Using NFTs as Collateral with Stephen Young from NFTfi

Diana Chen:  Hey everybody.  Welcome back to the unstoppable podcast.  I'm your host, Diana Chen.  And I'm here today with our guest Stephen Young.  He's the founder and CEO at Niftify peertopeer marketplace for a collateralized NFT loans.  Hey, Stephen.  Welcome.  Thank you so much for being here. 

Stephen Young:  Hi, Diana.  Great to be here.

Host:  Great.  So before we dive into Niftify, which I know people are really excited about.  I think I put out a tweet and people were just jumping on it.  I want to know a little bit about your background and your crypto journey.  So take me all the way back to when you first heard about crypto, got interested in it.  When was that and well, what was it that picked your interest? 

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  So my very first time I heard about it was actually around the time of the theory and launch.  So I heard about the - - network for, it was really cool.  Try to set up a no to - - mining on the test net, and then like, couldn't quite get it working and then forgot about it, which is one of those big regrets that like, everyone's got a story like that.  

And then a little bit later, I'd been speaking to one of my friends.  I was living in South Africa slam and I did a calculation.  I worked in London when I first left high school.  It was like 2000.  I was there 2020—yeah, 2000, 2001.  I went to London and I did a calculation and figured out that I was earning less in dollars in 2016 than I was in 2001 because the purchasing power of the Rand had just completely gone through the floor.  And so was looking for a way to wait to actually like exit that system, and then that's really why I started buying Bitcoin.  

And, and then I've just kind of kept my holdings since then.  And just obviously, you know, how it goes.  You just go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole and then when she left my fulltime job, I was an asset manager at the time.  Trying to get them to be a little bit more interested in Bitcoin, but there's no discount of cash flows and it was too weird for them, so couldn't get them to take it seriously.  So I left and cofounded an exchange called Coin Direct, and was there for a little while.  And then, shortly after leaving there, I started Niftifi.  So, yep, that's my story. 

Host:  Got it.  Got it.  Yeah.  So when you first started hearing about it, I guess it helps that you had that personal experience that got you interested in crypto, but how did you go about learning more about it back in the early days before there were all the resources and the crypto Twitter that we have today?

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  Well—so I mean, I'm technical.  So I was a software architect and software developer for almost 16, 17 years and—so I kind of came back from the technical side, but also got a lot of value out of Andrea's videos on the kind of the philosophy behind it and like the internet of money was a big influence on me as well.  And then, yeah, and then just kind of—there's—there has been good writing back then already and it just wasn't quite as popular.  So, you know, if you, if you were interested, you could, you could find stuff. 

Host:  Got it.  And how would you explain—now is sort of, we've shifted from just buying Bitcoin to this whole concept of DeFi.  And so for people who are just getting into DeFi, how would you explain that to newbies in the space? 

Stephen Young:  Yeah, it's quite difficult.  I would probably actually point them to Andrea's videos.  But for me, like the essence of it really is there's this decentralization of power.  So we've, over the last few hundred years, kind of the neck—the rise of the nation states and we kind of been handing over power to a small group of people and as the kind of the population has been increasing and there's more and more of us that seems to kind of be working less and less well as you can kind of see all over the world at the moment.  

So I think really, for me, the main thrust of it is a kind of standard that is taking power away from these centralized institutions where we hand over control to them and then bringing it back into the people's hands.  And, you know, that's across money and art and real estate and governance, you know, in a million different areas.

Host:  Yeah.  So it's obviously a very big concept and I think a lot of what's lacking in the space right now is still education.  But aside from education, what do you see as being some of the biggest barriers that are preventing the masses from getting into this space? 

Stephen Young:  Look, I think it is still quite difficult to understand.  You know, like the understanding of the concept of public and private keys and hardware wallets, and moving money off of exchanges into, into like a more secure storage.  So I think there's a little bit of that still, but it's getting better all the time and you're already seeing projects like NBA, top shots.  You know, you can, you can interact with that for, for months and not realize that you actually dealing with a blockchain in the back end.  

So I do think it's getting better and as more and more people actually taken that first step, you know, for us—for all of our customers already own an NFT and then to get an NFT, they first start to get ether and, and then I have to figure out how to kind of send the transaction.  So we're kind of like one step down.  So we're not actually seeing that many people struggling with that side of the technical thing and I think as more and more people have experienced it for the first time, maybe Diana first trade on a Dex or bought an NFT.  

