Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode
eight of the Blockchain Bay podcast. My name
is Chris, and today I am joined by Steve Ennis
from MyGeoTokens. Steve, welcome. Hey, Chris,
thanks for having me. So I heard a little bit
about your project, and we can get into that
in a few moments, but I want to know a little
bit about you and how you got into the crypto
space and your background. So I guess we can
start with that. Sure. So a little bit about
me. I'm a little bit older for the crypto space.
Most of the guys I end up talking to are a lot
younger than me, but I'm 42, almost 43 years
old. So I do have quite a work history. I worked
18 years for a company in Canada called ATS Traffic.
And this was a traffic company, Canada's largest
traffic company. They did everything from making
signs to setting up work zones to designing work
zones. And I essentially did everything for this
business. What I was doing the last five years
there is I was working as EVP of business development
for them, but then I wanted my own P &L. I wanted
to run my own business, so I came to them with
the idea of creating a new business called IntelliTraffic,
which was going to be the technology division
of ATS Traffic across Canada. So this is what
I did there. I started it, hired up, took on
a bunch of big projects to start with, and grew
pretty quick. I think we went from zero to $10
million in revenue over those five years. $10
million per year in revenue. But I've always
known I needed to be an entrepreneur and work
for myself, be my own boss. This was always in
the back of my mind. So I quit my job a little
over a year ago and I had some ideas in my head
and some things I had already started in conceptualizing
my geotokens being at the top of the list. So
I left my job in December of 2022, moved to Mexico
for six months starting January 2023. And started
to build my geotokens. And here we are today.
My geotokens is primarily, it's a geospatial
-based Web3 application. And my appetite for
geospatial and my experience working with geospatial
came from my time at ATS Traffic. In the sense
that I had built a piece of software that we
were selling to municipalities called Reflector.
And this was an asset management platform whereby
a city or a municipality could manage their publicly
owned assets, publicly owned assets, meaning
things that the taxpayers paid for. So guardrail,
fire hydrants, signs, you know, anything that
needed to be managed that the public had paid
for. So I started to love maps. And really what
you do is you identify all these assets on a
map and then you'd be able to click them and
manage them that way. So I started to understand
the power of maps. And then, you know, my brain
started going wild in thinking that, geez, we
could combine maps with digital collectibles
or NFTs to create an absolute ton of use cases.
Pokemon Go for NFTs or Geocaching 2 .0. Depends
on the age of my audience, but I'll typically,
you know, hit him with one of those two one -liners
to kind of tell him what we're up to. But there's
a basic background of... how i've been spending
the last 20 years of my life that's great yeah
when i first heard about my geo tokens and i
was looking at like the real world use cases
it kind of blew my mind i remember when nfts
were first coming out and it was pretty much
you're just buying it and no one really knew
what it was everyone's like oh it's just a jpeg
uh like i can just take a screenshot of it and
i have the same ability to own it but the use
cases that you provided were were insane so do
you want to talk about some of those a little
bit um i saw there was like for concerts and
for events you can just kind of map out a venue
and have people redeem that for either a discount
or some sort of free merchandise sure yeah the
use cases they're they're mind -blowing and you
know when you're really the team really gets
into talking about the use cases it's um They're
really never ending. But, you know, to go through
a few, I would say the use case I like talking
about the most because a lot of people, especially
in North America, understand what this is all
about is, you know, Dave Portnoy and his one
bite pizza reviews. So, you know, if we if we
think about are you familiar with that, Chris?
Yes. Yes. So Dave goes around from pizzeria to
pizzeria, one bite. Everybody knows the rules.
He goes and he buys a pie, comes out to the street.
um he he basically grades it um how good is the
pizza but but this this use case perfectly uh
shows this synergy between influencer business
and customer um so you know let's say that dave
um comes out to the to the street and when he
does he drops an nft and you know when he does
this or one of his staff drops this nft and it's
a branded nft it's got dave's brand on it the
one bite brand uh it's got the score that's already
on there and you can drop this in real time once
you know the score um but let's say he drops
500 of them and let's say they are a hundred
dollars each um and The platform doesn't determine
any of the utility or the value of the NFTs,
but Dave can determine this in collaboration
with the pizzeria. So let's say everybody who
gets one of these NFTs is now entitled to a 10
or 20 % lifetime discount off pizzas from this
particular pizzeria. The geofence that Dave or
his staff would draw would be the pizzeria itself.
