Join hosts Joe Benso and Michael Ross for a deep dive into the evolving world of Web3, crypto, and technology with Zeneca—former pro poker player, founder of Zen Academy, and a leading voice in NFTs and blockchain education. In this podcast episode, we unpack the intersection of AI and crypto, the resurgence of NFT seasons, and why stablecoins might be the unsung heroes of mass adoption. Whether you’re new to Web3 or a seasoned enthusiast, this conversation is packed with insights, laughs, and actionable takeaways.
Joe Benso (00:00)
Welcome once again everyone to the Tokened podcast today. We’re thrilled to welcome Zeneca to the podcast former pro poker players from what I understand turned Web3 visionary Zeneca made waves founder of Zen Academy, which we will talk about in the 333 club Empowering thousands to navigate NFTs and blockchain through education and community Also known for your insights and I like to dive deeper on one of them where you’ve said the best trade most of the time is no trade. So we’ll see if you still believe in that. But here to dive into the future of Web3, AI, crypto gaming, along with my co-host Michael Ross, we’re excited for this conversation. Zeneca, thanks for joining us today.
Zeneca.xyz (00:49)
Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here. And yeah, on the best trade is no trade. Like many other things, I don’t always take my own advice. I’ll just set that at the top.
Joe Benso (00:51)
Awesome.
Well,
I noticed actually you had a tweet out, you had a post out on X that you highlighted that you had round tripped a large figure. So that, but that still stays within the philosophy of no trade is best. That’s it. Make it those route trips. Yeah, it’s typical for crypto. But,
Zeneca.xyz (01:10)
That was last cycle, yeah. It is what it is, it’s crypto.
Yep, yep.
Joe Benso (01:26)
Tell me if I understand this correctly. So you started off in poker and is that, how was that translating into Web3? do you think a lot of people talk about crypto and gambling and the crossovers. What was that like for you? What’s that experience?
Zeneca.xyz (01:46)
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of overlap and there’s a reason a lot of poker players make the jump from poker to not even just crypto, like traditional trading and things like that. So I did poker for 15 years. It was a big chunk of my life. 2005 to 2021 is when I kind of quit. But 2017 is when I started getting into crypto. And it was through some poker friends who started telling me about it.
Yeah, know, was interested. was immediately interested. But 2017, I didn’t really know what I was doing. And you know, all my training was on an exchange. I just was buying things because people on YouTube were telling me to buy them, etc, etc. But I realized that a lot of just like the experiences through poker, so like understanding risk, managing emotions, managing a bankroll, thinking in terms of odds and probabilities, so many transferable skills. And so you always sort of kept connected to crypto and then 21 is when I fully just dove in full-time.
Joe Benso (02:45)
Mm-hmm.
Michael (02:45)
I like this emotion, right? I think that’s the biggest challenge sometimes, that people become emotional to see Ethereum going down or any Bitcoin or whatever and getting stressed like I have to sell, right? I think indeed with the same, probably you see this limit with poker, like or with gambling in general, like okay, don’t let emotion always speak, right?
Zeneca.xyz (02:55)
Yeah.
It’s everything. One of my favorite quotes is by this chess player, don’t know the butcher’s name, Siegbert Tarasch is what I remember. Anyway, he says, it is not enough to be good at chess, you must also play well.
I think that applies to poker you could be the best technical player in the world But if you get your emotions get the better of you you go on tilt Etc you could be the best at finding mean coins really early But if you’re you know super duper greedy if your emotions get the but there’s so many ways that you’ll end up losing money So yeah It’s everything I think
Michael (03:35)
So will be difficult to get you emotional or get you out of your comfort zone during this podcast?
Zeneca.xyz (03:40)
Yes, I would say so. I’m generally pretty even-keeled. I definitely do
get emotional and have ups and downs, you know, like all humans, but I think my general temperament is pretty chill.
Michael (03:53)
Is it typical for being Australian?
Zeneca.xyz (03:56)
Yeah, it’s definitely an Aussie thing as well. We’re pretty laid back and casual and calm and chill here as just a generalization for sure.
Joe Benso (04:05)
Got that poker face. All right, cool. So you started Zen Academy because, well, tell us like the reason behind that. I mean, I think when you started it, you know, a lot of people are still, it’s still early. Like that’s what we say, right? And onboarding people, there’s a lot to understand if you’re coming into this space and it changes so quickly. you know, tell us a little bit about the experience of setting up.
Michael (04:06)
Ha
Joe Benso (04:34)
Zen Academy and where that’s headed.
