Jeff Carvalho on Clubhouse, NFTs, and Token-Gated Access | DAFT Interview

Jeff Carvalho, host of the Culture Club show on Clubhouse, on the early days of the app, learning about NFTs in live audio rooms, and how tokens could change publishing, fashion, and access to communities.

Interviewed by David Cash. Book David to host, moderate, or speak: https://davidcash.ca

Recorded in 2021 for DAFT Magazine, Jeff tells David Cash how he joined Clubhouse in May 2020 and why live, untaped audio and detailed bios set it apart from other social apps. He describes hosting NFT launch parties through Culture Club and its NFT-focused offshoot Annex, then looks at token gating, Friends With Benefits, digital wearables, and how kids raised on in-game currency see digital goods. They close on digital wallets, .eth domains, and David's plans for wallet airdrops with The Fabricant.

Watch on YouTube

Chapters

1. 00:00 Intro: Jeff Carvalho, host of Culture Club on Clubhouse
2. 0:11 Is Clubhouse decentralized?
3. 1:07 Joining Clubhouse in May 2020
4. 2:19 A culture conversation during the George Floyd protests
5. 3:30 Invite-only rooms, live audio, and bios
6. 5:12 Learning about NFTs on Clubhouse
7. 7:25 Collecting, Culture Club, and NFT launch parties
8. 10:00 NFTs and the future of publishing
9. 10:57 Token gating and Friends With Benefits
10. 11:55 Wearables, brands, and community membership
11. 13:45 What's next: metaverses and in-game currency
12. 16:16 Digital wallets and .eth domains
13. 17:44 Wallet airdrops and digital fashion
14. 18:30 Thanks and sign-off

Speakers

• David Cash, interviewer and editor, DAFT Magazine
• Jeff Carvalho, host of Culture Club on Clubhouse

Key topics

• Clubhouse and its early community
• Live audio versus podcasting
• Culture conversations in 2020
• Learning about NFTs in Clubhouse rooms
• Culture Club and Annex
• NFT opening and closing parties
• Collecting, from zines to sneakers
• Tokens and the future of publishing
• Token gating and social tokens
• Friends With Benefits
• Digital wearables and fashion brands
• Digital wallets and .eth domains
• Wallet airdrops as marketing

In their words

"What makes Clubhouse different than podcasting is that it's live, it allows for interaction, and it is not taped." Jeff Carvalho

"I wouldn't want to say password but it's definitely becoming the new access point." Jeff Carvalho

How to cite

APA: Cash, D. (2021). Jeff Carvalho on Clubhouse, NFTs, and token-gated access [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/xEtX26QgZ9E

Chicago: Cash, David. "Jeff Carvalho on Clubhouse, NFTs, and Token-Gated Access." Recorded 2021 for DAFT Magazine. YouTube video, 18:56. https://youtu.be/xEtX26QgZ9E.

About DAFT

DAFT was a digital art and fashion magazine David Cash created as his master's project at Polimoda, Florence, in 2021. Its name stands for decentralized art, fashion, and technology.

More interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@davidcash888/playlists

Recording details

Recorded 2021 for DAFT Magazine. Originally premiered June 2021. This edition: archival re-release with chapters and captions, 2026.

Transcript

Machine-transcribed and reviewed. Timestamps link to the moment in the video.

[0:04] Hello, my name is David Cash. I'm the executive editor of Daft Magazine, and I am here with Jeff Carvalho. So the first question we have for you, if it's all right, is Clubhouse in our mind is a perfect example of a decentralized social media platform. So being such a popular voice on the app yourself, how did that start for you and how do you see Clubhouse fitting into your life? Yeah, I think it's not exactly decentralized. It's pretty central in how people come together. I think it's much more, you know, they're trying to make it a platform that's a safe place for a variety of people, anyone to really get on and have a conversation. You know, I don't think it's perfect yet, but they're doing their best to get there, but I do agree with you, I think it's been a platform, I think that's offered many people who have not had a voice, certainly underserved and, you know, underserved communities have benefited from it in terms of just allowing people to come together and I think that's one of the coolest things I got on the platform.