I think NFTs are quite a big driver actually, because you can't really buy them in like a centralized platform really.  You can quite easily trade crypto all day long and never have to deal with a private key, but to buy an NFT, you, you have to.  So I think we're going to crossing the chasm, you know, in the same way that back in the day, like a thing, like what is a web URL and like that was weird and yet understand what a web browser is.  And it's like, oh, do you mean the software is not running?  And my computer is out there, somewhere and that was weird.  And so it's not weird because everyone's doing it.  So, I think we're—we kind of getting there quite quickly. 

Host:  Yeah, 100%.  I think NFTs have done a great job of bringing the mainstream into the space a little bit.  So how did you get the idea for a Niftify?  You basically combined two of the most popular things in the space right now, NFTs and DeFi into a collateralized lending platform for NFTs.  How did you initially get that idea? 

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  So after I left the exchange, I was quite burnt out and tired.  So I took a little bit of time off, spent some time in Thailand and just as I was getting back, kind of finances were running quite low.  So I was looking to take out a loan, a CDP on macheda [phonetic] and my business partner - -.  He—I invested in one of his other startups a while ago, and so I gave him a call.  We'd always been kind of staying in touch because we both Ethereum and crypto geeks.  And I just phoned him to figure out, you know, like what does he think the Ethereum markets are going to do?  And we started talking and he was one of the very early Cryptokitties breeders.  So he's got 6,000 cats in his wallet, and he was saying, well, you know what?  He really wants is a way to kind of use them as collateral so that he can actually, like long ether.  And he knew a few people in the space who had been kind of blending the two between each other kind of on a trust basis.  

So they would have a spreadsheet and say, well, this person owes this person this much and if they don't pay back, this is the asset that they'll, they'll give back as collateral.  So we really just started brainstorming.  Well, what would that look like in a—like a, a trustless way.  And then a couple of weeks later, we had the first version of the, of the smart contract and then took quite a bit of time to actually build a, like, usable interface around that and figure out the user experience, but that was February, 2020.  And then we went live in June 2020. 

Host:  Wow, that's awesome.  So walk me a little bit more through the process of exactly how it works.  Like, what are the loan terms, what are—all the different things like somebody that just signs up for Niftify  and they want to either, either place an NFT that they own up for a loan or they, they want to be the person that gets the loan.  How would it work for both of those sides?

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  So I'll give a quick rundown and then we can make it down into a little bit more nittygritty if, if people are interested.  So, so it's a peer to peer market.  So what you do, if you, you sign up to our—you basically go to niftifi.com.  You can see all of the assets that are in your wallet.  So you connect your wallet to, to meta mask to our website and then you can see all of your assets and you can then list one of them as collateral.  And then once you've listed it, it shows up in our feed, on their homepage and we also put a message in our discord, and then people can make you offers.  

Those offers will consist of a loan principal, loan repayments, and a loan duration.  And then you can basically choose so multiple people, if you're lucky, will give you offers.  Not all assets get offers straight away, but yeah, so you'll get a bunch of offers and then you can accept one.  

If you accept the offer, then our smart contract will transfer the loan principal out of the lender's wallets into your wallets and transfer your NFT into our smart contract to be held as escrow.  And then you've got the loan period to repay that loan.  If you repay it on time, then the smart contract just transfers the NFT back into your wallet and transfers the repayments amount from your wallet into the lender's wallet.  So there's no partial payments.  You probably pay the whole thing on time or you don't.  If you don't pay back in time, then the lender can foreclose the loan.  In which case, you keep the loan principal and they get the NFT. 

Host:  Got it.  Got it.  And so what happened—I guess like, are there set loan terms that people can choose when they—it can be anything from like one day, two years, whatever they want.

Stephen Young:  Well, the smart contract supports any loan period.  But we basically have seven days, 14 days, 30 days and 90 days at the moment available on the website just because, we think it's—we wanted to kind of reduce the risk and not allow people to take out, you know, two year loan on assets that who knows if it's going to be around in two years time and, you know, just thought it was irresponsible to do something longer.  And then we limit the, the, the APR to like 150% just so that people don't rip somebody off, but we typically see, depending on the asset, anything between 20 and 80% APR on the platform.

