What is the metaverse, how does this all work and where is this going? with Breanna Faye

Keri Norley 

On this episode of the wealth Alchemist podcast, I have Breanna Faye on the show with me. When we talk about the metaverse, there is this buzzword being thrown around right now. But do you really know what the heck this means? Breanna is an architect and she has started designing houses for the metaverse. She's also an artist who is creating NFT's her insight into this space will help you to understand so much of what this is and why it's so important for our future. We talk about the reason people are investing substantial amounts of their money into this space, and how this is not actually some sort of fad. This really will have a profound effect on how we live our lives over the next decades. We are only at the beginning of what is possible and this conversation will totally open your mind to our future. This is not an ish it is happening. So please drop into this conversation. Enjoy the show and start listening and learning so that you can be a part of this to enjoy the show. Hello and welcome to the wealth Alchemist podcast. I am Keri Norley the host and today I am super duper excited for this conversation with Breanna Faye. And she is so first of all before I even tell you she is we met at the Miami crypto experience. She blew my mind with her brilliance and I am so excited to have her dive deeper into the metaverse. This is to me like a kindness. It's kind of a buzzy word at the moment and a lot of people are kind of throwing it around and I don't think many of us actually know what it actually means. And so I'm super excited to really dive deep into this conversation with you today and I will explain to you because her bio is freaking epic. We have a really smart woman on the call with us today. So please like grab pencils, grab paper, grab a cup of tea sit down relax, join into this because it is shorts who expand and blow your mind because stalking her always expansive blows mine. Okay, so brianna is a Senior Technology executive MIT trained architect CTO, that's Technology Officer. For those of you who don't know, underlying 501 C three and founder of metr Kai ticks collective that builds generative virtual architecture NF T's for the metaverse we're gonna have to break that down Brianna, entirely generated by an algorithm without the aid of architects from GPS enabled smart helmets to AI engines for electric vehicles. She has led projects spanning the metaverse, Blockchain platforms, IoT, Smart Mobility buildings and cities, and as an advocate for human centered AI love that design solutions that bridge digital physical environments. She is also a multimedia writer, poet and artist and works across disciplines to fuse technology centric thinkings, into more traditional artistry of poetry and painting. Her her art writings and design have received international awards and have been featured in exhibitions and sold as NFT's as part of the ether poems Ethereum blockchain poetry collection. That's one hell of an amazing bio stuff. So welcome to the show, my love.

 

Breanna Faye 

Thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here and extrapolate on some of those kind of many topics that probably aren't familiar to a general audience.

 

Keri Norley 

It's true. Like it's a lot of you know, it's what I find so interesting about this space is how much lingo there is how much how much there is already created in this space, how much of it's already happening and how little the world actually knows about this general area especially. And I think it's a fascinating conversation. And it's something that to me, first of all, like the metaverse to me, I like personally, I'm a little bit on the fence about it. Like, I love the concepts around that we're going to be able to have this totally amazing virtual reality. And I'd love to continue into the conversation. And it's not yet like I want to explain Metaverse and everything first before we get into this part. But I also have this like little concern about the humanity of it. And I love that you said the human centric because my concern being of course, like we could start playing into this virtual reality world, and completely lose the fact that we are actually human on this planet. And so I'd love to dive a little bit like knowing that piece of it like to hear some of your perspectives from that part. But first, tell us give us like a definition of what the heck is a metaverse?

 

Breanna Faye 

Sure. So there's a few different definitions of the metaverse saw walk through, kind of like both ends of it. A lot of people are hearing it today in the sense that like, there's a Metaverse world. There's a Metaverse game. There's a Metaverse building. And so although that's kind of like, it's sort of a falsehood, because it's it's sort of taking the definition of Metaverse and boil it down to its most basic sense, which is just virtual environment. The term was actually originally created in the 80s, by this science fiction writer in a book called Snow Crash, and what he defines the metaphors as granted, he doesn't actually write the definition, but the entire book is about, you know, this sort of virtual, futuristic environment. And there's a few principles of the metaverse that like most people in the space, really kind of, that's what we're building towards. That's what we hope to build towards. And some of those principles, a big one is interoperability. So interoperability is the kind of antithesis of what web two which is we have all these websites, we have all these platforms, we have all these centralized businesses, right. And each one has created their own proprietary software, and you kind of have to like go from one and then you know, log out and you have a complete new identity. And then you go into another right. And if you play

 

Keri Norley 

a game, for example, so for example, to be really clear, so it's like, I'm going to my banking site, I have to web on to my banking site, then I'm going to go play game, I have to log into that, then I'm going to go to pay my rent, then I'm going to go to whatever my health insurance, whatever. And we have to in and out, that's what you're saying. Yeah, right.

 

