Many people in the Cardano Community know Joshua Miller as Charles Hoskinson’s former Executive Assistant. He is, however, much more than that in the Crypto-sphere. He’s also a US ARMY Veteran, a husband, and an entrepreneur. Miller is also the Commercial NFT Business Lead for Input-Output Global (IOG).
In this position, Joshua has the unique opportunity to influence growth in not only the IOG NFT universe but the entire CNFT ecosystem as well. He’s represented his company at NFTNYC and at many other conferences. He’s been involved in bringing new celebrities influencers and collectors into our space. When people that aren’t into CNFTs think about Cardano NFTs, they likely think of Joshua Miller.
I had the chance to ask Joshua a few questions about his job, his background, and how he sees the Cardano NFT community growing in the next few years
Joshua Miller’s Start At Input Output
Miller completed his service in The US ARMY in 2013 and began working as an Executive Assistant at another firm before being hired at IOG. Miller told me he got the job because he possessed a particular set of skills. He told me that the IOG Recruiters “had been looking for a very exact background,” and he fit the bill.
Miller told me they wanted an “Executive Assistant with a military background. Sure, I had your run-of-the-mill Executive Assistant background, but they wanted someone with a high tolerance for stress, able to adapt to situations on the fly, and in a sense a low-level kind of security, or at least someone that would step in if needed.” He added that he’d “never forget driving up to a Starbucks in Broomfield to meet Hoskinson for the first time. He still dresses the same way I first met him.”
Miller talked about growing out of the Executive Assistant role as most do. He told me that most “either settle in for the long haul or tend to unlock a knack in certain areas.” Even at the start of his tenure with Hoskinson, he was already behaving like a veteran assistant. “I was able to plan our first trip to Mongolia entirely on my own while still performing my duties on the ground while Charles and I were traveling internationally.”
Early on, he couldn’t see making a career as an Executive Assistant. As he put it, he knew there were “many other things I could be doing because the typical EA work was a routine for me.”
Miller’s Transition to Commercial NFT Business Lead
In 2020, he moved to the Commercial department of IOG. Miller noticed that “over time NFTs started coming up. I grabbed that bull by the horns and while others were wondering if it was a fad or something that would burn out, I was setting up and engaging to add it to our capabilities.” Initially, he ran into some resistance to his affinity for non-fungible tokens. He told me, “It took a bit but everyone came around about NFTs and now there’s more priority to building up those capabilities. I’ve just spearheaded it internally and worked with the community to see what I can do there that benefits more than just IO.”
Now that Joshua has transitioned to the Commercial NFT Business Lead for IOG, I’m sure enjoys his new challenges. He starts most days hopping on his device and checking the backlog of emails, looking at messages that have come in, and then diving into his schedule Then, he says he’ll ” have exploratory meetings with potential opportunities, I’ll check in on things further down the pipeline and engage on social media.”
Upcoming Projects with IOG
Joshua Miller’s job is never done. One of the major upcoming projects is the yearly Cardano Summit NFTs. He has worked with Virtua since the 2021 Summit. He says “They really wanted to join Cardano and are a Polygon native platform. I’m a huge believer that the future is multi-chain. So I’ve been guiding that along.”
His next big task is to look at interoperability between metaverses. He gave the example of when Halo 3’s servers went down ” because the entire problem to be solved is, for example, when the Halo 3 servers shut down, that was it. The end.” Miller pivoted, “But with metaverses and NFT gaming, you can take your assets and everything you’ve earned to different places.” “They can unlock or be used for different things. It’s just a matter now of breaking other metaverses out of their shells thinking being solely on Cardano”. He thinks that’s what will help Cardano “really compete with big ones like Axie Infinity or Decentraland.”
Another big goal for Miller is “how to bring organizations into metaverses in the same kind of manner Barbados has an embassy in the metaverse. These local or international organizations could benefit in a huge way simply by being more accessible around the globe, than a mere web page and social media.” He added that “there are ways to engage with NFTs that are coming out that these sort of entities will be able to redefine their entire operation process around.”
He’s Also An Entrepreneur
Miller owns Zea Merch, an online store. Zea Merch sells blockchain-related merchandise including clothing and coins. All the products are professionally designed and reasonably priced. The item that stands out to me the most is the Basho Coin. The Basho Coin is a 2″ Matte Nickel coin that has an NFC tag embedded, which will allow you to claim your Basho NFT online. He talks about interoperability, and he’s even trying to make the IRL and Meta world more interoperable.
Joshua Miller On The Near Future of CNFTs
My last question for Miller was about his thoughts on CNFTs in 2025. He said “I see the Cardano NFT ecosystem thriving and working across many platforms, probably side by side with other chains. In metaverses, it’ll be a matter of interoperability and rendering for functions.
Joshua Miller
He thinks that the ecosystem can grow faster than even his imagination can grasp. He ended with “Overall I think what I think 2025 could look like for the Cardano NFT ecosystem will be short of what will actually happen. Real estate, Music, Movies, government, all of these will be either entering or already running and refining their models by then.”
Before he took the job at IOG, he wasn’t even in the crypto space. Since 2017, his accomplishments resemble that of someone ready to retire, not at the relative beginning of his career. His obvious talent for organization and achieving objectives has brought him a long way in a short period of time. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with CNFTs in the next few years. We’re so early in the life of CNFTs that it’s impossible to predict what will happen. There is one thing I’m confident of though. There’s no better person to help spread the Cardano NFT gospel than Joshua Miller.