Host:  Got it.  And what have the patterns been so far that you've been seeing?  Do most people end up paying off the loan on time or vice versa?  And then it ends up being basically someone just buying an NFT that, you know, they don't get to have for a little bit—a period of time. 

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  So we seeing around like 70 to 80% repayment rates.  It depends a little bit on the market.  So if you take out an ether based loan and then ether triples in price, then we see a little few more defaults, or if, you know, if it was, say, crypto punk and it was quite a generous loan and the crypto punk market's kind of implode, you might also see a few more defaults.  But typically, most people pay back.  But a lot of people who are using the platform are almost using it as a way to acquire assets.  That's one of the ways I use it.  So I'll make loan offers on items I wouldn't mind owning anyway.  

So in those cases, you know, you kind of almost hoping for  defaults and typically, if you—if there is a default, people usually make a little bit more money on that because we see like, like 50% loan to value ratios normally.  So people will kind of—it varies how much the NFT is worth and only make loan offers of say 50% of that, so that worst case scenario, they can sell it quite quickly for a profit.

Host:  Got it.  And then in terms of—you said not every NFT gets an offer.  So based on what you've seen so far, what are the types of NFTs that tend to get offers the most?  Should it be a really good and expensive and high end piece of art or is it actually the lower end ones that are cheaper, because, you know, it's less commitment for people to offer a loan of 20 bucks than 2000.

Stephen Young:  We're actually seeing the higher value assets getting the most traction.  So we've had a few loans in the kind of 90 to a hundred thousand dollars range, 20 to 40 ether on the ether markets.  So the, the high value assets that are very desirable that you kind of guaranteed of being able to, to sell on.  So like the bigger the—the deeper the secondary market is the more desirable the assets are.  So things like crypto punks, like found a crypto kitties a lot of like—so a lot of people, pieces of getting decent loans, like joy, and, Josie on the artist side.  

We also seeing autoglyphs do super well.  So, yeah.  So that's much better on the high end market, but then there's also some assets on the cheapest side that just have like a really strong community that we just see like very—so for example, AMBUCS lands are kind of on the cheaper side, but they almost always get offers and they're almost always get repaid.  So there's a very kind of good community there.  So I think as AMBUCS land is actually the leader in terms of number of loans on the platform.

Host:  Got it.  Got it.  So the strategy is sort of to put out NFTs that are more popular, that people know about or that involve games that a lot of people are into or virtual lands that a lot of people are in to.

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  From the lender's side, they're taking on risk, you know.  So they want to be sure that they—if it's an asset they don't want to keep; A, they wouldn't want to keep an undesirable assets and B, if it's not something they do want to keep, they want to be able to sell it on to somebody in the secondary markets and not be stuck with that asset thing.  So, so yeah.  So deep secondary market desirable assets.  Like pretty much like the real world, right?  If you, if you tried to get the bank to take some random thing that you think is awesome, but nobody else cares about as collateral, they're not going to do that.  So they need to be able to sell that on.

Host:  Yeah, for sure.  All right.  And we've got a question from Twitter.  Somebody said, will NFT shards be lendable soon on Niftify?

Stephen Young:  Well, shards actually are ELC twenties, right, so, so it actually makes it a little bit more sense to have them integrated into kind of this traditional AMMS, you know.  So maybe you have a union swap pool.  We already kind of seeing that with—there's some crypto kitties ones and people twenties.  So it makes more sense to just create a union swap liquidity pool for those and then kind of bold leaning on top of that.  So we're really kind of focused around the nonfungible tokens.  So turning—sharding an NFT is kind of like taking the, the, the end out of NFT, right.  So you'd like making them fungible again.  So, so I don't think that's really like our focus in the short term, but like I think there's definitely a place to do that in the broader ecosystem.

Host:  Got it.  And then another question from Twitter, how do you see NFT rights being treated during a loan?  So in that period before the person pays back the loan, you don't know if they're going to pay it back.  Who, who owns the NFT technically? 

Stephen Young:  Well, so the NFT is held in our smart contract.  So the smart contract like owns it during that period of time.  And then, we—that—the smart contract won't play, you know, for example, if that NFT gives you the rights to claim, say like pull tokens from somewhere else or something in a yield form, the smart contract wouldn't do that.  So then whoever then receives the token at the end of the loan can then kind of do whatever was had accrued during that period.  So yeah, so it was basically held by the smart contract and the smart contract doesn't do anything with it. 

