GaryVee
– So here’s my rant. And I’ll see you in three years. I don’t care if you buy an NFT. I just don’t care. (upbeat music) You got your perspective. I just wanna be happy. Don’t you wanna be happy? (hip hop instrumentals) – Hey, this is the NonFunGerbils podcast NFP with your host DKleine.
And today I have a very special guest, GaryVee. Welcome to the show. – I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. – Okay, this is wild. I have to tell you. I’m pretty excited about this. I really appreciate you making time for this.
– Thank you, thank you for saying that, I’m flattered. I’m really excited to be on it honestly. – Yeah, I’ve noticed you’re making quite the deep dive into the whole NFT art scene the last couple of days, I’ve seen you all over the place.
I saw you on Crypto Campfire the other day. – Hmm! – Tell me about, you know it seems like when you’re doing something you just go full board at it. – I really do. And I really, you know, it’s funny people don’t know this about me because they see all the energy.
You know, what’s so funny, I think so much of the energy that I bring has to do with the fact that usually, it’s because I’ve been pent up for three to four months about something I’m excited about, right? So for example, you know, with sports cards which was something similar that I got very passionate about, you know I grew up passionate about it and then I got very, very passionate about it about three years ago, it was several, several months, maybe almost a year on that one that I was doing real homework before I had come out and said this, that, and the other thing.
Now, I’ve been doing lightweight homework, you know since probably this summer, you know, on NFTs. The reason I bought Ethereum in 2016 after Aaron Battalion, big shout out to Aaron Battalion former CTO of Living Social, great VC, great technologists, educated me on it at South by Southwest.
Was basically the understanding of the potential of what became NFTs. Like I was like, Oh, okay, this isn’t currency this is framer build on time, you know like, platform and so, I think I get so loud and excited ’cause I’ve been wanting to be loud and excited for months.
I basically do 60, 70% of my knowledge base before I say a word to the world. – Hmm! – For example, I’ve been doing that with BR quite a bit, I’m very deep into BR more than people think ’cause I never talk about.
Even this mentioned is already a lot for me by my standards, because I don’t like to talk about things that I don’t know anything about. Now, I don’t mind to be in this place where I’m like, hey, I have some real opinions and understandings and thoughts and hypotheses, comma.
There’s still a lot of things I need to know to really feel comfortable the way I do about social media or wine or sports cards. But I don’t feel like I’ll be embarrassed. I feel like I understand my point of view on what the consumers are gonna do with that FT.
I feel like I can speak, I can speak to ERC-20 and ERC-721 and I can speak to crypto punks and larva labs. And I can speak to Pepe being a BTC a Bitcoin version of like I can, you know, I understand what wrapping is now.
Like, you know, like I can, I can I can hang enough where I’m not wasting people’s time because what I’m great at according to my mother, but in all seriousness what I’m very comfortable with is consumer behavior.
I mean, what I can say today, for example, I can say the following sentence to an audience, you know, I’m picking very specific places I wanna be on. Podcast I know have a lot of time. You know, DK. I do this show because of the people you comma, the people that I anticipate listening to this show which is a very authentic OG, thoughtful, bright, kind community.
– It is. It’s an awesome thing. – I know, I do a lot of homework, so I feel very comfortable I know who’s listening right now, which is people I admire is what would be the word I use. Comma, what I think I bring to the table in 1995 when I went to dotcom or email or Google AdWords or YouTube or social or everything I’ve done in my life Madison Avenue’s startup land, I can bring things like, hey everybody, listen.
And am just incredibly comfortable to put this on the record, NFT over the next 12 to 18 months is gonna be very similar to ICO. – Yep. – 97% of these projects are gonna collapse in secondary value. It’s gonna confuse people, say it was a fad, it was beanie babies.
Comma, the underlining tech, and consumer behavior is gonna be one of the most significant things that happens in modern technology. – I’m with you. – Cool, so like to me that’s- – I can relate. – Yeah, please, please.
– Yeah. – Take it away. – I don’t wanna take up too much of your- – No, take it away. – Time in the podcast but ’cause it’s your say I had the same experience when I learned about Bitcoin and Ethereum.
I literally spent a year learning about it before I did anything about it. And then I just couldn’t contain myself anymore. And I began writing about it. And that’s how I got to writing for “Coin Telegraph” was just through blogging about it and writing about it every day until the point that people noticed my writing.
And that’s when last year I had the opportunity to write about crypto art in particular and especially about the trash art movement. And that just flipped a switch for me because I was like holy crap, this is Marcel Duchamp.
This is data. This is the beginning of- – A 100% – It’s the beginning of modern art, – 100%, 100%. – It’s a renaissance or a renaissance of that same process yet now in a digital era. – And comma, those artists made peanuts.
