The Pomp Podcast
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.