In episode #49 host Brett Stanley chats with underwater cinematographer and co-founder of The Oceaverse, Ian Takahashi.

NFT’s have become a big industry over the last couple of years and they can be confusing for those that haven’t spent time looking in to them – so we chatted with Ian about what they are and how creatives can use them not only as a source of income, but also a way of raising money to go towards ocean conservation projects – which is where the Oceaverse comes in.

As a platform for promoting and selling NFTs, the Oceaverse not only showcases some of the best underwater creative artists, but they are reinvesting portions of the profits back in to conservation.

We talk about how Oceavers is doing that, ways that crypt currency can actually help the environment, and the future of crypto mining.

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Discuss the episode in our facebook group.

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About The Oceaverse

Ocean Conservation with Smart Contracts

Collective guardianship of reef and marine habitats threatened by neglect, pollution, and destructive marine activities. Oceaverse is an innovation in blue climate finance, perpetually funding the actual coastal shepherd communities who do the real work of conservation, all around the world.

Meet the Artists

Oceaverse is launching with the first collections of collectible digital assets, the specially curated works from 27 world-famous underwater artists, photographers, cinematographers. 

As Oceaverse scales out, these will be joined by musicians, athletes, scientists, advocates, community leaders, content creators, for a total of 99 team leaders.

VISIT THE GALLERY

Oceaverse is a new kind of conservation platform

Three passionate communities brought together at the intersection of oceans, artistry, and smart contracts.

Harnessing NFTs to birth a disruption in how we protect the planet’s aquatic treasures by empowering grassroots communities.

A smart contract NFT platform to empower a world of grassroots communities, content, and climate action.

Reef Conservation

Conservation-first structure baked into blockchain, empowering the coastal communities who actually shepherd Earth’s greatest reefs.

Underwater Stories NFT Platform

Curated NFT artistry from some of the worlds’ most prolific underwater storytellers, athletes, and advocates for ocean health.

Smart Token Contracts

Collective ownership and visibility of the project in the form of Oceaverse’s

• Non-fungible tokens
• Governance tokens

Coming Next…

A platform for organizations to curate you own collections, and use the Oceaverse contract to automatically fund and track the missions of your choice.

• Mission-first
• Accountability-driven
• Wider audience

Ultimately

An immersive ocean metaverse to bring the majesty of the ocean, wonders of the reef, and the communities who nurture it all together for a decentralized, sustainable ecosystem of conservation-led experience.

The Oceaverse BluePaper

This Web-based BluePaper provides the overarching framework for Oceaverse. It is a continually evolving roadmap, weaving in contributors from the entire community.