– Yeah. – In the scheme of the economics that happened over the next 50 years. The fact that the Jackson Pollock of today, whoever she or he may be, his family will be collecting checks in 31 years – Yeah.
– On a royalty rake on a transaction makes my heart smile, Darren in a way that you couldn’t imagine. – Yeah. It’s amazing, With that too, these same artists, whereas before they were the artists, you know, in the sloppy clothes with the, you know, cheap paint all over their clothes or whatever and then there was the collector and that was a different group entirely.
You now have this mix. Like I collect art, I never really collected her before in my life. And now I collect it regularly. – Do you transact on art, Darren? – I do, yes. I create art, I sell art. I sell secondary, yeah.
– Do you buy art and resell it at times you just decide to do? – Yes, yes. – This isn’t, the reason I ask that is that’s probably gonna be the most interesting thing in the super short term for me, which is what is the OG community gonna think about, what I know is coming, which is an enormous amount of collector, flipper, trader at heart people who are gonna get much more enjoyment of buying a piece of art and reselling it than doing that with a stock.
– Right. – Than doing that with a currency. Like for example, I have the same feeling, like for example, the art I have behind me Alice Barrett former employee I support art from a friend standpoint. – Hmm – Number one, number two – Personal networks is key to networking, it’s key.
– I’m just, I’m giving you like, I am a baseball card comic book, collectible toy flipper at heart. I love it. I love buying, you know a blue snaggle tooth that came from the Cedars Cantina set ’cause that’s the rare snaggletooth versus the red suit and buying that at a garage sale for four bucks and selling it on eBay for 200 bucks or buying it for a hundred bucks and selling it for 200 bucks later ’cause I thought it was a downtime for “Star Wars” or, I enjoy that.
I don’t like stock market. I don’t enjoy buying a stock and then reselling it. No enjoyment. I love flea market, garage sales, sports cards culture. – Well, let me, let me encourage you then to look into where that really happens because of course you can go to the Nifty Gateway, you can go, I do have work on known origin, for example, however I didn’t start on KnownOrigin of course, right.
I started on Rarible. – I know Rarible very well. – I started on OpenSea, right? And that’s where you can get that garage sale type of- – A 100%, am on those platforms- – When you find that gem, right? – I, SuperRare, OpenSea, Rarible, like Bitski, I’m watching everything.
I’m watching everything, and right now (sighs) I’m just very fascinated because I think there’s a huge amount of humans on earth that share my DNA that nobody talks about, which is the following. That trading component is much more fun in NFTs than it is in real estate or wall street.
Number two, and this is where it gets really interesting for me. This is a real thing that I’ve been doing my whole life. – You got to tokenize those. – Are you kidding me? It’s like the thing that keeps me up at night.
I’m like, oh my God. In grammar school, kindergarten, first grade third grade, sixth grade, a lot of kids knew me as a doodler as later people thought I was gonna be- – I was the same way, I was the same way.
– That I was gonna be an artist, which never gets talked about in my narrative, not something I share. And you have to watch my blogs very carefully and you’ll see that I’m doodling a lot in meetings, right? So, when this all hit my radar, you know, that was something that really got me emotional.
I’m like, oh my God, is this gonna be like, wow, God literally, this is something I said, God, thank you, it’s literally something I said to myself, six months ago, God, are you kidding me? Have you created a technology that takes everything that I am, how to build a community, you know, understanding storytelling, the doodling component, the garage sale flipping, the garbage pail kid, like it, this is crazy.
This is like my life’s work. So I’ve been very cautious and thoughtful of my entry into this world because I don’t wanna, I know I have a big platform now. I’m not who I was the first couple of times, you know, – Hmm, Hmm.
– I definitely, I definitely am worried to drive the market. – Right. – I’m incredibly scared of that, Darren. I’m scared to talk about- – You’re scared of creating a bubble, is that what you mean? – You know, it’s funny.
I’m actually not because I think I’m only gonna buy and talk about things that I’ve decided are 30-year projects. – Okay. – So I’m actually not scared cause I think I’m good. It’s what happened in sports cards.
In the sports cards world, I’ve been uncomfortably right. – Hmm – And it’s because I’m really darn good at this. And so I’m talking about NFT as a genre. I’m not really talking about projects because I just have more homework to do.
I’ve you know, I’ve alluded to so I’ll do it here as well. I have decided that CryptoPunks is a 30-year project. – Hmm. – And there’s been a million articles and this audience doesn’t need me to explain why.
So I won’t spend time on that. But no, I’m worried about being perceived as pumping and dumping as creating. And so it’s, I gotta really be thoughtful of how I’m gonna navigate but I’m not actually scared about the bubble.
I am probably scared about the macro bubble. Like when the inevitable shit hits the fan with all these projects, I do think everything gets dragged down with it. So I am scared to tell friends to invest in things or- – Right.