Zeneca.xyz (04:37)
Yeah, so I launched it in November 21. And pretty much the main reason was that around June that year, I started sort of creating content. like posting more on Twitter, started my newsletter. And it just it really resonated with people like it went beyond any of my wildest dreams in terms of like engagement and number of people sort of consuming the content. And that made me realize that there’s a real demand or need for just
especially for NFTs at the time, but like decent content around that. And especially educational content, because a lot of people were coming in with no real idea of what they were doing, why they were doing it. You know, there’s a million YouTubers who just shill stuff and promise, you know, 100 extra turns and stuff like that. So it was like the impetus for doing it. I’ve always sort of had a inclination towards education. I’ve always said in previous life, I would be a teacher and maybe I did that if I stuck around at university. Back when I was poker, I used
like coach people as a poker player, I would make educational training videos and stuff like that. So it was just natural for me to want to do something in that space. And the other element was that I realized I didn’t want to just be trading full time for the rest of my life. Like I wanted to do something else.
You know, as playing poker for so long, one of the things that professionals tend to wrestle with is the fact that you’re not contributing at all to society. Like the world does not need professional poker players. You add nothing of value, really. And I don’t think the world really needs people just trading shit coins, meme coins, any sort of crypto. So I didn’t want to just be doing that forever. so I thought, what can I do sort of in addition to this? And that’s where the Zen Academy came from. And yeah, we launched it back then.
Michael (06:14)
Just a follow up question I like that part is, okay, I could be a teacher, but I didn’t continue. You think education is very needed still in the industry and how do you see it’s moving or how would you do it? Education in general, regarding the web free, because it’s dangerous, right? You can see mental health, can see it’s 24 seven, right? It’s tricky. I can see someone at night and waking up and checking what the market is doing, which is not good, right?
Zeneca.xyz (06:29)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean I think education more education is just needed always globally on basically everything but certainly in crypto and one of the most difficult parts is that crypto is
changing at such an insane speed. Like I am full time, I spend so much time in the space, I can’t keep up with even 5 % of what’s happening across the different blockchains, the new upgrades, the protocols, the, you know, what’s happening with stable coins over here and a new L2 over there. And it’s impossible to keep up with it. So I think the first thing I always teach people is just accept that you’re not going to learn everything and sort of like pick your battles and start with the basics and go from there. And I think if people get a solid fundamental understanding of crypto as their entry point, they’re much more likely to stick around, have a positive experience and especially like probably just buy Bitcoin which is generally what I advise everyone new to the space to do and be weary of all the other coins. Maybe Solana, maybe Ether, like yes, starting with Bitcoin is where I always advise people to do.
Joe Benso (07:41)
Speaking of onboarding people with Bitcoin, it’s obviously the first crypto and the first blockchain and also kind of the philosophy behind a decentralized currency. How do you feel about institutions and governments getting on in terms of how that’s bullish for the space, bullish for Bitcoin, bullish for crypto or not? What are your thoughts on that?
Zeneca.xyz (08:08)
Yeah, it’s an interesting one because on the one hand, know, Bitcoin was created as this anti-establishment, know, anti-authoritarian censorship resistant thing, cypherpunk, et cetera. But there’s this great article, it’s called Geeks, Mops and Sociopaths. I’ll send you a link, maybe you can add to the show notes because I think everyone should read it. And the concept of it is basically,
Joe Benso (08:15)
Yeah.
Zeneca.xyz (08:33)
So many things start out small, but if you ever want them to go mainstream, if you ever want widespread adoption, certainly global adoption, you just have to accept that it’s going to lose some of its original charm, ethos, culture, etc. There is no world in which we would have ever got to billions of people owning crypto. We’re not there yet, but like if that’s imagine that’s where most people want to go. I imagine without having centralized exchanges to help onboard people and be that bridge without being accepting of it and so I think that it’s a necessary evil is kind of how I look at it. It’s certainly something to keep an eye on as well because they can certainly, it could lead us down a pathway where certain governments or entities, micro strategy, et cetera, have too much control, too much power, too much influence, especially if they pull together, maybe for some other tokens, but yeah.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing per se. I just think it’s a it’s a fact of scaling the technology.
Michael (09:37)
You see now as well a few days ago you saw that Pengu and PudgyPenguins is filing for NFT. So to have NFT and have an ETF and explaining to retail or in the traditional investors like look you’re just actually investing not in Bitcoin or gold but you’re investing in penguin pictures. think this is like how you explain this one right? I was like it is interesting but also with a very limited supply like do you think that’s a good move?
