involved, you know, how you get people sort of
keep interacting with it. It's like it's a game. I
have to accumulate things. I have to I have to
play it, which is obviously more fun than just kind
of using it if you like so, So, yeah, it
does get a bit more involved. But different levels of
trainer I suppose I have to call them sneakers because

(49:21):
that's what they're referred to in the game. Different levels
of sneakers, anyone, don't pander pander to American terminology. Okay,
Different pairs of trainers do different things, Like I think,
you know there are ones if you're just going to
walk at a certain speed, then you know there's a
pair of trainers for that. But if you're a runner,
if you if you're going to look to look to

(49:42):
look to earn these look to earn GST by running,
then you need a different pair of trainers or something
like that. Um And then to complicate matters further, there's
also gm g m T, which is stands for Green
Metaverse Token, and this is the kind of the game's
kind of governance token. If you like so, yeah, as

(50:03):
I say, there are lots of kind of upgrades and stuff.
Different pairs of trainers do different things like and you know,
let's face it, if you're prepared to pay more for
and then, you know, for a higher quality and f
T trainer, then you will be able to earn more
g s T and g m T from you know,
from walking around. And this is this is important, I

(50:26):
think because stepan got very very popular, very quickly, and
the hype around it got really crazy, and as a result,
the what they call the floor price of these n
f T s, you know, which is kind of minimum price,
minimum entry point if you like, the floor price went
absolutely ballistic. Now at one point on the thirtieth of
April this year, the floor Now bear in mind this

(50:48):
is built on Salana, so you have to pay with Soul,
which is obviously the native coin of the Salana blockchain.
Um At one point on the thirtieth of April this year,
the floor price was fourteen point eight nine soul. Okay,
so just shy of fifteen soul to buy to buy
an NFT and bear in mind you have to, yeah,

(51:09):
buy a pair of virtual trainers, and bear in mind
you have to buy the trainers in order to play
the game. That's how it works. So fourteen point eight
nine Soul. Now at that point one Soul was ars,
so in order to buy in order to just get
involved with playing the game, you needed to shell out

(51:30):
just shy of four hundred dollars on the pair of
n f T trainers, which is a pretty high barrier
to entry. You know, it's one thing downloading an app
and getting an activation code, even if that activation code
is quite hard to come by. That's one thing. Buying
an n f T that's another. Buying a far n

(51:54):
f T just to be able to participate in the game.
That is, you know, quite another thing in itself. So
that was, Yeah, that all all the hype, I mean,
you know, obviously it was attracting new users and things
like that. Lots of people were getting on board, but
the popular it kind of became a bit of a
victim of its own success in a way because the

(52:14):
prices just went crazy. Now this was while the crypto
bullmarket was still going on, so you know, there was
still a lot of hype around crypto, which is all
kind of evaporated now. Um. It's also worth pointing out
that that GMT in particular went ballistic around that time too,
so it around the same time it reached its all

(52:36):
time high of four dollars and eleven cents. So you know,
even if you had paid for an n f T
pair of trainers, you know, you could still earn theoretically
a decent amount in GMT by by moving around. Now,
both the floor price of the n f T s
and actually the sticker price of GMT have dropped a

(52:58):
lot since then, so um I actually downloaded the app
earlier to to to you know, when I was doing
research for this, and I was able to buy an
n f T trainers for like just under one SOUL,
and that is SOUL is currently around thirty three dollars
at the moment, so that's obviously a much lower barrier

(53:19):
to entry. It is still I would say, a fairly
high barrier to entry by a lot of people's standards, though,
which is which is again something that I found a little,
you know, a little disconcerting. It's like, okay, just in
order to get started, you've got to, you know, you've
got to download the app, open the wallet by buy

(53:40):
some Soul, buy an n f T, all this sort
of stuff in order to get earning. So remember, guy,
this is all just for your health. There's there's no
other motive for any of this this. We're doing this
for you to make sure you're good. Give us some
wor that is true. That is true. Well, okay, so

(54:04):
it's worth it's worth talking about how it Steppen makes money.
I think it's a large part of Stephen's revenue comes from,
you know, sales of these n f T s, particularly
on the secondary market, so it takes a cut of
of n f T sales. And there is quite a
thriving or certainly when Steppen was really popular, there was
quite a thriving market, you know for these n f