– Because even though I think Punks is a steal do I think if in nine months or 13 months or 16 months there’s that crater moment ’cause there’s just too much supply and there’s not sustainability of the secondary demand, could it go down with it? I do.
Do I think that’s probably one I’ll go most by increasing? To me, it’s April 2000, Darren. – Yeah! Yeah! – April 2000 is when the stock market collapsed, internet stocks and everybody bailed on the internet itself.
And that’s when I tripled down on the internet and said, no, no, no, the stocks might’ve been overvalued but the whole genre’s going nowhere. – Yeah. – And that was when I bought my Amazon stock for the first time cause it was like- – Right, of course.
– And so like that’s what I’ll do with NFTs. When and if, when and if because just ’cause I think it might, it may not. But if it does have that moment that’s probably what I’ll go shopping the most on the things that I’ve deemed most meaningful.
But there’s so much I mean, different blockchains and you know, right. You know, Ethereum, Flow, There’s so much going on there. Different, there’ll be many more. There’s Ethereum scale, wrapping things, burning things like, you know, there’s a lot to think through.
This is early, early, early days. – Yeah, absolutely. What are your thoughts on trash art? Have you looked at that, looked at that at all? – Not deeply yet. I’m still in the phase where, because I decided punks was real that I spend an ungodly amount of time educating myself there.
– Yup. – And I’m continuously spending most of my time doing stuff like this, whether in private or public I want to become friends with people in the community, I wanna offer my value to them. I wanna meet them and I’m still learning.
So I haven’t gone, you know, I’ve done very surface level stuff with like HashMasks with Cryptokitties I’ve looked at a little bit for my own education. ‘Cause that was obviously like many, the first thing I’ve looked at, Top shot carefully, I’ve looked at a lot of the wax stuff ’cause I like Street Fighter and Garbage Pail Kids.
I’ve looked at, you know, I’ve done my homework on people. So I’ve done a little on the individual artist front, artifacts. Some you know, the Bitskiprojects. I’ve looked at stuff, I’ve done my random, like three hour deep dives into OpenSea and Nifty just to poke around.
And (stammers) But I haven’t yet on trash art but I’m excited to, and I will. – Probably one of the best places to look for that is the artist that I interviewed for that piece that I wrote about called “Immutable Trash”.
– You can send me that link after this. – I will. – I’ll read it over the weekend. – Yeah, for sure. His name is Robness. He’s probably the best-known trash artists along with Max Osiris. And of course following that, there’s a huge movement of more artists that join in with that.
And I actually sent you the link to it in your Twitter, if you want to peek at it but it’s a bit of a read to do during a conversation obviously – Yeah, I’m not gonna do that, yeah I wanna focus on this.
– It wouldn’t be practical – But those two stand out. Another great place to go if you wanna find out more about just that entire movement in a community building is the art gallery auction house on telegram, Daniel Penn.
I think Crypto Campfire mentioned them too, actually. – Okay. – That was actually where I found a home when I began this as an artist because I’m coming from a different world. I’m a teacher. I teach full-time, I began writing ’cause I just love writing.
– Hmm. – And from that I just, when I saw the crypto arts I was just like, felt like what you were saying where it’s like all these different things I love just came together into this one. – I even felt- – I can’t stop thinking about like, I’m obsessed with it.
– Listen, I’m obsessed with e-sports. I’m obsessed with the cannabis industry. I grew up in the wine business. I don’t smoke, but I’m fascinated. I’m obsessed with many micro things. Things have happened, so many things have happened, but I have not felt anything like this since 2005 when I was like, oh, the Internet’s about to make a big change.
This social media thing, this is a real thing. This isn’t a- – This is like third-wave here. – Yeah, this, yeah. that’s right. I feel like for me it’s 95 oh five. I’m kind of mad that it’s not 2015 ’cause then they’d be a nice round numbers.
(Darren laughing) But it’s oh five-nine, you know, it’s 95 oh five- – It’s probably some Fibonacci thing or something. – Yeah, probably (Darren laughing). But, goddamn it’s exciting. And like the, and the fact that I get to bleed in my collecting flipping like, like pop culture, IP, retro.
Oh fuck, it’s just so exciting. – Yeah, it goes beyond that, right? Like I mean, people get excited about the money right. And of course the money’s great, like the fact that a person like, like I was- – To me, it’s not the money.
It’s the being right. – I love being right. (laughing) – I love being right. Like, no, but really it’s like, I’m only, I don’t wanna be right so I can tell people I’m right. It’s like a weird game with myself.
– It’s a game, I’m winning the game when I do that. – Am I right? Is this kid- – Yeah, it’s true. And I love when people are like, nah, ah and then, you know, two years later it’s like, ah. – That’s everything to me.