Rev 2 March 2022

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Podcast Transcript

49 – NFTs & The Oceaverse with Ian Takahashi 
 [00:00:00] Brett Stanley: Welcome back to the underwater podcast. And this week we’re talking non fungible tokens or NFTs with underwater cinematographer and co-founder of the OSHA verse a and Takahashi. And if T’s have become a big industry over the last couple of years, and they can be confusing for those that haven’t spent time looking into them. So I chat with Ian about what they are and how creatives can use them, not only as a source of income, but also a way of raising money to go towards ocean conservation projects, which is where the OSHA verse comes in. As a platform for promoting and selling NFTs, the OSHA verse, not only showcases some of the best underwater creative artists, but they’re, re-investing portions of the profits back into conservation. 
 We talk about how OSHA versus doing that ways that cryptocurrency can actually help the environment and how crypto mining could be the new meth house. All right. Let’s dive in. And welcome back to the underwater 
 podcast. 
 [00:01:28] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. Thank you, Brad. Thanks for having me back. 
 [00:01:31] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 of course. It’s know, you’re, you’re such a, well-known, underwater cinematographer. but you’re getting into more of the crazy cyber world, which 
 is kind of NFTs and stuff. Right. 
 [00:01:42] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. Yeah. 
 [00:01:43] Brett Stanley: So, what I would love to do is kind of pick your brain and maybe if we can kind of do like a bit of a, a primer for people, so they can kind of get their heads around what NFTs are and 
 [00:01:54] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:01:55] Brett Stanley: kind of how they can kind of use this to maybe make 
 themselves some, extra money. 
 [00:02:01] Ian Takahashi: Yeah, that sounds 
 good. That sounds good. I mean, it’s such a new idea and platform and everything. I think that there is a lot of potential for creators to get involved and started making things kind of on their own. 
 [00:02:14] Brett Stanley: Yeah, I mean, so how did you get into it? How did you 
 get kind of caught up in the NFT world? 
 [00:02:19] Ian Takahashi: I, you know, I, obviously I saw, you know, posts about it and this and that, and going around the internet and Twitter and Instagram, but really I met. my good friend now, but one of our co-founders of a project called, uh, uh, his name is Sylvester and then another one of the guys co-founders Steven Sao. 
 Um, I met them and we were talking about, um, like the things that we love, like scuba diving. And we were all in the Philippines at the time. So, you know, we were having, you know, we love being at the beaches and the water is perfect, but you know, the problem there is that when the tide changes, you know, like sometimes. 
 Garbage just comes in off of the ocean. And so you have these like perfect pristine beaches and then suddenly it’s like just microplastic and bottles. And, you know, so we started thinking, you know, w we are, we already have our own careers and our own different fields. You know, like Steven, you know, runs a venture capital firm and Sylvester, you know, is vice president at AECOM. 
 Like he literally builds entire cities for a living. Um, but we were thinking like, well, what, what can we do? We have all these different experiences. Well, can we do to help, solve this? And, you know, there’s so many great, conservation groups out there that are doing all of the work. And we’re like, well, why I started wanting to compete with that? 
 Like, you know, and so this whole idea of OSHA has kind of grew from there. And then we kind of fell into like, well, we know a lot of amazing. Um, and you know, NFTs are, you know, it kind of started off with like the pictures of like crazy looking monkeys, um, and like the little eight bit crypto punks. And, 
 [00:03:50] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:03:51] Ian Takahashi: kind of where it started and then, but we can see like a roadmap for it. 
 Moving more into like actual arts. Yeah. Um, beautiful actually like selling like beautiful images and you know, what it could grow into. And so as we started building and kind of getting into that world, then we started seeing that we were on the right track, you know, like Christie’s started doing some auctions of NFTs and like, like bigger artists, like Banksy and some other guys were getting into. 
 I’m doing a lot more of like the artwork and do different things you could do with it. So that’s where we kind of started. Honestly, it started with like a Google search, like what is 
 an NFT? And so then we, we, we saw like, there is no, you know, there’s this a definition of, you know, non fungible token. 
 You’re like, okay, great. Well, what is that? And then we’re like, well, it could really be anything you want it to be like, we’re writing. We wrote our own smart contract. And, you know, we picked the protocol that would be on and we will, we’re doing everything. We’re like, well, we can make this, you know, whatever we want it. 
 So, you know, in our case, you know, we, we decided that we wanted to, you know, give a platform for artists, you know, to showcase and to kind of sell their artwork. Um, but then, you know, for OSHA versus just focusing the company and the platforms goals, You know, back over towards like ocean conservation building, essentially an endowment fund for, you know, these other groups who are on the ground doing the work. 
 Um, but that’s how we got into it, you know? Cause we started off with, well, what if we, you know, raised money and bought a reef and then we did this. So like, well, what if we. And we went through all these different iterations of like what we could do to actually help like the oceans and this and that. And, you know, building like an NFT platform just as the first phase, you know, is where we kind of landed. 
 [00:05:42] Brett Stanley: Yeah. your kind of focus is ocean conservation with this kind of platform of OSHA 
 [00:05:47] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:05:48] Brett Stanley: and we’ll get into that a little bit later on, but it is kind of a platform to raise money, to be able to 
 do other projects with it, right? 
 [00:05:56] Ian Takahashi: Yeah for us. It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. but we also, you know, talking to different artists from around the world, you know, one of the main concerns that they had about NFTs was the energy usage. You know, it has been so highly publicized, like Bitcoin uses the same amount of power. Denmark. I made that up. I don’t actually know which country, but it was one of the, or maybe it was Norway. 
 Um, you know, and in theory and uses X amount of energy. And, you know, so we looked into that, like the number of transactions, the power usage, et cetera, you know, using EPA guidelines, you know, we’ve found that I think it was in 2020, you know, a single Ethereum transaction had the energy equivalent of, um, burning 114 pounds of. 
 [00:06:41] Brett Stanley: Right. 
 [00:06:42] Ian Takahashi: if you had a coal plant, it would take 114 pounds, you know, burn to create the energy to power one at 3:00 AM transaction, you know, and mainly because if aerium, you know, uses like a proof of work, work kind of protocol to verify the transaction. Um, and so that’s a lot of computing power, which means a lot of energy. 
 Whereas, you know, we started waiting for them to switch over to proof of stake. Which is much less energy intensive. Um, but that hadn’t really happened. So we decided to go because we live listened to the artists, we decided to build on polygon, uh, which is proof of stake. You know? So one transaction for us is now, uh, the energy equivalent of less than one Google search, 
 you know, so there’s a gigantic difference, but it was a, it was kind of an idea of building something for. 
 Um, that they could feel good about actually using, um, because that was one of the main concerns and people said, no, I don’t want to be a part of it because, you know, I don’t want to burn coal with one hand and then quote, save the oceans with the other, you know? So it was like, how do we address these things, you know, 
 for the artists? 
 [00:07:50] Brett Stanley: Yeah. So I think, I think a good thing to do, especially for anyone listening, who doesn’t really understand most of what you just said, um, is is taking it back a step. so, 
 [00:08:03] Ian Takahashi: Yeah, 
 [00:08:03] Brett Stanley: if T’s have kind of come out of the cryptocurrency world, right, like, 
 [00:08:07] Ian Takahashi: right, 
 [00:08:07] Brett Stanley: Um, 
 [00:08:08] Ian Takahashi: right, 
 [00:08:08] Brett Stanley: on that sort of what’s called a blockchain, which 
 [00:08:11] Ian Takahashi: right. 
 [00:08:12] Brett Stanley: a 
 digital ledger of, transactions, right? 
 Like it’s 
 [00:08:15] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:08:16] Brett Stanley: a record of 
 who sold what or who’s 
 [00:08:19] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. So, I mean, I’ll dumb, dumb, dumb it down, simplify it down. And we will lose a lot of the nuance, I guess. But think of it like a thing, think of it like, like a giant, like Excel spreadsheet that just has transactions, you know, like this person sent this to this and then over and over and over and over and over and over again. 
 Um, 
 but the thing of, 