Breanna Faye 

And now and then we have this, you know, miles long password sheet, right of all of our passwords, because these are all individual silos that we're opting into. And then, so it's a login logout, none of these things are connected, right? There are some plugins, there's some things like that. So and then you can extrapolate that into like, gaming environments. So when I go, like if I, if anyone's a gamer, I don't know if anyone is here, listening, but to say you're a gamer, in the mark, traditional sense, now you go and you buy the game, and then you take it home, and most of the assets in the game are free. And again, it's a siloed game, you could go buy 100 other games, and they'd all be different, right? You can't just like go from one game to another. And then we also have this other siloed environment of social media. So I have a Facebook, I have an Instagram. And even though those, you know, are owned by the same overarching company right now, there's also Snapchat, you know, there's there's hundreds of these social virtual environments. And, again, they're all siloed. And what I create in one doesn't necessarily translate the other. It's not, it's, it's owned by a different entity. And actually everything. When you sign on a lot of those disclosures that you never usually read, basically, say, I give you the rights to all my data. Basically, what you're giving them is access to all your data, even your content. So it's like, you know, you're giving up your content, they technically own it. They own your data. And yeah, it's basically creating no our entire what we call web two, it's like the current state of our internet is in web two phase is based on this principles of highly centralized, highly siloed, high lope, highly proprietary content, information dissemination of information. And that's our entire software ecosystem. A lot of proponents of you know, what is like what is the next version of the internet, right, that's what we call web three. So a lot of proponents of, you know, building a healthier version, next version of the internet for web three is about decentralization. So trying to eliminate those kind of centralized silos of you know, where things like misuse of data happens and, you know, basically creating kind of like, using people so we even call in tech, all everyone who, you know, every account every person is typically referred to as a user Which is kind of funny, someone actually mentioned to me like some sometime last year, like the only other, you know, field that mentions user is like the drug. Right? And tech, so drugs and tech. Yeah. So a lot of web three folks basically are advocates for this decentralization. And I had to explain all that background because the metaverse when you think about all these things that I just listed, your your social media accounts, right gaming environments, even where you log in to, like, buy something online, ecom your bank, for example, the future iteration of the Internet, whether it's web three, web four, we don't know. And the metaverse is really principles of decentralization, interoperability, which means you can easily move from one thing to the other, which you can really only have if you have centralized players that work well together, or if you have true decentralization. So interoperability is super big. I know it's not a word we throw around a lot. But in the in terms of like really defining what the metaverse like is, in the future, it's like, we can't be fully, we can't fully replicate ourselves in the digital sense, unless there is interoperability, because, you know, I can go to my work, I can go home, I can go to my grocery store, I can go to like my tailor and the way I do my laundry, and they know me, right? Because I've been there before. Um, but in the internet, everything's login, logout login log, you're almost like a new person every time right? So yeah, the interoperability is pretty key.

 

Keri Norley 

So will we be able to like be able to ultimately have one access point to all of it, is that what you're saying?

 

Breanna Faye 

Potentially, and what that looks like is, you know, yet to be defined, I guess, but in the way that we, you know, see it in crypto and NFT ecosystem is really that you have a wallet. And this wallet can be connected or read by other existing ecosystems. And so it's less about logging in and more about connecting the wallet, which maybe to some people sounds like it's the exact same thing. But um, your wallet is not just a login, and it's the same for every single one. So it's all connecting back to the same wallet. Now we call it a wallet because it actually does hold currency, it holds cryptocurrency, but a wallet is also bigger than a wallet, you know, in terms of the definition, in, you know, IRL, in real life. So a physical wallet, it's it can hold my digital assets. So it can hold NFT's non fungible tokens if anyone has heard of NFT's. But in the future, you know, your your they titled your car, your DD your house, might all be NFT's any contract that you sign at all could end up being an NFT that you know, is in probably more of a private wallet or vault. But again, this is all part of the same system of this is the thing that other websites, and we'll call them environments recognize me as and when I'm in that environment. Sure. It can be like a web two flat interface. But it can also be as soon as I land there, I'm in a three dimensional space. And that's a huge kind of principle of web three, I think, to really get to the next version of the internet, again, whether it is web three, or web four, or web 44. I think, you know, we're in this newspaper version of the Internet right now. And you think everything's flat, even our zoom is flat, right? So as our hardware improves as our software computing power improves, we're going to be able to utilize 3d A lot more takes more computing power takes more, you know, bandwidth. And that's inherently going to be a very heavily 3d experiential place. So

 

Keri Norley 

it's yeah, for you. So for you, the metaverse goes beyond like the spatial 3d virtual reality. Yes, I

 

Breanna Faye 

actually think that for it like so a lot of people probably have interested in the metaverse, they probably watched Ready Player One, that's a good point of reference. So Ready Player One is like a complete, almost like complete AR or VR experience, you know, where you go into this total VR immersive world. You've got the headset, you can, you know, you can have some hardware that kind of enhances the experience. But I think that what what I'd really like to see is and what I really believe, like will happen whether or not it's part of the definition of the metaverse is the combination also of AR and VR, and AR will probably be Much more ingrained into our everyday lives, you know, because as we move about the physical world, augmented reality is gonna be the thing that gives us a tech overlay while also still having our, you know, real world environment around us. VR gives you this totally other world immersive experience, right? So I mean, whether or not the definition kind of encapsulates that I think it's possible to talk about the future of our lives and of how we will use technology without talking about both AR and VR. And even though AR isn't traditionally talked about in terms of the metaverse, I think, I think they will become more synonymous, augmented reality and virtual reality. So what do you mean when you say augmented reality? So augmented reality is used a lot more in terms of mobile apps, so probably a lot of people have heard of Pokemon Go, that was that app, where if no one's kind of had a visual that or played it, it's like, Pokey, like hold up your phone, and you see Pokemon, but they're like, exactly like as if you're looking at the camera, or you can see in front of you like, it's not really

 

Keri Norley 

real in the reality like in our, in our like, physical presence. I'm not actually looking out my window and seeing a Pokemon. But if I look at the foreign the pokemons there, and I can claim

 

Breanna Faye 

Exactly. So it's kind of like creating a digital overlay on top of the real world. Also, like Snapchat filters are augmented reality, but Okay, okay, my least favorite kinds. But yeah, so when you think about things like Pokemon Go, right, that feels real, because you're, you're in it, right, your, your, your concentration, and focus is on the phone. And so if you're moving your phone around, and you're looking in their buildings, or park, or whatever is in front of you, but then you also see this pokemon, or whatever it is, it doesn't have to be Pokemon. It could be, you know, it could be a call out about, you know, your shopping list, right? It could be the reminder to return books, the library if anyone does that anymore. But you know, so it's like it can be contextualize pertinent information in real time that's happening as you're walking down the street reminders for certain things about stores that are nearby, or, you know, a movie you wanted to watch, right? So that's cool. You don't have to be like Pokemon obsessed, or just a gamer or into gaming to sort of like these things.