Host:  Got it.  Got it.  So who are you seeing using the platform so far?  Is it still mostly crypto natives or are you seeing actually more people from the mainstream since NFTs have really made their way into the mainstream already.

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  So, so at the moment you need to do lending on the platform.  You need to understand the assets.  So, so it's typically people who are collectors and who going to know how to value these items.  

We are seeing some more professional people kind of starting to use the platform.  So we're talking to a couple of people that are looking to put together kind of a little bit more professional funds and raise some money and then hire someone to kind of run, run a loan book for them, like on a kind of professional basis.  So I do think that's coming down the line.  Typically those people specialize.  So they'll, they'll, they'll only then do metaverse land, for example, or only arts or something like that.  And these are all people who are kind of in the traditional property world or traditional art world who are trying to kind of get some exposure into like this new kind of metaverse properties and, and the other people were seeing as dowels.  

So Flamingo is quite active on our, on our platform.  So, so they've got a list—so they've got capital that they raised to acquire a bunch of NFTs.  They've got a hit list of entities they want to purchase.  So they'll make offers on NFTs that they want to acquire anyway.  So worst case for them, they, they get some yield on the ether that they raised, or they acquire the asset for 50% of market value if it gets defaulted on.  So it's like acquisition strategy for dowels and funds. 

Host:  Got it.  Got it.  Ultimately longterm, is it your hope that everybody, you know, the masses will be using Niftify?

Stephen Young:  Yes, but we need to like, do some changes in there.  So really what the next step for us is finding a way to allow, allow people who, who have good capital, but don't necessarily have the expertise to make that a capital available to people who've got the expertise, but not necessarily the capital.  So you kind of, kind of have like a pool model where people can pool capital and have people kind of manage the actual loan process for them and then that should allow us to kind of bring in much more active participation from the broader kind of—especially the DeFi  committee.  

Host:  In a sense, it's almost like people can treat it, like you were saying earlier, as you only bid on assets that you wouldn't mind buying anyway if you saw it on open - - Nifty gateway.  So in a sense like you, you could treat it as another open sea or Nifty gateway and just go on there and look for art that you want to buy and put out an offer and either you get to buy it, which is what you set out to do, or you make more money back on it and you can buy something else.  So—

Stephen Young:  [Interposing] 100%, yeah.

Host:  So it is, it is accessible.  I, I see it as like being accessible nowadays, even to people that aren't professionals in the space and are really just casual art collectors that might buy a piece or two on open scene Nifty gateway and now Niftify.  

Stephen Young:  Yep, a hundred percent and like I said, like, that's, that's how I use it.  So there's certain assets that I really like and if I see any of them listed on the platform.  So if there's an odd blocks, I always make an offer.  You know, any autoglyph that comes on there, I'll make an offer because those are things that I, I—like, I think they're—they're kind of significant and I think there's some, some beautiful generative arts in there, so I quite like those.  But yeah, I think that's a really good strategy for the average person to get in.  As long as you don't mind actually owning the asset, there's, there's basically zero risk to participating.

Host:  Exactly.  Exactly.  So more broadly, how do you see the space of—the space you're in?  So like sort of the intersection of NFT and DeFi, how do you see that space developing in the next year?  Like what new projects do you see coming out of it?  How do you see it evolving? 

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  Well, so, so I really think we're seeing that the both of a new asset class, you know, and this is—real estate doesn't asset class on its own.  All of a sudden now, we can have digital property rights and as more and more value accrues to these, to these NFTs, all of a sudden you need more and more financial services associated with them.  So I think there's the guys like NFTEX are doing great work on the kind of fractionalizing on the—they don't do fractionalization.  They do, like index funds, which kind of gives you like a full price, which I think is very interesting—Upshot is doing some really cool work around getting a building like incentivizing appraisals of these assets.  

And so then you can start building, like algorithmic models to price what these assets are.  I know of a couple of projects that are working on tokenizing actual, real—physical, real estate.  So I think you'll see some of that coming in the near future.  I think art is—for me, art and, and the current state of like Ethereum is just such a great match because for art, it's not like a game.  We need a thousand transactions.  You know, you meet once, you sell it once every few months, maybe years even.  So it's a really good match.  You can kind of do low throughput, but it's less secure.  