 [00:08:44] Brett Stanley: right? Like people 
 [00:08:44] Ian Takahashi: oh yeah, it’s. 
 [00:08:45] Brett Stanley: this. 
 [00:08:46] Ian Takahashi: It’s transparent. Um, you can see it, you can see the transactions. Um, you know, there are some of the cryptocurrency protocols that try to make it less transparent for privacy, but just for now, we’ll just say, I think of it like a big like spreadsheet, which has list transactions. 
 [00:09:04] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:09:04] Ian Takahashi: but like if my, my Xcel, I can go in and I can change the data later on. But with, you know, this, uh, say like the blockchain, you have multiple computers. Um, basically verifying the transactions and kind of locking it, you know? So once you say, you know, like Ian sent one Bitcoin to Brett, you know, then like a bunch of computers would say, yes, he did boom, boom, boom, boom, like verified and kind of like literally called like immutable, like unchangeable. 
 Like that’s the truth is that I sent you one Bitcoin. 
 Right. And so then it kind of does that over and over and over again, um, to just verify these transactions, you know, and that takes, that essentially takes a lot of. Computing power to do that, you know, millions and millions and millions and millions of times. 
 Um, but you know what I think people don’t really talk about is like the tradition. And banking sector that is doing some of those same things. Um, you know, but across the banks and with computers and everything else. So you’re not talking about like a gigantic difference. It’s just, you’re kind of taking the banks out of the, Out of the. 
 You know, so the way that the NFT fits in is that it’s stands for non fungible tokens. So like even none of the tokens, you know, it can be exchanged exactly for each other. You know, it’s like if I have two apples, you can switch the two apples and it’s generally fine. But if I have like an apple and you know, a carton of milk, you know, those two don’t really exchange perfectly. 
 so you have these tokens and all those tokens can sit on these blocks. So that people can see them and how they’re, you know, exchanged back and forth between people and those tokens will then point to say, ownership of something else. Like. Yeah, you have one of the, um, like the crypto punk pictures, you know, one of these tokens will point to that and say, this token, you know, represents ownership of that image. 
 [00:10:59] Brett Stanley: Right. 
 [00:10:59] Ian Takahashi: So then that image sits on a server like the IPFS server, and that really doesn’t move. But this token say this token representing ownership will move between people. 
 [00:11:11] Brett Stanley: And I think, I think something that I read, which kind of made a lot more, a lot of sense to me was, was kind of thinking about NFTs as 
 kind of like trading cards. Like it, it’s a, one of a kind trading card and, it is recorded in this ledger as a token. So it has basically, uh, a number associated with it. 
 And then you that number, it gives what you trade and, and use to authenticate your original. One of a 
 kind trading card. 
 [00:11:39] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. And it’s a great way to think about it, especially at the beginning. I don’t remember. The NBA came out with, like little clips of moments, you know, like LeBron, like super drunk. And then those would be traded back and forth. Um, and they really were like the, you know, the, like the 20, 22 version of trading cards or 2021 or whatever it came out, but like the updated version of trading cards, because they were actually like, instead of seeing a photo of, you know, Michael Jordan and mid-air like, you actually owned that little. 
 You know of him doing that special move or whatever. Um, and that, and that is a great way to think about it. and as we’re moving forward, like real estate has moved to actually being able to, in certain cases, buy and sell property, but using an NFT because it becomes, you know, it’s a token that points to ownership and they’ve written the contract out for actual ownership of say house or an apartment. 
 And this way, it’s, you know, you don’t have to go through all the different layers that it takes to buy real estate, you know, traditionally. and really it’s just, it’s there and you pay the money and you get the token, and now you have ownership of that piece of property. You know, I think that over, over time, you know, you’re going to start to see a lot more of these kind of like NFTs working in the. 
 and just cause they’re not there yet, but there are whole, or there’s like thousands of people working on kind of like real, like use cases for an FTS and like, you know, 
 selling all kinds of stuff. 
 [00:13:07] Brett Stanley: So in that, in that example of buying a house and then having the NFT kind of represent that house, 
 [00:13:13] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:13:13] Brett Stanley: and you were talking about the contract, are you talking about when you are physically, we buy that, buy that house in the contract or in the, like the deed, I guess, of that house is 
 [00:13:24] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:13:24] Brett Stanley: the, uh, the NFL. 
 [00:13:26] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:13:26] Brett Stanley: Um, token number. So then it is kind of a legal kind of 
 ownership. 
 [00:13:32] Ian Takahashi: Yeah, I am not 
 super versed in like exactly what those contracts would say, but, you know, when you buy a house, so you have a contract that you’ve signed between the buyer and the seller, um, and you know, that’s part of that gets sent to the state so they can legally change it or whatever, you know, so whatever that contract is that legally needs to be stated to transfer the real estate, you know, can be written into. 
 That contract for that token. So it can say, you know, like, you know, all the, you know, all the legal jargon for transferring real estate back and forth can be written into these contracts because they are just kind of like open where you can write in all kinds of different things into the contracts, 
 [00:14:13] Brett Stanley: And so when you talk about contracts, cause there’s contracts, real-world kind of contracts, you know, like a contract between me and my employer or whatever. Um, but there’s also contracts online in terms of NFTs, right? Like there’s a, a, an NFT 
 has a contract that goes along with it. 
 [00:14:29] Ian Takahashi: Yeah, correct. you know, we’re kind of, they’re calling them like smart contracts, you know, because you can program them to do different things. Um, and automatic. Um, so we’ll use an example, say for OSHA verse, you know, we, we say, you know, 40 to 60% of our revenue goes into, you know, building this like annuity fund for conservation. 
 So we’ve built into our contracts. Um, Automatic split, you know, so when, you know, when funding comes in through whichever channel, the moment it hits like that smart contract immediately splits it into two different parts. Immediately sending that percentage that we claim to a different wallet that holds all those funds. 
 And then the rest of it goes to our like operations. You know, so you can, and that’s part like that smart contract where there’s no one sitting there saying, okay, well this is that calculation. And send it here, send it there. And have room for fun and you know, the funny stuff of, oh yeah, sure. Yeah. We totally funded that account. 
 You know, it’s, it’s automatic, it’s there in the contract. So, you know, like if you send us, you know, one in theory, you know, a hundred polygon, you know, that say 40% is going to the conservation wallet and the 60 present is going over to operations or whatever, you know, that percentages that we put into the contract and those can get as complicated and detailed. 
 You want and are willing to spend for your development team to actually code it? Um, yeah, cause it’s all in code, you know? So there are some programs online where you can actually look at it and kind of see like a visualized version of it. Um, but it’s, you know, it’s computer code, which I can’t read. 
 [00:16:15] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:16:16] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:16:17] Brett Stanley: But it, but it is literally a set of instructions that goes with the NFT when it’s sold, you know, it is 
 [00:16:24] Ian Takahashi: Exactly. 
 [00:16:25] Brett Stanley: So that any time there’s another transaction on that NFT, like I sell it to someone else. Then that contract gets invoked and gets processed and, um, and whatever I’ve said in there, and in terms of the terms of the 
 contract 
 [00:16:39] Ian Takahashi: yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So like, let’s say you, you own an NFT that that’s supposed to. You know, one Maddix and two it every day, you know, let’s just pretend that that’s a thing that happened. And so then if I, if you sold that to me, then automatically, you know, that, that Maddick payment was started coming to me instead, 
 [00:16:59] Brett Stanley: Right. 
 [00:16:59] Ian Takahashi: you know what, whatever is written into that contract, you know, we’ll go to the go-to the owner of that contract. 
 [00:17:06] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 And that’s why, so when I first heard about NFTs was verbally, you know, uh, early last year, um, you know, lots of my friends, photography, friends had, you know, was starting to sell their images as NFTs, and animators and stuff. We’re kind of doing some cool, animations. 