(54:24):
T s. People would buy them, see the price go up,
and you know, flip them, sell them on and all
this sort of stuff. So you know, Stephen was able
to make its money that way, you know, not necessarily
from from harvesting user data or anything like that. And also,
of course Steppen issued g m T and GST, these
two in game tokens. Now as the price that those

(54:45):
went up, obviously you know that they're they're also in profit. Now.
I didn't have I didn't quite have time to look
into the sort of vesting of GMT because obviously, like
you know, early investors into Stepen were would would have
been rewarded in you know, for their investment with GMT,
but that is vested, So that doesn't mean that they
can necessarily sell it straight away. So that is something

(55:08):
to bear in mind. But that is obviously a way
in which the project can make money in the long term.
You know that through through sales of GMT, which has
or GST which have you know, both accumulated in value,
even though they're a long way from from their all
time highs at the moment. So yeah, and I mean
stepping the project, it's still got a lot of traction.

(55:29):
I mean, user numbers are are way way down on
what they were you know when the project was sort
of really hyped up back in kind of April May.
And the crypto bear market is a big part of that.
You know, people just aren't so aren't so on board
with with crypto anymore. UM. But I think you know,
it's clearly had it clearly had something. You know, the

(55:50):
project clearly has something. It attracted a lot of attention, UM,
and it attracted you know a lot of investment as well. UM.
And I mean it is still you know, it is
still very much, you know, very much going on, you know,
very much a going concern. There is a lot of
development happening on step and there are a lot of
kind of you know, milestones ahead for the project. Um.

(56:12):
It's had a few sort of things to deal with
as well. It suffered a di dos attack earlier this year.
It was also forced to block users from from mainland
China were running around too much. Possibly possibly I think,
well it was apparently because of regulation. Chinese regulators weren't
too weren't too happy with it. Um. I mean, personally,

(56:36):
my speculation is I reckon the Chinese government sort of
looked at it and went well, tracking people's movements, that's
that's very much our job. So you know, you guys
were not too happy about this, you know, some some
to the experts. Yeah, exactly where I think, you'll fine.
We're much better at knowing where people were going. We
got this, we got this. Yeah. That's a very very

(56:58):
brief kind of over view of of Stephen, which, as
you know at the time of recording, is still very
much the biggest of the move to earn projects. I
haven't got its market actual market cap to hand yet,
but you know, it's still very much, very much up there.
So the other one, now, the next one is quite

(57:20):
interesting as well. And this is one that you know
you've talked about as well. Now, this is sweat coin,
and this launched more recently. Now that's not that's not
actually entirely true. I had I had an early early
version of this, maybe pre pandemic, I think, where it
was kind of like you you you walk about, uh,

(57:43):
you move around, and will give you some fake money
where you can get some stuff with. And I had
the ingenious idea of of gaffer taping my phone to
my dog and just letting him run. But I have
a small dog in a big phone. It didn't really work,
and I got bored and realized didn't really want anything

(58:04):
that was on there. Peter got involved, there was a
lawsuit the r s p C A. Yeah, yes, good, good,
And the phone's recovered as well, I hope it's yes,
So yeah, you're right. Sweat cooin itself has actually been around.

(58:24):
I think it's been around since so pre pandemic. And yeah,
sweat cooin is is actually a very popular, very successful
health and fitness app. In fact, I think even this year,
it is the most downloaded health and fitness app in
the world, which is which is pretty crazy. Really, It

(58:44):
has around a hundred and twenty million users, yeah, which
is pretty damn good. And obviously, yeah, it's it's it
works in a similar way. It uses it uses step counters,
and you know, it uses the technology already in your
phone to you know, to log how much you move around,
and it's it's had this own sort of pretty popular

(59:07):
app with its kind of own kind of inbuilt marketplace
for for quite a while now, but in just the
last couple of months it has actually launched its own cryptocurrency.
So in just the last kind of in just the
last couple of months or so, it's actually launched its
own cryptocurrency called sweat Economy or you know, sweat short.

