Be friends, welcome to Vcon I said V Friends welcome to Vcon I'm so humbled. Thank you so much! This weekend is a culmination of many years of work uh, incredible amounts of focus the last 15 months on this project and I just want to thank everybody for being here. It's uh, it's going to be very special most of all. What I'm most interested in besides the content, is to make sure that as many of you as possible get to meet as many of you as possible.

I Think the biggest Roi from every conference always is the relationships you make. The last seven years I went to to South by Southwest I don't think I went to a single talk. it was all just intermingling and jamming. Um, that is very clear to me the thing that you should be looking for.

And so I highly encourage extending your hand and saying hello. I Know a lot of people here are naturally introverted, but push yourself. This is an incredibly incredibly kind community. Speaking of kindness, you know we talk a good game on kindness on Discord and social, but people were literally throwing flying elbows at each other at the merch tent a few minutes ago.

So I want to establish in the opening Keynote that please challenge yourself for the next 96 hours to being the bigger person in every situation, even if somebody cuts a line out of their over enthusiasm or anything else. I really, really, genuinely have no interest in hypocrisy within the framework of this conference. So I challenge everybody to genuinely push themselves to be their best selves this weekend. Please.

And by the way, just and I really appreciate that. And for the record, I'm really just talking about the last 10 percent. Ninety percent of the juice here is off the charts, but in excitable moments. I Have a selfie station.

Let's throw up the selfie schedule so that people can take uh, photos because I know I was out there for four hours. Please take a photo of this if you are interested in getting a selfie. I'm allocating quite a bit of time to that. I'm also going to ask the uh, the thousands yesterday that were able to get their photo that if they could be a little bit patient and let people who were unable to do that um, and so tonight and tomorrow, maybe please allow that and then we'll see how Sunday looks be friends is the beginning of a journey for me on the next chapter of my career to scale the things that I'm most passionate about.

and those things that I'm passionate about like for all of us, is in the framework of selfish things and selfless things. I Think the world really struggles with and I think that's something for a lot of you I mean a lot of you are very close to my content and know what? I Talk about what I Believe in. The thing that I've been thinking a lot about is people's really people's real struggle with The word and everything is so or or or and what I plan on doing with V friends in the next five decades is really establish aggressive and I will build a very large intellectual property and business. There's probably a substantial chance that V Friends is the business that finally gets me to buy the New York Jets and more importantly, win a Super Bowl I.

Really need everybody to be healthy because I really need you to be there to watch when they give me that Lombardi Trophy Because if you think my face was a meme in that CNBC interview, wait till you see my Super Bowl trophy face. But but more importantly, more importantly, the selfless journey of what I think be friends will be and can be for me is very important to me. I Genuinely believe I mean look how good these characters look spinning around the stadium. This is a little ways away from a couple of Doodles Just a year ago, there's literally characters walking around here.

We're only 15 months into this journey. We're going to operate this very aggressively and we will make these characters incredibly popular. Almost everybody's grandkids in this place will interact with a V-friend in their life and the thing that I'm most passionate about with that is obviously the attributes of the V Friends. What we can instill yesterday was one of the great days of my life.

Four and a half hours of selfies and conversations I wish on you. Besides Health the opportunity to have one person ever tell you that you changed their life. It's not about the 500 that did it yesterday. One one person has a better life because of you.

That is the most intoxicating feeling a human being can have I love you much more I have a very scaled vision for this and I'm very excited to operate it. I want you to all know that I will not let you down I will navigate every day I will rarely listen to any of your opinions I'm very aware that you care about the floor price I can't do that I have a responsibility, but I will navigate this the way I've navigated everything in my life with Supreme effort with a hell of a lot of hard work, with a lot of clever smarts and with tremendous good intent I make you that promise and I'm humbled by your support. Now let's talk about you. My great hope for this weekend is what happens to you is what happened to me when I started to go to conferences in web 2.

I had a lot going for me. The wine business with dad was going great I knew a lot but I started to go to these conferences and I heard things I'd never heard before conversations I've never heard before and it really changed the course of my life. The conferences I went to in 2006 and seven shaped who I am today. My ambition for Vcon over the next three years is to provide not only the community that I know is happening, but the information.

The one sentence in one talk this afternoon that makes a click for you of why you can do this for your law practice or your concrete business. Or maybe it is time to step away from your job, live a little more humbly within your means, and try one time to scratch that itch that's been inside of you forever. The content, not just the community of this conference has tremendous ambition, has a lot of thought to it The Luminaries and personalities that are here are extraordinary. There are many artists that will be speaking at this conference that only 15 months ago had regular jobs.

How many people here by show of hands? If I really ask this question and I want you to really give a thought, don't just raise your hand. How many people if I asked you this question would say as a child they did grow up fairly artistic, they drew, they played, they think they were creative, and because Web3 didn't exist, they didn't know that was an option and they ended up doing a non-creative thing in their lives. Actually, please stand up. If you're one of these people, please stand up.

Let's clap it up for these creative individuals. Don't sit back down. Back up. Thank you.

It's these people that really sit in my gut because they may think as I'm talking now. Darn it. nine-year-old me would have really won if this worked out I Wish I could bring the two guys back on right now to make the joke of you're 80, you're still young I Look at the faces that just stood up I Just don't think human beings are good at understanding time. Every person that just stood has a dramatic amount of time to execute their own V Friends It may not be what V friends ends up being because let's call a spade a spade I'm really good at what I do.

