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He Turned Childhood Pokémon Packs Into a $180M On-Chain Marketplace on Solana | Jake (Mr. Colada) | Phygitals
Description
What if ripping open Pokémon packs as a kid was actually your billion-dollar origin story? Jake, Co-Founder of Phygitals, built a $180M on-chain trading card marketplace on Solana, bootstrapped, shot down by 7 VCs, and still winning. This one hits different.
In this episode, we cover:
🃏 What Phygitals actually is — a tokenized collectibles marketplace where physical cards live in vaults and trade at the speed of blockchain 🔐 The vault system — how PSA, Fanatics, and Alt Vault secure the physical cards behind every NFT 💸 The 92% instant buyback model — why it works and how they make money on the delta 🚀 Building on Solana — why the culture, community, and bootstrapping power of Solana made it the only choice 📦 From $4K in Pokémon cards to $180M in volume — the scrappy GTM that started with an airdrop and a $1 claw machine 😤 Getting roasted by 7 VCs — and why Jake used it as fuel 🌐 60% Web2 users — how Stripe + CoinFlow made crypto-native rails accessible to non-crypto collectors 🏪 The B2B infrastructure play — deployable storefronts and API layers for card shops and major brands 💬 USDC as the future of collectibles payments — solving the ACH settlement nightmare in high-value auctions
🔗 LINKS
- 🐦 Jake / Mr. Colada on X: https://x.com/coladacodes
- 🐦 Phygitals on X: https://x.com/phygitals
- 🌐 Phygitals Website: https://phygitals.com
- 📺 The Index Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@theindexpodcast