[1:06] Let me check. I think it was May. I think everyone if you're on Clubhouse can check on the bottom here. I joined May 21. So I was invited by some friends May 21 of 2020. I remember them saying it was sort of like this cool place where there was a lot of interesting people talking and they thought it would, you know, they knew that I came from radio and audio and I do a lot of speaking and it'd be a great place to kind of jump in. And when I first got on the platform, it was a super heavy VC finance tech user base and I think that's because you know, when any new application jumps off, those are usually the first people to get on you know, especially people that are into the future of tech, they always get on and I found it really interesting because there wasn't that many people talking about culture. So after having been on a, you know, after having been on a few stages and for those not familiar you know Clubhouse has a speaker stage and has an audience stage and people can move in and out of the two, which makes it really cool and super simple and allows people to interact with speakers and really plays into that club, the club mentality that they're building.

[2:18] And I found it in George Floyd was really happening at that point. That was sort of the moment where a lot of it was coming together and and while I wasn't, you know, necessarily say trying to get people on to talk about it. But there was a lot happening in the world of culture around it and specifically in New York City, you know, with a lot of the protests that were happening you saw, you know, so home Manhattan and being boarded up. And there was a lot of artists that were coming in and, you know, really using those canvases those plywood walls. And I thought about people that I could have that conversation with and I thought of Ruba Nima, who's at Ruba on Instagram, you know, she's just an incredible creative mind. And a gentleman by the name of Gian Deleon who I think is one of the best writers and in the in the in culture specifically in the world that we work in to kind of get on board and it happened that Ben Dietz, who was also a friend was already on board on the live when we all came together and we had this conversation and, you know, I think for us, that early audience was very small.

[3:25] And, you know, there was less than 5000 maybe 10,000 people in clubhouse at that point. But what made it really cool was the quality of the audience and I'm not trying to suggest that there was a privilege on being being in clubhouse that early on. But more was that because it was invite only and I think it is still invite only it allowed you to kind of think about who would participate and who would, you know, give back in the community sense. I looked at people that could talk people that were willing to have the conversation rather people that would sit in an audience and just listen to what was going on so that was always really important for me and that's really how it started for me and again I think really quickly in May I just understood that this was going to be massive and there's a lot of people out there that have a lot to say that don't necessarily like to be in front of the camera and if you looked at the tools that existed prior to clubhouse you know you had it zoom and you know there's there's YouTube but the majority of that stuff with the exception of podcasting is all, you know, front face forward.

[4:28] And what makes clubhouse different than podcasting is that it's live it allows for interaction, and it is not taped. So, you're, you're, you're in the moment which I think is really cool. More importantly, the app allows you to understand who's in the audience and who you can bring up and invite up because bios are quite important and I think I want to mention that because you know most social apps. It's what you do in feed that's really important, where I think in clubhouse what you put in your bio is what helps people understand what you do who you want where you can participate, you know how you're willing to participate. Absolutely, I think the small like the very few tools in clubhouse are you know really used so well by the community, because there are so few tools so it's made us you know a big advantage super simple right yeah and the next question is also clubhouse related. Personally, I got into this space, at least initially by listening to nft conversations on clubhouse a lot through.

[5:20] Sorry, when did you join clubhouse joined it in February of this year so all right cool a little bit later in the game but still. Right still early. I still feel like there was still a huge ship from then to now I really I get at least a taste of what you're talking about I'm sure it was on a much smaller scale before but it still was really cool. When I first got in and the nft conversation, you know I still felt pretty early to the game I actually minted my first nft in 2019. So I had that before. Thank you. But you know it really started blowing up and I started hearing more about it. You know in February and March of this year. And that's when I got into a couple rooms where some really cool people you know like bps and people from like Mark Jacobs leave it on we're just on this app, talking about you know nfts and fashion and then it really started clicking for me, and then I started getting into the nft rooms and both listening and learning and hearing about things like IPFS certificates and things that I had no idea about at the time. And then also providing value in the ways that I was also researching the space. And that was really exciting for me so I'm just wondering, you know somebody that I've heard also talk about nfts on clubhouse, as well as somebody who's so in the culture space.

[6:19] I'm wondering, have you gotten into the nft space on clubhouse or how would you define you know nfts and clubhouse for you at least in your experience I'd be curious. For sure. On a topic like nfts if you actually are on clubhouse, then a matter of a couple days by going in and out of nft rooms and there's a tremendous number of rooms or clubs as they say right so clubhouse is all based on this club mentality so you can. You can join a club and they'll notify you when that club meets or when a room opens up so I've actually had this conversation with people before where, if you're new into nfts or even it's a, another, you know, another energy that's happening the moment, you can spend a couple hours on clubhouse or a couple days and actually get pre educated on things because the majority of you know, I don't want to say experts people that know what's going on are there having these conversations, and there's constantly people asking questions from the very basic to, you know, much more complex questions are, you know, what pros would ask.