However, it can be more for them than even be friends is for me, because doing something you like and living within those means whatever that number is, whether it's eighty thousand dollars a year or two hundred thousand dollars a year is genuinely genuinely the greatest gift a human can have besides good health. And so I cheer for these individuals I Hope you get inspired and I hope you make a jump I Really do thank you. Perspective: Something as I continue to go through my life that interests me quite a bit is that life is so binary based on what you've decided. You want to find the ability to find negativity on an everyday basis.

I'm sure this will confuse no one based on how good the mainstream media and human beings on social media are at pushing and selling negativity. The ability to find negativity on an every hour basis is extremely easy. The thing that I am far more interested in is the ability to find positivity is there at all times as well If I had one big massive macro goal for Vcon, if Vcon can be the extra juice, the extra little push to tip some of you over that are on your journey to deciding to be optimistic versus defaulting into being pessimistic. If this event and other people's love towards you the love that likely if you are that person you are not given along the way if this community can do that for each other, if this event can be the container of that, this would be a remarkable weekend.

And so I ask the people at this conference that if you were happy and optimistic to over communicate that to every friend you make to step up to your fellow V friend that might not be there and try to build that bridge. I Genuinely believe that people are really missing the Simplicity of life. Choosing to be optimistic and happy is hard when you were built to be negative and cynical. Recognizing its truth and putting in the work no different than doing exercise or eating better or reading and learning about web.

3. Recognizing that truth and putting yourself on a path to try to go there is not as difficult and so I hope that we can choose practical optimism this weekend and I encourage it very much. Next: I Want to give a humongous and I mean massive shout out to that dude. Let's all look at them one dude over Polaris sitting.

Let's wave it dude I Love the whole section. Yeah you brother, you let's go. That dude has a whole section to himself. He's a gangster.

He's a one-of-one Look at him. he's a star. Let's God ha I Love that move. It's a little too introverted for me, but I'm glad let me do this.

Let me do this. I Saw it I saw it my friends I Expect lots of competition at Vcon I Want to know everyone's scores in Candyland I Want to see people crying? If they're losing, we must Champion competition. The reason competitive clown is going to be a beast is: be friends is going to eliminate eighth place trophies. Competitive clown is gonna make seven-year-olds cry.

He's a clown. He's scary. You know what else is scary coming in second I Love people that come in second, third, fourth I Love losing. You know that I Really do.

The point isn't trying to make kids unhappy that came in second, third, fourth fifths. Our reaction was eighth place trophies. That was the wrong move on that. The right move was Champion when you went all the way and respecting the Merit of coming in Forth when we eliminate Merit we get into a dangerous place Merit is good.

Competition is good. Tenacity is good. ambitious Angels The best Who's got an ambitious angel I See you brother I Also am extremely excited for the late nights after the conference. I Expect people communicating where they are so others can find you I expect people when they're leaving here.

If they see somebody walking solo saying, come with us We are building a real community and I'm really, really genuinely excited to be a part of it at the helm of it to be with you I think that there's an incredible chapter of Web 3 that's coming this next year. I Would argue that unlike some of the Rain, we got the timing of Vcon from a Web 3 standpoint. could have not been better. I've personally and you know this I've put out a lot of videos a lot of you I've read the comments didn't love when I was fudding when I said 98 of projects are going to zero that wasn't flooding.

that was. Please be careful. I've seen this movie twice before. The timing of this conference is unbelievably good.

Everybody here is wildly aware that there's been correction in pricing. That is the best thing that has happened to us. This will clean out some of the very dangerous I would call it behavior that captures all of us in it. It's not fun when your assets go down on paper.

That's not fun I'm sure some of you are in the stock market too. There's other things coming after that, so it is what it is. But the timing is remarkable because now a lot of the good work gets done. A lot of the real learning gets done.

A lot of the Innovation gets done The next two three years for web 3 will be remarkable. I Ask in the opening Keynote for all of you to double down on something very important, which is education I Think my message for years has always been confused because of how angry I get at college debt I Am not thrilled with the current way that America and many other countries sell education I Believe in education more than anything. It is why we went on a four-month journey to how to set up a metamask, how to buy Ethereum and many in this audience went through that. Journey and not only one with V friends, but one in many other great communities.

Like many of you minted board ape many of you minted World of women, many of you did many other things right now. If you're here, you've got a baseline education. You've got a baseline education. This is when you have to Triple down on your education.

Let me give you a really good hypothesis for this conference. You've probably decided which panels you want to go with, or considering many of you are going to choose based on the person and you think they're cool or the subject matter is something you already know and like. Please challenge yourself to go to two, three, five, Twenty Five fifty percent of the panels where you know nothing about it, where you're not sure about it. This is the time to Triple Down on education in Web 3.

so much is about to be built in the next three years. I Highly recommend you do that my friends. This is a party. This is a gathering.

This is a culmination of a very strong Community built on very good values I am uncomfortably proud of you I'm incredibly humbled. Could we throw up the selfie station before? I Get out of here one more time. My main goal: I've won Kpi for Vcon I Wanna talk to all of you I Want to say hello I Want to say thank you I want to be the Best Host I can um and I just wanna be with you and I just thank you so much really from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for being at Becon One I Adore you I love you I Can't wait to see you and have the greatest, greatest, greatest, greatest, greatest greatest V-con I See you up in there in the seats.

Let's go! Thank you everybody! I'll see you here.