(59:28):
But yeah, so it's important to clarify that before before
we talk about the crypto Sweaty. It's like this, this
is something that has existed for a few years already.
So this isn't like a brand new crypto project that's
just you know, brand new moved to earn crypto project.
This is an already established health and fitness app that
has moved now into crypto as well. Yeah. Now, as

(59:51):
I say about a undred and twenty million active users
at the last count, I think thirteen million of those
had activated crypto wallets. Okay, so you know it's um
by no means, by no means you know, a majority
of of sweat coin users have opted to you know,
to go crypto if you like. But it does suggest that,

(01:00:13):
you know, there is there is a kind of potential
user base for for the crypto project itself to expand into.
And another thing that's interesting about sweat is that it's
built on near protocol, which is a big rival to Solana.
The two projects are actually do actually have quite a
lot in common. Um. But yeah, so you can think

(01:00:35):
of sort of Sweat or sweat Economy as it's as
it's sort of more rightly known as kind of the
big rival to Stepan and on a rival blockchain as well.
So yeah, so what's interesting is that it does have
this kind of strong user base that it's built up
quite separate, quite removed from anything to do with crypto.

(01:00:56):
And the Sweat Economy token has launched in I think
it launched in mid September, and it's sort of immediately
kind of shot up to about eight cents or whatever,
but it's now kind of dwindled right down to it's
sort of between one or two cents um. But which
is again kind of hardly surprising because you know, we
are we are in a bear market, after all, how

(01:01:18):
far do you have to go to get one of these?
So I was looking into this, and this is this
is one of the interesting things, and this is something
I want to touch on a little bit in the
after the next break as well, when we talk about like,
you know, how moved to earn is kind of going,
you know, is there a future for it? Because um,
at the moment, you have to walk sort of over

(01:01:39):
a little over a thousand steps in order to mint
one sweat coin thirty in a day. It's a big day,
but that's that's decent. Yeah, Well, I think, as as
I understand it, you're limited. You can earn up to
sort of five sweat coins a day at the moment,
so only your first five thousand or so steps actually

(01:02:02):
count and five is your five is your maximum, which
I guess is you know, is a way of sort
of incentivizing people to do you know, a fair bit
of walking. But you know, you can't go on a
thirty mile run and earn hundreds or whatever it would be,
which I think is perhaps, you know, a little bit
of a shame, but we'll we'll talk about that in
a bit. Um. But yeah, so sweat Yeah, but apparently

(01:02:27):
it's going to become progressively more and more difficult. So
at the moment you can earn one sweat coin with
a little over one thousand steps, it's it's um projected
over the next few years to get more and more
and more, so you know, eventually you're a walkin half life. Yeah,
but yeah, a bit like a bit sort of similar
to a bitcoin harving in a way. Yeah, it's like, yeah,

(01:02:48):
you're gonna have to walk progressively more and more steps
in order to earn one sweat coin. And that's you know,
that is you know it kind of as it gets,
as the asset gets guess it gets harder to earn.
You would think that that would you know, that would
presumably add add some value to it, But again we'll
talk about that in a moment. So so, yes, sweatcoin

(01:03:11):
itself as a non crypto thing, it does have users
in kind of dozens of countries. It does have sort
of one twenty million and you know, plus users. So
in theory, if that gets adopted as a crypto, you know,
that could be that could be a real force for
kind of mass adoption of crypto in the future. And
another thing that I noticed about sweat cooin as well,

(01:03:32):
which I which I thought was interesting, was that it
seems a lot simpler than stepping, Like you know, sweatcoin
does does have a roadmap. Yeah, Like I suppose it's
kind of it's that that that's that's a that's a
good point, so it's easier to get involved with. But
then also it's it's big sort of user base may

(01:03:53):
not already be crypto savvy, so it's kind of it
works in two ways. Like they've got a an audience there,
but as far as their crypto and the coin, it's
it's you know, a lot of the people may not
be interested or or or educated aware enough on how
to so sort of set up a wallet and get

(01:04:16):
get all that. Yeah, and I think, you know, it
means that it's good in a way because if you're
not interested in crypto, you know, if you're just using
it too in its kind of earlier format, you know,
to earn to earn sort of normal sweatcoins if you
like non crypto sweatcoins, which are obviously you know, can't
be used can only be used within the app itself. Um,
then you know you don't have to You can just

(01:04:37):
carry on using sweatcoin as normal. The crypto at the
crypto element of it is completely opt in rather than default.
So yeah, and I think like there are things on
sweat cooins roadmap, you know that they're going to be
doing stuff with n f t s. You can sort
of stake your your sweat tokens as well. There are

(01:04:57):
going to be sort of more and more things, more
and more integrations. But if you want to, you know,
if you want to do it, all you really need
to do is download the app, follow the instructions to
set up a wallet, start walking and that's it. You know,
you don't need to buy an n f T exactly,
and you don't really need to know imaginary trainers exactly exactly.

