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Greetings all,

In this week’s episode of Ventures, my guest Josh Vitulli returns to the show (he was previously on Ep74) to not only reflect on the last six months of the metaverse space, but how DAOs and NFTs can help humans flourish IRL (in real life). We talk about his recent article Beyond Beeple and Bored Apes, soul-bound NFTs, his leadership of Project Starling within BanyanDAO, a number of practical use cases for NFTs beyond what is normal today, and how all these technologies can (and should) be designed to tangibly make the world a better place.

Check it out: How NFTs, DAOs, and metaverses can help humans IRL :: with Josh Vitulli

Is Web3 actually helping people IRL?

It seems like most people - outside the relatively small Web3 community - have either never heard of Crypto/Web3 (perhaps only a passing reference to bitcoin), or they have neutral-to-negative feelings about it. The media likes to either talk about teenagers becoming billionaires betting on memecoins, or they talk about how bad actors leverage crypto for nefarious purposes (hacks, exploits, criminal activity, etc…).

I’m actually quite surprised that regulators in developed countries haven’t tried harder to shut it all down already. Perhaps if they could move faster, they would. China tried, but then recently it was discovered that 22% of the bitcoin hashrate was coming out of the county. Terra’s massive collapse a couple weeks ago certainly makes regulators increasingly concerned.  

Still, on the flip side, at least four countries are embracing bitcoin as legit currency (even the national currency in the case of El Salvador and the Central African Republic). If I lived in a country with a fiat currency that could be massively devalued at any moment, then I’d look toward trusted stablecoins in Web3, for sure.

Overall, while there are certainly stories of people making a great full-time living in Web3 who wouldn’t have access to such an economy, I’m quite impressed by the work that Celo is doing to bring DeFi to the unbanked around the world, and the work that IXO is doing to empower and surface impact data for all.

Indeed, while the headlines are full of bizarre NFTs and scary exploits, the underlying infrastructure is being built to empower a massive IRL win for people across DAOs and DeFi in the near future.

Have a great rest of your week!

~Will