(Darren laughs) You know, you may know this ’cause you have a lot of context for me. It’s why I love documenting. I love, you know, when someone’s like, oh, Gary, you’re a fly-by-night and I can show him my point of view on virtual goods in 2010.
I don’t know if you saw that clip. – I don’t know if it will all fly-by-night at this point anymore (laughing). – Yeah, but you know what, not fly-by-night, you know what, people are like, oh, you’re just jumping on this.
– Right. – You know, – Bandwagon or something. – You don’t care about NFTs. Yeah, and I’m like, look at this video in 2010 when I’m talking about virtual currency and virtual goods like this has been on my mind in some shape or form for a very, very long time.
It just prime time now. – It’s a culmination of a number of different elements – A culmination. coming together, you know. – Yes. – Coalescing. Absolutely. You know, and but with that, what I was saying was the money’s great like it’s amazing.
I was talking to someone just the other day who I forget which country he lives in. It was a developing country. And he says to me, this art that I sold I’m paying my kids’ school fees with it. Like this is like life-changing, – Game changer.
– For a lot of people. – I know somebody who sold a Hashmask in India to a big collector that is like more money than his parents have made in five years. – Yeah, next level, yeah. You know, the opportunities are huge but beyond that too, it’s this community and that’s maybe a little harder to see with, you know the Hashmasks and the CryptoPunks.
But when you get down into the dirt of it, as I have as an artist starting by like, like some other, just sold my first piece the other day and it was terrible. It was, I just took a Bitcoin logo and I put it into an app called Photomosh and it melted it and made it look like a fried egg.
And I called it “Fried Bitcoin”, right? And a guy was like, hey, is that your first piece? I want that, right. It’s a great feeling, right. – It’s an intense feeling. For me, what’s been interesting about this is thinking through the metadata.
– Hmm. – So I, my project is gonna be very very interesting. – Okay. – And I don’t wanna give too much away but I wanna give you a little something for our history we’ll look back at one day. – Very interesting.
– All my time- – And, I’m assuming, I’m assuming in your case you’ve got people facilitating this process. – When you say facilitating, – What I mean is getting everything set up, getting everything tokenized, getting a, you know, if you’re going beyond that, if you’re doing something with smart contract technology and stuff like that.
– Yes, I’m talking to people and trying to figure out where I wanna do this and how I wanna do this. When, but what’s fascinating is the reason I asked you when you say, you know, facilitating, I am gonna draw all 5,555.
– Right, that’s a good point to make. – It’s not like some of these people- – Yeah exactly! – Who have jumped in with hiring some artists and then they say- – Correct. I am going to, I am gonna create the stories, the dynamics and the concepts.
The pipes, and doing it right, and getting it minted and getting it, smart contract properly, yes. I’m speaking to all the, a lot of people in the community and trying to figure out what the right things are.
So anyway- – Now you said 5500 pictures, is that what you said? – Yeah. I’m already giving too much. So we’ll talk about other (Darren laughs) Edit that out. (both laughs) – Seriously dude, should I? – No, no, it’s okay, you can keep it, but I want you to have the scoop.
But like build-up, don’t play it up too much. Hopefully, it’ll just be starting getting along- – It’ll be in the tweet, – Yeah. – 5500 (laughing) – But you know, it’s, I’m really excited. I’m excited, I’m excited.
I feel like I know when I find my home. I know when I’m, the sports car community, my home the wine community, my home, the entrepreneurial community, a home. This is gonna be a home and and a home that is gonna show a different side of me up from a creativity standpoint that has always been there.
I’ve spoken so much about the creativity of being an actual entrepreneur but, this one’s really gonna be obvious and I’m gonna enjoy it. And it’s gonna open up a whole new avenue to my life which I can just feel incredibly excited about.
– Yeah, it’s just an opportunity to be expressive in a different way, right. – I also hope I motivate people. You know, I think I’ve got a lot of eyes on me. I have a communication style that lamps for certain amounts of people.
And I feel like somebody’s going to say, wait a minute, am I an artist too? And is gonna fulfill their destiny of being an artist. I think what NFT, what social media did was allowed people to be personalities and experts that would have never been that.
Influencer marketing, influencers have been art is now a collection of people who are destined to be lawyers, but are now known for yoga. Accountants that are now known for StarTrack. And I think NFT infrastructure is gonna allow somebody who’s destined to be a carpenter actually now to be an artist.
Someone who’s destined to be a sports agent now to be an artist. Somebody that was destined to be a stay-at-home dad now to be a artist. Somebody that was destined to be a police officer to now be a meaningful artist.
The fact that art will now be practical to a generation of parents, and encouraged instead of discouraged is going to be a very good thing for society. And I’m excited to see the birth of it. – Yeah, it’s fascinating.