Zeneca.xyz (09:42)
Yeah, ETS.
You
I think it’s not bad. So I don’t necessarily think it’s exceptional, but I think, I if you look at traditional ETFs, there are ETFs for all sorts of things. You can get ETFs for penny stocks, you can get ETFs for emerging markets, you can get ETFs for this, that, and the other. And so it’s not unusual to have ETFs for more than just sort of the main big dogs of whatever sector it is in. I think, yeah, it’s nice that there’s options. I think ideally, it would be packaged with other things. like I could see an NFT ETF making a lot of sense where there’s punks, exposure to punks and pudgies and a bunch of others. But you know, I’m a fan of pudgies and I think it’s, I mean, yeah, Doru just applied for an ETF. So like a meme coin is applying for an ETF. So it’s like the floodgates have been opened. And I think if we’re gonna allow some, we should basically allow all and see if there’s market demand for them, et cetera.
Michael (10:57)
When we talk about project, just to get, what is your favorite project still?
Zeneca.xyz (11:03)
I mean, I love pudgies. If I had to pick a project with a team that’s building it out, would pick pudgies. If I had to pick something that I find the most interesting and fascinating, I would pick Terraforms by Mathcastles, which is this fascinating on chain art thing. I love squiggles from art blocks just for the history and the culture there. And I love punks for the timelessness of them all. Yeah.
It’s hard to pick one.
Joe Benso (11:29)
Coming back to the education initiatives, what are some of the things that you wish more people would know coming into this space immediately? And what are the challenges that you’re finding educating people coming into Web 3 and where your thoughts are, where things are going?
Zeneca.xyz (11:51)
I think it’s basically just the going back to the cypherpunk ethos and like the reason crypto and Bitcoin was invented in the first place, the importance of decentralization, the importance of self custodying or at least having the option of it.
I think that’s basically the biggest and most important and in many ways the only thing that you that I really think people need to understand because everything else things like how to use a wallet, how to read a blockchain, what is an L2, what is a decentralized exchange, all of these things. think almost all of it will get abstracted away from the end user eventually. So someone will just have an app on their phone and they’ll get like an 8 % return on USDC and they don’t know what’s happening with what blockchain it’s on or what DeFi even is.
So I think that all of those things are good for people that really want to be, like who are passionate about the space, who want to work in the space, who want to be in the space full-time, trade, or have a genuine interest. But I think that for the vast majority of users, eventually, it’ll just be, all this stuff will be in the background. But I still think it’s important to understand where it all came from.
Joe Benso (13:00)
And what’s maybe for our listeners you can kind of distinguish the difference between what Zen Academy is and the 333 club is.
Zeneca.xyz (13:09)
Yeah, so I I launched them both at the same time. And the idea was that they would be, mean, first of all, it was an experiment. I said, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know where it’s going to go. We had a discord server and I said, you know, it could just be that we all we end up doing is keeping the discord server and that’s it. Maybe grows into something much larger. So that’s where we started from. And the business model or the model of membership was we sell some NFTs.
If you hold the NFT, you get access to the project and community like many other projects did at the time, which eventually fizzled out as Bear Market set in and especially as Royalties kind of disappeared as a model in the space. The initial difference was the Zen Academy was for everyone. It was a low, low mint price. It was an open edition so anyone could mint. It was a two week period that you could mint. So no FOMO, no exclusivity or anything like that. And it like, if you want to be part of the community, if you want to join and be part of this experiment journey, come on in.
The 333 club was was much more exclusive and capped to 333 NFTs. It was an application process. So I had to, I read and approved everyone manually and it was initially targeted towards builders. So people who had their own projects that were building something in the space, wanted to connect and network with other builders, wanted to, you know, I would jump on calls with people. I still do get advice, advisory stuff. So those are like two different levels of membership where we started. Things have sort of evolved and we’ve had a whole roller coaster throughout the bear market to get where we are now. But we’re both, both communities are around and kicking and I still spend a lot of time with them.
Joe Benso (14:37)
Awesome.
You know, now one of the big trends, obviously, people are talking about the intersection of AI and Web3 and content creation. And these are all things that I’m assuming, you know, your communities are also asking about. But how much time do you have to kind of dive in, you know, as crypto is changing so quickly, AI is obviously even changing even more, you know, at a rapid pace. But we do see signs of these two massive technological kind of changes merging together.
What are your thoughts on AI and crypto? Do you have any plans to use AI maybe for content creation, scaling up initiatives or the merging of NFTs and AI? Where are your thoughts on that?