(01:05:22):
So I think that's you know, I think that's an
important thing to bear in mind, is that there there
there isn't nearly the sort of barrier to entry as
there is with with something like Stepan, and you know,
to be fair to step and I think this is
something that the project itself is very aware of, you know,
but this is something I want to talk about this
in a bit more details, sort of after the break.
So we'll just kind of well, just before we talk

(01:05:42):
about that, we'll just kind of finish up on on sweatcoin. Really,
as I say that, there's a lot kind of there's
a lot in the pipeline for it, and um you
may remember that on the podcast a few weeks ago,
I spoke to Rob Wolfe who runs a channel called
Digital Asset News. Really really cool guy, really, you know,
one of the one of the real good guys in crypto,

(01:06:02):
and he has done he is really he's really keen
on sweat coin. He's a big fan of it, and
he's done quite a lot of material about it. So
you know, anyone listening who is interested in sweat coin,
then Digital Asset News and Rob over there are other
people to you know, to go and find out more
about that. Um So before we take another break, I

(01:06:24):
should also add, as as I said earlier, there are
other kind of move to earn projects out there. We've
just looked at the sort of top two by market
cap there's also things like step app, Geno, Pets, Dot Moves,
um Dose, etcetera, etcetera. And as I said, there are
you know, a dozen or more of these projects, which
suggests that it is you know, it is a kind

(01:06:46):
of it is a growing niche, so you know, another
reason to watch out for it. Anyhow, let's take another
quick break and then we'll look at whether Move to
Earn is just a fad, can it survive? And what
might the future hold? And we're back for part three

(01:07:18):
of Move to Earn. I'm guy, he's mad, Mike mooch again. Yeah,
it's working quite well. What's it like inhabiting inhabiting my persona? Um,
it's um, it's refreshing. There's a lot there's a lot
less uh sort of hate going around my head. I

(01:07:40):
feel slightly more positive about the world. Um yeah, good, good, Yes,
we're back talking. Well, let's let's round, let's round this off.
We've looked at these two projects, and I think the
question that now remains is, well, I think two questions.
Is Moved to Earn just a fad, just another passing fad,

(01:08:01):
or can it be a thing? And can these projects
and others like them survive. Is there is there a
place for them in the crypto ecosystem. So I mean, yeah,
I want to go back to this idea. Like so
many you know, so many times in crypto you see
these crypto projects and you think, you know, the question
is like what what problem does this solve? What utility

(01:08:25):
does this particular projects have? You know, what is it
trying to do? And I think with I think with
Move to Earn, there is, as I said earlier, there
is a problem to solve. It's like people are generally
not as active as they should be on on average,
and there should be a way of incentivizing them to
get off their asses and and exercise because it's good

(01:08:48):
for them and it's good for society as a whole really,
and I think that I think that that's one of
the that's one of the reasons that I like Move
to Earn. I don't think it's necessarily just a fad
in that respect. I think there is you know, there
is a genuine incentive there, and if it works, it's

(01:09:08):
it's a good thing. It can be you know, everyone
can win um. And it also I think has the
advantage of it's it's kind of filly it's it's kind
of fit quite nicely into this niche as I say
that the tech is already there, you know, and and
the fact that sweat coin itself has existed for a
long time before kind of moving into crypto. You know,

(01:09:30):
this tech is already there. We're already carrying around these
devices that can track where we go and track how
many steps were taking. And obviously this whole ten thousand
steps thing has been you know, everyone's kind of known
about that for a long time now. So it's certainly
it's you know, there's certainly a kind of ease of adoption. Really,
the tech is already there, so you know, throw into

(01:09:52):
n f t S a couple of tokens and a
nice shiny app and and you're good to go in
in a way which is perhaps a little a little
bit of a cynical way of looking at it, um
but I think perhaps in terms of you know, and
feel free to disagree obviously with me on on any
of this, Mikey, but I think perhaps the big threat
that the problem that these apps face is one that