[7:24] And I did you know we have as well and I'm a huge collector, I've been collecting everything from punk rock fanzines to, you know, to sneakers to, I guess I wear my sneakers more than anything but you know I'm just a big fan of collecting and ephemera I have all my concert tickets. Sorry, it makes sense for you that the whole concept. Yeah I'm a super nerd like I love, you know, for me what's exciting about culture is getting deep deep into something, rather than staying on the surface. And with nfts it was, you know, think we almost fell into it a little bit we hosted. On our show culture club a room with people and Christie's when he first launched is nft and really had no idea just where that thing would go and you know, I think what makes culture club very cool and specifically annex which is where we do a lot of the nft conversation annex is sort of like a sub show off of culture club is, you know, what's what's important for us is was bringing on an audience and educating them very much in the same lines as we were educating ourselves around the same time right so we bring on experts that we would be asking questions that we're pretty sure our audience wanted to know.

[8:38] And it's been, you know, really amazing, you know, there's a lot of, as they call nft Wales on on clubhouse you can really move the needle on nft on clubhouse. Surprisingly, and it's become one of those platforms I think discord is also a huge play and to some extent twitch and Twitter of course but clubhouse is where there's quite conversation and on any given day there is either an opening or closing party for somebody that's launching an nft, which I think is super cool. So yeah, I mean, my, my education on the world of nft's less so in the world of tokens and crypto but definitely within what's happening in fts it's happened there. And it continues to happen there and I think we're we have a lot of fun is actually hosting these opening closing parties because you can actually watch in real time. You know, how these things transact which is cool. That's awesome. And yeah you get some really historic moments like in real time and I feel like sometimes we leave and I'll even pop into a room and I won't even realize the gravitas of the situation that's holding in front of me and I'm like, Oh wow, somebody just, you know, top of the record, right. And I was right there.

[9:42] You know, you weren't able to do that before so. And again, I can't you can't under you can't understate how amazing it is to be able to talk to not only creators of these digital assets and digital works and how you can interact with them on clubhouse and have that conversation. And again, it happens in real time. Directly. Yeah, no, absolutely. So one of the conversations I've been having on clubhouse recently, at least in my certain, you know, circumstances around NFTs and publishing. And obviously, you know you've been in the publishing space for a really long time. So based on your 13 plus years at high stability, you know building such a multimedia empire. How do you see NFTs affecting the future of publishing digital or otherwise, in your opinion. I think I actually look at a little deeper than I think that tokens in general are going to really change how publishers interact and, you know, at a very simple in a very simple example.

[10:38] You know we're about to come out of a world, we're about to come out of the world where we've been sort of stuck in our homes and our offices and wherever we are and now everything's opening up again. And in the future world, you know, and if you go to an event today, usually in an event you hold a ticket or you hold you're on a guest list, right. With what you can do with tokens these days especially around gating, you know, you can actually use wallets to allow for people to enter into events so you know FWB which is friends with benefits is one of the really interesting social tokens out there, as a very large community behind it, you know they're at Bitcoin week in Miami this week. And I was just looking at the newsletter and you know their big event, which I think is Wednesday or Thursday. You can only enter the event if you hold 60 FWB and wallet, you know so I think we're going to, we're really starting to show real world examples of where, you know, a digital wallet and what's inside of that wallet really plays into what's happening in real life.

[11:44] A lot of people, especially if you look at social currencies and social tokens were very unsure as to what you would get from it but it's very clear that it can it can lend itself very well to a membership model so for me it's not so much about what NFTs are going to do in fashion because I think eventually we are going to be in a place where wearables are going to be, you know, incredibly important you'll be able to either own or purchase a wearable when you buy an actual physical good. And, you know, my, my, my belief is that you'll be able to apply that to a variety of different worlds or lands within the metaverse and within gaming. But it's not necessarily just about NFTs. It's, it's, it's about how you're able to begin to partake in communities, especially within fashion by holding something. And today that's something is, is tokens in a specific coin or it's holding an NFT but we're only really touching the surface we have no idea where this is going to go. And honestly I think it's, you know, we're in June 1 today and you know I think that the current run has been happening since about, you know, January or February and I really think that by the end of this year we're going to really start seeing innovation and, you know, how people accept it and certainly brands are all trying to figure out how to get involved.