Zeneca.xyz (15:25)
Yeah, I think it’s the most interesting sector in the space. I’ve basically thought so. Actually, one of my first ever NFTs was an AI art project back in 2021, because I just found it interesting at the time. And then ever since, and I bought a bunch of other NFT projects that were backed by AI later on, but really ever since Chad GPT came out, that was like the big aha, holy shit moment where it was like, all right, now.
It’s sort like the cats out of the bag and things are about to go absolutely exponentially crazy. And so ever since then, like you said, know, blockchain is one of the most significant technologies. AI is definitely the most significant thing happening in the world right now. And, and they’re definitely going to intersect and merge in all sorts of ways. So I spent a lot of time thinking about that. Most of my sort of trades and investments within crypto lately have been in AI related tokens. You know, we have the whole AI agent meta. There’s the whole AI DeFi thing coming out now.
There’s just a whole plethora of stuff happening within with that intersection. So yeah, I find it fascinating and I think it’s the number one place to be focusing on right now. And in terms of using AI myself, I do use AI, I find it difficult to stay on top of the AI space because like you said, it’s moving even faster than crypto. There’s new stuff. There’s 10 new things a day, 100 new things a day. I have friends who are really tapped into it and occasionally they’ll tell me about something. for the most part, I just use Chachi BT or Claude or even DeepSeek from time to time. And I do use it to help content. Only recently have I started, but it’s not very good at writing content in my experience, but it’s very good as a brainstorming partner. So, you know, I’m writing an article on this topic and I’ll feed it to the AI and be like, there anything I’ve missed or any other topics that would be interesting? And it’ll give me 10 help, like one or two of them will be interesting and I add it to my article. Stuff like that, which I find very helpful. And I think that, yeah, why not use AI as an aid?
Michael (17:23)
Well, something we recently launched with Sleep was our agent together with Coinbase, XOTA, with X.ai, which is actually an agent would help you with your travel planning, which we connect your wallet, start learning, okay, who are you, is Seneca, what is his preferences are. And eventually you can also do like, okay, just book my stay, right? And that’s it. And it takes a month to find your wallet.
Zeneca.xyz (17:42)
Yeah, that’s the dream.
Michael (17:44)
Well, we have it working, but it’s still for us thinking, okay, are people really willing to say, look, I’m trusting the agent in recommendations for my holiday and he might recommend me free places. And if I just say book for me and you’re just taking it from my wallet without any clicks, without any approvals, is it not scary? What is your opinion if you go really into this mulling with just purchasing an e-commerce without actually zero clicks almost and just tell your agent what to do or to buy for you?
Zeneca.xyz (18:11)
It’s definitely scary and I think early on it’s going to make mistakes and people will be very apprehensive. I would be. But I think that starting out it’ll… you know, a lot of people will probably use it where it’s like, hey, you know, I’m going to Japan for three weeks, which I am coming up soon, honeymoon, etc. So, you know, these are our preferences, you know, me, and this is the kind of budget, you know, tell me like two recommendations in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, etc, etc. Find the best prices. And then it comes back and it’s like, all right, these are our recommendations. Would you like us to book? know, would you like me to book this whole set for you? And that way, at least I still have some input and say and can do that little bit of research, but they’ve done a lot that themselves already or the AI has done a lot of that themselves. Eventually I do think that we’ll get to a point where an AI agent can book because it’ll, if you effectively think of it as like people have you know executive assistants, personal assistants who do book their travel and AI will eventually be able to fill that same role and do that for everyone.
Michael (19:14)
It’s something which is different and quickie we have at lunch and for us to see okay what is the difference in behavior right do you still want to make your own selection and using endless filters and etc. I was like look or just ask you can just do it for me just find me a hotel in what you said in Japan.
They know your budget, they know your preference, if it’s like a business hotel or you prefer more modern, you prefer more trendy or more boutique. So it’s very interesting, you how can the agent help you, but let the agent sometimes make decisions. I understand it could be scary for people, Eventually, they even be your groceries automatically because they know what you’re ordering and what you’re eating every week, right? Why just go to the supermarket and get into the same things? What you said, what is interesting, I think AI can also help people with stress reduction, right? I think indeed what you said, if it’s, for example, travel,
Zeneca.xyz (19:34)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Michael (19:59)
I know 72 % of the people have stress when they have to book their travel, right? And which is that if I’m content and actually I’m not so sure if it’s great or do I miss something, can I just use AI to confirm for me? think it helps a lot of people in their daily activities, right? So, now very interesting.