So I think you'll see the ArtMark and grow.  Music, I think is coming big time.  I think anybody who's got IP that they want to, to leverage is going to come to the platform.  Like I—the example I always use is imagine if Lucas forms mince, you know, like a limited edition.  Luke Skywalker, NFTs and if you own that, you've got backstage access to any new shows that they do, you know, all of that kind of stuff.  I think you need to—for those kinds of things, you need to tie some real world benefit into it.  But I think the entertainment industry is just going to jump on this over the next while.  In - - sports, you see it with top shots as well. 

Host:  For sure.  And so if we're looking ahead to 10 years down the road, do you see music and art being a new asset class in the same way that we see real estate as an asset class today?

Stephen Young:  Well, I mean, it already is.  You know, these people spending hundreds of billions of dollars on buying a back catalog music rights, for example, or like sports.  Sportsmen are using their Contracts as collateral to do these private lending things.  You know, these are—it's happening.  Like if you're not a sportsman, you don't really know about it because you don't have a multimillion dollar fiveyear contract to use as collateral, but those guys are.  

So, so I think you'll just see these things that are currently—it only is for the elite sportsmen who have hundreds of millions of dollars to—they can use this.  And we're going to see that kind of coming down in price.  So before there was mass - - airliners, only super rich people could fly because you have to own a plane to fly.  And as soon as you could buy a commercial ticket, the market just exploded because everybody could actually afford to fly then, and I think that's what you're going to start seeing and to see more and more people—there's always going to be the top end, but it's going to kind of filter down into kind of making these, these assets like productive for the everyday person.

Host:  For sure.  So tell us—last thing about Niftify before we move on.  What do you have installed for Niftify for the remainder of 2021 that you can—you're able to share with our listeners?

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  So we're, we're working actively with the dapper labs team.  We are—we should be launching the flow assets in the next quarter or so.  So you should be able to use your MBA top shots moments and get loans on those.  So that's definitely coming down the line.  And then, like I said, there's kind of more fun based model where people can pool their capital and, you know, so that's really going to be—I think that's going to be a big game changer, allowing more people to, to take part in that and, and then—yeah, I think that's kind of all I can say right now, but they'll—there'll be some more news coming soon. 

Host:  Awesome.  I can't wait to see what comes out of it and I'll definitely be keeping my eye out.  So another thing I wanted to talk to you about is token engineering.  This is something that you've spent some time doing and I think people are just starting to hear about token engineering, but I think most people, it's probably safe to say still don't really fully understand what token engineering is.  So can you explain what that is?  And, like what sorts of projects you were working on back when you were doing more token engineering?  Talk a little bit more about. 

Stephen Young:  Yup.  So, so token engineering is really trying to take some of the mathematical like techniques that were being used.  It's actually being used in—to build things like, fighter jets and spaceships and nuclear power plants, where this is extremely complex systems that the consequences of getting, getting your design wrong, you know, is life and dead.  

So there were all of these methods developed where you could kind of guarantee that a system will adhere to certain properties.  So you can't, you can't say exactly what will happen, but you can say things—that certain things never will happen.  So you kind of like putting a boundary around the possible things that could happen using a specific design.  

And then token engineering is kind of pioneered by Michael's argument, block science and they—basically, you're trying to take the—this kind of body of knowledge that exists in, in that space and trying to apply that to the crypto economic systems.  So, so it combines some, some sophisticated Maths with some agentbased modeling, which kind of can model different kind of actors acting in their own self best interest using different strategies and then you can kind of run these models and see, well, if I designed my token like this, what are the possible outcomes of, of that scenario?  

And I kind of got involved in—there's a project called common stack and they're trying to, to bold alternative economies that allow people to, to kind of use like the common good as a—reward the people contributing to the common good instead of just like monetary rewards.  And through that kind of got involved with, with the box science guys and just to help out a little bit with, you know, kind of writing some of their documentation.  I was also just kind of learning at the time, so I just kind of dived in and volunteered, helping—to help them a little bit on that side.

Host:  Very cool.  Is that something you're still working on now or that you plan to in the future or is that sort of in the past? 

