Today we need to ask permission to come aboard as we have the pleasure of having Yvan, Captain, and founder of the Crypto Yacht Club (1st tokenized Yacht Club) with us. Offshore and in the Discord international waters, Yvan goes by KPTAIN.eth, and with him, we will deep dive into what Crypto Yacht Club is all about. O Captain! My Captain! Let’s cast off and get right to it.
[SurferInvestor] Could you please summarize briefly what CYC is about?
[KPTAIN.eth] CYC is the 1st tokenized Yacht Club. Contrary to a Yacht Club that is limited by Its location and Its size, CYC enables anyone around the World to access a Yacht Club. Our common goal in the long run at CYC is to bring YachtLife to the NFT Ocean.
[SurferInvestor] Could you please introduce yourself as a founder? What is your background?
[KPTAIN.eth] My name is Yvan Mudrakowska, I am 25 years old, a French national, and passionate about boats & tech. I have a bachelor’s in Finance as well as a Master’s in Management with a specialization in Entrepreneurship from EDHEC Business School. My professional experiences are divided into 2 areas:
- The nautical industry:
- +5 summer as a manager & skipper of a boat rental agency on Corsica Island,
- 1 year during my gap year helping a Yacht Charter to organize Yacht Parties in Sydney
- My online side businesses:
- Created an IoT mobile app
- Managed several online E-commerce stores
As a founder, I consider all my projects as the real purpose of life. Hence I should push as far as possible. CYC in my opinion is the most relevant project linked to my personality and my skills since it gathers the only two sectors I am passionate about – IT & Yachting.
I am really passionate, and grateful about the journey we are going through with the Yachties and I am now 7/7 24/24 pushing all I can to make this Yacht Club the strongest one in the long run.
[SurferInvestor] How did you come up with the idea of CYC?
[KPTAIN.eth] During the lockdown, I took a step back over my side businesses because I was not passionate enough about them (mobile app, E-commerce…). I was feeling bad about not working with a real purpose and got somehow depressed.
During summer of 2021, I decided to stop everything and focus only on helping my Corsican relatives to manage their boat rental agencies and skip their customers on a daily basis. At the same time, I discovered the power of tokenized communities from the famous businessman Gary Vee. After doing my own research about the concept, I directly thought about tokenizing a Yacht Club using NFTs. Yachting is something that has been very hard to disrupt. Especially Yacht Club, any Yacht enthusiast very often has to wait at least 2 years to take part in a real Yachting community. This is a real issue not only for the enthusiasts that want to discover Yachting but also for the industry itself that does not manage to create very strong fan bases (which is not the case for the car industry for example).
This was the main problem I wanted to solve with NFTs and, after working on a day-to-day basis for 10 months before launching the collection I came up with the new and the most relevant values for the future of CYC.
[SurferInvestor] Why should I own a Crypto Yacht?
[KPTAIN.eth] In less than 2 months, we launched the strongest and only community centered around the nautical industry. Our growth, even if early is crazy, we went from 1k followers to 15k followers in less than a week, are bigger than most of the other projects in the Metaverse, and are also exploring IRL opportunities partnering with the Yachting industry but also with our own F1h2o team we are backing for the GP world championship. This scalability of the Yachting communities is what I have been working on a day-to-day basis since July 2021 before launching the collection in March. This daily focus enables CYC to have all the pieces of the puzzle gathered in the Metaverse & in-real-life.
For the amazing Team that is behind and these main reasons, owning one of our NFTs is very relevant
[SurferInvestor] It’s possible to have my yacht customized, how cool is that? Can you explain how the feature is working?
[KPTAIN.eth] The project is very broad and 100% takes inspiration from reality. For more than 10 months we have been partnering with Sandbox artists to retranslate as much as possible the Yachting culture through the collection. Same as in reality each CryptoYacht comes with a Marina berth n° that let any Yacht owner put their NFT aboard, and rename their Yachts but also enables the holder to custom their Yachts the same way as in reality. Each CryptoYacht owner can in fact directly get in touch with a Yacht builder to custom the color and add details the way he/she wants.
[SurferInvestor] I was super impressed seeing that CYC is sponsoring the F1H2o GP how did the opportunity materialize?
[KPTAIN.eth] As a founder, with my experience in the nautical industry, I really believe that CYC can get the best experience out of Yachting through IRL partnerships. Since we are the only Tokenized Yacht Club of the NFT Space we are the only possibility for the Yachting industry to enter the NFT space and the metaverse. We tend more and more to build very strong relationships with big actors from the Yachting industry. F1H2o is a part of these collaborations that are coming for the CYC community. This Collaboration with F1H2o and our sponsorship of Maverick Team and F1H2o WorldChampion is the first and most important step for CYC. After only 3 months of existence, we as a tokenized Yacht are very very grateful to be the 1st crypto Yachting organization to sponsor an IRL event. Probably nothing. 😉
[SurferInvestor] Have you ever been on a real yacht? If yes, how cool was it?
[KPTAIN.eth] I first got into some during BoatShows and then on some of my relatives as a teenager, I was really impressed because It was much bigger and much fancier than the 6 meters boat my family used to own. A few years later, I got to chance to get hired for a period of 6 months to assist a Yacht Charter which is organizing Yacht Parties on a 130’ Yacht. Living on a Yacht is for me the craziest experience ever. It does not seem to be real to live on the water in a fancy place. Especially during Yacht Parties, it can be very easy to get disconnected from reality. Everyone is getting excited to party in the middle of the water and the atmosphere is insane. As a founder of CYC, I did not hesitate to include this IRL aspect for the Yachties, we have to live this all together.