Joe Benso (20:15)
so as we see, you know, crypto and AI kind of merging, is this something that you think, you know, is required for mass adoption to actually take advantage of the potential of blockchain or NFTs or smart contracts? Is AI the thing that puts it over the edge where mass adoption actually starts to come into play? And we’re using both technologies in a way that does provide actual utility. What are your thoughts on the future of JPEGs and these community NFTs moving forward?
Zeneca.xyz (20:52)
Yeah, I think AI will help us go mainstream and help adoption, but I don’t think it’ll be the singular thing or the biggest thing that will get us there or speedrun us there. I think stablecoins are doing a massive job of that.
That’s a separate topic, but in terms of AI’s role with NFTs and where do I see these communities? know, 2021 and early 2022 was sort of just a fever dream in this space. And like so many, say 10k PFP projects launched, they had a roadmap, a community formed around them and you know, people got excited and then, know, 99.99 % fizzled out, went to zero, ran out of money, community disbanded. But a few stuck around and the ones that stuck around, I think other ones that are the most interesting to me because
I mean, they just survived and they still have these strong communities. And I think that they will go on to do some really powerful things, again, using Pudgies as an example, proliferating their IP globally, as well as having thousands of NFT holders now who gain some perks and benefits from that, as well as are incentivized to help propagate the IP. So I think that’s one case. think just NFT as a membership tokens is a business model that can work.
But at least for the time being, I see it as like a hybrid model where if you have say, you you could have like 100 NFTs that give lifetime access and then a thousand and those holders get a 50 % discount on your monthly whatever subscription model. Things like that I think we’re gonna see more and more of. And then there’s the outside which I think is gonna continue to thrive.
Michael (22:31)
I think you’ve a good point, right? like the business model of NFTs is tough. You’re just making your mint, you’re making your funds and then you have to deliver and making costs which nobody likes to do, right? So let’s make it. And what you said, I think this hybrid model, I think you’ve got a good point there like indeed to have indeed access to something, get unlocking some benefits or perks, but still indeed maybe have recurring income by having a subscription or other. Indeed, I’ll say revenue streams is crucial to be alive in NFTs. Otherwise it is
Zeneca.xyz (22:39)
Yeah.
Joe Benso (22:58)
So you also mentioned art on blockchain. So obviously Ethereum is…
has a lot of kind of significant digital art pieces, art blocks, for example, and a lot of the projects within that. But now you’re hearing people speak about the role of Bitcoin as kind of the best blockchain too, if you’re going to have art on the blockchain. What are your thoughts on kind of the expanding art ecosystem across blockchains as you have? hundreds of different L1s potentially, but where does the kind of art value accrue in your opinion moving forward?
Zeneca.xyz (23:39)
I find art or anything on Bitcoin, ordinals, etching, inscribing, extremely fascinating and interesting and exciting. It’s like the idea to put something on the Bitcoin ledger that is there immutable for now until literally the end of time. That is really exciting to me.
The sort of issue I see in terms of art adoption over on Bitcoin is that it is still clunky to use. It is not as easy to display your art, to trade it as Ethereum with smart contracts and with all the dApps that have been built and everything else. In addition to that, the culture of NFTs and digital art is really…
it came from Ethereum. And I think that what is art if not culture? it can evolve and always does and move and all that kind of stuff. But I think Ethereum has such a significant not even first mover advantage, like, cultural advantage over Bitcoin, over Solana, over all these other chains that are especially for art. I could see a world where gaming NFTs thrive on another chain, but I think art especially will almost certainly stick on Ethereum for the most part. They’ll obviously be great pieces on other chains as well. But I think personally, I think that the significant bulk of culturally relevant crypto art will be on Ethereum or potentially Ethereum.
L2s in the future and the main net will have a premium. But yeah, I just think it’s a cultural thing and it’s going to be borderline impossible for that to shift elsewhere.
Joe Benso (25:20)
Very interesting point. Speaking of culture, crypto Twitter has…
kind of a lot of the mind share around if you’re trying to look for alpha in crypto, you gotta be on X or you gotta be on Twitter. How do you see kind of the evolving social media landscape moving forward, you know, with maybe younger generations choosing to be on TikTok or YouTube? And is that something that you’re also planning for as a content creator, you know, needing to be where, you know, the emerging…
emerging markets might be going or do you see it all continuing on Twitter?