 So, um, these sorts of things are selling. And then what I kind of, what they were saying was that, you know, I would sell this for, you know, one a theory them, and then if it gets sold again, so people collect these NFTs, because they want a series of them or they like what they’re, they’re getting, or they’ll click the one artists with of stuff. 
 But if they then ever sell that in Ft to someone else, Then the original artist would get, say 10% of whatever it sold for four per perpetuity. For as long as 
 [00:17:52] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:17:53] Brett Stanley: they’re always going to get this kind of, um, 
 commission back on It which I think 
 is amazing. 
 [00:17:58] Ian Takahashi: It is. And again, that’s all part of that. The contract that’s written. So, um, you can have a royalty system like that built in 
 [00:18:07] Brett Stanley: Yep. 
 [00:18:08] Ian Takahashi: and you can pick 10%, 30%, 5%, 1%, um, or 0%, you know, whatever, you know, whatever you want it to be. But, um, it is kind of like, The thing that has kind of become like an accepted part of it, where the original artists will continue to get, say 5% of that sale price, you know, over and over and over and over and over again, which is really great. 
 Especially if you’re, you know, what you’ve created becomes one of these like, oh my God, it’s sold for 800 Ethereum. You know, if you had just sold it out, right. You know, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t get it. Um, you know, the way that some artists, you know, when you, their art sells and Christie’s for 110 million, you know, the original artists doesn’t really get a piece of that. 
 Uh, whereas here you can get that royalty system. 
 So, you know, it’s great. Especially if you have, you know, one or even like 10,000 different pieces out there as they move and change hands, you’re getting a little bit, you know, it was dripping back into your accounts all the time. 
 [00:19:05] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 which I think is great. The 
 [00:19:07] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:19:08] Brett Stanley: that, that were doing as well. And I, and I’m not sure which platform this was, but, you know, if you create an image or if you create a, some footage or you create an artwork and there are other people involved, say our model or via the hairstylist or whatever, um, you can actually. Credit them on the NFT 
 [00:19:29] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:19:30] Brett Stanley: and give them a percentage of, of, of the ownership of it, I guess, 
 or the what the 
 [00:19:36] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:19:36] Brett Stanley: commission of 
 [00:19:37] Ian Takahashi: Give them, you can give them a 
 piece of the commission on it You can give them a piece of the royalties. I mean, that’s why I’m just kind of saying, it’s kind of like the wild west out there because you can build these contracts, say, you know, almost anything and you can, and you can layer them, you know? 
 So we’re doing for OSHA verts. We have that. Split towards our, you know, the OSHA verse fund, um, and then to our operations, but then we can have that as a sub layer and have another contract on top. Say, if we let’s say we partnered with you bread and we’re like, okay, you know, we’re, bread’s going, gonna launch, you know, 10,000 images for this other project, you know? 
 And so then, you know, you, we have a split with you. You know, and so that automatically goes to Brett’s wallet and OSHA verse wallet. And then that goes to all the other contract. And then the OSHA verse wallet then splits it into the two that we had already said, you know? So then if you buy that, then if you had a model that you would work. 
 No, you can build that into the contract as well, so that, you know, she gets paid or he gets paid and you get paid and you know, it just splits it up automatically. And then there’s no, you know, it’s also makes it a lot more transparent and easy. So no, one’s like, oh, but I thought you sold it for 10 Ethereum, but you’re telling me it’s only eight. 
 It’s all 
 there. 
 [00:20:51] Brett Stanley: exactly. Yeah, 
 [00:20:52] Ian Takahashi: You can go and look at it and be like, 
 no, Brett, you sold it for 10 
 or no, no, no. Look, it is like, I’m legit. I’m giving you, you know, you got what you were supposed to do because it’s all in the contract. That’s the set split, but 
 [00:21:04] Brett Stanley: yeah. 
 So, and it’s 
 [00:21:05] Ian Takahashi: yeah. 
 [00:21:05] Brett Stanley: of verified and, and, you know, kind of, um, 
 notarized, I guess, like by computers, 
 [00:21:10] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. That’s a good way of putting it. Like it’s notarized 
 by either the proof of work or proof of stake 
 kind of systems. 
 [00:21:18] Brett Stanley: So if there’s a creative out there who wants to sell their, their stuff or can, or, you know, turn something into an NFT, what are the steps that they 
 need to do to be able to do that? 
 [00:21:29] Ian Takahashi: Oh, well, one is a pick a platform that you want to kind of create that image and then sell that you sell that image on, you know, there’s so many out there, you know, was quick Google search and empty platforms, you know, and different ones will pop up. 
 [00:21:43] Brett Stanley: And when you’re, when you’re saying platform, you kind of talking 
 like a 
 it’s kind of like a gallery 
 [00:21:48] Ian Takahashi: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. 
 [00:21:50] Brett Stanley: where NFTs are 
 sold and traded. 
 [00:21:53] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. I think of it like a, like a marketplace, you know, like if you’re, let’s say like, you, you, you want to sell, you know, socks, you can go to Amazon and you create an account and you put your picture of your socks up there and someone comes along and buys it. Um, and so it’s sorta like that you pick the, the marketplace or the platform that you want to be working with. 
 Um, Yeah, they all have different, slightly different ways of doing it, but essentially you can just have an account and you probably need a digital wallet to link to it so they know who to pay. Um, and then you can upload your image and sometimes it’s as easy as uploading the image and saying. You know, and then boom, it’s there. 
 Um, there are other ways of doing it. Um, our friend Patrick Lawler, who’s in, you know, in our industry as well. Um, he has done a couple of them and he did it through a separate website of his, where you, uh, you kind of minted it just directly off of his web. Um, so he uploaded everything. It was kind of randomized. 
 Um, and then it went directly onto the Ethereum chain. So when you opened up, um, like open C or foundation, or any of these that have, are built on like polygon or Ethereum, then it popped up in your account because it’s in your wallet. So it shows up on the platform. So you can then turn around and sell it on different platforms and marketplaces. 
 [00:23:09] Brett Stanley: yeah. 
 [00:23:09] Ian Takahashi: so it say, if someone here was like, I have this great image, I want to say. I have my laptop. I mean, it’s pretty straightforward. I think the hardest part, the most complicated part is choosing and setting up your digital wallet, you know, because that’s what needs to link to the platform marketplace website. 
 Um, and that can be a little bit challenging. It’s really not too difficult. Um, but you need to know some terms and, 
 [00:23:38] Brett Stanley: Yeah. And so the digital wallets, uh, just a, you know, like a, kind of like a number, like an account, right? 
 [00:23:46] Ian Takahashi: Exactly. 
 [00:23:46] Brett Stanley: that’s 
 [00:23:47] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:23:47] Brett Stanley: the blockchain and also possibly linked to your bank. So you can 
 actually transfer funds into it. 
 Buy, 
 [00:23:53] Ian Takahashi: then they have, 
 [00:23:54] Brett Stanley: Ethereum or polygon. 
 [00:23:56] Ian Takahashi: exactly. And they, they, they’re kind of two different, I’m sure there were more, but keeping it simple, it was kind of. Kinds there’s one that is linked to, you know, back to like dollars or like a Fiat currency. So that, that’s how you get, say you have, you know, a hundred bucks and you want to send it over to this wallet and you want to buy Ethereum or polygon or Bitcoin or whatever with it. 
 Um, so that one, that one knows who you are, you know, cause it’s linked to your bank, you know? So you set that up. It’s very, you know, it knows who you are and your bank accounts and everything. And then there’s more like the more like. Kind of where it’s not linked to your personal bank account. Say like meta mask is one of those where you really just, you know, you can open up Google Chrome and download a little extension for meadow mask and you just set it up there and you have your code to get. 
 And you have your password and then it’s there and it’s like anonymous. It’s just your, I think it’s like 16 digits is your coat. Your is your wallet number. Um, and then, but then you need to get funds in and out of it. So they need to come from another source to fund that meadow mask account. Um, but it’s essentially a 16 digit code digital wallet, um, that you hold tokens and coins in. 
 Um, and if you use Medimap cause that’s what you can use to sync up to any of these markets. Um, and then that’s where the funds will transfer between. 