So you actually have to march down to the pizzeria
in order to pull down, swipe down, and collect
your NFTs. So you actually have to be there.
to get the NFT. So how does this work for everybody?
Well, it works for Dave in the sense that he's
selling the NFTs. So he's making the money off
the NFTs and creating a more immersive experience,
marketing experience for his followers, adding
something new. It works for the pizzeria, for
the business, in the sense that they're generating
a bunch of additional publicity and foot traffic.
Because people need to be at the pizzeria in
order to collect the NFT. And then once they
have that lifetime coupon, they're probably going
to be drawn to ordering a lot more or almost
exclusively from that pizzeria moving forward.
And it works perfectly for the customer in the
sense that maybe they're already buying lots
of pizzas there anyway. And now they're going
to be discounted. Maybe they live around the
corner or a couple blocks over. And this is their
preferred pizza joint anyway. they're going to
save money in the long run. Plus they're going
to be pulled into the world of web three, you
know, potentially without, without even knowing
it. And at some point of some point in this interview,
we'll talk about the minting on demand concept
and how that's going to allow us to onboard a
bunch of people without even knowing it. Yeah.
No, that's, that's the first, that's the first
use case is the, you know, the Dave Portnoy,
the Dave Portnoy and the, really it's a small
business use case. I really think this is going
to be, MyGeotokens can be sort of a next -gen
couponing loyalty type platform, marketing platform
for small businesses. You know, a bakery has
a bunch of product from the day before that they
want to sell. Maybe you have to be down at the
bakery by 10 a .m. in order to collect your coupon.
I, you know, 50 % off bread. Or maybe there's
a, I'm in Mexico right now, so I'm looking at
some, Parked boats, you know, maybe there's a
booze cruise where, you know, if you're there
by noon, you can go down and you can swipe down
and collect the NFT, which is a coupon for the
booze cruise that day. You know, we sort of envision
people on vacation waking up, pulling up the
MyGeoTokens map and saying, what's going on today?
Where can I go to collect either something cool,
whether it's just, you know, art. And we do envision
a lot of artists and influencers and stuff using
this to just drop cool stuff. But maybe there's
businesses, maybe there's deals to be had. So,
you know, that's kind of the small business use
case. But, you know, other use cases, let's talk
about events. We envision the first 100 ,000
users for MyGeo tokens coming on via event collaboration.
So the percentages, the conversion rates, I suppose,
are staggering. For people that are at an event
and, and in the zone, I mean, it's the same reason
we, we come home with a, with a hoodie, a hundred
dollar hoodie from, you know, every concert that
I go to. You're, you're there and you're fired
up and you're ready to buy, you know, anything
that's almost put in front of you. So how the
event, how the events work is, you know, picture
you're a big DJ. I'm close to Tulum right now
in Mexico, so I always think of the Zamna Music
Festival and what could be down there. Let's
just talk one DJ right now. It's the last song
of his set. He has these big screens up beside
him, or she has these big screens up beside them.
They've been displaying cool art. um and you
know basically a brand all night let's say that
they have an interesting way of throwing up a
qr code maybe the qr code spins and then slaps
against the screen and everybody in the audience
has a chance to take out their phone uh scan
the qr code what that does is it opens my geo
tokens uh progressive web app uh they need to
prove that they're a green dot in the red geo
fence the geo fence has been set by the DJ. And
you can do this in real time or you can schedule
drops. So you can do this in advance of when
you're actually up there. But you can make it
so that this is available at midnight on Saturday
sort of thing. But you scan the QR code, prove
that you're a green dot within the red fence.
If you are, then there's an opportunity to pull
down and collect. If you're not, you can... sort
of navigate and see as you're getting closer
into that red fence the fence can be a vip section
of a festival or concert or venue it can be the
entire venue itself um and it can be paid or
it can be they can be a hundred dollars or they
can be free also uh that was my next question
was whether or not you can just airdrop them
or charge people so yeah you can you can charge
people uh you know we take we take 20 it's one
of our revenue streams my geo tokens uh we take
20 of all revenues collected on the platform
uh or you can uh or you can drop for free um
you can allow people to pick up for free but
there are there is a charge to that on the back
end for uh the dropper because there is there's
there's costs doing that right and to for us
to facilitate that but you can you can create
drops that are free for people to uh to collect
i wanted to talk a little bit more about that
fee i was reading in your white paper you have
a high fee for a reason you know i've been in
business long enough um i've been creating business
models for a long time and there's ones that
work and sustainable that are sustainable and
there's ones that are not so you know this we
make my geo tokens makes money in three ways
uh we will take 20 percent of anything that's
collected on the platform. That's the first way.