(01:10:16):
you know, lots of lots of kind of play to
earn and and other crypto projects themselves face and that
is that the only way that they're going to grow,
that the only way that they're going to keep you know,
being a thing, is to is to attract new users.
And there is that kind of you know, there is
I hesitate to use the word, but there is that
kind of Ponzi scheme element to it, because you know,

(01:10:38):
in order to in order to keep the users that
they have engaged and in order to keep being able
to reward them for the activity that they're doing, they
need to attract new users into you know, into the ecosystem,
new users using the app, buying n f T trainers,
or minting and spending sweat coins and all this sort

(01:11:00):
of stuff. So, you know, there is that there is
that difficulty and as we've seen with Stephen, you know,
Stephen is struggling with users now in the bear market.
It remains to be seen how successful sweat coin is
going to be. Obviously, thirteen million wallets is a start.
Is that going to you know, is that going to
translate into into more wallets over time? Are more people

(01:11:23):
going to be incentivized to, you know, to to to
use the crypto element of sweat coin or are they
just going to be happy using using the app in
its kind of original form that remains to be seen. Um,
and yeah, if if new users don't come on board,
then these projects and ones like them are are really
going to struggle. Yeah, and we saw that, sorry going

(01:11:49):
now you're going, okay, Well, we we saw that with them.
A popular play to earn project, play to earn rather
than move to earn a project called actal Infinity. Do
you remember have I we've talked about in the Philippines, Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Now this was, Yeah, this was a sort of game

(01:12:10):
where axes are basically these sort of blob type monsters
that you breed and they you know, you breed them
and they fight each other and you earn you know,
the in game currency of the game. And it's kind
of similar to stepan. You know, you had to buy
these axes as n f T s And it became
really really popular and people were earning s LP, which

(01:12:31):
was the native sort of token of the game. There
was also a excess, which is the kind of games
governance token as well. And yeah, at one point quite
a few people in the Philippines of all places, were
actually earning you know, quite a nice quite a nice
bit of money from They were actually earning a living
from playing ACXI Infinity, and that's because more users. The

(01:12:55):
game was generating a lot of hype. More users were
coming in, you know, so they were buying n f
T s. They were pushing up the prices of the tokens,
and therefore people who had been using the app for
a while we're able to benefit. But it had kind
of similar problems that Stephen has experienced in that as
the n f T has got more expensive, the barriers

(01:13:16):
to entry got higher and higher, and that is obviously
something that puts off new users. And then you know
you have a problem because if you're not again, if
you're not able to attract new users to the to
the game, to the platform, then it's it's going to
it's going to struggle to grow and and survive. So

(01:13:37):
how do you I mean, look, we're not sure of
fat people. That's that's the one thing they've got going
for it. There's a lot of us fatties about um.
I don't know if that's good or bad because are
we really going to be incentivized for five sweat coins
a day? Which leads me back to I think instead
of carrot, we should have stick, and if the government

(01:13:57):
really care at us, it should be a bit more
of a an ominous threat as opposed to a sort
of pathetic you know, you know, carrot are you can
get some earbuds, you can get some mere buds, or
how about you can see your kids this week? Yeah,
if you don't walk, you're not going to see a kid.

(01:14:19):
That's maybe that's not a benefit. Some people probably wouldn't
want to see their kids, but some people, yeah, some
people do. So you're what you're saying is that move
to earn needs to go a lot more black mirror. Yeah,
move to survive it needs to go more Hunger Games. Yeah, okay, okay,

(01:14:40):
kind of yeah that then that's something i'd and i'd
watch that. You can you can you know, that's content.
It's kind of like a wipeout but instead of like
water lava. Okay, okay, I I mean so you're saying
that move to earn is moved to earn is is dead.

