Are their practical NFT's out there that do more than just be a cool JPEG? Yes, there are many practical use cases of NFT's and STEPN is one of the.
STEPN is a Move 2 Earn Crypto App that allows you to earn money by simply walking, jogging, or running daily. STEPN was developed by FindSatoshi Lab Ltd., a reference to the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, the app wants to be the leading crypto-fitness game for smartphone users.
In this episode you will learn:
Be sure to follow us across all of our social channels.
Duke McKenzie
LinkedIn - Duke McKenzie
Kyle Kaplanis
LinkedIn - Kyle Kaplanis
TikTok - @theweb3guy
IG - @kyle_kaplanis
YT - The Web3 Guy
Are their practical NFT's out there that do more than just be a cool JPEG? Yes, there are many practical use cases of NFT's and STEPN is one of the.
STEPN is a Move 2 Earn Crypto App that allows you to earn money by simply walking, jogging, or running daily. STEPN was developed by FindSatoshi Lab Ltd., a reference to the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, the app wants to be the leading crypto-fitness game for smartphone users.
In this episode you will learn:
Be sure to follow us across all of our social channels.
Duke McKenzie
LinkedIn - Duke McKenzie
Kyle Kaplanis
LinkedIn - Kyle Kaplanis
TikTok - @theweb3guy
IG - @kyle_kaplanis
YT - The Web3 Guy
All right, everybody. Welcome to Tomorrow Today with your host Duke McKenzie, and
Kyle Kaplanis:Kyle Kaplanis. What's going on everyone?
Duke McKenzie:All right. Now this is another special Duke and Kyle episode. I actually, you know what? It sounds funny. I really liked these because, it allows us to go deeper and really dig into interesting things. You have been a cheerleader and putting us on to a, Web3 app called STEPN. Right. Basically STEPN is a Web3 lifestyle app and basically, it encourages exercise and all of these things and why? I think we want to talk about it. It's actually one of the first times that we have experienced a very practical use of an NFT. And how can it affect your everyday life? Especially since I've downloaded it for a little bit and purchased my first NFT, but using it. Talk to the people about what it is and that, and how you discovered it. And then we could just talk about how we have been using it..
Kyle Kaplanis:I think a lot of people look at NFT's and they think it's just a, JPEG, but the thing is a lot of people are not educated on the utility aspect of things. Right. And so there's some really cool NFT projects out there, and this is one of them, which is on the Solana blockchain. The reason why it's so cool is like, you've mentioned, it's a lifestyle app and it's a, move to earn NFT that's the utility that comes with it is moved to earn. You buy the NFT itself, which is a shoe, it looks like a shoe. And some people might see that and say, that's silly. What's that shoe going to do? Well, you get to use it, and it links to an app. Then you walk. And when you're walking, you earn a token, that's part of the game that you can exchange for real money.
Duke McKenzie:It's cool right? You know how one time in one of our podcasts, we've been spending time talking about tokenized games, right? Where you play a video game and you earn points as you play a video game. So this is like, tokenized fitness. You know what I mean? You're walking and as a reward for you walking, once you buy these shoes, you basically get tokens for walking. You are the one that put me on to this. And I bought my first NFT we'll show some clips of what it looks like. So I bought my first STEPN NFT and I didn't listen to your advice. I actually bought a walker, cause I didn't think I could walk as fast as the jogger or the, the runner . So what happens is that when you go in, you sign up, so you go and you download the STEPN app, right?
Kyle Kaplanis:Yep.
Duke McKenzie:You know what it reminded me of, it reminded me of the similar processes when I download the Nike running app or something , to use, to encourage me to do fitness. And then the product that you're buying is, yes, in order to play the game, you have to be an asset holder. You buy these shoes. You have three different types of choices. You could buy something to specializes in walking, something that specializes in running something that specializes in, I think trainers are, they
Kyle Kaplanis:Yeah, trainers cover all of them.
Duke McKenzie:Right. And then when you download it on your phone and it connects to your GPS and the map. And then basically when you start to walk, you literally hit start and it tracks how fast you're walking, tracks all of those things. A lot of times when we talk about technology and we've been talking about Web3, and we've been talking about NFTs, a lot of it is sitting at your computer and not doing anything. What I loved about this it's encouraging you to walk. It's gamifying excersise.
Kyle Kaplanis:Yeah. My wife, Emily, she's always like, whoa. I've not seen you get up and make yourself go walk ever. And it really made me want to go move. I'm like, Hey, I gotta go for my night walk and she'll come with me. And what's fun about this as well is I've had a couple of people on board into this game now. And one of them is my mom and my mom not knowing what NFTs were. She had no idea but, this made sense to her. So it was easier for her to onboard and she did it all herself. She's like I bought SOL(Solana) I'm like, what? She did it herself because she was excited.