You know, it makes me think about, I was actually just talking to someone about this today. The idea that, you know we’re talking right now about art NFTs, but in my mind, I’m anticipating pretty much anything that is property.
At some point you could theoretically say, could that be tokenized? – Well, that’s a foregone conclusion to your point. I think my passion right now sit around creativity. But for example, every book by any author that’s got any juice is gonna be launched as an NFT.
Like I’ve got to rethink my entire thought process of signing another book deal. – Hmm. – Why would I do that? I can launch it as an NFT, make incredible dynamics deliver actual book on the back of the NFT, create incredible secondary market dynamics.
I mean the world, Darren, this is a big fucking deal. – It is. – I’m gonna sell my- – I’ve been trying to tell people this for two years. (laughs) – Well, you’ve been right, good news. You know how you like being right? Good news, there you go.
(Darren laughing) This is gonna change everything. Absolutely everything. I think what’s gonna be, what I would encourage everybody here who’s listening to fall into something I said the other night and I’m using it, I like it.
Don’t try to convince, have conviction. And it’s very different. You know, convincing people is fun but exhausting and not required when you’re this right. – Hmm. – So like people are like, Gary convinced me about it and this literally actually ironically happened today.
Somebody said, convince me about the space. I’m like, I’m not going to, here’s the here’s how I’m gonna convince you. This NFT thing is gonna be one of the biggest technology shifts in your life. I’ll see you in three years.
I’m not gonna sit here and try to explain to you that you don’t understand social currency, human behavior. Why people wear logos on their clothes. What happens in a digitized world. Why people will be curious like rubbernecking and reality TV and social media to know what people have bought and ledgered that the Provenance matters incredibly and always has in our society, that eliminating the middle that brings very little value is a good idea.
And the Internet’s been doing it. Technology’s been doing that for, for its entirety as a term. Like I’m not, I’m not gonna do that for you. I don’t need to do that for you. It’s just gonna play out. Why did chiefs and Indians and cavemen paint their faces with colors and have skins that were like, this has been going on.
This is a foregone conclusion. So here’s my rant. And I’ll see you in three years. I don’t care if you buy an NFT. I just don’t care. – Yeah. I mean, speaking of Provenance I think really interesting element of that a lot of people don’t recognize is, you know, say if you look at this Topshot thing, right, and you think about, okay well who’s hands has this particular card been in? – So cool.
– And you can look back and go, whoa, this was actually in LeBron James wallet, for example. – Really matters. People don’t understand. That’s gonna be really cool. When you meet somebody in 13 years at an event, instead of going to Google or Instagram, like many do now, I think people will go to public wallets and look at what they’ve done.
And I’ll be like, oh, Darren, you were fucking on this blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, people love to have street credit. And be like, I knew about Pentera first. – Like Vanilla ice? – Yeah, exactly.
(Darren laughing) Where like, I was early. like for me, I was early on Notorious BIG, but do I really have proof, I don’t, but I could. – Sure. – I could. – You could. – You know, like, we’re, you know, when someone’s like, I was early on Nirvana.
Were you? Like now you have, but now in 35 years, somebody who’s early on something is likely gonna have some proof to it because that entity, the band, the influencer, the person, the thing is gonna have an NFT infrastructure that’s gonna prove.
Could, do you understand the level of clout Darren, that somebody could have as being the first person to buy the first item that Pearl Jam put out in 1991? – If you could prove it, yeah. – Well guess what? That’s the world we’re about to go into.
– That’s right, irrefutably. – Irrefutably. So I think Provenance is gonna be a currency that matters in an insane way. I think people are naive. I told people that online dating would be the standard in 2000, they laughed at me.
I said that people would buy wine on the internet in 1995, they laughed at me. I told people that they would spend all their time on Facebook, they laughed at me. Playing mobile games, they laughed at me.
Like, all I do is get laughed at (Darren laughs). And that’s when I know I’m onto something. And this one is one that’s making a lot of people laugh. They’re like, I’ll just take a screenshot. What’s the difference? I’m like everything.
– Well, I was talking fine art with Sasha Bailey, he’s the founder of My BAE. – Hmm. – And he was talking about how he had experienced with traditional fine arts. For example, if you were to say, look at an Andy Warhol and it was the real one, Eddie Warhol and then you had a fake sitting next to it.
They are indistinguishable. You can not tell the difference between them, you know and that’s a problem. So what do they do? They go by Providence. They go, okay, who’s hands were, who had this piece, you know where is the history of this piece.
And again, that’s where the blockchain is vastly superior as a solution. – It’s not even close. – Right? Not only that, where are those Andy Warhol’s, they’re in a vault. No one’s even looking at the things.
– Correct. – I go to the New York MET. I don’t know if you saw that, but I posted about it. I go to the MET and I go look at a painting and I’m like, is this even the real painting, or did they just put a replica here ’cause they don’t want the real one to get damaged?.
