#NFTCast

# Interview with Sirsu - https://twitter.com/sirsuhayb

Artist, advocate, leader, and mesch

Philly born and "raised", but he moved around a lot

Parents encouraged art and art career

Pokemon voice acting

MySpace as the foundations for his business career

Every time he found something he loved, they pushed him. 

Why it is important to encourage art and artists

How we all benefit from what Sirsu's parents did to encourage his artistic path

How that became part of his mission to support and grow artists and lead

Digital vs. traditional for his choice

His path to crypto pre NFT

How he lost a lot in a wallet from when he had bitcoin as a kid

His crazy path between art and a crypto hackathon healthcare crypto project and how he ended up in Japan

How Instagram filters introduced him to NFT

How he understood early that art on blockchain equaled creative immortality

Was struck with the idea that decades or more later, that people will discover art

Dove headfirst into NFT at that point with Discord, the web, friends, etc. 

Started recruiting people

Saw gas increasing and realized it would be difficult

How curation is a mess and categorization is so difficult for artists

How old styles of art may not apply to new artists, especially if they didn't go to art school

Concerned that people see it as a bubble rather than where equity, wealth distribution, and inclusion can happen. 

Agrees with me that NFT  is the gateway drug to crypto and he saw that early on

# The Mint Fund - https://twitter.com/themintfund

Helps artists get their art on blockchain with funding

Provide marketing and legal guidance

The system is meant to be self-sustainable

How to get involved with them - DM them on Twitter

# HeatCheckMe

An effort to create an influencer platform for growing art exposure for artists

How it came about from just asking a community "Can I get a heat check?". He wanted to build consensus around the best things people were creating. Then the whole thing got out of hand with heat related gifs and deep fakes of Sirsu.

Whether black artists are having more success in the NFT space than they get the opportunity for in the traditional art world. 

His most brilliant or important person in NFT/Crypto

Interview with Jordan Lyall - The irreverent product guy

-->>  Brought to you by Doki Doki Finance - The most fun you will ever have with digital art and collectibles. 

Background

The Story of Meme

Consensys and Ethereum's Future

-->>  Brought to you by Doki Doki Finance - The most fun you will ever have with digital art and collectibles. 

Do you want to understand how the best leaders in DeFi succeed against incredible odds? Do you want to learn how to succeed in the crypto world, then our interview this week is a perfect place to start. 

Roy Blackstone is our guest on the first episode of NFTCast and we couldn't have asked for a more entertaining and educational show. Roy's built an unbelievable career in DeFi, investing, project promotion, venture capital and he's a fiction author among many other things. 

In this episode we explore his unique upbringing and how it impacted his incredible networking ability, his favorite investments, his life as an American living in Italy, and his role as the Creative Director for Doki Doki.  

We also cover his trading strategies, what is important in the NFT world, who he admires most in crypto, and his strategies for leading and growing projects including his approach to triaging tasks in order to gain maximum efficiency. 

Roy is a powerhouse in the NFT an DeFi world and it will be abundantly clear to you why at the end of this episode.