Duke McKenzie:She bought Solana. She figured it out.
Kyle Kaplanis:It made sense to her.
Duke McKenzie:Right, but here's the interesting thing. You are correct that once you're doing something like this and why we did a podcast about this particular product, right? By, by the way, we're not getting paid by the product. We don't know anything about product. But why we're doing a podcast, but this particular product is that this is the first time that you see a practical, real world use of an NFT. We saw it a little bit at VeeCon , but it being an NFT doesn't matter, right? Like it's more of, oh, this is a more interesting way for me to go and walk for me to go and exercise and be incentivized to do so. And it just happens to be that it is an NFT and using tokens and crypto to doing it. That's why I find this so cool. Yes a form of cryptocurrency. Yes. It's an NFT, but it doesn't matter, right?
Kyle Kaplanis:Exactly.
Duke McKenzie:They're using those tools. The reason why you're using this is not because it's that it's because it's an interesting way to incentivize you to exercise. It's kind of cool..
Kyle Kaplanis:Hundred percent. She has no clue about NFT's, but she doesn't look at it like it .It's just a real app that's being used that she's incentivized to do so. And the fun thing is, well, now it's, incentivizing you to get out and move. And my mom's already lost six pounds just starting on the app. Really
Duke McKenzie:What! She's lost six pounds?
Kyle Kaplanis:Because my mom never moved before. Now she's even more excited about it because not only is she's able to earn some money walking, but because you're moving you're doing good on your body. So it's like a win-win to me was like, wow, like that's powerful in itself. Like you said, it's not about the NFT. And that's where I think the mainstream audience is eventually going to own NFTs without maybe even knowing they are.
Duke McKenzie:It's like the web, right? We use the web in everything. It is everywhere. It has infiltrated every part of our life. My father who just turned 86 years old, he uses the web. He doesn't even realize he's using the web. He's just using it as part of it's connected to his phone. It's connected these things. The big knock on NFT's and the big knock on everything decentralized, it's like, okay, what's the practical application. Warren Buffet said something once about crypto. I know crypto is not NFT's, but it's all part of this whole decentralized thing is that Warren Buffet said, you wouldn't buy all the Bitcoin in the world for a million dollars. And everyone's like, why? Because you can't do anything with it. It has no practical application. He's not wrong. We can have an academic debate as in, okay. Crypto is a store of value and right now on the NFT side, the thing that has captured the imagination of the market currently is the collectability of it. So it's like, why would I want own a JPEG and all of those things? He's not wrong, but what is cool about STEPN and why I wanted to bring it to the Tomorrow Today audience, is that it being an NFT actually makes it work better in the real world for something practical that I should be doing and I desired to do and that I want to do anyway.
Kyle Kaplanis:A lot of people get caught up about crypto and all that. My thing that I get excited about is the technology behind it, because like you just mentioned. App only functions if I own that NFT. So it limits a lot of bots out there in the world that limits a lot of scams and things like that.
Duke McKenzie:This thing you were saying, talk to them about that, how they have this thing where they did a scam check on me when I was walking.
Kyle Kaplanis:That's actually something they just added. This new feature that can test if you're, artificial intelligence, because there's some really smart people out there that can figure out a way to move your phone without you doing it physically.
Duke McKenzie:Right.
Kyle Kaplanis:But they have a scan and then it checks based off of the actual steps you take. Based off the GPS data. How fast it should take you to do that particular walk. And if those don't match up, then you don't get paid out your tokens. And there's a lot of people who haven't. And the funny thing is they're claiming that it's real, but if you look at their map, it doesn't look accurate. I can almost call it out. It's intended for you to move your own self and, then being able to update these technologies to be able to do that is what's really cool.
Duke McKenzie:Yeah. And again, as we grow and as the industry matures, there'll be more and more, practical use cases that this is better than, what was previously. I have three or four fitness apps, the Nike run app, Fit Pal, whatever it is, this is actually a great fitness app because it incentives me more than the others. Right. And for everyone, for anyone, so I've been incentivized, I've been collecting my points and my wife asked me a question. I said, I'm going to ask Kyle on the podcast. Just to remind when you're walking, what happens is that you earn tokens. You get rewarded for the token currency that STEPN has developed. Have you turned your tokens into USD? How much are you earning per walk and all of that?