 

Keri Norley 

There's also, we've been finding some that are now for crypto too, right? Like we can walk around and claim krypter. I'm like, Oh, my God, that sounds so fun. I haven't gotten into it yet. But like, there's games now, right? That we can literally go and it's that same concept as Pokemon. We walk around, and you look for the crypto symbols, and you find it and you actually get money now. And I was like, wow, it'd be so cool. Like, I want to look at like, these are some of the things I'm really curious because I haven't gotten into gaming yet. But it's definitely a place I am diving into at the moment, because it's fascinating to me, one of the things that's most fascinating to me about it is thinking about like so my kids who can't like who are not going to go out and get full time jobs. And realistically, they're not going to find places for the most part at nine and 12 years old, a while they're going to school and doing gym training, to be able to go out and walk around and claim some cash and make 10 bucks here, 20 bucks here for being in the crypto games, right. And I find it fascinating because it's not just as kids, but like, I was talking to someone recently about gaming. And I'm sure like you've you know, this is part of some of the stuff that you would say to that, like in the Philippines, so many people are getting into crypto gaming, because you can make $100 a day. And it's more than they could make if they went to work by a lot. And they have to push a few buttons. And I find like to me, when we start to look at this reality. I think what excites me the most is this is the part that to me, all of a sudden, we have this huge ability to transfer wealth, because those people who could not otherwise have ever made that amount of money. You know, and some people it is $100 a day for people there is a lot of money, you know, and I know that some of them are making more than that, depending on how much you put in and other that is making less, you know, depends on the person. But when I actually added it up because the one of the guys who I spoke to this guy, two of the games that he plays are $120 a day he makes approximately right. And I was like and then others on top of it that are a few dollars here. $5 here this year, so call it but we I just did it for minimally $120 a day. I was like I added that up. That's 43 grand a year. Yeah. And I'm like, it's that's boggling.

 

Breanna Faye 

There's actually companies that are trying to kind of create an organize, you know, and structure, how to sort of categorize all the games that are out there and also kind of create management systems for, you know, like, oh, there there are people that own assets and games that don't want to use them. So they rent those assets to people who want to play with them. And then of course, you know, they split proceeds in some breakdown. Yeah, this is like a whole economy,

 

Keri Norley 

right? This is what I was gonna say around the metaverse part to me because this is I guess in my mind where I kind of go with Metaverse, things And what you're talking about, even with interoperability, this is the question that I had. Because when I was just saying to my son, so for those of you who don't know yet, like, he's 12 years old, my older one, I have a nine year old and a almost 1320, a teenager, we call him now, but he's almost a teenager, holy moly. And he loves gaming, both of them do. And so I was talking to before getting on the call with you. And I was saying how, like, you know, how you guys go out and do games now, and sometimes your passion, but really, you get nothing back out of it. And you're building even if you look at Minecraft, right? You're building these worlds, that eventually like, there's it doesn't matter, you could walk away from it. And that's it, like, nothing will change, nothing happened, you own nothing. It's just a game, right? And, and I was like, but when we start to get into these worlds into these virtual realities, and I love that you were sorry, even talking about this, like that, you're starting to build homes and these virtual realities that people are buying, right. And so I was saying, like, you could go out and you can buy your house. And if you hold it as an NFT, you own that house versus like you've just given Minecraft money to give you a house. Right? Right. And so now you own this house. And in theory, I love what you're saying, like you could rent the house out and my question and interoperability going. So with these, like, let me first finish this thought you'd own these places, you'd own the house, you'd own if you have a shooting game, you know, on your gun, you'd own your bone, arrow, you'd own your block of land, you'd own your whatever, whatever, whatever, to expand your your empire in these games that are already being played. But instead of the game owning it, you now own it. And then as as life goes on, and the values increase, you can start selling them, or I love this renting them. Right. And so my question is, is your timing interoperability? Could I take that house almost, and then use it in another game? Like it's so used between, right? Yeah,

 

