Looking Forward
It’s been a uniquely challenging and transformative year. We’ve seen the explosion of digital communities embracing NFTs and the emerging rise of social tokens.
We remain more committed than ever to our mission of bringing a new financial system to digital communities across the internet. While we got off to a strong start with Roll social tokens nearly approaching $1B in markets, our company was immediately impacted in mid-March by a security incident on our hot wallet.
Our co-founder and CTO Sid Kalla has written extensively on the incident and our response. We wanted to be as careful and thoughtful as possible here, so we paused minting tokens for the moment and have been spending the past few months rebuilding our entire infrastructure from scratch and implementing the best custodial security system we’ve encountered so far, Fireblocks, to secure all current and future social tokens powered by Roll. We’re excited about the new smart contracts we’re releasing soon which will make it easy to use Roll in both a custodial way and a completely non-custodial way
Through all we’ve faced, we remain extraordinarily bullish on the growth opportunities ahead for Roll and the broader expanding category of social tokens. Roll was founded on a simple but transformative idea – to bring economics to digital communities that are independent of platforms. I’m proud of the position Roll’s network, products and services have played in the emergence of social tokens as an economic primitive for digital communities.
I deeply admire and am extraordinarily impressed by the 350+ creators on Roll and the resilience of their communities as we move into a new era of the creator economy. There are now tens of thousands of people who are touching crypto for the first time through social tokens. We’re deeply honored to have played a significant position in the growth of this category so far.
Thank you so much for your continued support. It’s an incredible privilege to be a part of the financial lives of so many digital communities. We’ve never had a greater opportunity to make a real difference. And now, without further adieu…the Social Money Times! 🙏🙏
Bradley Miles
Co-Founder and CEO of Roll
New Money
A different $GENRE. Music label Leaving Records has fully embraced crypto, first by creating their social token, $GENRE, and more recently by announcing the creation of Genre DAO.
The $FIRST of its kind. Music producer Harrison First has set-up a 24/7 stream that earns the top 10 streamers 5,000 $FIRST at the end of each month. You need to be holding 1,000 $FIRST to participate.
$WHALE’s out of the gate. $WHALE becomes the first social money to be listed on a Top 10 exchange after getting listed on cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io with a WHALE/USDT pair.
Resourceful $LADZ. You can now get some sweet $LADZ directly on Polygon after the folks of Ladz City set up a pool at ComethSwap. The Uniswap pool still exists though!
$1337 digiphysical swag. Gaming brand 1337 has released some dope new merch. Don’t worry if fashion isn’t your thing in the physical world, because they’re also available for the digital one, in the form of NFTs.
Roll Academy
Withdrawing from Roll. You can withdraw your social money from Roll at any time.
- Go to “Send”. From your dashboard, click on “Send”.
- Send to an ETH wallet. Select the “Send to an ETH wallet” option
- Select social money. From the dropdown menu, select the token you want and input how much of it you want to withdraw.
- Add your destination. Input the Ethereum address you want to withdraw to. Make sure that address supports ERC-20 tokens!
- Withdraw. Click on “Continue” and then confirm the transaction and your tokens will be on their way.
Learn more at our FAQ. What do you want to see in Roll Academy? Tell us. 📩
Humans of Social Money: Sascha Bailey of $BAEPAY
“Our founding team, Sascha, Jack, and Mimi, was deep in the art world, but we also shared a love and interest in crypto and blockchain tech. Combining those two in 2018, we created an NFT marketplace called Blockchain Art Exchange. We’re working hard on building our community and focusing on bringing the best experience to our platform by engaging with artists and collectors and getting their feedback.
Our social money, $BAEPAY, gives us another opportunity to give more options to our community and reward them for their engagement. We just relaunched our platform and added a new unique achievement system to earn $BAEPAY.
Coming up, we have a brand new NFT art show starting in Japan and going around the world where we’ll present the history of the crypto art space told through the artists that have built it from the simple beginnings.” — Sascha Bailey of The Blockchain Art Exchange (aka BAE). Visit their platform and join their Telegram groups here and here.
By The Numbers
140.1K – The traded volume of WHALE on the first day of being listed on Gate.io.
12.5 million – The amount raised by Yield Guild Games in just 30 seconds.
20 million – Total revenue generated by artist Damien Hirst with “The Currency” NFTs sale.
35 minutes – The amount of time it took for the Stoner Cats NFTs to sell out.
Required Tweeting
American entrepreneur, politician, and 2018 presidential candidate Andrew Yang commented on the value of NFTs Camila Russo of Defiant News quoted entrepreneur (and Roll investor) Balaji Srinivasan in a minimalist tweet. Balaji talked at the Miami crypto conference, hosted by mayor Francis Suarez, and shared his thoughts on future startup cities having their own coin.
Actor, television host, and former professional football player turned cryptocurrency enthusiast Terry Crews ($POWER) spoke with Cami Russo for an interview on “The Defiant”. Terry talked about why he believes the current financial system is broken and how everyone can be rich in crypto. More about Terry Crews and $POWER in our TechCrunch exclusive here.
Watch This
We had the chance to talk to Call Me Karizma, aka Riz, who is an American singer/songwriter and rapper. We talked about his background and his career so far, his upcoming tour, how he sees social money in the music industry, and of course his own token, $RIZ.
Catch the episode on Youtube, Apple, and Spotify.
Community Board
Offered Video editor for the video content of the Whale Community. You can check the requirements and apply through this link.
Offered In house developer for the second phase of $FIRST Audio. Check the $FIRST Discord for more information.
Jobs wanted? Jobs offered? Are there other opportunities in your community? Post to the Community Board. 📩
Social Money Calendar
August 6, 18:30 UTC NFT Live on $LADZ Discord.
August 7, 23:00 UTC Karaoke Night on $INI Discord.
Get your community’s events featured on the Social Money Calendar. Tell us! 📩
Bye For Now
Hope you enjoyed rolling with us this week! Reply to this email with thoughts or shoot us a DM @tryrollhq. If you’re a creator, we’d want to feature you in the next issue! We’d love to hear from you so ping us at [email protected] 📩.
Grab 20 BAEPAY ($BAEPAY) 👇
This newsletter was sponsored by Sascha Bailey from BAEPAY. Grab 20 $BAEPAY here or using the QR code above (only for the first 50 people).
Love you guys,
Bradley
Shoot over some responses! We love ’em (and may have some prizes). The first five people that respond to this email with the phrase “Social Money Times” may get something special 👀