(01:15:00):
Basically it should be moved to survive. Yeah, that's what
we want, kind of like Gladiate next, but with actual gladiators.
The next big crypto niche won't be moved to earn
it will be fight to survive. Well, you who knows

(01:15:23):
the way the world is going, Mikey with you know,
with people like you, I wouldn't rule it out. I
really wouldn't. Um. Yeah, I think moved to earn the
I mean, you're right in a way, like, how do
you is it going to be enough of an incentive?
You know that people can earn a few you know,
people can earn a few sweat cooins or a few

(01:15:45):
g MT or whatever it is, just for for moving
around a little bit. And I think this is you know,
this is a this is a good question to be
asking because when Stephen was you know, when all the
hype around Steppen was kind of at its peak, were
people making between kind of you know, twenty and fifty
dollars a day from from using the app. And now

(01:16:08):
that isn't that isn't life changing amounts of money? Well,
certainly not in the developed world, but you know, it's
it's certainly like it's a decent side hustle, isn't it.
If you can earn if you're moving anyway, it's not
that big a deal. Yeah, yeah, if you're this is
the best bloody app in the world. Yeah, suddenly, you know,

(01:16:31):
if you if you were yeah, if you work on
your on your feet for a living, if you're if
you work in an Amazon warehouse or something, if you're
a doctor, you're getting bubble bubble, You're getting paid toward
the dogs and yourself and yourself. Yeah. But again, I
think this is I think this is something that you know,
people need to be when when kind of when looking
at move to earn, I think people need to be

(01:16:53):
kind of realistic about this thing. It's because if a
few early adopters can get in and make an absolute
you know, make tons of money, make fifty dollars a
day or a hundred dollars a day or whatever it is,
that's that to me isn't sustainable, and that to me,
you know, that necessarily kind of pushes up the barriers
to entry in a lot of cases, and it doesn't

(01:17:15):
incentivize new users at all, um because you know there
will be that sense it's like, oh, well, if I've
only got in six months ago, i could be making
some decent money, but as it is, I'm kind of
late to the party, so I'm only going to earn
maybe you know, a few pennies or a few cents
a day. But I think, like, you know, I think
if moved to earn is kind of realistic about itself.

(01:17:36):
I think that can still be a good thing. You know,
it's not about it's not about having a side hustle
all of a sudden. I don't think it's about giving
people that little extra nudge to, you know, to walk
instead of taking the bus two you know, to maybe
just be like yeah, and it could be just that
small incentive. It's just like, oh wow, you know, if

(01:17:58):
I did an extra two hundred steps before I went
to bed, then I could just tick over and just
earn like one more sweat coin or something like that.
And I think those those little incentives can be you know,
can be just enough to sort of tip people to
take that little extra bit of exercise. And obviously these

(01:18:18):
things are accumulative. So you know, if you are take
if you are doing those few extra steps a week,
that doesn't add up to anything over you know, over
a couple of days, but over a couple of years
for example, you know, that does translate into into more exercise.
And you know, if you take that into your daily life,
if you're and it makes you think about it, doesn't it.

(01:18:39):
It's like, oh, you know, I should you know, I
need I need to remember to be up and about
or wow, i've been sat down for four hours. I
mean I found this yesterday. You know. I was like, wow,
I've been sat at my desk for four hours sort
of working on various things. It's like I should get
you know. And I looked at I've got one of
the you know, I've got both of these step counters
now on my phone. And I looked and I'd like

(01:19:02):
done five hundred steps in the whole day, and I
was like, wow, that's you know, that's pretty pathetic. I'm
not gonna I'm not going to earn any sweat coins.
I'm not going to earn anything from that. So you know,
I got up and had a bit of a had
a bit of a walk around, which you know, did
me at least some good. So I think, yeah, I
think move to earn. If it's going to be successful,

(01:19:24):
it can't be you know, it can't sort of position
itself as something like, oh you're going to have a
nice little second stream of income. You know, you're going
to have a nice side hustle. It's it needs to
be about small nudges. It needs to be about really
kind of not so much incentivizing people with coins, you know,
but incentivizing people to sort of make those small changes

(01:19:44):
themselves and and then find later on actually it's not
about earning x amount of sweat coins or whatever. It's
actually about you know, you're shifting, you're you're you're right
with that. Like I read a book Stomic Habits, which
is a phenomenal book and everyone should read it, and
it was it talks about, you know, just small improvements,

(01:20:08):
and one percent improvement over a year is dramatic, you know,
the compound effect of just small incremental improvements. And those
are the small incremental improvements you can make in life,
you know. It's it is, as you say, walking to work,
it is skipping that sort of chocolate bar and having

(01:20:28):
an apple or a banana or whatever, those small sort
of little things. You know, not having an extra five
dred calories a day because you've exerted it through exercise
or or eating slightly healthier will make a dramatic impact
over three sixty five days, and small improvements really do.