Breanna Faye 

that's exactly why the principles of interoperability is so important, because, you know, it's so exciting. And maybe some people are still like, kind of like, why do I care to own a virtual gun? Like, why do I care to own a virtual house? We'll touch on that later. But the interoperability component is say you did want to own those things. If they don't connect to anything, if they're built by all these centralized companies that don't speak to one another? How do you ever you know, what's the utility then then again, it's still only valuable in that world, which again, most people are think very short sighted, and they're like, I'm fine with that. I'm fine with this game. This is the game I like, what happens if that business goes out of business? Right? I mean, we're talking like long term, 10 years, 20 years. If, if that is what your assets are tied to, and there's not true interoperability, then you really don't own anything more than you own your Facebook pictures, right? if Facebook were to go offline, sure, you'd literally have to go and download all your pictures, right? You don't, they're not going to host it for you anymore. So interoperability is super key there. And the other point I want to make is, you know, for the for those of you that are kind of skeptics and say like, Well, why would I ever want digital assets? Like, why would I ever want to own these things? I'm not a gamer. Um, okay, so Metaverse, really, when you get down to it, it's really not just gaming. And it's really not just social experiences. But it's entertainment. I mean, we could have virtual movie theaters, we could have virtual classrooms like it could almost be like a replica, or at least designed more in the real world. Like our world, I go down the street, there's a bank, there's a mall, there's a movie theater, and there's my you know, my work and then there's a school, and all these things kind of coexist in the manner that they were designed. The Metaverse might be the same type of thing, where, again, it's it's not just like, hey, I'm not a gamer, that doesn't apply to me. I don't really use social media. You know, think about zoom, even zoom has been this amazing tool that really in the last two years, people started understanding, you know, the value of being able to see each other virtually right, we had this whole world, you know, kind of closed down for COVID. And, you know, we had to rely on especially businesses, especially schools, everyone was, you know, figuring out how to do virtual conferencing, which I've been doing for a long time. So it wasn't new to me. But that I think is a light bulb that can people can suddenly start to say, yeah, so in the same way that Zoom was so important. These last two years, think of what the next version of that is, you might actually not want to connect with strangers similar to a chat room, let's say where we're all like little people hanging out in a virtual place talking but you might want to connect with your family. And what if your family can't get together for you know, the holidays this year? You can be on a zoom in the future you might be all of you with an avatar in a you know, virtual vacation home that is you know, in the Maldives, or somewhere completely made up right so it's and you You don't have to have a bunch of fancy tech to do it that can just be done on your laptop, right? But it can be done more in a three dimensional space.

 

Keri Norley 

Amazing. So avatars, you mentioned avatars, right? Like, to me, this is fascinating because ultimately, like we can be whoever we want to be, right? So explain more about that.

 

Breanna Faye 

So avatars are just the kind of digital representation of yourself. So if you're talking the gaming sense, it could be your character that's, that's namely, often here. And in the NFT world, which by the way, all those things that you mentioned earlier, those could all be NFT's, right? They totally that's what NFT's are, it's basically just a digital asset. And a recognition of a digital contract. That's called a smart contract. So an avatar could be an NFT.   So the avatar itself could be an NFT. It doesn't have to be three dimensional, but can be is for talking about Metaverse type thing, it's most likely three dimensional. But yeah, it's sort of like your character. Right? And, and for people that people that are into gaming, they'll understand Yeah, character, I love to like customize, I love to change their clothes. You know, if if you don't, if you're not into gaming, go look at what your kids are doing when they're playing computer or video games, because for sure they're doing it. But if you don't think about social media, right, you know what a profile picture is, right? You everyone goes and uploads their picture. And most likely, it's a picture of you. So now we're starting to see a lot of these web three folks actually buy NFT's that are just, you know, a flattened picture of, we call an avatar. So it's, it's a, you know, visual representation of what an avatar could be. And then some of these projects are making them 3d So that you can just literally import, you know, download that asset, import it into, you know, a virtual gaming environment, or virtual social experience environment. And you show up as that avatar,

 

Keri Norley 

I think there's something as you're sitting here saying, I think there's something kind of fun because like, when I talk about manifestation principles, I will say, right, like, the thing that you get to do in order to step into the dreams that you have, is actually start to be the person. That's that, that version of yourself, right. And so it's ultimately in many ways, taking on a new avatar, right? Like we're taking on a new experience of ourselves. And when we really start to break down, like, on a very human level, like, we all have different, you know, like, when I'm home, I'm kind of a certain person, when I'm on, you know, speaking on a stage, there's gonna be an energy around it when there's, you know, like, we all have different aspects of ourselves, right? And I love the concept as I'm sitting here thinking about it, I'm like, Oh, you could actually play into like, Who is it? That would be my dream version of myself. And I can go create that avatar. And I wonder how much like, it's a curiosity cuz I don't know yet, right? Like, this is all such new stuff. But I wonder the curiosity being like, if I can start to go create that avatar, how much that then we shift into that is a human self too, right? Because all of a sudden, I'm like, Oh, well, I've now had to say, I'm gonna go and I want to have this person who's, you know, sassy, and her hair's this way and unedited. And it's like, oh, you really get to play with your creative expression around who you choose to be, which is actually kind of a fun exploration and expression.

 

Breanna Faye 

It really is. I mean, it's a huge movement of self expression. And the really interesting thing is you can pick an avatar, that's funny, because this happens. A lot of times people pick an avatar that kind of looks like them, and some pic like radically different, right? And there's like, there's all sorts of avatars, there's, you know, there's animals, and then there's more like human, they're cyborg. There's all these like, different types of styles of drawing them as well, like, Are they realistic? Are they like pixel blocks, right? So, but you're right, and that sometimes, you know, I'm friends with a lot of avatars online. Most of them hang out on Twitter, which is a very, you know, web to platform, but it's where a lot of crypto and NFT people hang out. So for those of you that are interested in crypto, web three, and NFT's Twitter is honestly the place to be right now for sure. Definitely a lot of good people. You can follow and I'll try to give out a list anyone who will want it but yeah, so but it's funny because a lot of people I'm connected with are just avatars with you know a not they're not name right. So

 

Keri Norley 

We get to have we get to have individuality and also a non amenity and not a nun.

 

Breanna Faye 

A tongue twister but yeah, that's another thing of course that is inherently kind of baked into the crypto totally, you know, seen blockchain seen for since it was created and before It was created the people working on it were obviously, it's all part of hacker culture and a lot of underground tech. And now it's kind of become this whole other space, right? Where, you know, just traders day traders can just do crypto, right. But yeah, being anonymous is a big part of that for some people, and, you know, whatever their reasons are, but that also is like you have this idea of who, what personality someone is and their name. But when I think about it, it's like, that's really just, you know, that's really just an ape that I know is 0x Four, six. And that's it. Right?