Stephen Young:  It's more a skillset that you—that I'll be applying to Niftify.  You know, also made some good contacts there.  So I have some people from that space that will pull in to kind of designing our kind of more sophisticated models coming in the future.  We really wanted to start simple because it was a simple, real problem that we can solve straight away.  But over the long run, we want to go and use these more sophisticated techniques to kind of enable us to scale and kind of be more capital efficient and bring in more larger pools of capital, et cetera.

Host:  Got it.  Got it.  And then another thing I wanted to bring up, I saw you tweet a lot about this actually and this is just to prove that not everyone in the crypto space is all about crypto 24/7, that we do have lives outside of crypto.  One thing you're really into is kite surfing, right? 

Stephen Young:  Yeah.

Host:  Or is it—

Stephen Young:  [Interposing] Yeah.

Host:  It's kite surfing, not kiteboarding, right?  They're not the same thing.

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  It's basically—kite surfing is when you use like a directional surfboard style and kiteboarding is like a little bit more like a snowboarder or a white board, where you kind of go in both directions. 

Host:  Got it.   Got it.  So how did you get into kite surfing and are there a lot of kite surfers in the crypto committee?

Stephen Young:  So I got into it almost 10 years ago now.  So Cape Town is kind of the center of the world for kite surfing.  There's this huge competition there called the red bull king of the air.  So they have all the top kiters in the world coming there every February and they're all kind of their training.  So it's super windy there, lots of, lots of big waves.  So it's just really big.  

So whenever it's a windy day, you just see hundreds of kits out in the water and I've always been a little bit of a adrenaline junkie.  So, you know, like anything in the nature—in nature—in the ocean where there's like a little bit of adrenaline involved, like that's, that's my thing.  Yeah, there's actually quite a few people in the, in the crypto space into, into this.  I think there's a lot of people who are risk takers.  You have to—you take on quite a lot of regulatory risk to start something in the crypto space.  It's so new.  

So I think that it's like there's a big overlap.  I actually met a lot of the people.  So Jonathan Gambler [phonetic], he was involved with block science too.  He's founded the crypto valley association in Czech, and CAD labs is one of his recent projects and they kind of do token engineering as a service for, for big projects.  And he—so him and I were both into kiting.  I invited them down to Cape Town and that's actually how I got introduced to a whole bunch of our seed round investors.  

So yeah, some, some like lots of big people there.  We're actually turning it into a bit of a project called never stop network where we trying to bring together a bunch of—I know some of the pro kite surfers and bringing in some of the web three founders and kind of arranging these events where you're going to put together people who are both into some extreme sports a little bit of the crypto side.  I think you kind of make better friends when there's not just one thing in your life that you—that you're interested in.  So it's a kind of networking event to kind of make friends within—in the space. 

Host:  Very cool.  How hard is it to pick up for people that are listening and haven't tried it before, but now they're like sold - -.

Stephen Young:  It is—it's—takes a little bit longer.  I'd say then kind of just learning to snowboard.  You probably need to take some lessons and do three or four days of practice, but then after that, it's—it's like the first few days are quite hard.  And then after that, you kind of get going quite quickly and kind of become selfsufficient.  So it's definitely worth getting into if you, if you have a bit of a adrenaline junkie side to you.

Host:  Nice, nice.  I haven't heard much about that, but I definitely want to try it.  I have always heard about the shark diving or I guess, cage diving with sharks down in South Africa.  So that's something I've always wanted to try out.

Stephen Young:  Yeah, there's fewer sharks in - -.  There's some killer whales have moved into the area and they eat sharks.  So the sharks are, are hiding away a little bit, but I mean, there's beautiful ocean life there.  So if you ever come down in Cape Town, I'll, I'll, I'll introduce you to some, some good kite surfing instructors and you can give it a try.

Host:  Awesome.  I would love that, thank you.  So for the last segment of the podcast, I always end with an explain your tweet segment.  And this is where I go through your Twitter and I dig up some interesting or cryptic tweets and give you a chance to explain them.  

So your, your Twitter is a lot of Niftify stuff and a lot of the stuff that we already talked about, so I won't go through those.  I just picked out a couple that are, you know, I guess passing thoughts that you've had.  I'll start with this first one.  I think this is the one that you have pinned to your profile.  It's from August 26th, 2019.  It says, "Realizing you don't need most of the things you own makes happiness much cheaper to buy."  Is that something that you've practiced, like minimalism traveling, doing the digital nomad life or—yeah, tell me more about that. 