 [00:25:19] Brett Stanley: And then, so those funds that you’re using. So when you want to upload your image or your artwork to one of these platforms, then you go into the minting process, right. Which is the creation of the 
 NFT. 
 [00:25:31] Ian Takahashi: Exactly. And, um, you know, if you’re doing it on your own, like from your own website that you want to mint and create, then it gets more complicated because it has to be like a, say uploaded to like an IPFS server and you need to pay for some things, but if you’re going to. You know, one of these kind of marketplaces that’s already, um, open for business, you know, they’re doing a lot of that work for you, you know? 
 So you can just say upload it’ll upload to their website and they’re taking care of all of the, you know, all of the, kind of like the backend work for you. Um, and then, you know, if you amended on say the Ethereum protocol, you’re going to have to pay gas fees, which is essentially paying. Um, the different computers out there that are called, like mining or verifying. 
 So to mint it, you need to kind of pay that fee so that everyone can verify that this then Ft was created. Um, if you’re using a protocol like polygon, um, there’s usually not a fee or if there is it’s super tiny. Um, but that’s part of that, that part of that fee is like the minting process of. 
 [00:26:37] Brett Stanley: um, 
 [00:26:38] Ian Takahashi: Telling the computers out there, Hey, this image and this token are now linked. 
 And this token now sits on the blockchain here and it’s owned by this wallet. And that’s how it kind of is like comes into existence. Um, and like the most simplest terms possible. 
 [00:26:56] Brett Stanley: So with the gas phase, what I kind of noticed was that, you know, the gas has gone to your investment into sort of bit of minting that and there are, from what I remember, I think, you know, it’s something had to be done up front. other platforms now that do it when you sell rather than doing it, when you leave. 
 [00:27:16] Ian Takahashi: Um, well, if you’re on a theory from the protocol theory and protocol, it has to be done upfront because you’re, you’re taking, you’re essentially creating the token, um, saying, and you’re putting it on the blockchain of like image. This NFT token belongs to this wallet, you know? So that fee has to be upfront because the computers are doing the work and the miners are doing the work to verify all that information. 
 You know, and so th that gas fee goes up and down depending on the price of Ethereum. Cause you’re paying in GUI. I don’t know how to pronounce a bit. G w E I it’s like the fractionalized Ethereum. Um, but there are other protocols. So like on polygon, um, I don’t think there is. Um, you know, so I think if you, if you’re doing it on polygon, you can mend your an Ft and it costs nothing to do. 
 Um, depending on the platform, there may be a platform out there that does charge. I don’t, but I haven’t seen one. Um, so you can do it for, you know, for basically for free and you’re creating that on the polygon network. Um, and then it’s there, you know, and it shows up, you know, polygon is like another layer of Ethereum. 
 So it does show up in the same, you know, Kind of galleries and everywhere, as you know, as you’re a theory and token ones. 
 [00:28:36] Brett Stanley: Right. 
 [00:28:36] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:28:37] Brett Stanley: And so, so even if you’re using polygon, I need to sell or whatever, and the money, you know, whatever your profits are from that, it’s still converted into an Ethereum at the end of 
 [00:28:46] Ian Takahashi: Oh, it’s all, it’s all paid in polygon, you know? Cause upon the, in MADEC M a T I C is like the native token for the polygon protocol, you know? So, um, you’re getting paid in, you know, you’re transferring MADEC back and forth, uh, which you can then take and transfer into, into a theorem if you want, or, you know, send it out to a different wallet and turn it into dollars or pestles or whatever, you know, you want it to be. 
 [00:29:12] Brett Stanley: So if you’re to say, if you’re on foundation or something like that, that 
 [00:29:15] Ian Takahashi: Yep. 
 [00:29:16] Brett Stanley: a theory them, you’re going to get a theory and back. 
 [00:29:18] Ian Takahashi: Correct? 
 [00:29:19] Brett Stanley: say OSHA verse, which is based on polygon, you’re going to get polygon back 
 [00:29:22] Ian Takahashi: Correct. Exactly. And the, and then actually what you were talking about is like paying that fee, you know, at the end it would essentially kind of be like using OSHA verse and doing it on polygon, you know, because then if you wanted a theory, then you would pay it at the end, you know, because then you would take your MADEC and then on an exchange exchange MADEC for Ethereum, you know, you would pay a gas fee and then you would have it. 
 [00:29:44] Brett Stanley: Right. 
 [00:29:44] Ian Takahashi: Yeah, 
 [00:29:45] Brett Stanley: and so I know one big concern, especially early on for people about NFTs was I meant this artwork that I’ve created in the real world, whether it’s a photograph or a, you know, uh, an animation or whatever, and I sell it as an NFC. Are they buying the rights to this artwork that I’ve created? 
 [00:30:06] Ian Takahashi: Um, well, like, um, you kind of back to the other answer of, um, you know, it’s, whatever you put in the contract, you know, so you can say like, yeah, this is a full commercial rights. You own it a hundred percent do whatever you want, you know, but you’re probably going to charge like a much higher fee. 
 [00:30:20] Brett Stanley: Right. 
 [00:30:21] Ian Takahashi: or you can write the contract where no, it’s essentially like buying a digital print of it and it’s. 
 You know, it shows your ownership of it, et cetera, but it’s of the digital print, you know? So if I buy like an original, if I buy a print of a Picasso, you know, I don’t own the, like, I don’t own the original, like his artwork. I just own the printer. Right, but it can be anywhere in between, you know, you can, uh, you can sell off like, well, you know, it’s, uh, um, you know, if you burn, you know, if you burn the token, like then the artist will send you a print of it, you know, or if you buy it, then you, you know, the first buyer gets a print of it or you can add all kinds of different things onto it. 
 I know a friend of ours is, is building something. That’s kind of like. Like a box that has a bunch of other things in it, you know? And so when you get to certain points of ownership, then it unlocks other, you know, other features and functionalities 
 and stuff to it, 
 [00:31:16] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:31:16] Ian Takahashi: is kind of cool. And then for OSHA, various, you know, we’re building in, you know, when say an artwork, a piece of art gets to a certain, uh, let’s say like value or floor price. 
 So you pay X amount for it, you know, then it might unlock. Say a free photo shoot with bread, wink. 
 wink. 
 [00:31:33] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:31:34] Ian Takahashi: You know what I mean? Because you can program in whatever you like. We can, you know, we can build in these different things, but it doesn’t mean that if you mint an NFC and then sell it, it doesn’t mean that you’ve suddenly lost all your rights to the image. 
 You know, as long as the contract says that, you know, they’re essentially that they’re buying a digital print of it, you know, or, you know, in some of our artists have been like, well, we want, you know, we want. You know, something that’s like little red, so they can’t go and take that image and then print, you know, like a poster size or a billboard size, you know? 
 So when people have different, you know, um, different desires for how to sell their work, what they want to do with it, it’s possible. Um, if you’re going through a marketplace platform, uh, then you need to see what their contract says and what their. 
 Um, because, uh, you, because you’re using their contracts, you don’t necessarily want to just go do it blind, go and just do it blindly. 
 [00:32:31] Brett Stanley: Yeah. Cause you don’t know what you’re actually agreeing to. You 
 [00:32:33] Ian Takahashi: Exactly. 
 [00:32:34] Brett Stanley: you’re really selling. 
 [00:32:35] Ian Takahashi: Exactly. Yeah. 
 [00:32:36] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:32:36] Ian Takahashi: And that’s been for OSHA for us. That’s been one of like a months and months of like discussions and lawyers and talking with, you know, um, with our artists about what they’re looking for, what they want to do, what they’re willing to sell, et cetera, to kind of get that feeling of it. 
 And that’s where we kind of landed on. No, there’s no reason to be selling the rights to it, especially, you know, for what we’re doing for our debut launch. Just. Essentially writes to a digital print of it. Um, but with that, you know, it’s going to be, um, owning one of our like curated, uh, NFTs that we’re going to we’ll do at the launch. 
 You know, we’re building in functionality down the line. So when OSHA traverse gets to phase two and three, you know, ownership of those curated NFTs act as like unlocks to. To pre-sales to like early access, to like the immersive OSHA rivers, you know, those kinds of things. We can kind of build into the contract. 
 So it’s not just, you know, the beautiful artwork, but it comes with kind of these bonuses that go along with it. 