 

Keri Norley 

You know, it's interesting because I want to be like, say something here on this because a lot of people don't understand when we start to get into the crypto space, that anonymous entity and that word. They you know, a lot of people think when we start to get into blockchain and crypto, they think that it is full of wallet, there are a lot of scams, but they think there's a lot of people who are like in the drugs, and they're moving all this money and yada yada yada and all this kind of stuff, right? And I'm like, actually, as much as we're anonymous, because I don't actually have my own name to my block, or my wallet or my identification, right? It is one of the most that's the beauty of it is it's transparent. So we're anonymous and yet transparent, because you could follow literally every single one of my transactions online. And so if somebody were to move money for things like money laundering, it's actually like you could follow the entire trail, because it's totally transparent. You just don't know who that number belongs to. And so it's so interesting, because then you can create this avatar, and you can have this whole experience and be completely anonymous, but yet transparent as hell.

 

Breanna Faye 

Yeah, it's it's kind of it's a really interesting, it's like a, it's like a duality. That's almost weird, right? Yeah, it is. And you're right, everything is transparent. There are a lot of actually big players in the space and NFT space specifically that are, you know, completely anonymous, probably have been in crypto for a very long time and therefore know how to do it properly. And, you know, are our influencers really, with hundreds of 1000s of followers that are quite, you know, recognized in the, you know, NFT and wider cryptocurrency space and have influence over hundreds of 1000s of people...

 

Keri Norley 

You'd have no idea who they are as a human person.

 

Breanna Faye 

No idea.

 

Keri Norley 

It's crazy. Isn't it was also an interesting something that you said that I wanted to say here too. You were talking about NFT's and these avatars and what we can do and one of the things that came to me was recently I noticed I saw that Nike has just trademarks, quite a handful of trademarks within the metaverse space within the online web 3.0 space. And I think that's really fascinating because as we talked about this, this is like fashion, right? We're going to start seeing fashion like as we dress our avatars, they're going to have their own fashion sense and we're gonna be able to buy into and I thought it was really quite like forward. Oh look like and I say this because of the adoption, right a lot of people think that we're like crazy you and I sitting here talking about this and the amount of people I talked to they're like, Yeah, I'm just not really interested. I'm like, well, you're gonna have to get interested pretty soon, right? Yeah. Because if you're not interested is going to come and smack you in the face and you're gonna wonder what the heck you're missing out on and why didn't listen before, right? And when you start to see these huge companies trademarking so that they can have fashion in the metaverse like you want to start paying attention, because it's these big companies that are having these adoption places that we're starting to know like this. This we mean business, like they mean business, they wouldn't go and trademark something because they're like, yeah, just felt like it.

 

Breanna Faye 

And I can tell you, like I'd say 90% of fortune 500 companies right now are looking into NFT's are looking into the metaverse, Nike, Adidas, Adidas, just did a huge. I don't even remember how many million dollar project launch. They actually partnered with a few players in the NFT space. Obviously, a lot of people that know Facebook changed their name to meta, yeah. But I will say like, this is something that the grassroots community that exists now, which even if you're not a part of like the NFT community, the web three community, I think you're still kind of relate to that one, because it's, it's the little guys, right? And a lot of the that movement is sort of anti that grassroots movement, because what is trademarking? It's saying no one else can do this, right? It's a we own that, and the whole principles of, you know, decentralization as if none of us own any of it. Yeah, it's like open source, right? It's like interoperability, connectivity, open source software. And, and those kind of principles, which, of course, is at a heads with, you know, giants of web two that want to trademark that one, a closed source. And, you know, who knows what they'll build in, it'll likely not be interoperable.

 

Keri Norley 

Right. It's interesting. It's like it's such a fascinating exploration of what will happen. So it's so interesting. Okay, so you're an architect? Yeah, one of the things, right, and one of the things that you were talking about at Miami crypto experience is building houses in the metaverse. Right. So we've talked about all these other ways that it isn't actually virtual reality. But it also is that and so the curiosity and this is a question that a lot of people have is like, Why the hell are people spending 1000s of that there's 1000s and 1000s of dollars to buy cyberspace, like, what are we actually getting? And why the heck are we spending and then people are going to go out and build these designer homes in the metaverse like what the heck tell us.

 

Breanna Faye 

So there's, there's a big word, we always trace it back to utility. And art, really, because I a lot of people firmly believe like art doesn't have to have utility. It just needs to be art. Right? So in the NFT community, we talk a lot about art and utility. And this other thing called collectibles. And NFT can be art, but it can also be a collectible. A lot of people have heard of maybe projects like crypto punks, or the board apes or me bits that have just kind of like yeah, taking,

 

Keri Norley 

Like, the apes they like I mean, millions of dollars people have spent on these NFT's.

 

Breanna Faye  

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's it's huge right now. It's crazy. Oh,

 

Keri Norley 

I think about it. Um, so like, I don't I? It blind boggles my mind.

 

Breanna Faye 

Right? That there's a lot of small ones too. So don't let it really go. Totally crazy listening. Like there are tons of projects that are entry to.

 

Keri Norley 

Buy for $1. Right, like, you know, we were talking about it with with Ken Bozak and crypto, right. And they'll sell off their NFT's for like $1.