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  So there's a great line from fight club versus the things you own ends up owning you.  And like I've got so many friends who, you know, just like every time they get a raise, they get a bigger car or a nicer car and, and then they're so busy that they can't do anything, you know.  So for me, for me, I don't mind spending money, but I want to spend money on things that make me happier and like having more stuff doesn't make me happier.  

So most of my money goes to things like sporting equipment or like cutting trips or, you know, doing holidays with my girlfriend.  So, so I think there's this kind of a misconception that like—yes, I think money can buy you happiness, but not if you buy stuff.  It's more if you buy experiences like build memories, you use that money to kind of live a more full life.  

Host:  Yeah, I—a hundred percent agree.  I think it sounds cliche a little bit, but I think it's definitely worth more buying experiences than things because, you know, things are—you can just throw it out and then it's gone, but the memories will be with you forever.

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  Well, that's the thing, like lots of times cliches—sound cliche because they say it all the time because they true.  So it's just kind of, if you don't understand it, it sounds stupid and if you do understand it, it's like, yeah, of course.  So, so I think that's a—it's a, you know, chasing money for money's sake is—it's not really something that's super interesting to me.

Host:  A hundred percent.  All right.  And then this other tweet, this is from October 31st, 2019.  I think this is—these are both pretty old tweets compared to most that I pull out, but this is a retweet of something Novel said.  He said, "For knowledge work, time spent has little to do with value created in the 40 hour work week is anachronistic nonsense."  And then you quote, tweeted that and said, "Five hours of inspired work while fresh and inflows is greater than 20 hours of drudge work while tired and trying to push through."  I just wanted to bring that up.  I think, you know, like everybody can agree with that, but I just wanted to call it out now because in this time when it seems like everybody in the crypto space is working around the clock.  I just wanted to get your thoughts on, on how that applies today.

Stephen Young:  Yeah.  Well, I mean, if you're trading, it's much better to make 100 X trade than to make 500 losing trades, right, or like just barely breaking even.  So, you know, the quality of your decisions are—matter more than how many decisions you make, especially in kind of in this world.  We've got like just infinite leverage everywhere.  

And then, you know, especially for creative work, it's—you need to get sleep.  If you're tired, you're not going to do good work.  I actually learned this in my days as a programmer and you'd kind of have a deadline and like, like just really try to push through and you kind of doing like 16 hours in a day, and then you go to sleep and you come back the next day and you spend five hours undoing, like the last half of your day's work the previous day, because it was just stupid idea.  And then you kind of like, then you like to gain and then you have to kind of carry on.  So I really kind of think that I'd much rather have people like the developers working for me, you know, have a few really solid, good hours where they're like really like in the moment and really can kind of—you can have ideas when you're in that space that you just can't have if you're tired.  And when you, when you're getting paid for making good decisions, then you have to be—rested to be able to do that. 

Host:  For sure.  A hundred percent.  All right.  Well, Stephen, thank you so much for joining me on this podcast today and talking about Niftify.  I can't wait to check it out.  Before you go, just tell people where they can find you if they want to connect with you personally and then also remind people where they can check out Niftify and just give a quick summary of the cool things that people can do initially as soon as they sign up on Niftify.

Stephen Young:  Yeah, sure.  So if you want to find me on Twitter, my, my, handle is Stephen, STEPHEN, underscore, YO and to our Twitter profile for Niftify is @NFTfi and we're at Niftifi.com, NTFfi.com.  So yeah, if you sign up, if you hit up Niftyfi.com and you've got some NFTs in your wallets, you, you can list a couple of them, see if you get any offers, jump into our discord.  There's a link on the website.  There's lots of great community members there that'll help you kind of like figure out the basics.  If you've got a little bit of capital, you want to buy something.  I have a look at the, at the landing page or the homepage, you'll see a list of all the assets that are listed on Niftify.  You can make some offers, you know.  Don't, don't try and make super lobel offers cause people aren't going to take them, but, you know, try and figured out 50% of the actual value make an offer.  Maybe you end up with a cool asset or make a little bit of money. 

Host:  Awesome.  Well, thanks again so much, Stephen.  Thank you listeners for tuning in and we'll be back again soon with another episode of the unstoppable podcast. 

Stephen Young:  Thanks very much.