Zeneca.xyz (25:57)
I think for the foreseeable future, the lion’s share of crypto Twitter-esque conversation will remain on Twitter. Certainly TikTok, YouTube, many other Instagram, many other platforms are taking off, but there’s something inherently crypto native about Twitter. It is, you can be anonymous. It is fast, it is text-based, information can move very, very quickly. And part of the reason it,
it started thriving on Twitter like 10 years ago is that people used to chat on Facebook and Instagram and other places and Meta or whatever the company was back then Facebook just like banned it and they’re like, you know, we’re going to shut down any crypto related content. And so the community was rightfully like, you know what, screw this. We don’t want to stick around in a platform that doesn’t want us. Let’s go to Twitter. And now with Elon at the helm and like free speech ostensibly being something that is pushed for, I think it’ll stick around for a while. However, I do
see that the future, maybe distant future eventually is decentralized social media. I hope that happens and I think it will. That’s where you have platforms like Farcaster that are really important because it’s effectively you can build Twitter, but it’s an open source protocol. So someone can build a TikTok version on top of it. And all your followers are the same between platforms. You don’t have to have this fragmentation. If you don’t like one client, you move to another one. No one can shut you down, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that that is a future
it’s gonna take a long time because you know these social media platforms just have enormous network effects that are entrenched but hopefully that’s the future and then last thing I’ll say because you asked if I did YouTube or TikTok or anything I’ve tried it I’m not good at it I don’t like it so much work to make good video content I even got a really nice camera and everything I was like I’m gonna make YouTube videos and then you know I’m a writer I’ll stick to writing
Michael (27:51)
Well, the rumors are indeed like it depends off the bit they might bring TikTok on chain, right? I think it will really help, of course, a mass adoption and stuff and bringing a new generation. I’ll say even earlier, like a younger generation into into Web3. So curious if this is going to take place.
Zeneca.xyz (28:06)
Yeah, that would be fun.
Joe Benso (28:08)
Maybe a couple more questions. As you’re moving forward into Web3 projects, what are the types of advice that people signing up to, know, Zen Academy or 333 club can get if you’re talking about maybe how you personally evaluate Web3 projects and the legitimacy for long-term potential?
Zeneca.xyz (28:33)
It’s definitely evolved over time based on what I’ve learned. But I now evaluate projects basically through the lens of.
how likely are they to get actual users and keep them? I think that everything else, like it’s a cool idea, the team can be amazing, extremely accomplished, et cetera, et cetera. But if they aren’t able to get users and keep them, then the protocol, the project will just fizzle out and die unless it’s some weird thing that doesn’t require any users or customers. So that’s kind of where I start from. And so let’s say I do some investing and if I’m gonna invest in a project, how I think it’s like, they going to be able to market this product? Will they be able to generate attention? Will people like it? Will it go viral? And so to reverse that, if you’re building something, it’s how can you go viral? How can you build something that will generate attention, especially because there’s a bazillion projects more coming out every day, all trying to grab people’s attention in crypto and then outside of crypto as well. So that’s to me the most important part. And then obviously building something that adds value, that has longevity, that people will want to stick around and use all important things as well. But attention, getting users, building community is to me the most important part.
Joe Benso (29:52)
Have you seen any, coming back to poker, have you seen any web three poker projects that you would be interested in? It seems like it would be a natural fit, right?
Zeneca.xyz (30:00)
There have been a few.
Yeah, there have been a few. I don’t know why none of them have really taken off. Part of it might be regulatory, part of it might be the moat that the existing large poker sites already have, and part of it might just be the expense. It costs a lot of money to…
Joe Benso (30:08)
Is it regulation or?
Zeneca.xyz (30:25)
properly run a poker site because you need departments to fight against bots and that’s getting an increasingly difficult problem. You need massive legal teams, you need many, many, many other teams. And so I think maybe it’s just the risk reward or the incentive structure hasn’t been there. And I’m not sure that it ever will because as AI gets better, as bots get more prevalent, online poker is gonna struggle to find users as time goes on unless there’s some solution to.
Which actually, bringing it back to blockchain, there’s some potential version where it’s like proof of humanity, reputation tied to your account type thing, you can never make another account if anything is found out wrong that may allow poker to survive one day.
Joe Benso (31:10)
Maybe a little bit of alpha there if anybody’s building a Web3 poker brand there. Or legacy poker.
Michael (31:15)
But it’s also still that a lot of people still with crypto, they’re buying and selling and not really spending crypto as well. Of course, we have a hotel booking platform where people can spend crypto. And you can see, of course, it’s really depending on the market that people are willing to spend their crypto. And do you think as well if you go to online gambling, I’ll say web free version where people can also gamble with crypto, it still has to be more accepted. And you mentioned briefly stable coins, right? I think it’s very important. Like if this becomes more, I’ll say more accepted.