 

Breanna Faye 

There's a lot of different chains without going into the explanation of that, that basically, you know, have varying types of fees and prices. So yes, there are affordable NFT's there are very expensive NFT's. Most of the expensive ones are on Etherium, which is the biggest kind of protocol where, yeah, but it's it's the biggest blockchain. So for building on top of, but yeah, so mad architects is the organization collective that I'm part of, and we actually, so we design virtual homes right now. Um, but it's all out. It's all generative. So why I was talking about crypto punks, and board apes is because those are NFT collection projects. And what that means is they're sometimes art, sometimes collectibles, it's sort of you know, a lot of people would say, Oh, the board apes are at all. They're, they're a collectible project and what's a collectible like think of Pokemon cards again, you do? These are things that especially a lot of us as kids used to collect, right? And they're used for certain things. So in that sense, it's a game but also it's just fun to Left, right, they have value. You can trade them with your friends, you can sell them, you can open a pack and sell off five cards and get your money back and then keep the rest. So there's all this different utility right for things like Pokemon, YuGiOh, Pogs, whatever is the people collect, some people collect, you know, these, we can collect baseball cards when I was growing up baseball cards, too. Yeah. So a lot of NFT's are considered collectibles, as opposed to art. And so one of the things is is the kind of the flatline or the base utility is that it's a collection. And with this collectible, I can sell it to someone at you know, potentially a greater cost. I can trade it to someone. But in this sense of what we're building, I can also have this Metaverse, Metaverse social utility, so I can take this virtual building asset. And I can upload it into a virtual world, which we are we designed ours basically to basically be a 3d model that you can import that we're going to create import guides for so that if you've used decentraland, somnium, space, the sandbox, these are all pretty common, quote, unquote, Metaverse, worlds. Basically, they're social gaming environments that a lot of crypto people hang out in. So you can you can see a lot of NFT's and avatars running around, basically. But yeah, so our generative homes can basically uploaded those. And some of you might be asking why? Well, it's like people actually buy land in these virtual worlds. And when you buy land, it's basically an empty plot. So what you do is you have to like start building, hire someone to build, or you know, do something, right. If you want to put something there, right, you just, you know, you spent whatever amount of money on this virtual land and you want to populate it. And again, this is sort of like, it's sort of a gaming environment. But it's not a game, because it's not a game where you start at a start line. And your goal is to get to the finish line, it's actually more of a three dimensional social media experience, where you can interact with other people. So you know, you and I could be in this virtual world right now having a conversation with our avatars. You can also do like really kind of absurd things. Like I think it was Domino's that created a vending machine where you can actually like order a real pizza and it will be delivered to you in real life, but like from the metaverse. Yeah. So there's, there's, you know, there's all these different things you can do inside the metaverse world. But anyway, the whole reason you might want a building in general is because you want to participate, like people that really want to participate, and go to this place, whether it's every day or every week, you might want to place again, when we talked about, you know, zooming or Skyping with your families, right? Where do you actually go and meet, right? This could be your virtual family's home, meaning you and I and our 10 friends could come and actually meet in this real, you know, virtual space.

 

Keri Norley 

Totally makes sense. So, the, okay, so the question that I hear a lot around this is like, so we have this, I'm gonna say, I mean, this is the thing about NFT's right? Is it's, it's a value that we place on it, there is no like, I mean, like we said, we can buy it for $1, you can buy it for millions, it's whatever, whatever value much like and this is, you know, this is what I tell people when they want to get in into NFT's in the first place, is like, if you were going to buy that piece of art for your wall, you don't necessarily buy a piece of art for your wall. Some people do, right, our collectors will buy it for like holding a financial value. And you buy it because you like it, you don't just go out and buy art put on your wall, because you don't like it just for the financial, most people don't anyway for the financial value, right? And so it's the same concept here. It's like, whatever you're going to buy, especially at this point in time, because it's kind of anyone's game at the moment. It's kind of the wild, wild west, right? You don't know if it's gonna have a higher value, right? If you go out and find an artist that you see on the wall, and you're like, oh my god, I really like that. And it's $1,000 painting, and you're like, Yes, I really want to have it, you didn't buy it, because you're like, I hope that one day, this is gonna be $100,000 You bought it because you like the art and you want to put on roll. And I think it's the same concept with NFT's in this point right now. And the question being, like, the value, right, like so many people are like, but what happens if what happens if everything drops out of its ass? What happens? Like are people actually gonna want to buy these in a year? What's going to increase the value? Why is this how, why is this a good investment? Or how do we even start to look at it as an investment right now?

 

Breanna Faye 

So from an investment point of view, NFT's like crypto are very volatile, digital assets meaning and so I think it's always a good idea to go in knowing your goals. Me personally, as an artist, as you know, a collector as an art collector, I like things that I like. I also So do flip NFT's. So I will buy projects with the intent of like selling them. Those are more collectibles. I don't, you know, typically do that with, you know, I guess you'd call it fine art but so so yeah, I think it helps to go in knowing what your goal is. And it can be a hybrid too. You can be like, Hey, I like this art, but I'd probably have a selling price that I'd sell it at. Right So like for example, I, I bought Damien Hirst, Genesis NFT collection. And at some point, I don't know what there are at now, they last my check, they were hovering around, like 10 Aetherium for the floor. And so it was sort of like, okay, well like 10x profits here, but I like really like my Damien Hirst, like it's really cool to own a Damien Hirst, right.

 

Keri Norley 

I have people 10/8 right now is about an eighth is about 3000. Sitting around 3000. Yeah. 1338 3800. Now. So what's at 4000? But it's a substantial amount.

