NBA junkies know Spencer Dinwiddie as the promising point guard who averaged 20 points and 7 dimes for the Brooklyn Nets last season, before tearing his ACL and missing most of 2021. Crypto junkies know him as something else entirely: a longtime blockchain innovator who, back in 2019, suggested tokenizing his National Basketball Association contract. (He eventually held his token sale in 2020, even if it didnât go exactly as planned.)
Dinwiddie later acknowledged that putting his NBA contract on the blockchain wasnât entirely necessary, but that it served a longer-term and perhaps more ambitious purpose. âIt was to future-proof,â he said in October. âIt was about what was coming.âÂ
And now we have a clearer idea of whatâs coming: Calaxy, a mash-up of âCreatorâs Galaxy.â Dinwiddie is the founder and CEO. (When healthy, Dinwiddie somehow has time to run the Netsâ fast breaks and also run a company. I can barely manage running the dishwasher.) Dinwiddie describes Calaxy, which is still in beta, as a âsocial media super app from the future, designed by Creators for Creators.âÂ
Spencer Dinwiddie, of the Brooklyn Nets and Calaxy, will be speaking at Consensus by CoinDesk, our virtual experience May 24-27. Register here.
Calaxy is essentially a cocktail of fan tokens, OnlyFans, Patreon, social media and a supercharged Cameo. Hereâs how it works. For fans, you can buy tokens of entertainers and influencers (such as Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott) and then use those tokens for direct access and perks, without the usual middlemen.Â
For creators and entertainers, you can raise funds through those very tokens, and then use the tokens to monetize your direct engagements with fans. As for the blockchain? As Dinwiddie explained in his announcement, âWhen you scale to an ecosystem that revolves around every individualâs intellectual property and likeness and you want verifiable scarcity as well as lightweight trading and movement, blockchain is necessary.â
Dinwiddie has been in the space since 2017, heâs an investor in multiple projects (including Dapper Labs, which developed NBA Top Shot) and you almost get the sense that crypto is not just a side hustle but his true calling. He once described himself as âjust a tech guy with a jumper.â Over a Zoom in April, Dinwiddie sat down with CoinDesk to dish on what we can expect from Calaxy, why NBA players are warming to crypto and why creators will flock to the new Calaxy ecosystem. (Hint: It partially involves nudity, or a lack thereof.)
What are some of the actual, real-world things that people can do with Calaxy?
Spencer Dinwiddie: So, at the onset youâll be able to get very simple things. Like, Iâll pay you a dollar to follow me on Twitter. Or, I want a direct message conversation with you. Or, I want a FaceTime call, or 30 minutes of your time.Â
We have a pretty prominent chef on the platform, and you can pay to get 30 minutes or an hour of his time, and he can walk you through his own private cooking class. These things can become customized. So in a 30-minute block of time I could walk somebody through a basketball workout.Â
Slick. Where does the blockchain angle come in?
As it scales, weâll use social tokens as the transactional currency.
Can you walk me through how that works?
Yeah, so not to dive too much into that, because thatâs phase 2 functionality. And right now, every token is pegged to a dollar to make this very seamless. You can pay for somebody to follow you on Twitter, or pay for somebody to send you a birthday message. And everything is pegged to $1. So if itâs $5 to do a FaceTime call with me, then itâs 5 Spencer Tokens. You know what I mean?
I think youâre selling yourself a little short, Spencer. Iâd pay more than $5 for a FaceTime with you.
[Laughs.] Thank you, thank you. No, I havenât officially set my prices yet. So you have this comprehensive list of features, and you have these social tokens that are pegged to the dollar because people are used to transacting in the dollar.Â
Sure, makes sense.
And in phase 2, you get to more live token modeling, with market caps on tokens â and people will be buying more, or buying less, as [the prices fluctuate.]
Got it. I imagine itâs tough to start something like this from scratch; how do you get other influencers on board? Is it tricky to explain the crypto concept?
First we started with friends and family, who have just kind of believed in us. We probably got 15 to 20 people off that. And this industry is very small, so they all talk to each other. What weâre pitching and talking about is the building of a community. And a lot of these creators canât get on OnlyFans because of the reputation risks.Â
You mean X-rated content?