[SurferInvestor] Why sandbox versus Decentraland? Or other metaverses?
[KPTAIN.eth] In my opinion, Sandbox is and will remain the best P2E metaverse for the next 2 years minimum. They have been establishing the best infrastructure for the players and the builders themselves. Contrary to Decentraland any creator can build their own games/ assets easily. At the same time – in my opinion, the best competitive advantage – for Sandbox, is that they did not go into the 3D Advanced Reality but into the Voxelzed/Minecraft style which does not require a continual improvement as heavy as the 3D Reality. They also have sold a good proportion of their LANDS to communities such as CYC which are anticipating the full opening of Sandbox to host Metaverse experiences for their respective communities. Last aspect, specific to CYC, all the CryptoYachts are .vox files and can be uploaded in the Sandbox Metaverse. This means that the CryptoYacht NFT in the long run can potentially be used as a Metaverse Yacht in the Sandbox.
[SurferInvestor] Anything you can share on your strategy on how to buy Sandbox land?
[KPTAIN.eth] In real-life, real-estate prices are determined by the location & the size of the plots of land. In the Sandbox Metaverse, the 3rd factor to take into account is the Crypto trend, the more the crypto is crashing the cheaper the price is. At CYC for the reasons mentioned in the previous questions we are very confident about the potential of the Sandbox Game. After months of research, there are two strategies to buy land:
- Buying from Sandbox auctions: almost every month Sandbox is auctioning Metaverse Lands (1×1) and Estates (from 3×3 to 24×24). In my opinion, these auctions are the best opportunities to buy Estates at the best price because not that many people are aware of these auctions and some auctions are less crowded than others depending on the given district where the lands are located, the crypto market and the metaverse trend. For 1×1 land I would not necessarily give too much attention to these auctions, I would rather place some bids directly on the secondary market.
- Buying directly from the secondary market: is IMO the best strategy for 1×1 lands and eventually Estates if you continually assess the market on a daily basis for a long period of time. 1×1 well-located lands at the best price are easier to catch. For estate It really depends on the size, the bigger the Estate is, the more difficult the land is to get. For 3×3 & 6×6 estates (bundle), It is very often possible to notice some listed. Nevertheless for 12×12 or 24×24, It is almost impossible to catch directly from the secondary market because the supply is very low. Therefore for these types of Lands one must directly contact the given owners or intermediaries that know some owners who are likely to sell.
In the case of CYC, we decided only to focus on well-located LANDS and ESTATES. When the market was bullish, we first bought a LAND for 4ETH at the intersection of 3 big Estates like EToro and MadMecha especially for the location to secure our 1st Yacht Club location in the Metaverse. When the market got bearish, after watching the market for weeks on a daily basis, we went all into a 3×3 Estate for 13.6ETH (listed for 1 hour). The market might get more bearish but IMO, in a long-term perspective and from the perspective of CYC in the Metaverse morning this price is an amazing deal.
[SurferInvestor] Any upcoming features that get you really excited?
[KPTAIN.eth] For now, the feature that we are pushing the hardest is in the metaverse. We are building on a 3×3 plot on Sandbox the 1st and biggest Metaverse Yachting Hub. From jet ski races to Casino & Yacht Parties It will be possible to get a taste of the Yacht life before we go real. We also recently teamed up with an “in-real-life” leading Yacht Charter. This means we are getting bigger bonds with the Yachting industry. More info SOON!
[SurferInvestor] If you could choose, which celebrity would you like to have on CYC?
[KPTAIN.eth] Dan Bilzerian combined with Jordan Belfort in the Wolf of Wall Street is an inspiration I have been getting for CYC. Dan Bilzerian really epitomizes the #YachtLife and the exclusivity aspect we want to push in the long run.
The wait is over. @David_Yarrow @SuperRare pic.twitter.com/ZIUiKRNHdZ
— Jordan Belfort (@wolfofwallst) January 17, 2022
[SurferInvestor] In an ideal world, how would CYC look in 5-10 years?
[KPTAIN.eth] I am shooting for CYC being the best Web3 ecosystem for the Yachting industry and Yachts enthusiasts.
- Managing the biggest Yachting Hubs in the various Metaverse
- Organizing IRL Yachting events partnering with Yacht Organizations around the world
- Developing the 1st Token for the Yachting industry with a dedicated ecosystem to cut costs and enable more value creations
[SurferInvestor] For people who wanna jump in, how to get involved?
[KPTAIN.eth] We’d be happy to welcome new members! Feel free to join the Discord, Follow us on Twitter, and support us in acquiring a Yacht at a good price at the moment (NFA). Use your network to bring qualitative members aboard. Take part in our virtual and IRL Community events. Offer your skills (content creations, community management, art…)
[SurferInvestor] What are you looking for to foster the growth of CYC? How can the community help?
[KPTAIN.eth] For now we have around 250 holders and the team, even small, is enough to maintain sustainable growth. Nevertheless, our upcoming partnerships and drops will bring more and more people aboard and we will need Yachties with experience and skills to sustain the growth: Tech Dev, Yacht Designer, Event Planner, and Contents creators.
[SurferInvestor] Thanks a lot, KPTAIN.eth for your time today. You got me even more excited about the project than I was already. Of course, none of the above is financial advice. Crypto and NFT are risky, you can lose all that you put in. Do your own research.
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