 

Breanna Faye 

Potential now. Yeah, but so so yeah, I mean, if you're interested in Damien Hirst NFT's there on the market, but I think it does, it does help. Like, if you're going in from strictly an investment point of view, just recognize that and then just look for good deals, if you're going in with a, I'm keeping the stuff right, then go in and get things that you really like, and then the value doesn't matter, you know, maybe it does, it can it does kind of affect your, your emotions a bit because we are very emotional beings. So like, if I like something, and the price, like drops out on that I am a little crushed. But it doesn't matter, because it's still like the thing that I really liked, right? So it really shouldn't matter. It's just I think that's like an innate emotional response, we get to like, others not agreeing with us maybe. Right.

 

Keri Norley 

So in regards to, though, like, with the land as well, right, this virtual land in these virtual houses, like where do you see that all heading? And why is that important right now.

 

Breanna Faye 

So I think with virtual real estate, we have yet to even scratch the surface on what that means. And its importance. One for placemaking in a virtual environment, which we've kind of already talked about, it can be a social experience, it can be a family thing, it can be a friend's thing, it can be gaming oriented, you could, you could, you know, that could increase in value, but you could also potentially rent that space to, you know, people who can't afford to buy their own land, from order we have in the real world, right? Like, you might host events in a virtual, you know, building, right, so you need virtual space to do these things. It's kind of the same thing is, you know, back when the internet was brand new, and you know, there were all these random websites, and people were like, Why would I ever need a website like that? I'll never need a website, right. And now I like most people, all businesses, like understand the value of having a website in real estate, from an artist to a business to you know, Facebook. Exactly, it is virtual real estate, it was one of the first virtual real estates, right, like, so now, we are actually just applying that and saying that's going to become three dimensional, it's no longer going to be a page that we flipped, right? And scroll, again, super antiquated. Like, when we look back 20 years, 20 years from now, when we look back, we're going to be like, Wow, can you remember when we used to like Webflow? Like that word won't even exist? websites were like reading the newspaper in black and white, like no one really does that anymore. Right? So yeah, it's it's gonna be just truly, truly a different experience and the importance of virtual real estate. When we talk about Metaverse, buildings, it's the equivalent to a website right back in the day when people are like, Why would I ever need a website? Right now?

 

Keri Norley 

Such a good comparison. I love that. Okay, so before we have to wrap this because I'm like, so we're time I could keep talking to you for ages about this. Um, the thing that I started the conversation with, and I'd love to wrap this with that is the humanity in this right? Because like, I have the only say fear, but the awareness right as we get more into the virtual world, that it's like, I mean, okay, I'm just gonna speak even from like my own shamanic work, right as a shamanic person, like the whole purpose of shaman shamanic work is to learn to journey into other dimensions and other realities. Right, if I can break that down into this easiest way to explain shaman, shamanic work. And when I would go and do my when I still do go do my shamanic journeys. It's like and I remember when you and I when they first start doing it, and my teacher would remember. Yeah, my teacher my mentor would call me out of the journeys. We wind ourselves back on like, Oh, but I don't really want to go it's so beautiful here. It's so blissful in my little dream state and this other dimension In this other reality, like, I don't want to come back to this one, right? And so I have that same I guess feeling around the metaverse or this virtual reality, right? Because we have this experience where we can create anything we can be anyone. So these really introverted people might come out as like this crazy ass party extrovert because they want to experience what that's like. Because in the reality in the real world, that's super freakin hard for them, right? And so then are they going to ever want to come back into this real world versus staying into this virtual world where things couldn't be easier? Where they can create a completely new avatar? of who they show up as? And doesn't it get like, I just want to stay out in that world? And then do we start to actually forget about our human bodies? And like, I get almost like, you know, like The Matrix where I plug in, but on the human form, like, I mean, not in the matrix, or I'll fit in the matrix, but like, do we get like, you know, people can get, or we can have even more problems with our house and our weight and our, you know, our not taking care of ourselves. Could you spend so much time playing in this virtual reality? What do you think?

 

Breanna Faye 

So I think that there's always going to be a strong tie to reality. But again, that's why I am such an advocate for and I think a lot of people are for, you know, augmented reality as part of this ecosystem to not get left out of the conversation on what the future it is. Because for sure, augmented reality is not going away. But with Metaverse being such a hot topic right now, I think VR is sort of having its moment, right, where people are like, Oh, okay, this is exciting, right, this, this totally other world. And I think it's a beautiful thing. But I do think that, you know, we're always going to have our real worlds. And I don't think it's going to be any more different than the problems that we have today, potentially, with, you know, people spending so much time on their phones, the phone will just transform, right, and I, what the one thing that I do think that is potentially like more positive than where we currently are, as opposed to thinking of it as like getting more and more negative is that with interoperability, you can really, by breaking these silos, you can connect to people and things in ways that you wouldn't be able to before. Right now we're facing this, you know, problems of like bots, right, and like, misinformation, and all these types of things that are, you know, created in all of these silos, where with true interoperability, it can help to kind of clear some of those things, basically, because you're yourself. And you're also connected through all these places, and you're not in segmented environments, like I don't have to, you know, go to this platform to talk with, you know, we talk exclusively, like via texting, right, but other people, it's like WhatsApp, or Snapchat or Instagram, you know. So, again, all these silos, kind of concrete, this barrier, and maybe having this interoperability can actually help solve that. Because the more you connect with real people, the more you talk about actual experiences happens all the time with all of my avatar anonymous friends. It's like when we're actually talking, we reference things in our daily lives. So people that I've never met before, I don't even know their name. I learned stuff about their kids and what they did at school, right. And that's so random. But it also is like, oh, that's your that's your connection to their real world. Right?