Commissions, we call it. The second way is royalties.
So for any subsequent sale or transaction of
anything that was originally dropped on the MyGeoTokens
platform, MyGeoTokens takes 5 % and the original
dropper also takes 5%. So we split that 10 %
royalty. And then the third way we make money
is we call it the collector's club. And that
is basically 5 % of the quantity of anything
that's dropped. So if that DJ that we were just
talking about drops 100 NFTs at midnight, five
of them get auto -deposited into the MyGeo tokens
wallet to be managed and sold at some point and
profited off of. But what's interesting is we
are a Web3 project, so we do share revenues.
with our nft holders so you know we have launched
our i don't know if is it a good time to get
into our genesis nfts and what yeah absolutely
okay okay uh so 20 of that collector's club is
allotted for uh the holders of our nfts uh 20
so uh the more rare the nft you hold the more
um the more of that 20 % you're entitled to.
If you have one of each of our five variations
of our Genesis Collection featuring our guy,
Geo, our mascot, the more rare, the more revenue
you're entitled to. If you have one of each of
the five, you can claim a Super Geo. We have
33 unique Super Geos, two of which have been
claimed already. This is a max rev share from
the collectors club. Then we also have, uh, we
also have decided to share our commissions. So
that, that first revenue stream, the 20 % of
anything collected, we are sharing 5 % of that
with our, um, with our NFT holders. And we're
sharing them equally, uh, 1 % for each of the,
uh, five different variations. Now keep in mind,
there's, there's more people for each variation.
quantity is higher for the uh for the less rare
variations but you know this is all within our
gitbook so i guess the point is is that we are
we are a revenue sharing project generating passive
income for nft holders we do expect all of our
nft holders to be part of the project And, you
know, we are asking them for feedback. We're
asking them to chip in on should we do this or
should we do that? And we really want to pull
our NFT holders even closer to the project and
really get them involved and ask for feedback
on every step along the way. So we do ask for
a little bit of work from our NFT holders. That's
great. I really like that you're leaning into
the community to get some advice. That's definitely
helpful. Yeah. it's kind of uh needed or required
to play i feel right now is uh yeah you know
especially for for nfts is the you know the idea
of value and utility um is going to be this next
run of nfts uh you know the first one was hype
and art which i still think is cool and required
i think still think nft should look cool um but
uh you know yeah i mean we haven't sold too many
of our nfts and we're okay with that because
these are pure value there's other there's other
utility to these nfts that you'll be able to
see in our gift book we're going to do travel
voucher giveaways uh we're going to do uh you
know a whole bunch of other things but most most
of the time people are interested because the
revenue share and what it might mean long term
yeah um but yeah it's uh we think that the sale
of these things will pick up as we get closer
to the builds and as we start to demonstrate
to um To all the Twitterverse and all of our
Discord people, how cool this thing is looking
and coming along. We feel that the NFT sales
will pick up even more. Nice. Do you have any
of the Genesis NFTs still available? Yeah, we
got tons available. There's 3 ,333 of them available.
I think we've sold over 100. Okay. Yeah, so there's
still lots available. And you know what? Lots
of people ask, well, isn't that an NFT launch
flop? Well, no, it's not. Because again, we're
not a hype. We're not even an NFT project. We're
building a geospatial NFT marketplace. And we
have NFTs for anybody that is interested in owning
a piece of the project, essentially. That's great.
I saw that you guys are on the Solana blockchain,
and I've been seeing a lot of companies and crypto
projects move over to Solana or launch their
projects on Solana. So I kind of want to pick
your brain and see your thought process on why
you picked Solana over Polygon or any other network.