Zeneca.xyz (31:22)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Michael (31:42)
If you take a look, I’m gonna use stable coins because it’s easier to take a look. I’m gonna use those indeed for gambling and then it fly.
Zeneca.xyz (31:49)
Yeah, I think it would have to be in stablecoins. Like I know there are some sites out there where you can bet in Bitcoin or fractions of Bitcoin or Ether or whatever, but most gambling sites now, they convert your crypto into staples anyway on the platform. And so yeah, it just makes total sense to make it all in stablecoins.
Michael (32:08)
I mean, well, indeed, if people start, like indeed start spending crypto in general, and then of course convert to stable, but indeed then they start just getting away, I would say from fiat currencies and then cross out, say payments to people and employees in some countries, of course, it’s a bit easier. like, look, you get paid in stable, then people think it’s also a help indeed to spend those stables on, for example, on gambling or on other services, right?
Zeneca.xyz (32:34)
Yeah, with Zen Academy, at one point we were employing like 15 people and throughout the entire time we’ve always paid in crypto, stable coins, there’s some great payroll platforms now which you can pay in stables. They receive it and they can receive it in a way that they can withdraw it to their bank account if they want or they keep the stables on chain. yeah, mean, massive, massive improvement over the older systems of having to pay people in 15 different countries would have been a nightmare.
Joe Benso (33:03)
If people want to get started into Web3, like never heard of Web3, never heard of crypto, what would you say would be the best place to start? And how would you onboard somebody into crypto just in the most basic way?
Zeneca.xyz (33:18)
Yeah, Bitcoin is a place to start. It would depend on…
Joe Benso (33:21)
Mm.
Zeneca.xyz (33:25)
It always depends on the person, how old they are, what’s their background, they technical or they’re not. And can I personally walk them through it? Do I have the time? Do they want that? Or is it sending the resources? Most of the time it’s sending people resources. And so I think there’s some fantastic resources out there. Jamison Lopp is an OG Bitcoiner who has a fantastic website. And on it, there’s a ton of resources for Bitcoin, starting from Explain Like I’m a 5-year-old, Explain Like I’m a 15-year-old, think, etc. First principles, that’s really good.
Which is basically I send everyone new there and and Andreas Antonopoulos’s videos and even books It’s how I learned through him and he’s like the best crypto educator I think ever so yeah
Joe Benso (34:12)
Shout outs on both those. Yeah, definitely. So what’s next then for Zen Academy and 333 club? What’s on the horizon for you there?
Zeneca.xyz (34:21)
Yeah, so mean, like we, 2022 and 2023, we tried various business models, we had large team, we tried to make revenue, we basically failed. Nothing quite worked. almost Implemented what I spoke about earlier where we said, know, let’s do a monthly subscription model But if you have a three three three club, it’s free as an Academy you get a 50 % discount and we can grow that way but to be perfectly honest by the end of like that to two or bit years I was completely burned out and and just couldn’t see doing that and and still be able to add enough value to justify it effectively and so unfortunately most of the team had to be let go and Now we are kind of where I said we would be from the beginning or potentially would be and it’s largely a Discord server, but we still hang out, we’re active, we explore new things like the AI agent meta, tokens on base, meme coins even, NFT season and whether we should be getting in on that. And yeah, so just hang out with the community now and spend time together and learn together. With the 333 club, it’s a little more involved where we obviously have our own private chat area. We still have a weekly call, so anyone that
Once you can jump on a call every week and I still make my calendar available if any members want to book a half an hour call to get advice or whatever Yeah, that that’s the main difference between 333
Michael (35:43)
You said NFT season. When? Okay.
Joe Benso (35:46)
Thank
Zeneca.xyz (35:46)
No, so it’s front of mind because I’m working on my newsletter right now to go out today and the topic is, NFT season kicking off? Because we’ve seen, I mean, I think it is, is the short answer because punks usually lead it, punks have been moving a lot lately. And then we saw the Good Vibes Club and the Masks of Lucci by Sam Spratt. And it’s just like all this positive energy is now surrounding NFTs, which generally is what you need to happen for them to have a season to start moving.
And yeah, if the market remains reasonably bullish, think a lot of the NFT prices are down so much from where they were even three, four months ago. So I think there’s a good risk reward opportunity there in the event that we do get an NFT season.