(01:20:48):
But it's the commitment to that. And I suppose this
is that that small incentive to keep you committed. Um,
you know, and and give these big corporations all the
data of where you are at every single second day. Well, yeah,
I mean I should, I think as far as as
far as data is concerned. When I was when I
was reading up on on both these projects, you know,

(01:21:10):
it's not it's not about it's not about selling user
data because I think you know, we're right to question
that sort of thing, right to go, well what are
you okay? You know how much we're walking? Do you
know where we're going? And what are you doing with
that information? Um? That? Yeah? I mean sweat coin as well.
You know, I think they they make their money largely

(01:21:31):
from advertising because you know they you know, they have
this platform and they build this community around it, you know,
these people who are using the platform, and that that
obviously gives you a place that you can sell advertising space.
You have a community. Therefore, you have eyeballs and you
have and obviously you have it. And it wouldn't if
you were in a certain position or a certain place

(01:21:53):
and they could put a certain advertiser in front of
you because you're in that location, that would be good.
That sounds like Mark Zuckerberg's kind of dream. I'm that's
that's a bit blade runner. If you asked me, Mike,
it's like, oh hi there, Mike, see your see you're

(01:22:13):
just taking a walk past McDonald's. I don't suppose you
fancy a big mac. Yeah, yeah you can, but you
can get five sweat coins will get you an extra
portion of chips. Yeah, ultimately pointless. Yeah, there's there's, there's there's.
There's two sides of every sweat cone. I suppose, you know,

(01:22:33):
I think one of the sides is, you know, it's
going to help people get a little bit of additional motivation.
But I do also think that there is an ulterior
motive to to a lot of this, and I think,
you know, understanding patterns and and movement data is something

(01:22:55):
that is um really valuable. I touched on it on
an earlier segment that we may or may not cut out.
But you know, the share share bikes and the share
scooters that are out there, there's big money being thrown
at them, and there's not very much profit from these
uh sort of companies because it costs a lot of

(01:23:18):
money to put these um bikes out there, and they
get damaged and they get they're not treated well and
you need servicing and you need to collect them and
put them all. But there's there's people queuing up to
invest in this, so there is there is value from
something else apart from offering that service, and and people

(01:23:38):
know about it. I don't know exactly what it is.
It's probably something to do with the data, but I
feel that there's an element of that to this as well.
And don't get me wrong, there may be some benefits
you know of cool wicked incentivized as a portion of
people to to get up and moving and make small
incremental changes in their life. For for some some earbuds
or you know, Friendship, bracelettle whatever the hell they give

(01:24:01):
away some some crypto coins. But I think people should
tread with caution, sept with caution for one of a
more puney phrase, because I think I think it's I'm
skeptical these days. Maybe it's because I'm old, it's you're, well, yeah,

(01:24:24):
there's just so much to be There's so much to
be cynical about, isn't there. And I think you're you know,
you're right to question, You're right to question things like this.
It's because I mean, obviously these projects. They're not doing
it for free, are they. They're not doing it out
of the goodness of their heart. So there there obviously
is you know, there is, and there is a business

(01:24:44):
model in it for them. There is an incentive in
it for them. Um, I don't think it. I don't
think in these cases, certainly the ones that we've talked about,
it's it's so much about data. But I think it's
it's certainly something that is certainly something that we you know,
that we need to be aware of, and it's it's
all so important. Going back to what we were talking
about earlier, just kind of Web three in general. You know,
the big problem with web Web two was that it

(01:25:08):
got you know, it became about these big corporations that
that that use data that monetized us, and if we're
not careful, then Web three could quite easily become about
that as well. And then it's like, well, what was
the point in the whole endeavor, because Okay, we've got
some new apps, we've got some new things, you know,

(01:25:31):
things working. There are slightly different toys to play with.
But if they just end up with the same result,
if they just end up in in vast profits, going
to big corporations that you know, a sort of morally
dubious in a lot of cases, Then then what's what
was the point in the first place. So I think
you're right too, You're right to question. I also don't

(01:25:52):
have a problem with it to a certain degree, you
know what I mean. Like, I was watching a YouTube
channel video about a skincare company called Ordinary and they
basically have taken They've they've really caused a big disruption
in the skincare market, which is, you know, traditionally held