Kyle Kaplanis:When you get a shoe. And the reason why it's like a game. Each shoe starts off on a certain level. And then you have to level those up to earn more and you use that token that you're earning to walk to level up. So a lot of the tokens you're earning goes back into fixing your shoe, repairing it, leveling it up. Recently I got it to a level where I'm happy with right now. And I was able to flip some money. Currently I have just cashed out and this was only a total of six walks it was $256.
Duke McKenzie:Hold on, hold on. Of real money? Money money, like US currency USD real money.
Kyle Kaplanis:Yeah. I wanted to show Emily too, because she was like, show me it's real because a lot of people are like, oh, crypto is fake money. But what I did, I used real money bought SOL (Solana), bought the shoe now I'm earning GST. Right? So what I did was I take that GST and I convert it to USDC.
Duke McKenzie:Sorry. What's GST?
Kyle Kaplanis:GST is the token that you earn while you're walking. Green Satoshi token is what it's called. And that token is what you earn. I converted that from what I had in my account. And it converted it to USDC, which is the crypto form of US dollars and that lives on the blockchains. And it's a stable coin because it's backed by the US government money. And so I converted it to that, but then Emily she's not satisfied with that. Cause she's like, I still don't think that means anything. What is that? You
Duke McKenzie:know what you can understand. Listen, listen, didn't a stable token crash the other day and become unvaluable. So that's a fair, that is a very fair criticism.
Kyle Kaplanis:Exactly. So she said, no, I want to see it in our bank account. And I was like, okay. So then I moved it. I took it and moved it to an Account it's called Newton, it's like a Coinbase, but basically I moved it to that, which is linked to my bank and transferred it right over. And it went into my account, got real us
Duke McKenzie:dollar, so real
Kyle Kaplanis:dollars real money and was able to, to yeah, pay a bill with it or fill up my gas tank with it, which is really cool.
Duke McKenzie:Right, right.
Kyle Kaplanis:I can even show screenshots on here that was real deal..
Duke McKenzie:That is cool. And I think that's why we're talking about it. Okay, great. STEPN interesting app, and I'm given, the founders of clap and it's funny. I sent them a email to say, Hey, do you want to go on to the show? Because, it's an interesting way to imagine how to use these new technologies. To impact everyday life. And I'd love your final thoughts on this, but I think that's my final thought is in the reason why I've been talking about Web3, I've been talking about crypto. I've been talking about NFTs. I've been talking about the metaverse. I'm not going out there trying to say, Hey everyone invest, Hey everyone do this. I'm a modest, I'm very modest in my approach when I'm investing in buying things. That's not why I'm doing this. I'm doing this because, everything that we are learning today, all of the technology is being developed is going to affect everything over the next five years. Over the next five years and I want to be really relevant and know what I'm doing during that period of time. And that is why I'm pushing this. I dunno. What are your final, what are your final thoughts Kyle?
Kyle Kaplanis:I agree with you. Always do your own research. And if this doesn't sound like for you, we're not telling you to do it, but it's the practicality that NFT's can come with something real. That is exciting for you and this one particular gets me out of the door and I'm also incentivized by earning a little bit of money. And that's where the future I think is going to be evolving. Is that everything isn't just going to be simple anymore. People are going to want more from things.
Duke McKenzie:A hundred percent. You know what it is, I think what this stage of the web is. So Web1 was about democratization of information, right? Web2 was about democratization of communication. Everyone can broadcast and communicate to everyone. And what Web3 is about, is more group ownership, more group participation, right in Web2 particularly right. There's democratization of broadcasting. We're only three or four companies won.. You know what I mean? Only three or four companies took everything. Where, what Web3 is in theory about is more broader participation by consumers of fans of apps.
Kyle Kaplanis:Exactly.
Duke McKenzie:The users of Instagram don't get anything from Instagram. Okay. You might get a career out of it, but you don't get anything from Instagram. Right. Whereas the users of this app, if you support this app and use this app, you are getting something as well. And hopefully as people try and re-imagine how to use all these technologies and re-imagine the world. I'm excited when I see new things like this get built
Kyle Kaplanis:A hundred percent. I like to say things as w ell on these podcasts, we can go back and maybe in two years we can use clips from this. But I think, yeah, I think that there's going to be a brand out there. That's going to be the next Nike. That is a web three development project that is going to be owned by, thousands of people that have a say, and voting rights into running this giant community of a brand. And I think it's fun. It gets a lot more people involved and there's just so much more we can do when you have a group of people invested versus just a few people at the top and you get to be an employee, but there's more to life than that. Yeah. I agree.
Duke McKenzie:Kyle, Kyle great episode today. This is a good episode. Thanks everybody for listing Kyle and I will see you soon. And thanks for listening Tomorrow Today. Subscribe like all that fun stuff.