Joe Benso (36:29)
Do you see some of these projects having the resurgence to all time highs like they once had, know, board apes, you know, over a hundred eith? I think Luca from Pudgee even predicted that Pudgee Pagans would have a 200 eith floor at some point. So what are your thoughts on getting, you know, the floor prices back up to where, you know, they were at all time highs?
Zeneca.xyz (36:50)
Some projects will surpass all time highs. Yeah, mean, paradoxically, maybe not, I think it’s the ones that never had a particularly high floor price are the most likely ones. Like
Joe Benso (36:54)
Which ones?
Zeneca.xyz (37:05)
Apes, I really don’t see getting over 100 ETH again. I hope I’m wrong. I have an ape, I’m still OG ape. yeah, you never know, but. There’s two things kind of working against it getting over 100 ETH. One is it’s just an enormous amount to run up from here and there’s so much baggage and so much history and et cetera, et But two is the price of ETH in my view will just keep going up over the longer term. so then, know, 100 ETH could be just a ridiculous amount of money. And so, yeah, those are the two things fighting against it. I think that, which ones might?
Maybe like some of the sort of the mid-tier PFP community projects that are still around like Sappy Seals or Chimpers or things like that, yeah, they might have had like a two-week floor, one-tooth, two and a half,
Joe Benso (37:49)
Mm, chipper.
Zeneca.xyz (37:53)
maybe even. But if we get a proper NFT season and they release some really exciting things, potentially they could run. But especially I think the thing that is, the projects or the collections that are most likely to hit new all-time highs are art collections because they, art generally takes a long time to appreciate in value, but they also tend to have a… more diamond handed collector base for lack of a better term. something Derek Edwards always talks about is no external dependencies or a few external dependencies. like, the art doesn’t need to do anything for the price to go up. A squiggle doesn’t need to do anything. A punk doesn’t need to do anything. An autoglyph doesn’t need to do anything. And so assuming crypto keeps doing what it’s doing and goes up into the right over a long enough time frame, I think the crypto art scene is gonna continue to grow. It’s already growing.
Joe Benso (38:30)
There’s no utility expectation. Yeah. Right.
Zeneca.xyz (38:48)
NFTs in multiple museums around the world now and more and more joining in. And as time just goes on and younger generations just grow up and get older and then come into money, they will be much more likely to be willing to spend on crypto art or to appreciate it than people maybe in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s today, to traditional art collectors. So yeah, crypto art, I’m very confident that a lot of it will hit new all time highs. Obviously, a lot of it won’t, but some key important collections will.
Joe Benso (39:19)
So maybe if there’s one thing you want the audience to take away, anything underrated in Web3 that you want people to pay attention to, and also how can people get more involved with you around Web3.
Zeneca.xyz (39:35)
The answer is so boring because the thing that I feel like everyone should be paying attention to and not enough is stable coins. think the adoption is massive, the impacts are enormous.
Yeah, they’re trying to pass legislation in America to some, can’t remember exactly what the specifics are, but to just help the adoption of stable coins. It is the use case. So many people ask, ask me, ask probably all of us, what does crypto do? What’s the use case? You know, it’s just speculative, et cetera, et cetera. Stable coins is the perfect answer to sending money to someone on the other side of the world in four seconds for less than one cent is such an incredible use case for so many reasons, payments, payrole, commerce.
Gambling is also one. yeah, think that’s, it’s not something that people can easily exploit, but maybe find projects or protocols that are in the stablecoin space. If you’re a builder, maybe build something around stablecoins. Because I think it’s going to be an enormous thing in the next few years, even more enormous than what it is now. And in terms of where people can find me, just add Zeneca on Twitter. Zeneca.xyz is my newsletter. I write twice a week in there. And yeah, in my Twitter bythere’s a link to Zen Academy as well and come join the discord if you want
Joe Benso (40:54)
Awesome.
Thank You, Zeneca, for sharing all the insights. It’s been amazing to connect with you in this conversation. obviously following along on Twitter, there’s a lot of alpha that you’re sharing. And appreciate you taking the time to share with our audience as well.
Zeneca.xyz (41:11)
No, thank you so much. appreciate you both having me here. Fantastic questions. I enjoyed the conversation. Hopefully others found it insightful.
Michael (41:19)
For sure we did. So thanks a lot Zeneca and speak soon.
Zeneca.xyz (41:23)
Thank you.
Joe Benso (41:26)
Thank you so much. That was good.
Zeneca.xyz (41:27)
Thank you guys, that was awesome