(01:26:14):
by you know, these big big companies, you know, protat, Gamble,
all this sort of stuff, with all their lotions and potions,
and they've come in with a with a radical news
of marketing sort of ploy for this product, which is, hey,
look there's nothing is innovative here. We're all selling you

(01:26:35):
exactly the same stuff, and we're just going to be
very clear and transparent and scientific with what it is.
This whatever acid, uh whatever chemical is what is used
to make your skin feel and appear more plump. That's
what it is, and that's what they say on the bottle,
and that's what we're selling you instead of you know,

(01:26:55):
this latest like all this science mumbo jumbo and and
oxy doughs and whatever to sort of tricking into thinking
exactly all of these whatever extra plus volume whatever whatever
they market on the bottle. It's kind of like, no,
there's there's no rocket science for this. We know what
what these chemicals do. It's not it's not witchcraft. It's

(01:27:19):
just we know what it is. And everyone is selling
you exactly the same thing. But we're just the ones
who are going to say this is what it is.
It's ordinary. We're scientific call. And maybe that's what a
data company should should should should come in and say, hey,
look cool, we want to learn more about how humans
work and how they interact so that we can be
a bit more efficient. Maybe we can plan things better.

(01:27:41):
Maybe we can um you know, use that data to
benefit us and be more efficient. It's sort of like
how when TfL introduced the Oyster card, they would new, okay, cool,
Well these are the routes that are getting used more,
so we need to invest more in these routes so
that people are are comfortable on their travel and stuff
like that. And maybe that's what data needs to do

(01:28:04):
and be a bit more transparent and obvious and and
clear with what they're using that data for. And people
may be like, okay, cool, fine, because I don't think
anyone has a problem if they're looking for a certain product, Okay, cool,
I need to buy some camping gear. I want adverts
for good camping gear coming towards me. I don't want

(01:28:26):
adverts for you know, um, I don't know, fucking skincare stuff,
makeup and stuff like that. It's it's it's it's irrelevant
to me. So it's on that level people are are
okay with it. It's when the data is being used
for you know, more sort of dodgy stuff, you know,

(01:28:47):
like with governments and and maybe big corps and stuff
like suppressing sort of stuff like. That's that's when people
are a bit concerned about their data. But if it's okay, cool,
Look we're gonna we're gonna make the pavement wider here,
or we're going to make the street lighting better here
or whatever, that's great, let's do that, wonderful take my data,

(01:29:08):
have it all. Well. Yeah, and I guess you know, again,
what something I was talking about earlier on wasn't that
It was this idea. You know, one kind of web
three idea is that that people people should be able to,
you know, monetize their own data. So it's like, perhaps
if you can choose who to whom you to whom
you sell that data. It's like, hey, Transport for London

(01:29:31):
would like to would like to buy your travel data
for a year so it can do this, this and this,
and you can go, Okay, that sounds like a fair deal.
Whereas you know, baby killing Evil Corp Limited would would
like your data in order to develop a more efficient
baby fresh babies. Yeah, then you can go, do you

(01:29:56):
know what i'd I'd rather not know? Not a year,
not yeah, six months? Maybe? Yeah, I'm not a monster anyhow,
we are baby killing when maybe we should. Maybe that's
a good, good place to leave it. Maybe maybe it's

(01:30:16):
it's certainly one of the cheery episodes that we've ended
on recently. So yeah, it was good, man, it was
it's good cutching up. Man. It's been a while, it
has been, it has been, isn't it. Yeah, it's been
a long time, but now it was fun. It was
a nice sort of rambling discussion. Um, we sort of
reached reached a conclusion in a way about baby killing machines,

(01:30:40):
and I feel we've I feel we've both both learned something.
Thank you so much for listening to the coin Bureau podcast.
If you'd like to learn more about cryptocurrency, you can
visit our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com forward slash
coin Bureau. You can also go to coin bureau dot
com for loads more information about all things crypto. You
can follow me on Twitter at coin berea or one word,

(01:31:01):
and I'm also active on TikTok and Instagram as well.
First of all, it's not thank you for listening, You're
welcome for great content. Yeah, like this is free and
they're learning about a fairly great topic in a non
boring way. If you'd like to visit me and hear
more about me, go to mooch about m O O

(01:31:22):
C h A, b O U T or else. For
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever we get your podcasts.

(01:31:50):
The coin Berea podcast is a production of I Heart
Radio

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