Right. But what if you had that same feature, which is basically a video drop box, or content drop box â all through Calaxy â and we call it your Fan Club, and you canât post explicit content. So instead of it being explicit content from Person A, itâs Spencer Dinwiddieâs Fan Club or Ezekiel Elliottâs Fan Club or Matt Jamesâs Fan Club. And itâs all on the up and up. So thatâs what we pitch [to the entertainers] â that itâs built by us, for us. And we charge half the fees that other platforms do. And we guard reputation risk as thereâs no explicit content.
Youâre at the intersection of the NBA world and the blockchain world. In the past year or so have you seen a change in the overall awareness of crypto from other players?Â
Yeah, a ton. Everybodyâs got their attention and sights set on it right now. With the amount of investment capital thatâs flying around right now, everybody wants in. Theyâre not even necessarily sure exactly to what degree or how they want in, but they just know they want in because they see whatâs going on.
What do you think has catalyzed the playersâ interests? Is it more the bitcoin price surge? NFTs? Top Shot?
Bitcoin probably made everybody pick their heads up and say, whoa. But [non-fungible tokens] are really what has everybody rushing in, because anybody with a name or a certain fan following is rushing into the NFT market.
And I think itâs going to be interesting to see what happens, because I do think NFTs are for real. But for people who kind of just throw out random NFTs as a cash grab ⦠youâve got to remember that these things also need an ecosystem to play in, you know?
I think so. What do you mean exactly?
You canât go throw out a one-off NFT, and if somebodyâs fan following isnât big enough the purchaser is going to be stuck with that. I donât think people always realize that. So itâs going to be very interesting to see where the market goes.
Any plans to incorporate NFTs into Calaxy?
I mean, obviously, NFTs are very immediately on our roadmap, because we know the demographic of people who are on our platform. We plan on having those in the next month or so. But remember, weâre creating an entire ecosystem where NFTs are on display in our platform, or theyâre able to be acquired on our platform. Thereâs a certain utility around it. Thereâs a marketplace, thereâs an ecosystem. So weâre trying to solve for that problem as well.Â
How would that work? Can you give an example?
With the Fan Club, when you have these interactions [with fans] you might want to turn some of that stuff into an NFT, like make an NFT from a specific art class, for example. If there is a broader ecosystem attached to this type of thing, we can start to say, âOh, this NFT is valuable because he did it in this time [or specific context],â versus kind of it being like, âOh, Spencer wore this shirt on a Tuesday NFT.â You know what I mean?
Yeah, itâs a question of scarcity, right? If they say that this NFT is unique and scarce but then tomorrow they mint another one almost identical, then it kind of loses its value?
Exactly.Â
What else are you excited about in the crypto world, just in general?Â
I mean, I always shout out my partners. Our three main partners right now are Hedera Hashgraph, Flow and Chainlink. Iâm really excited about those. Obviously, Hedera Hashgraph is the layer that we built the whole system on. Iâm really bullish on them.Â
And other than that, the main thing Iâm most excited about is when we do our own token selling, and when Calaxy Cash comes live and we start to decentralize our governance. I think itâs going to be huge because I donât know of any other social media platform thatâs built on blockchain. And itâll be done in the most transparent fashion possible. It has all of these functionalities in terms of helping fan interaction and engagement, building an ecosystem. And it has that future focus and sits at that proper intersection.
Proper intersection?
I would say, you know, not in a bragging way, but to my knowledge Iâm the only one [who] really sits in the middle of both industries, with an intimate knowledge of both. I know a lot of guys are getting into [blockchain], but they havenât spent four or five years actually researching and learning what blockchain is, and learning what a smart contract is. So I just think weâre positioned really well, and we have a chance to do something very special.
Last question for you. Do you see the NBA doing any other blockchain or crypto-related things?
It has to. They developed a council with a couple of the owners on it and stuff like that. I ainât gonna lie, I was kind of disappointed that I wasnât chosen.Â
Yeah, why arenât you on that council?! You could be the freaking chairperson.
I would have loved to. You know what Iâm saying? That would have been a dream come true, to be able to sit on a council with some of the most prestigious people in the world. But, you know, it is what it is. And theyâre definitely going to do more blockchain stuff. They have to. They have to. They donât have a choice, really.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.