[12:59] Right now. Yeah, no I totally agree. And I think I think the thing you're touching on which is the access point of this specifically like the smart contract technology behind this because you know every token is different. But you know the fact that they can provide access or they can you know fulfill some sort of code that allows you to enter something like literally like you can scan some things and they let you in it's amazing and this didn't exist. You nailed it I'm on a new newsletter today that required you to have token in you in a wallet and it uses a wallet connect to allow you to read the newsletter you know so it's becoming the new gate it's becoming the new. I wouldn't want to say password but it's definitely becoming the new access point as you say it's not your followers on social media anymore now it's here you got to you got to buy in somehow or maybe it's still. That's also going to be changing for sure. Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to start wrapping it up because I do want I don't want to take up too too much more of your time but you know thinking about these things of these these elements of access and these elements of you know, adding tokens to your projects.

[13:58] Maybe with Heisenabide in mind but maybe just with digital publishing in mind in general. What's exciting you at the moment what do you think is going to happen next maybe at the end of this year or next year within the publishing world specifically since you're so intertwined in the space. Yeah, as it relates to what's happening in the world of crypto and tokens crypto or you know it could be meta versus or AR or VR anything you want to touch on all of it's like on the table, you know, Again, I'm very new myself to a lot of this stuff but if you look at what's happening within Decentraland if you look at Sandbox which hasn't launched yet. You know there's a there's a few different worlds that are coming out. Yeah I mean this Decentraland, I think it's an incredible CPU hog right so it doesn't run on your phone yet you need to be on a desktop and that's going to have to be fixed eventually.

[14:50] But I think if you, you know, I had Bobby hundreds who started the hundreds line was on a podcast with me once, and he, excuse me not a podcast on a clubhouse sorry. I'm always confusing the two. And you know he talked about, you know this past holiday how, you know, he went out he went out and bought his kids like you know the best toys the best things the best tech. And at the end of the day all they wanted was like, you know tokens in their fortnight game, you know and I look at my six year old son who plays Minecraft and Roblox and you know he just started playing a new Marvel game I had to buy crystals for him. All they want is these, you know, these digital, these digital coins in order to be able to buy up within those worlds and I think that for sure is how a generation is looking at things that doesn't mean that you or I and in a younger generation would stop wearing clothing but there is now this interconnection to something else and we're going to 100% see more and more brands figure out how to enter that space and maybe, maybe it's on, you know, maybe it's it's in the wearable space, but I think that more and more you're going to see this idea of access through membership via some sort of token system, really beginning to play out, but to get there requires a lot more people to understand and start using digital wallets, you know, the MetaMass or Bitski wallets of the world. Those are two of like a thousand examples of wallets out there.

[16:28] And I think we're going to see a lot of innovation and how people look at the wall, how people use the wallet, how they store it, you know today it's on your phone, or at least it's on my phone. And that's going to, you know, that's going to become, that's going to become a place where you turn too often, you know, I use like a dot ETH domain, which currently works with a few browsers and a lot of wallets so that you know I don't need to remember this long string public key for my wallet. But, you know, we're all we're getting to a place now where more and more of us won't even have a conversation as to what a wallet is, the same way that we, you know, we had a conversation as to what a smartphone is or, and I think the big innovation is, and again I think we're at the very early stages and you know you mentioned your first NFT in 2019 I think I bought my first crypto in like 2017 like we're still super early on this.

[17:27] And you know, it's what what's going to happen on blockchain without getting too deep into it is going to really advance what we do in the real world, we just don't know how it's going to happen yet. So, I'm excited to see where it goes. Me too, and I think we're still just scratching the surface and sure you know I'll share one tiny thing with you that I'm one thing that we're talking about in a couple projects that I'm doing is kind of trying to start treating wallets, like the early early days of email marketing, like doing airdrops to people's wallets as a totally private marketing. So we're trying to integrate that into a few projects are really really excited about that. And also one of the people we're partnering with this because completely on board with what you're saying is the fabric and so you know with somebody like that. You know, you can see with the stuff that they're already producing a zoom call or something like this why people would want to from home where I don't know a really cool hoodie that they don't have to put on they just press a button and boom they're in the newest Givenchy hoodie.

[18:24] So that's, that's exciting. Again, only you know they were only touching the surface and much more to go. So I really really appreciate you taking the time to do this I know I know you have a million things going on and you're working from home so you're with your daughter and I know that that's all right they're right I appreciate you having me on. No, it's been an absolute pleasure. And again, thank you.