“Punks are sort of an ever present part of the journey in NFTs for me and I think a lot of people.”
Meet Spencer, founder of @venturespencer, a partner @LoftyVentures and a fellow CryptoPunk holder who we had a deep chat with in Punks Brunch Seoul.
When asked how Punks separate themselves from other NFT collections, Spencer explains, “One reason people are often bearish on NFTs is because they’re bearish on operators in the NFT space, and the beauty of Punks is that they’re not really operated. This is a big thing or question that was going to change when you acquire [a Punk] but [the founders] have been pretty hands off.”
Additionally Spencer compares Punks to fine art, but also attributes how Punks are run and hosted by the community, “there’s no utility, a Punk is a Punk,” so new Punk holders don’t have the same execution risk as compared with other projects where you’re risked to a founder or to a team.
In fact, Punks allow its holders to have exposure to larger NFT space without having exposure to the individual people, which Spencers sees an added advantage towards its existing community.
“Part of the beauty of NFTs and the beauty of Cryptopunks is the permissionless-ness. Someone may be a terrible person but they can still buy a CryptoPunk on chain as much as anyone else can, and it’s the role of community to decide how you interact with someone who owns that asset.”
If you asked Spencer what he thinks about Punks Brunches, he’ll tell you they’re one of the events at any crypto conference. Mentioning that oftentimes, “you have a lot less noise at a Cryptopunks Brunch than you would do at a lot of other events.”
He also mentions that the Punks Brunches are events all thrown by the community, with the purpose of solely getting people together, versus being thrown “for the sake of benefiting the company throwing them” or a “show for its holders or speakers to do something.”
Because of this, Punks Brunches foster an interesting crypto native group of people to communicate with, to which Spencer comments that “they tend to be pretty smart - a lot of really smart Punks out there.”
According to Spencer, “the most important thing about Cryptopunks is understanding what Crytopunks is and presents.” To him, “it’s the project without founders, it’s the project where the founders don’t really matter; it’s a project that exists as a community, and so the most important thing is that the community continues to be awesome as an aggregate.”
And while Spencer accepts that not everyone in the community will be great, he hopes that “in aggregate the community or the people will continue to be as good as they have been and continue to be at the forefront of the industry,” and he believes that there’s a very good case the Punk community will continue to do so.