Amy Wu on Why FTX Is So Excited About Web3 Gaming - Ep.345
Amy Wu, head of FTX ventures and gaming initiatives, discusses her role at FTX, what problems need to be addressed in the web3 gaming world, and her thoughts on APE and Yuga Labs as a board member of Apecoin DAO and investor in Yuga Labs. Show highlights:
what Amy does at FTX
how her background investing in gaming prepared her for her role at FTX
Amy’s vision for FTX’s gaming studio
how FTX is helping gaming studios get into web3 and NFTs
why Amy thinks blockchain games are the evolution of the ‘free to play’ gaming archetype
what best practices Amy believes web2 companies should implement when transitioning into web3 gaming
why there is so much backlash against traditional companies incorporating NFTs (hint: it’s not just about environmental concerns)
how FTX Ventures is looking to deploy capital and why it is so interested in Korea and India, specifically
why Amy thinks the L1 wars will end with just a few winning chains
why “consumer products” are going to be more important than high throughput blockchains in onboarding the next billion users
what Amy’s role as a board member of Apecoin DAO is like
what Amy thinks about APE and Yuga Labs
trends for the rest of 2022: social media, dating apps, and more…
Tickets to the Cryptopians Book Clubs Go on Sale Today at 1pm ET!
Today, Tuesday, April 26, at 1pm Eastern Time, we will sell the NFT tickets to five book clubs to discuss my book, The Cryptopians. All the book clubs, which are 90 minutes and limited to 22 participants each, will be hosted by me and will take place on my Discord from May 2nd to May 10th. The sale will will take place on Bitski: bitski.com/@laurashin/created
The dates and times for the book clubs are:
Monday, May 2, at 8 pm ET
Tuesday May 3, at 1pm ET with Lefteris Karapetsas, Griff Green, and Christoph Jentzsch of the DAO
Thursday, May 5, at 12pm
Monday, May 9, at 12pm ET with Andrey Ternovskiy of Chatroulette
Tuesday, May 10, at 3pm ET
Again, the link for the sale is at https://www.bitski.com/@laurashin/created.
Also, join me for a Twitter Spaces, hosted by Bitski (https://twitter.com/bitski), at 12pm ET today.
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Episode Links
Amy Wu
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amytongwu/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/amytongwu
Roles
FTX Gaming
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1495834891858100232
Apecoin DAO Board
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1504238389737967622
FTX Ventures
https://ventures.ftx.com/
FTX Stuff Going On
NFT lounge at Coachella
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1515407892693745665
FTX Ventures x SuperteamDAO (India)
https://twitter.com/ajm_ftx/status/1510339725059629058
Acquisition of Good Luck Games
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1506308327399063557
Backlash
`https://kotaku.com/nft-crypto-blcckchain-storybook-brawl-card-f2p-steam-re-1848708120
FTX Africa
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1504095099873280005
Com2uS, a publicly-traded company, launched a token on FTX
`https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1501675620832583684
FTX launch in Europe
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1500902895880974340
YGG India push for FTX
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1499075404887465994
FTX Future Fund
https://ftxfuturefund.org/announcing-the-future-fund/
$400 million raise w/ plans for M&A’s
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-31/bankman-fried-s-ftx-valued-at-32-billion-after-latest-round
Miscellaneous
Blockchain gaming backlash
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgd78d/the-crypto-revolution-is-an-existential-crisis-for-video-games
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FTX’s Gaming Strategy | Amy Wu, FTX
On today's episode of Empire, Jason sits down with Amy Wu, General Partner at FTX, to take a deep dive in crypto gaming. Covering the differences between traditional gaming and crypto gaming, Amy Wu provides an in-depth and pertinent perspective on the future of gaming as exciting developments occur everyday. She also discusses FTX's personal strategy when concerning crypto gaming and what they see for the genre in the future.
--
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96 - Web3 Gaming 101 | Amy Wu
What is Crypto Gaming? Why is it important? What about Gaming NFTs? This is what we explore in this episode with Amy Wu, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. This is Crypto Gaming 101.
The Web3 Gaming space is emerging from all sorts of angles, from normies to hardcore gamers to crypto natives—and each has a role to play as the ecosystem matures.
Here are the 5 questions to answer in this episode:
1. What is Crypto Gaming and why is it important? What about casual & mobile gaming? 2. How do you identify the next Axie Infinity? 3. Why are Guilds important? Are they a good investment? 4. How do you earn in Crypto Gaming? 5. Where does meaning, value, and identity come into play? What about fun?
With the Crypto Gaming Revolution well under way, Amy walks us through the fundamentals of the space and how to approach the future.
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------ Topics Covered:
0:00 Intro 3:15 The Conference Experience 6:44 TradArt and NFTs 10:11 Metaverso 13:14 Crypto IRL 16:20 The Panel 19:40 FreeRoss DAO 21:38 The Panelists 24:28 The Potential of NFTs 29:00 More than Fractionalizing 33:45 Liquidity 39:33 Pricing Assets 46:50 Community 54:34 Regulatory Issues 1:00:22 Use Cases
----- Resources:
Amy on Twitter https://twitter.com/amytongwu?s=20 Lightspeed Venture Partners https://twitter.com/lightspeedvp?s=20 The Crypto Gaming Revolution https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/the-crypto-gaming-revolution The Rise of Axie https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/the-rise-of-axie-infinity-jeff-jiho
----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
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Lightspeed Venture Partners' top gaming VC explains how NFTs will revolutionize gaming
“The evolution is inevitable.”
On this episode of The Scoop, Partner at Lightspeed Ventures Amy Wu joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss Lighstpeed's investments in the intersection of crypto and gaming as well as the problems participants in that corner of the market face. Specifically, Wu says that game developers in crypto have to worry about not only building a good game but creating financial incentives to support a robust in-game economy. "Opening up a game economy and allowing a lot of really creative incentivization of both player and creator alike can actually deeply add to a game environment," she said.
The rise of in-game economies
As for blockchain-focused companies, specifically, Wu said that such projects will have to abstract away the complexities of blockchain to allow for a superior gaming experience. "The primary reason for some of these games with the longest longevity is not going to be around NFT speculation at all. It ultimately will actually just be about gameplay in my opinion...it cannot be the main driver of play." Turning in-game assets into NFTs solves a big problem for game developers and players, allowing holders of in-game assets to tap into their value. “Gamers have been buying digital assets in games for decades, so this is essentially just the next step towards that evolution… I think that having the ability to invest the time, actually put money into the game to buy these assets, and then sort of have some guarantee that there will be some value coming out of the assets as well is pretty attractive”.
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Episode 81 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Amy Wu, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.
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