– Correct. And meanwhile, somebody changes their profile picture to a CryptoPunk, and you can go check if they’re the actual owner of it. You could. – You can. – You could. And then you get into the monetization of the IP.
Like you look at some of the entity standards where you’re allowed to monetize something you buy up to a hundred thousand not like, there’s so much neat stuff. It’s just gonna be neat. That’s like the word like I’ve been using the word neat.
Like, I don’t know if it brings me back to when I was four- – It’s a child, it’s nostalgic thing right, it’s neat. – It’s neat, it’s fucking neat. – Well, that’s why making the art for myself as well.
A lot of the art I make literally makes me laugh as I’m making it, you know like there’s a joy in it. And I’m hoping you have the same experience with your doodling, (indistinct) – I mean, are you kidding me? – There’s a joy in it, right? – I mean, look at Patient Pig, how can you- (Darren laughing) – That’s right.
– You know, like, I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of this. I am really happy that I’ve been able to bring a lot of awareness. I’ve had a lot of beautiful DMS and things like, you know, I have a big platform and I’m able to bring awareness to people, the Flamingo project, or, you know Felicia sort of, you know, whatever it might be like it’s just really fun.
– Hmm. Let’s talk barriers though. Let’s talk problems. – Please. – You know what, you know, Ethereum obviously, you know, if you’re minting on Ethereum like it’s got some technological problems. – Clearly.
– You know, it’s too much success. – Yep, gas is expensive. – Gas is terrible, you know. We had kind of a mini crypto winter in the art scene where I don’t know, you talked about that you’ve been following it for months.
And it was just on fire in October, November, come December Ethereum prices kind of skyrocketed and all of a sudden people couldn’t create or they could create, but they couldn’t mint. They couldn’t tokenize unless they were upper echelon.
You know, where do you see that going? – Too early for me to make a call that I would wanna look back on and say, okay, you were smart or you were an idiot. I just don’t know. That’s the honest truth.
I know human dynamics. So what do I mean by that? I know that there’s an incredible amount of people that are building on top of Ethereum that the network is so vast that the stakes are so collectively high that people that are dramatically more technically skilled than I are tackling it at ferocious levels.
Now I do think that people are naive a little bit with L-two and all that. Like, I think there is some naivete cause when you want it to happen, you know I’m thinking a lot about the burning and wrapping of tokens, you know, like, listen I would never have bought CryptoPunks if I didn’t know what wrapping was.
– Right. – Because I would have been too scared. Like, you know, I, you know they’re very different technologies but there was a day where Yahoo was the only search engine. – Sure. – And then Google came along.
And I sit here and say, well, there could be a different blockchain, like – Ask Jeeves. – Correct, I mean, look how great Flow is. Roham you know learned a lot, – (coughs) Excuse me. – Being up on Kitties and the scalable issues and, you know, Flow, and there’s tons, there’s tons of innovation going on on this.
So, Ethereum scaling issues scare me less than they did six months ago. – Hmm. – Because I have enough belief that if it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean all the assets go to zero. – Right. – And I’m a person that doesn’t have the skillset nor to be honest, the interest on how the concrete and steel is made.
I like designing the room. – Hmm. – Got it? So I try to stay educated enough that I can speak to the way I’m speaking to you where I’m dangerous, right. I can be a little dangerous but I’m not the person that’s gonna speak about the technical underpinnings at the level that so many others can.
What I spend my passion and time and skillset on, is the human dynamics on top of those things. Now I don’t want to get caught with my pants down which is why I try to stay knowledgeable-ish, but to speak about scalability of Ethereum, that is above my pay grade.
(Darren chuckles) – I kind of anticipate in my opinion, that we’ll get to a point where there’s a level of interoperability, that you know, perhaps these tokens are moving from one chain to another. (clears throat) I mean, there is obviously a technical challenge now.
– I think that that is something that is in the best interest of everyone, thus makes me think likely. – Well, on the flip side you could say, well, maybe it’s more like the Beta max VHS situation where VHS dominated because it simply was the one that was more widely used.
And you know, you could make that argument for Ethereum. – I think you could, but the speed of technology advancements are so different today compared to what it would have taken for a third, you know, cool.
But that was a one-on-one battle. If the speed and costs associated with innovating back then in that game, might’ve led to something called PS-nine, which would have destroyed VHS. – Sure. – And I think that’s how I look at a Flow had the luxury of knowing what Ethereum was.
– Right. Yup, what do you think of the whole, you know kind of there’s these, you know kind of curated scenes for galleries and then there’s the ones that are kind of the wide open. Like where do you find yourself drawn to the most? – Neither and both.