The answer to that question is threefold. One,
because I honestly felt a little bit emotionally
connected to Solana. i made some a decent amount
of money on solano during the last bull run so
i i started to be very familiar with the project
um and i felt an emotional connect yeah i felt
an emotional connection to solana and that's
the first reason uh the second reason is because
it it works perfectly for what we're trying to
build it is the best blockchain for what we're
trying to do in the sense that you know um We're
going to have a lot of drops, a lot of NFTs,
a lot of stuff moving around. So we're looking
at two main metrics, transactions per second
and cost per transaction and transaction fees.
And Solana is leading that race right now, especially
what they're doing now with these compressed
NFTs. It seems to be getting even better and
better. We'll continue to explore that. So it
works really well. um for what we're building
and the third reason would be i thought that
it might be easier to stand out and grab attention
as uh in a smaller community um i i also love
the ethereum community and you know that's where
i i i feel emotionally connected to that too
that's you know the first bull run where i was
in crypto is that's where it all started so um
but it's a huge community The benefit is there's
lots of ETH flying around. So there's more money,
which is appealing also. But I wanted to try
to stand out in a smaller crowd. Is there anything
else you want to talk about with MyGeoTokens?
We got some really cool stuff going on right
now. So, you know, MyGeoTokens, we're building.
We have a great team. We have Linda Stevens on
board. Linda Stevens. So, you know, at the heart
of it all, we're a geospatial based Web3 project
where I thought we were weak on the team. You
know, we got a great chief creative officer,
Adrian Cooper. He is amazing. He's the reason
we look so good on our website. Our, our good
book, you know, our brand, uh, is, is aid and
he's amazing. We, uh, we had the help of, uh,
a company called mega Keck. Um, they have done
amazing things for our discord and our Twitter
up to this point. Um, we, but, but Linda specifically,
she comes from Esri. Uh, Esri is one of the world's
largest. geospatial companies. She was an executive
there. She had a 25 -year career there. Incredibly
smart with maps and all things geospatial. And
she's a part of our team. And really what she's
looking at primarily is the evolution of maps
and how we can make the mapping experience more
cool for the users of MyGeoTokens. We're launching
with 2D maps. but wouldn't it be cool if you
can drop an nft onto the 14th floor of an apartment
building and you can see this all in 3d and you
can see that you have to go up the elevator to
get to the nft to collect uh yeah so you know
i i think a lot of the uh evolution of my geotokens
will be the evolution of maps and making that
experience more fun and more cool and maybe we
evolve into uh uh you know some vr or i should
say ar um like pokemon go and maybe you have
some glasses on and you can see an nft hovering
in certain places there's lots of cool places
we can go uh and so she's really looking at that
the other thing that she's looking at is she's
doing some research into location spoofing because
this has been identified as one of our our risks
uh i mean if it had where i'm at with location
spoofing is if people are doing it to collect
nfts on my geo tokens great because it means
that uh you know, we're a popular platform and
that people are wanting to buy NFTs, right? So
I anticipate the problem happening. But that
being said, we want to be aware of it and we
want to be, we maybe want to be the company that
figures out or partners with somebody that's
already got it figured out for some anti -spoofing
stuff on a transaction level. So maybe it's an
extra step on the transaction that actually proves
that you are. You actually are where your phone
is saying you are in reference to that geofence.
So she's looking into some really cool things
for us. And she's been a really excellent, intelligent
addition to the team. So our team is strong.
You know, the other thing that I think we need
is we want to be launched at the end of June,
which is still a lot of time between now and
then. So we've got to keep. My challenge is I
need to keep everybody involved and engaged,
the community that we've built so far. So we're
going to show them some screenshots of how the
build is coming along. But I'm also going to
be building, call it a very early stage proof
of concept. But I want to build a little, we're
going to call it Where's Geo. And it's going
to be a little game. And what it's going to do
for us is it's going to generate, and we're only
probably two to three weeks away from this being
done. but it's going to be a very, very simple
game where we're going to hide Geo in different
places of the world. We're going to give you
some images of where we are, almost like a Google
Street View image of where we are, where Geo
is. And then it's going to be a race to guess
where Geo is. And everybody's going to be, for
every location, everybody's going to be allowed
three pins. Pins to drop, essentially three guesses.
And it's a race to guess where Gio is within
a one kilometer radius. So you can use all three
of your pins on the first image that we drop,
or you might want to wait till the second image.