 [00:33:38] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 it’s funny. The more I think about it, the more I talk about it, the more, it feels like a collectors community, I guess, you know, I think healthier collectors, do these things with like, you know, baseball cards and, Pokemon and all this sort of stuff, where if you 
 [00:33:51] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:33:52] Brett Stanley: you know, if you have a certain Pokemon, you can get access to, to, you know, early access to these sorts of things. 
 and I think that’s what I love about what’s happening with NFTs is that, you know, it sort of started as a very simple, this is an image that you now are. To now being very, you know, almost in the real world sort of stuff. Like people are value adding 
 [00:34:12] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:34:12] Brett Stanley: to the things that they’re buying. 
 [00:34:14] Ian Takahashi: Yeah, no, exactly. And that was one of our goals, you know, with OSHA verse was to. You know, to do real world good, you know, with this whole NFT world. And, you know, you know, so many artists who are very ocean centric, you know, underwater photographers, you know, ocean photographers, wildlife, et cetera. 
 They understand, you know, the need for ocean conservation. And they’ve built these great groups and other things, but it’s hard to go to, you know, like an underwater nature photographer and. Hey, can you give like $20,000 to help fund this project? He’ll be like, uh, um, do you want some pictures? 
 [00:34:50] Brett Stanley: Yeah, 
 [00:34:51] Ian Takahashi: And so that’s why we’re like, well, what if we tapped into that? 
 And it allows photographers and artists who are ocean centric and aware of the conservation needs to kind of help. Uh, a large fundraising effort, but by contributing their artwork. And, but it’s not as a, it’s not as a charity, like here’s my artwork, sell it, keep the profits it’s, uh, you, you know, are like enabling artists to, you know, in a conscientious, you know, ocean, you know, Earth’s environment friendly way of selling. 
 Earning income for themselves. But knowing that the flow of cash to the platform, it was not buying Lamborghini’s for myself and the other founders, you know, we’re trying to build up something else, but me in the meantime, building like a large endowment that can continually fund ocean conservation, you know? 
 So like all the, every step of the way, you know, it’s going towards that goal of ocean conservation, but yet also helping artists make. And building a platform they can feel good about, you know, cause even now, like we haven’t even launched yet, you know, but we’ve already invested in like forestry red plus carbon credits that are, you know, those are fun. 
 Um, people like landowners in the Amazon to not cut down burn, et cetera, their forests. And, you know, you get those carbon credits for that, you know? And so you, because we don’t have cashflow coming in to fund our carbon sequestration projects and things we have in the pipeline. Um, you know, we were doing that just to offset. 
 Yeah. Even my little, like my emails and like our Google searches, just to kind of blanket offset all of those, you know? And then when we start getting into the transactions on our platform, I think right now it’s like the first 4 million, 111,000 transactions, you know, are all. 
 [00:36:46] Brett Stanley: Right. 
 [00:36:47] Ian Takahashi: You know, so until we went until we do 411, you know, whatever, 4 million, 100 blah, blah, blah, plus one, you know, we’ll be, have a negative carbon footprint, you know, and as we get close to that number, you know, we’ll continue to be doing all of that good work to, you know, to see ques more carbon out of the air and buy more credits and invest in other things, you know, so that we stay with a negative. 
 You know all the time and that’s been important to us. Um, and we’ve been working with conservation groups and, you know, uh, carbon credit groups and people way more knowledgeable on how all of this stuff’s work technically. And we’ve been working with them and talking to them about what we’re doing, what our plans are. 
 We’re our thinking is, you know, just so that when we come out and say it, you know, we have, you know, kind of experts there who haven’t told us where. 
 [00:37:36] Brett Stanley: Yeah, exactly. 
 [00:37:37] Ian Takahashi: And we’re done. I just making it up, like we’ve talked to them about it and they’re like, okay, great. Yeah, no, that sounds good. This is what we’re doing. This is how it works. 
 This is what you should be doing. You know, just talking to people who know what they’re doing is 
 usually good. 
 [00:37:51] Brett Stanley: this is something that, that was quite a surprising to me and I felt kind of stupid once I, once I kind of realized it all was, you know, kind of told about it. And I think NFTs have really kind of highlighted this is that we kind of think that computers and work done on computers has no car. 
 [00:38:06] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:38:07] Brett Stanley: you know, we kind of look at them and think, you know, it’s just, it’s just the day, you know, it’s just, it’s all the same thing. 
 But 
 [00:38:12] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:38:13] Brett Stanley: NFT sort of came out and people started highlighting the fact that, you know, there’s a lot of energy that goes into doing these transactions, that it really highlighted the damage that we can be doing to the planet and to the environment just by, you know, pushing some buttons on a computer just by making it do some things. 
 [00:38:31] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think it goes back to, you know, where that power is coming from 
 [00:38:36] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:38:36] Ian Takahashi: you know, if it’s coming from like coal plants or natural gas plants or nuclear plants, or, you know, wind farms or solar, like, it all makes a difference. You know, it, you know, it’s like driving, you know, driving an electric car, but you’re know. 
 You’re plugging it in and you’re getting powered by a coal plant down the street. You’re like, okay, I guess it’s better than may be probably better, you know, than driving a gasoline car, et cetera. But you still have to look at where the power is coming from. It’s not nothing it’s just like free, I guess, unless you’re, um, whenever the country is doing the, uh, the volcano Bitcoin mining, 
 you know, using 
 [00:39:13] Brett Stanley: there 
 [00:39:14] Ian Takahashi: like, uh, yeah. 
 They’re using one of their volcanoes is like a throne, you know, thermal, 
 you know 
 [00:39:22] Brett Stanley: power plant kind of 
 [00:39:23] Ian Takahashi: exactly, exactly. It’s it’s like volcano powered Bitcoin mining. You’re like, okay, fair enough. That’s kind of cool. You know, that’s a natural heat, like steam and making power, like, 
 okay, cool. 
 [00:39:34] Brett Stanley: this is the kind of crazy thing I think that is with, with crypto mining and all that sort of stuff. And for those who don’t kind of know how crypto mining works, it is basically, you know, massive banks of computers doing calculations until they get to certain of number, which is then Bitcoin. 
 and I think the funny thing is for me is that, um, you know, years ago, not even that long ago, you know, you could tell like a meth house or. Anything like that because they would use lots of electricity, but now it’s generally like Bitcoin mining because that’s when, you know, they’re sucking all this power in. 
 And I think that’s the thing is, you know, lot of people are setting up like crypto of minds, you know, in, like squatting in people’s houses and stuff who’ve gone away so 
 [00:40:19] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:40:19] Brett Stanley: their electricity. I think it’s, it’s a, it’s an amazing new world 
 [00:40:23] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:40:23] Brett Stanley: this. 
 [00:40:24] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. Especially, I think there was a story of a guy who built like these little micro mining rigs, um, and then go sit in Starbucks, you know, and we would plug in to the Starbucks power and we’ll use their wifi and he would sit there and drink coffee. And like, he had a little bank of like USB drive, you know, a little USB drives. 
 There were like these little micro mining rigs and, um, he would just sit there. 
 And it would just mind, you know, but, uh, on Starbucks is wifi and Starbucks has power, 
 [00:40:53] Brett Stanley: It’s 
 [00:40:54] Ian Takahashi: you know? 
 [00:40:54] Brett Stanley: world. It’s 
 [00:40:55] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. And I, you know, I think it fluctuates is, uh, the, the price of Bitcoin goes up and down, you know, compared to how much power that you need, especially when they do, um, you as the rewards, like half, you know? 
 So, you know, now you need to do like twice the amount of work, which is twice the amount of power, et cetera, to get the same kind of rewards as you did before. 
 [00:41:16] Brett Stanley: Right. 
 [00:41:17] Ian Takahashi: and that’s why so many protocols are looking at going to proof of stake instead of proof of work, because it lessens that amount of power that’s being used because that’s, what’s been brought up, you know, all over the media and everywhere else. 
 And, 
 [00:41:29] Brett Stanley: Right. 
 [00:41:30] Ian Takahashi: complain about a theory and gas fees and then, you know, it’s a whole. You can’t really encompass what’s going on in the crypto world in like a sentence because you, I mean, you jump on like Twitter and you’re just like, what is this craziness here? Or like just, you kind of peek into some of those discords and things. 