– Hmm. – To me both will succeed of whomever wins. Right, so you will have meaningful players in both. – Okay. – And then I think you’ll have underlining technology where people like myself and others can do it on their own domain and just have the underpinnings of the capabilities within it.
– Hmm! Let’s bring it to your background a little bit here. What do you think it is about this, you know, you talked about it a bit already, but you know you’ve talked about your childhood. What is it about your childhood like that really clicks with it, you think? – That’s a great question.
You know, my mother’s side of the family has a very heavy leaning towards storytelling. They’re just like funny Russian uncles who get drunk and story-tell, and I’m like, okay that’s something, (sighs) being an immigrant and learning how to speak English by watching “Scooby-Doo”, “Batman”, the “Adam West” stuff and “The Hulk”, the movie staff, you know, the TV staff TV show, “Dukes of Hazzard”, like a lot of seventies and eighties IP taught me how to speak the language.
And I think cemented my Americana, you know. Being a merchant trainer, you know I think this is just the modern stones and rubies and you know, like gold. I would’ve probably been a great character in the gold rush, you know? And so DNA and circumstance of like I do think the immigrant can’t speak English.
These are the things that taught me English and they’re all IP, probably has something to do with it. I can’t really unwrap it, sweet pickles- – But there’s a comfort you find in that in a sense. – Yeah, for sure.
And then I maintained it. Like I loved garage selling my whole life and buying toys and books and mugs and T-shirts up IP happy days, more Mork and Mindy. Like I just always gravitated to nostalgia Americana IP, that shit.
– Yeah, yeah. Very interesting. Different question entirely. Totally kind of a- – Please. – Bit of a shift here, you know I think a lot about how this will change the way economies work on a kind of a macro scale, you know.
Any thoughts on that in regards to, you know. – Big time. – You know, it’s kind of changing the way we, we transact. – I think I will become a central bank. – Hmm! – I think humans will have economies built around them because of access and metadata.
– Hmm! How does that work in our current system without there being a huge conflict? Or is that inevitable? – I mean, if you’re going super macro with me around like cryptocurrency and NFTs versus, you know, sovereign nations.
– Which is like say, Fiat money versus- – Oh, I think it’s a, I think it’s a big, big deal. – Yeah. – I think that there’s inevitable regulation that is overbearing and it will depend on how big the movement is at the time to see what the counter-reaction is.
I mean, I think the stakes are high. If you believe that Bitcoin wins, then you believe in the massive lack of leverage of sovereign nations. – Hmm. Or that they just rush in and they try to have their own little hash war going on and try to- – They’re going to do that.
– Get as much as they can, right. If they are- – They’re going to do that. – I mean, Germany I feel like is my prediction to go first. Like I think oh they’re gonna. They’re gonna have to- – Why German in particular? – By the way, when I say complete intuitive wild guess of like, I always think about who’s incentivized, but big enough.
– Hmm. See, ’cause I would lean towards say something like say Iran or something like that. – They already kind of have their own control if you think about it, if you think of Germany as a major player in Europe where Europe is now kind of like a third player in the world behind the US and China, it’s almost like they’re incentivized to do a move to almost like re-energize, you know, cause don’t forget, that’s the part of the world that was number one.
And I always think there’s some underlining tension when you use your spot, I think America losing to China in that global leader over the next hundred years will be like an interesting underlining resentment the way that London and Germany look at the US.
And so I dunno, I’ve always had this weird feeling in my own game of chess in my head that if there was a place that would do this first and most meaningful, but that was big enough to actually matter.
So that’s always been my hot guests. – Are they competent enough to fight it? – I don’t know. I genuinely don’t. – I often wonder. – I mean – I just know, – I just see a traffic light system take, you now 2 months to get installed in my neighborhood I don’t know if they can fight this.
– Yeah, well that (Darren laughing) that is a really good point. In reality, no. In passing a law that makes things illegal that would make our head spin, yes. – Hmm. Well, and that can cause harm. I don’t know if it stops.
I don’t think it can be stopped. – Yeah. I think you’re probably right. I think it’s like alcohol. You can do prohibition but be prepared for the ramifications – (chuckles) And be prepared for people to still be consuming alcohol.
– Correct. (Darren laughing) – Yeah, all right. Talk about your hopes. I mean, you didn’t, couldn’t give a lot of detail there about your projects, but you know, what do you see? What are you hoping happening here over the next year here with your experience in the NFT world, with your experience in NFT art, what are you hoping to see happen? – By far, my reaction to that question is the 13 to 27 relationships I make in this next year.
That mirror, the ones I made in 2006 like the Kevin roses and the MSGs and the Travis and the Sockers and Dave Morin’s and you know, just these real friendships. Mike, you know Lazarus and Belsky like these real, real, real friendships.