We're going to have one facing north, one facing
east, one facing south. And the last one being
sort of the most, you know, maybe it's the Eiffel
Tower. Maybe we're standing beside the Eiffel
Tower and that last image is facing west and
now you start to see. images of the Eiffel Tower.
So we're creating this game. It's going to create
some marketing content for us. It's going to
create some community engagement. It's going
to create some logins and some signups and some
early traction, which is important to demonstrate
as a project as well. And I'm pretty excited
about it because these are the things that we
need between now and launch. So yeah, that's
sort of, I guess that's a little bit of alpha
for this conversation and this podcast. I'm definitely
looking forward to trying that out. Yeah, it
should be fun. It needs to be fun, you know,
trying to, trying to make something fun here.
Yeah. And really that's gotta be, that's gotta
be geo tokens at the core of anything anyway,
because it has to be simple, cool and fun to
use. Right. That's what we're trying to build.
Me and my friends, when we used to do Pokemon
go, we would sit in a car and drive around all
of us with the app open. So I can definitely
see how this could catch some attention fast
and, and gain a large crowd. For sure. Yes. This
is a. I got my fingers crossed anyway. The 13th
floor of the building thing? I thought it was
interesting that you brought that up because
the way that I thought about it is you could
have people, let's say, go to the Eiffel Tower
and have to go to the top or a building where
you can go to the top and you have to pay to
go to the top. You're also bringing revenue so
you can partner with that business. 100%. Yes.
The business and the collaborations are endless.
The two other, I guess I'll wrap up with two
more use cases if that's okay. Because I think
the use cases are really what enables people
to wrap their head around all that MyGeo tokens
can be. So the first one is the influencer use
case. Influencers are always looking for additional
revenue streams, new ways to make money. So I
really like... the ability of influencers being
able to drop nfts uh you know cool designed nfts
showcasing them or you know a brand that they've
created and they can drop the uh nft uh anywhere
so let's say they do a nightclub event in vegas
at a big nightclub the influencer is going to
be there and uh you know they create a deal with
the nightclub uh and say listen i'm gonna drop
this nft at nine o 'clock tonight but people
need to be in the nightclub which is going to
create a lot of foot traffic you know maybe it's
a it's a during the week drop for the nightclub
when they might be a little bit slower than than
on the weekend but it'll create a whole bunch
of hype around an event uh the influencer can
drop you always want to gamify it and you don't
want to you don't want to drop too many right
so let's say the influencer drops 200 of these
nfts let's say it's a luxury brand that they've
created or something, for $200 each. This is
an additional revenue share or revenue stream,
I should say, for influencers. And I really think
that the influencer play is going to be bigger
than what anybody thinks also for MyGeo tokens.
And the last use case I'll talk about, because
I like the play for charities. events that are
trying to create a more sustainable, uh, earth.
Um, but somebody approached me recently and said,
listen, I'm doing, uh, I'm doing a big beach
cleanup. Again, I'm, I'm in Mexico. So beach
cleanups are a thing here. And, uh, so they said,
I'm looking to facilitate a beach cleanup. And,
uh, what could we use my geo tokens to get more
people to fill up? I said, yeah, well, definitely.
So, you know, how we could structure that as
we could create, We could create an NFT and we
could say that there's 100 of them and you need
to be there in order to collect them. Or somebody
could donate an NFT to the cause, to the cleanup.
About 100, 150 NFTs. And what those NFTs would
represent are raffle tickets for this valuable
NFT that's already been created. that already
has value. So you need to be there to pick up
a raffle ticket in order to qualify for this
valuable NFT. So, you know, I think that there's
lots of really cool, creative, unique ways that
my geotokens might be able to help all sorts
of projects and intents. That's great. Where
can we find you? Uh, we're web three project,
baby. So, uh, find us on Twitter, uh, at my geo
tokens, uh, or, uh, on discord also where, uh,
we have some fun in the discord channel there.
Uh, but yeah, those, those are the two ways or
check out our website, you know, www .mygeotokens
.com. And you'll be able to get to our socials
from there. Awesome. Well, thank you so much
for joining me today, Steve. Thanks so much for
having me, Chris. Enjoyed the conversation. Wishing
you lots of good luck and good fortune. Thank
you. You as well. Thanks, buddy.