319: Bradley Miles Explains Social Money

— Bradley Miles founded Roll, a blockchain platform that enables individuals and communities to create branded Ethereum tokens called "social money," providing new ways to incentivize engagement and monetize communities.

— Social money allows creators to turn their network value into tradable digital currency with utility across multiple platforms, differing from platform-specific reward systems by offering interoperability and true ownership.

— Roll has onboarded approximately 200 communities with roughly 10,000 holders; examples include creators raising $20,000–$25,000 via token sales and influencers like Laurel (Tingles) using tokens to incentivize key performance indicators across Patreon, OnlyFans, and other platforms.

— The bull case for social money centers on a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity where major platforms (events, streaming services, esports teams, DJ platforms) adopt the Roll infrastructure to allow creators to mint tokens, making content itself a currency.

— Roll is blockchain-agnostic but currently built on Ethereum; the platform operates semi-custodially with off-chain transactions that settle on-chain, reducing dependency on Ethereum scaling solutions like ETH2.

— Hip-hop culture and high-profile investors (Gary Vaynerchuk, Spencer Dinwiddie, Arthur Hayes) are increasingly interested in blockchain and social money, signaling mainstream adoption potential beyond crypto-native communities.

— Monitor Roll's progress toward major platform partnerships (Coachella, South by Southwest, streaming platforms) as proof of mainstream adoption; successful integration at scale would validate the social money thesis and potentially attract creators with large existing audiences.

— Social money use cases remain early and nascent; track emerging verticals (athletes, esports teams, DJs, journalists) to identify which communities and creators drive genuine utility and sustainable demand for tokens beyond speculative trading.