I think I’m gonna make some of my best friends in my life over the next year. – That’s awesome. I know for myself, you know, just joining this community I’ve made some awesome friends that, you know we connect on a daily basis, you know.
– This is going to be a year that I make some best friends. – That’s awesome. Anything, any last words you wanna wrap up with? I know you’re kinda tight on time. I’m guessing you are a pretty busy guy, so – Yes, I definitely appreciate that.
I can definitely, that I’m grateful that I’m available. That I’m intellectually generous. I was so gifted with the ability to get mine that I always, that I’m a person that believes in like abundance.
So if there’s anything I can be a help to anybody. I think everyone can win. And to be thoughtful on the investing side. I do think people need to be very careful. There’s gonna be a trillion projects and there’s only so much demand.
And right now a lot of the demand is from people that are financially incentivized. They don’t really care about it. They’re gonna buy this thing ’cause they think in a week it’s gonna be this much. And that’s okay.
I don’t judge that. I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a capitalist, you know in the good sense of the world meaning I want it to be fair. That’s why I love a lot about this. I think it’s pure capitalism. Like there’s, it actually, a game of who is good not let’s rig the game.
And so- – It’s a meritocracy, yeah. – It’s a meritocracy, that’s such a good point. I just would tell people like be thoughtful because when it hits, when it crashes or it goes down, you know, it’ll hurt, it’ll be fast.
It’ll be hard to liquidate. There’s not enough underlining demand to carry what’s going on. And so you have speculation at scale. Buy what you like or really do homework on things you genuinely believe are gonna work.
For example, every great IP, Darren that’s about to come out, whether it’s “Star Wars”, or “Star Trek”, or “Alf”, or “Smurfs” or whatever, right. I’m gonna look very carefully on how they built it. You know, because I can’t just say, oh the Pokemon thing is gonna crush ’cause it’s Pokemon.
If it’s sloppy and not thoughtful, the dynamics won’t play out to make it a good quote-unquote investment. – Yeah, yeah. Well then you just have a repeat of the ICO thing we saw. – This is gonna be a massive ICO moment, just so you know, this will be that the shit-coin like reality is there’s gonna be an ungodly amount of NFTs that sell for a lot in the first three months and go to very small places.
So pay very close attention to who’s behind it. For example, for me what I’m gonna do is gonna be with me to the die I die, which gives me tremendous confidence in the economics around that ecosystem back to economies around people.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of people that have my leverage of awareness and audience, I think are gonna go for the quick 3, 4, $5 million score. And I think that’s gonna hurt them and it’s definitely gonna hurt their fans.
And I caution people to be thoughtful as they continue to navigate especially these next 24 months. But these next 24 years in NFT are gonna be remarkable. – Yeah, a 100%. Hey, I really appreciate you taking this time and I’m looking forward to your podcast.
I hear you’re doing it with someone else in my community next week. Now I don’t wanna give away too much about that yet. ’cause I’m not sure if he’s even said, but I’m excited to hear that as well. And I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.
I mean, of all the things you could be doing with your time right now, why is it that, you know, this is what you’re doing. I’m curious. – I like people that are authentic to the thing that I’m excited about.
– Hmm! That’s awesome. – It could be a lot of fancy people who are gonna hit me a little bit. It’s already happened. There will be a lot of super famous super wealthy, super leveraged, super strategic people.
There’s all the natural people that I’m friends with that are also in, and those are real relationships but there’s something important to me that if I go into someone’s home, I want it to elite and the rules are take your shoes off.
I wanna take them off. So that’s somewhere else the other day. And it kind of feels that way to me. I want real friendships, real relationships. I want to be in this community for the rest of my life.
And the only way I know how to do that is to be… Is to bring value. I know that in real life, that my appearance on your podcast for you gives you leverage to do more with your podcasts. And I want that for you.
– I appreciate that. – And the number one asset that I can, the number one asset I protect is time. – Hmm! – So to me, writing, being a $5,000 sponsor of your podcast is a hell of a lot less meaningful of like me knowing the truth than me allocating this time.
– Right on yeah. – And so that’s- – I’d be okay with that too. (both laughing) – We can have that convo too. Anyway, my friend thank you for your time. I gotta run. – Right on. Thank you very much. – Bye there.
– Thank you so much. – Take care. – See you in the circles. I hope to spend real time in person as well. – Awesome. – Take care – Cheers. Where do you live? – I live in Alberta, Canada. – Love it, love it.
I actually- – I love New York though. I had tickets booked. I had hotel booked. I had tickets for Hamilton booked. I was all ready with my wife to come out there for a week. – Gonna be going on lot of conferences.
So I’m sure we’ll be synced. – Oh man, I was crushed. Bye, Okay. – Cheers. – Take care. – YouTube watcher, what’s up, it’s GaryVee. First of all, thank you so much. I hope you’re doing super well during these times.
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