 And you’re like, okay, I, you lost me a week ago. 
 [00:41:49] Brett Stanley: Yeah, 
 [00:41:51] Ian Takahashi: about, because there’s some, I mean, there’s some crazy smart people in there doing all kinds of, you know, creativity and math and 
 stuff. 
 [00:42:00] Brett Stanley: mean, that’s the thing too. I mean, it’s. algorithmic, you know, like everything about this as an algorithm. And I think, when they come up with a new algorithm to, to do the calculations that they’re doing, that is, you know, faster or uses less energy than, you know, that’s something that is, you know, that’s money. 
 If you can listen the amount of energy you’re using to create these things, then you know, you’re suddenly more efficient and you’re suddenly. 
 [00:42:22] Ian Takahashi: Yeah, it’s a crazy world. 
 [00:42:24] Brett Stanley: So the other thing that I want to touch on as well is, and this is a good reason to sort of get involved with OSHA verse is that, you know, you can go mint your creations. You can go and put them up on a platform, but if no one knows about them, 
 [00:42:39] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:42:39] Brett Stanley: one knows that you’ve done It 
 [00:42:41] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:42:41] Brett Stanley: one’s going to be there to buy it. 
 Um, and I think. You know, that’s the other half of the NFT equation is, actually getting eyeballs on your stuff to be 
 [00:42:51] Ian Takahashi: is, 
 [00:42:51] Brett Stanley: to, to, to invest in it. 
 [00:42:53] Ian Takahashi: it is, I mean, so much right now. It’s just like a giant hype machine, 
 you know, of getting people to be there and see it. And you know, and it’s being out there talking about it and, you know, getting, you know, your, your, like you said, getting eyeballs on it and there’s a whole like business, that’s grown up around just doing the hype. 
 You know, you, if you go to so many of the, like, go on Instagram and look up, just use like hashtag. And you’ll find so many accounts that are there with the sole purpose of promoting NFTs. 
 [00:43:22] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:43:23] Ian Takahashi: You know, so if you look at, if you go to, um, the OSHA verse, Instagram account, and I put the hashtag NFT. You know, the first, like, you know, 5, 6, 10 comments are all random people, you know, bots basically saying, Hey, DM it to these people and they want you to send it there. 
 And then those people like, oh, well, you know, for 0.2, Ethereum, you know, we’ll put it out as a story and we’ll do this and we have a million followers, et cetera, you know? And so we haven’t gone that direction. Yeah, but I mean, you can, you can pay people to promote it. You can pay them to put in, try to get it out in front of more and more people. 
 You know, this whole company is built around, um, like hyping through discourse. 
 [00:44:03] Brett Stanley: Yeah, 
 [00:44:04] Ian Takahashi: the they’re like they have like a, you know, across all their platform, all their different accounts, they have like 500,000 people, you know, and then you can pay them to jump in and, you know, just promote the, promote, your project, which you, which you need. 
 You know, I ha I, for fun, I put one image, um, up on like an open C account and I’ve done zero to tell anyone about it. Okay. It was the first time I’ve told anyone that is there. 
 [00:44:29] Brett Stanley: You 
 [00:44:29] Ian Takahashi: Um, 
 [00:44:29] Brett Stanley: it first people. 
 [00:44:31] Ian Takahashi: yeah, exactly. It’s super exclusive, but it was just there. And I was just like, literally, no, one’s clicked on it and no one seen it, but like, I mean, why would they, you know, there’s so many accounts, like there’s no promotion, I’ve done nothing. 
 It’s just like hiding there. Um, and I also priced it where I don’t think anyone will buy it. Um, but just to see like what would happen if I did absolutely. 
 [00:44:51] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:44:51] Ian Takahashi: Um, so that is the other thing like you can’t, um, you know, you can’t just passively like put it up and like, hope that somebody buys it, you know, you’ve got. 
 Be vocal and active. And if that means being on like Twitter and around discord and doing things, you know, you’ve got to, um, you know, again, like Patrick Waller has a great as a couple of great projects, but he’s also, he’s, he’s fantastic as well with, with discord and being active and hyping it up and in a good way, and like talking about it and getting people excited and, you know, sh I bought one from him know, like, 
 [00:45:22] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:45:23] Ian Takahashi: you know, I looked at it and I was like, this is cool. 
 And then he w it was just such a cool thing. And he was talking about, I was like, yeah, Why not like this is fun. So, you know, if you look at my little NSE wallet, there’s an image of mine that no one’s looked at. And then there’s one of Patrick’s 
 and that’s it. Yeah, 
 [00:45:39] Brett Stanley: but I think that’s the thing too, that you have to remember is, is, is, you know, like it’s not like people are just walking down the street and see this and go, oh, I want to buy that. a lot of these people who are investing in NFTs 
 [00:45:49] Ian Takahashi: yeah. 
 [00:45:50] Brett Stanley: you know, whether they’re collecting. 
 You know, a certain artists kind of stuff like they’re trying to collect all that artist’s work. Or if it’s just stuff that has a theme, 
 [00:45:59] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:46:00] Brett Stanley: it is getting into that stream somehow. 
 [00:46:02] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. And it’s so it’s so weird because some of it is all about like rarity and unique images and then some people are more into like, well, what’s the use case for it? You know? Like, is it, is it really part of like a growing community? Is it really interesting? So I want to be part of that community. 
 [00:46:18] Brett Stanley: Thank you. 
 [00:46:18] Ian Takahashi: Um, and then some people are just collecting it for the image itself, like, because it’s beautiful. It’s a gorgeous image, 
 you know? No in building out like what our debut launch is going to be. We’ve found incredible artists from around the world. You, of course being one of them, um, who create like really unique, interesting images from all different kinds of niches of, you know, of like, what are, you know, in ocean centric, art can be, I 
 mean, of course everyone knows your work. 
 Um, but then, you know, we have, uh, like Amy Solomon who, uh, she does like anatomical collage, um, Which honestly, I didn’t know. That was, that was a thing, but like we loved her work and then that’s what she described as that. And I was like, oh, and then we looked it up and then, yeah, it’s anatomical. Collage is something that people do and 
 [00:47:05] Brett Stanley: yeah. 
 [00:47:06] Ian Takahashi: cool looking. 
 And what she was making was just incredible. You know? Um, another one of our artists, Kristy Lee Rogers, you know, it was like the pioneer of, you know, Baroque style, underwater photography, 
 [00:47:19] Brett Stanley: Yeah, 
 [00:47:19] Ian Takahashi: you know, 
 [00:47:20] Brett Stanley: stuff is amazing 
 [00:47:21] Ian Takahashi: It’s incredible. Like she, like apple has commissioned her to make pieces for, you know, like their headquarters, you know, her work hangs in galleries around the world. 
 Um, and she’s actually like add, like right now she’s creating a piece specifically for our launch. 
 [00:47:37] Brett Stanley: Right? 
 [00:47:38] Ian Takahashi: that’s just for OSHA verse and et cetera, so that I’m super excited for that to see whatever it is that she came up with. 
 Um, 
 [00:47:47] Brett Stanley: think that’s the thing too, is, is that the, the beauty of these kinds of kind of collectives, I guess like our HSA versus a collective 
 [00:47:54] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:47:55] Brett Stanley: of similar artists, like doing theme sort of stuff. And what it means is that, you know, people who are fans of Kristi Lee Rogers will come to the site to see her stuff, but then maybe see, you know, someone else’s. 
 On there as well. And then, you know, 
 [00:48:09] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:48:09] Brett Stanley: exposure 
 [00:48:11] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:48:11] Brett Stanley: of being pulled along by everyone else. 
 [00:48:13] Ian Takahashi: Exactly. You know, and I think I’m actually, I think you and I talked about this a long time ago of, of like, of, you know, if I, you know, if I personally tried to market my own NFC project, you know, it would go so far, you know, but if you and me and, you know, 25 other artists came together and marketed it all together, but. 
 That’s much more powerful. And as you said, if someone comes to look at your work, they might see images from me or from Christy or from Andy or from whoever else is involved and be like, oh my God, I love that piece too. And it’s kind of like discovering other artists. So it was kind of like when you’re on Instagram and you like, look at, you know, hashtag underwater, you know, and you, you’re seeing like these incredible different pieces and images and everything there. 
 And so in this case, you can actually like own a piece. 
