Hello World

Open Outcry is a term used to represent the old yelling/waving trading process in the Wall Street Trading Pits back before the machines replaced the Pit Bosses.

Open Outcry the NFT project, is based on a lore where Wall Street and the global financial markets have been taken over by an evil genius who leverages his small army of artificial intelligence (AI) bots that not only control the electronic trading systems but also send smart. programmable neurons to traders' brains that keep them distracted by dreams of generational wealth, while the machines slowly drain the digital wallets over time.

As more power and wealth shift from traders to the machines, people are forced out into the streets seeking shelter. The few people who are not blind to false promises of financial freedom gather in the shadows to devise a plan to take back what is rightfully theirs, a world of opportunity without being controlled by the machines. Long live Open Outcry!

Traders fleeing Wall Street under attack by bots and machines

Welcome Fam

My name is Cryptus Maximus. I have been in the Crypto and NFT space for over two years and have learned a lot about how not to run a NFT project from the view of a diamond holder. I have had some wins, but more often than not I have had some big losses in my crypto and NFT investments. One of my favorite things about my 2+ year journey is that I have met a lot of great people across the globe from every age, race, culture, gender, financial status and investing experience. At the end of the day, we are mostly all really good humans who just want to make money on our investments to provide a better living for ourselves and our families.

The Crypto and NFT space reminds me of the historic California Gold Rush that occurred between 1848-1855. Gold was being discovered as America expanded westward towards the pacific coast. Anybody with the will and a way could make the journey west with the potential to make generational wealth from finding gold "in them thar hills". But it was a dangerous journey because the land was unsettled and ungoverned, giving way to theives and murderers. Many a settler perished on the journey west, but some of the early pioneers staked their claim and made a better life for themselves before all the corporations and govenment entities took over.

Settlers in 1885 mining bitcoin

This is very similar to the crypto and NFT space. Although we are not super early, we are still early here. The government is still trying to figure out how to regulate the space but any "pioneer" can set up shop to mine the new gold (crypto and NFTs). The problem is that this journey too is filled with predators who pray on unsophisticated investors using very immature and fragile tools to communicate and store their assets (digital wallets, Ledger devices, Metamask browser extensions, discord servers, etc.). 

But beyond all the hackers that prey on unsecured wallets or gullible people who will click on anything that says free airdrop or free WL, the real elephant in the room is the founders. Anybody can start an NFT project and anybody can create hype. But very few founders can actualy lead a startup and continuously bring value to the their holders. I have been apart of too many projects that failed to deliver. Some never intended to deliver and were just there to grab mint money and run, the most common form of a "rug". Many were rugs because the founders just had no clue how to lead a startup and simply ran a failed business. Still others were the worst kind of rug. The kind that looks like a legitimate business that keeps investors excited and upping their investments for a long time as the founder(s) slowly and methodically drain their holders' life savings with promises of future utilities that never come or never produce the results that they projected.

I have been invested in all of these types of rugs and almost everyone I know has too. Instead of complaining about it, which I have spent a lot of time doing, I decided to do something about it. I have decided to put my name and reputation on the line and try to deliver great value to holders who believe enough in me and my vision to invest their hard earned money in this project. It won't be easy. I might fail. But I will try my best.

A little about me. I have spent 38 years in IT in a number of technical and leadership roles. I have always been early to new tech trends. I started on the mainframe in the late 80s and was early to Windows, early to Linux, early to the Internet (Web 2), early to cloud computing and now kind of early to Web 3. I have worked in large corporations as a consultant for F100 companies. I have done startups where I literally worked for food for a few years before selling for a nice exit. I have done dev, ops, marketing, fund raising and product development. I have been a CTO, Chief Architect and a Product Owner. My parents owned a small drugstore in a small town and I learned at an early age that the most important thing in business is the customer experience.

Making customers happy creates loyalty. Loyal customers return to spend to more and bring their friends. Nothing rings truerer to these words than building communities in the NFT space. If you provide enough value to your loyal holders, they will help you succeed. My #1 goal of this project is to help my holders finally find a project that they feel safe in and can get a decent return on their investment.

I am not here to promise Moons, Lambos or 55 ETH a year per NFT (what a fuckin' lie that was). I am here to work with a communtiy to help us all make good money. It takes a village.

There are 3 major projects that have influenced the concept that I am building here for Open Outcry. The first is Killabears. I admire the way Killabears respects and rewards their community. They entertain the community with a great lore that keeps us all guessing what is next. The discord server is popping with optimism and people are trying to figure out the next steps through the breadcrumbs that the lore drops daily.

Second is Supreme Kongs. I love the staking and marketplace mechanisms that are in place there. People earn just by holding and can stake/unstake whenver they want, unlike some projects where you get locked in for a long period of time. And third is my first true love, my beloved Bapes Clan. The Bapes original whitepaper is what got me hooked on NFTs. Bapes, in my opinion, had the most innovative vision of any project I have ever seen or read about. The concept of decentralizing the venture capital industry by implementing a metafund with fractional ownership from holders, thus creating funds for startups to quickly raise capital was a light bulb moment for me. Unfortunately, due to several reasons, they fell short on execution. The two things I took away from Bapes is this....Give your holders a chance to be early stage seed round investors, but pick something IRL that doesn't keep them waiting too long. Second, don't treat your community like shit and reneg on your promises.

So after two years of stumbling and fumbling my way through the modern era's "gold rush" and getting knocked on my ass multiple times, I have decided I will take all of these lessons learned and try to build a project the way I feel projects should be run. I plan to provide monetary value in three areas.

Driving value to holders is our purpose

IRL Utility - I won't go into to the details yet while I am still trying to navigate all the legal and governance implications of my hypothesis. The legacy brokerage model is you pay a company to take your money and grow your investment without you having to know the ins and outs of stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, etc. Imagine doing the same thing in Web 3 without the middleman who charges you insane fees. What if buying an NFT gave you access to a metafund, a shared community wallet, where seasoned professionals traded stocks, crypto and NFTs and you just sit back and reap the rewards without doing all the work and paying all the fees?

That is my goal here and yes, there is still a ton of discovery to do and a lot of hurdles to overcome. But that it vision I am working towards.

Lore - The Lore serves two purposes. First and foremost it is to entertain the community and gamify the roadmap experience. Instead of publishing a massive document with a bunch of promises that usually never get fulfilled, we wil create the roadmap through an interactive story that guides everyone through future releases, drops, collections, etc. But equally important is that lore is a Parody of this crazy, wild and often corrupt NFT space. It's almost group therapy. You will find out soon enough. You might evern recognize a character or a project.

Loyalty - While people invest in the project and follow the lore, why not also reward them for being part of a great community that onboards new people and devotes their precious time to spreading the good word. We will implement various mechanisms to reward holders for going on this journey with us.

What is Next?

I believe in the lean startup approach. Right now we are in hypothesis mode. We will not launch until we feel good about the experiments that we will execute over the next few months. Our mantra is "Utility on Day 1". So we have a lot to do before we plan to go live. I am targeting late summer '23, but we won't launch until we are ready. Along the way we might pull in some of our OG friends to look at what we have and give us feedback. We might start slow dripping some lore. We might look at bringing some value for some of our dead collections in our bags, Who knows? Just know that there is a pissed off diamond hand whale that is sick of losing to bad founders and plans on building something that helps us all finally make some consistent earnings in this space.

LFG MFers!

Disclaimer:

Characters in this lore are 100% fictional and by no means are directed at any individual. The lore is meant to poke fun at the entire NFT space whether one is a founder, admin, trader, regulator or even a bot.