FTX CEO Backs Firm That Aims To Issue NFTs For The Programs It Develops

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is backing Trustless Media. A firm that is issuing NFTs for the programs that it develops and produces. Describing the concept as “NFTV”, the company has raised $3.25 million to crowdfund Web3 programming.

With the ongoing crypto and NFT skepticism and wariness, many still look at the underlying technology as something that can be disruptive. In Trustless Media’s system, purchasers can buy tokens to get a stake in the shows that they are developing. Ultimately, opening up the creative development process to the public.

Producers have long lamented that commissioners don’t know what they want, or even worse what the public wants. The process opens up the capacity to hear what the public wants that could in turn help commissioners make decisions on what to funnel monies into.

Fans of the idea will also then own a piece of the show if it goes to air.

The web 3 concept is drawing comparisons to web 2’s Indiegogo and Kickstarter but for the next generation. The startup is led by former CNBC and Yahoo Finance reporter Zack Guzman.

The first show Truthless Media plans to release is Coinage, a Web3 news program hosted by Guzman that is set to be released this Autumn.

After the first season finishes, Trustless Media will mint a 9,000-piece NFT collection called Caucus, which is aimed at helping fund the show’s future while setting its narrative direction. There will also be “Subscriber NFTs” available, however, those will be free to mint. The company plans to avoid artificially inflating the value of its tokens to stop massive price fluctuations.

“With a lot of NFT drops, I feel like they’re focused on minting out so the price goes up or, more recently, there’s been a few drops where a creator chooses who can mint or who the first NFTs go to,” Guzman told TechCrunch. “There’s not a lot of transparency there and not a lot of leaning into decentralization. So with the trust experiment, we’re trying to build how a community trusts each other.”

With Bankman-Fried, other members that participated in Trustless Media’s seed round include Ava Labs and Megan Kaspar, who is a founding member of fashion entity Red DAO.

Key insight

Another firm that is looking to streamline and correct some of the processes that have been negatively associated with web 3 is cryptocurrency exchange Billium.

Similar to Trustless adding another level of value to NFTs, Billium is marketing itself as being different from other exchanges through their policies by promoting the fact that a person can start trading cryptocurrencies without understanding them, or the tools for their analysis.

In the highly competitive ecosystem of crypto exchanges, they are also beginning to cut through in a world that is constantly being disrupted.

Ilya Angelov said about the market as it currently stands, “The hardest part was getting the first clients. New crypto exchanges have to deal with the fact that this is a highly competitive business area. And in order to somehow stand out, you need to offer something unique, we offered copy-trading and people liked it.”

“With this ‘NFTV’ concept, there is also a level of disruption and relevance to the TV sector that could prove fruitful. We’re seeing disruption everywhere but sometimes people decide to focus on just crypto pricing when there are so many other areas of focus.”

Billium is fully regulated in Dubai, UAEUAE
and similar to Truthless has plans to grow past the country into many new regions. Billium effectively uses copy trading which means that the platform’s users will be able to copy the trading positions of other investors. Akin to Truthless who will divulge which show concepts have been the most popular through NFT pickups.

Billium is aiming to reach 100,000 active users in Turkey and Russia, whilst acquiring a license in Europe, and continuing work on the $BILBIL
T native token.

Both Truthless and Billium identified that digital security needs have to be paramount to ensure any type of success through user trust. As the world is recognizing web 3 scams have been rife with success in certain territories, firms are being extra cautious and producing much more due diligence than ever to combat nefarious actions.

A disruption to TV development is certainly needed as so many strong ideas fall by the wayside. Harming not just producers but broadcasters also. Having early audience insight is something that can aid in helping audiences and keeping production companies afloat.