 You know, and one thing we’re doing with OSHA versus, um, we’re minting 10 images with the artists owning, you know, zero, zero themselves, and then nine others are available for purchase, um, at the auction, which has kind of, which I think is kind of cool of owning like a limited piece, but with the actual artist who. 
 You know, like I want to buy one, just, you know, to say I own something like with Kristi Lee Rogers, like her 
 work is incredible. Like, oh my God, like, I want one of those. Or even, you know, Felix Hernandez, who he’s a miniatures photographer, but like on a whole other level, like, 
 just look him up. It’s incredible work. 
 And, you know, he sent me the image that he’s putting up for us. And, you know, I looked at it, I put it up on our big screen TV and I just, I stared at it for like, at least. And I was getting all emotional, just looking at this image because it’s, you know, everything from the actual image itself to the, especially on the child’s face and all the different pieces, just this visceral reaction to it. 
 And I was like, I, yeah, no, I need this. 
 [00:50:09] Brett Stanley: Yeah, 
 [00:50:10] Ian Takahashi: So to be, to be fair, we may not have a launch. I may just buy it. 
 [00:50:14] Brett Stanley: Yeah. This is just a personal 
 [00:50:16] Ian Takahashi: This is my personal collection now. No, obviously joking, but there’s such incredible pieces out there that, you know, and I think to be able to own it alongside the artist and then be a part of this entire group, you know, and then what we’re we’re adding is, um, because it’s for conservation and everything, there is the whole idea of going. 
 You know, of, of where the projects go and you know, how everything is, you know, moving forward. And that’s what we want to down the line offer to the artists who joined us early and artists who do are kind of participate in our curated works and, um, about having kind of having a say, and you know, where OSHA rivers goes from here, 
 you know, 
 [00:50:56] Brett Stanley: In terms of using that, that fund, that you’re going to have to be able to do some real world projects. 
 [00:51:02] Ian Takahashi: Exactly. And like who gets to, you know, who gets to nominate, you know, um, conservation projects and groups to be, you know, to be funded, you know, who gets to decide, you know, who, who actually gets funded and for how much, and, you know, those are all important things to do. You know, as part of a whole learning process, because you know, not everyone who is a, you know, an art collector also understands the ins and outs of conservation and, uh, of, uh, like funding projects, you know, but it’s, um, it’s like fun walking this line of having building a community, but also doing some very like, Technical and like financial things as well, where you need like specific expertise, but then also having people, a part of the community, like weigh in on what they think we should, you know, OSHA verse should be doing and you know, the direction that they should be moving, you know, so none of that’s like super ironed out, but there, there is a roadmap that we’ve built for moving that direction and we have. 
 Great people who are involved, um, as artists who also have background, like decades of backgrounds, of working in, um, the NGOs and charities and who are helping us with that insight and, and how to build something, that’s, you know, part of the community, but also resistant from, you know, outside groups coming in and buying up all the tokens and then taking control, you know? 
 Cause the last thing you want is like, X corporation, you know, coming in and saying, oh, well, let’s just buy all of this up. And then, you know, no, no, no spilling oil in the, ocean’s not the problem. It’s 
 really, you know, it’s really the boat. So it’s really the fishermen. They’re the issue, you know, 
 [00:52:39] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:52:40] Ian Takahashi: you know, we don’t have those outside influences, you know, changing the real narratives. 
 [00:52:45] Brett Stanley: Yeah, you’ve got leave. Got a bit of a firewall kind of set up where it’s it’s it’s separate, 
 [00:52:49] Ian Takahashi: Exactly. 
 [00:52:50] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:52:51] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. And with people who have expertise in that area, 
 [00:52:54] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:52:55] Ian Takahashi: to kind of guide, you know, to guide us. 
 [00:52:58] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:52:58] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 Yeah. 
 [00:52:59] Brett Stanley: I Hopefully. 
 this has kind of made some sense to people, and, and made some things clear about the NFT world. and you know how to get involved in this stuff as well. So, so OSHA verse is out there. It’s OSHA versed.io, uh, online check out their, their Instagram as well. And for me, it’s a massive, huge honor to be in amongst all these other amazing artists, uh, who, uh, you know, contributing their work to it. 
 And, and being in that curated kind of collection to me is just it’s mind blowing. 
 [00:53:27] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you’re one of the first people we talked to, 
 so 
 [00:53:31] Brett Stanley: thanks 
 [00:53:31] Ian Takahashi: yeah, of course, of course. and for me to building it, I mean, I’ve, uh, you know, the first calls were to people who I knew like you who do amazing work. and then as we kind of grew, it’s been an incredible to meet and talk about. You know, artists from all over the world that I didn’t know. 
 But then as we started building it, you know, I have my own like kind of online reputation for my work and that kind of helped get my foot in the door and get the phone calls with people and, 
 [00:53:57] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:53:57] Ian Takahashi: all of that. But then just talking to them about what we’re doing and how they can help and be a part of it and listening to their concerns and trying to address those has been, a really amazing kind of journey and learning experience and trying to match their concerns with like what’s technically possible. 
 It’s been a, it’s been a wild ride. Oh. Plus also working 
 [00:54:18] Brett Stanley: Oh, yeah. As well. 
 [00:54:20] Ian Takahashi: as well 
 [00:54:21] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:54:21] Ian Takahashi: top of, on top of all of this, 
 [00:54:24] Brett Stanley: Cause it’s 
 [00:54:24] Ian Takahashi: you know? Yeah. 
 [00:54:25] Brett Stanley: just been sitting on your butt to still in this. 
 [00:54:27] Ian Takahashi: No, no, it’s not. 
 [00:54:28] Brett Stanley: No. 
 [00:54:30] Ian Takahashi: yeah. I have been like in the backs of vans, like driving around with my laptop out. Building a roadmap and like sending it off to the, our other co-founders for notes. And then like jumping on phone calls with people in Portugal about like how we’re building this and 
 [00:54:46] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:54:47] Ian Takahashi: it’s been, 
 [00:54:47] Brett Stanley: set and get this thing going. yeah. 
 [00:54:50] Ian Takahashi: Yeah, exactly. It’s been, it’s been crazy, 
 [00:54:53] Brett Stanley: Well, 
 [00:54:53] Ian Takahashi: fun. 
 [00:54:54] Brett Stanley: Yeah. And it’s amazing. It’s going to be exciting to see where all this goes, man. So, 
 [00:54:58] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. 
 [00:54:59] Brett Stanley: so I 
 [00:54:59] Ian Takahashi: for, yeah, for anyone who’s listening, who wants to know more, get more involved with it. Um, like Brett said, like the old traverse.io, um, you follow us on Instagram, Twitter, all that kind of stuff. But then also we’re our blue list is open. Um, so it’s just collecting names of people who want to access to the auction and then we’ll open up the. 
 Um, at some point here in the future, and that’s when you need to have your wallet and get connected and that’s the much bigger thing, but that’s the next step is, uh, uh, is doing that and seeing who can be part of the white list and getting them on there. So when we do launch, there’ll be people there and you have access and see all this great images. 
 And, you know, some of the images will we’ll reveal ahead of time. And some, you know, really won’t be even available to see until the moment of that launch. 
 Um, and I’ll have to mention, we do have a couple of. A couple of people who are in that like legendary status. I just got some of the images for one of the images from them and it’s like 30 years old 
 shot on Kodachrome. 
 Like, it’s just, you look at it. You’re like, oh my God, like talk about like, talk about like a rare and unique. It’s from, you know, one of the artists is like he never puts out photographs, and finally like, and agreed to do so to support it. You know, his, his cut is all going to charity and it’s this incredible, super old image. 
 That’s 
 just like amazing. 
 [00:56:21] Brett Stanley: Awesome. 
 [00:56:22] Ian Takahashi: cool. 
 [00:56:23] Brett Stanley: jump, on the, on the blue list to get, get 
 [00:56:24] Ian Takahashi: Yup. Yeah. And I’ll send you all those links and stuff, so you have it and we can share it with people. 
 [00:56:30] Brett Stanley: Yeah. 
 [00:56:31] Ian Takahashi: Cool. 
 [00:56:31] Brett Stanley: Thanks. And it’s been awesome. 
 [00:56:33] Ian Takahashi: Yeah. Thank you for your time, Brett. Always nice talking to you. 
 [00:56:35] Brett Stanley: You’d say, man, let’s make saying. 
 [00:56:36] Ian Takahashi: Okay. Thanks, bye.