 

Keri Norley 

Yes, interesting. The the thing that came to me as you were saying that and even as I mentioned, this was I read a post by Cathy wood. And she was talking about if you don't know who she is, people go and check her out. She's pretty awesome investor and woman in this space and future pacing, a lot of amazingness in the world. And she mentioned, like the top 10 jobs that we will see emerge, because of moving into this space. And one of the things first of all architects within the virtual reality, but also personal trainers are like fitness people who are going to be able to help in the virtual space to be actually help our physical bodies. And I thought that was really interesting. I was like, huh, such an interesting blend of things that I hadn't thought about. But I was like, Yeah, I guess that totally makes sense. So we'll see. You know, I'm excited to see what happens as we move forward into all this and what emerges because as we have more AI technology, as we have more of this, we're going to see some of our current jobs and financial stability places fall away, because AI will take over for that, but then we'll start to see some more things emerge that we've never seen before because of what's being created. So I think that's really fascinating to 100% agree

 

Breanna Faye 

Kathy Kelly Woods great and I love the point about physical activity because that is something to that when you when you grow into three dimensional space, whether it's virtual or real. You get to what move, right? Like when we're looking at a three by five inch you screen all the time, we're not moving, we're focused on this three by five inch screen. When we're in three dimensional space, it's totally different experience, you know, and I think a little bit of gaming is actually good for everyone if it's an if it's, you know, perpetuating physical activity. So, yeah, that's awesome. Probably all of us know from COVID.

 

Keri Norley 

Yes. Okay, so I know we have to get wrapped up. So is there anything else that you would like to wrap this with, and after that, please let people know how they can reach out to you. And actually, before I even go there, I want to let you guys know, Breanna is thank you, Breanna, I'm going to come in and have a little chat with people in unplug, which is my mastermind that is opening more around this space, I am really excited to open this because as you know, like there is a there is a learning curve and all of this and there's so much excitement to be had. But there's also a lot of things we can avoid. And even you just said it, like how do we invest in this? How do we know how do we make the right choices? How do we even know how to go and buy the land? These are the types of things that I know I want to start bringing into the conversation in unplug because this is our future. And a lot of people saying like even in the crypto space I know like with NFT's like it is so new. But with you know so much of the crypto space you'll think like oh, I've missed the mark. I'm like, oh, no, no, you haven't like we are at the forefront beginning of all of this stuff. And so that's what unplugged is about. I'm super excited to have you coming in and have a little chat about some more of this stuff and how we can go deeper into this. So otherwise, tell me, is there anything else that you would like to add in or and how can people find you?

 

Breanna Faye 

Sure. So definitely recommend jumping on Twitter. Again, that is the place to learn about web three Metaverse, and NFT'S cryptocurrency all of the above. You can find me at underscore Breanna Faye I think you've probably dropped it in somewhere. So I want to be a shout out. Um, yeah, that's my main social media Connect. I'm also on clubhouse at Breanna Faye, but haven't been there as much and you can, you know, scavenge the other socials and probably dig me up, but Twitter is the place to go. I do answer DM's eventually. So if anyone's trying to like, learn and get started or whatever, just DM me, I can send you a list of some great people to follow if you're interested in NFT's or crypto. And then check out more architects. So that's the collective that we put together these generative homes, basically the collection of 10,000 generative virtual homes. And similar to crypto punks, the board apes generative means it was all done kind of algorithmically, so it's at the at sign METARKITEX. Net. And basically it's like meta architects. So before Facebook stole the word meta from everyone. You'd actually read in our branding, and so we want it to be meta as in metaverse.

 

Keri Norley 

Fantastic. And do you have anything else you would like to leave people with.

 

Breanna Faye 

Just the best way honestly, if you're interested in this, like you said, it's the best time to get started, was when it was created. The second best time is now where.

 

Keri Norley 

It doesn't matter if you're listening to listen to yours, either people.

 

Breanna Faye 

The best time is to just and honestly getting into crypto, it's like, it's like those people that used to you know, their parents used to just throw them into the deep end and be like, you know, if you you'll figure it out, right. And that's the best way to do it. Honestly, do a little research, follow some people join some communities on Discord, Twitter, and then honestly, just just buy something, you know, you can often find NFT's and even on Aetherium for 100 200 bucks, buy something and you will just start learning 10 acts. So that's the best way to learn, honestly, is listen to people who have been there and just buy something and get started. And everyone is so helpful in the space. So in Twitter, they're super, you know, open to questions. And so just ask away.

 

Keri Norley 

Yeah, I kind of just think of it as like taking a lot of water, drinking water down from a firehose, like it's like, the pressure is so intense, there's so much coming at you. And yet, like, there's more and more, and I just don't want to keep drinking, I just want to keep drinking water.

 

Breanna Faye 

That's literally like one of MIT's motto. So I went to MIT. And that's, they, they often say like, MIT is like drinking water out of firehose, because that's how your educational experiences which I agree with.

 

Keri Norley 

Well, thank you, my dear. I know you have to get going. Thank you so so, so much for this. This has been absolutely amazing, insightful, wonderful. I adore you. I think you're amazing. I'm so grateful for all the work that you're doing in this community in the world. And I'm so grateful that you've been able to be here on the show with me.

 

Breanna Faye 

Likewise, it was so great running into you at Miami crypto experience. I hope to see you there next year and Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing a bunch of newcomers. But definitely mention this podcast if you connect with me on Twitter.

 

Keri Norley 

Perfecto. Thanks, Breanna. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you love what you heard, please help us get this message out to more people because together we rise, please review it, subscribe to the show and share on social media. When you share please tag me on Insta, I'm @KeriNorley and on facebook  Keri Kaplan Norley is my official name there. Please come and connect with me on social media and say hello, I love hearing from my listeners. And thank you so much for your support. I'm so excited to help you bring in the new well