My point in 2012 to a lot of people was, you do understand, there's an entire generation right now being affected and they're going to be 24 years old and they won't know any different and that's where we're living now in 2021.. You've got your perspective. I just want to be happy. Don't you want to be happy gary, fantastic to see on real vision, say my friend.

Thank you. There's look, there's a lot to talk about. Firstly, just for some people, just a bit of your background would be fantastic. How you got to where you are now and then we'll dig into what you're really up to now and where we're going, you know very classic um.

You know kind of americana. Immigrant eastern european story, family is from belarus in the soviet in the former soviet union. We immigrated here in the late 70s uh 78 december of 78 right before 79, very tough kind of first three, four five years, you know studio apartments in queens. You know no cars walking five miles to kmart.

You know scrapping my sister was born in the states. The first year we were here so it was just a very you know: hardcore upbringing, east coast, queens, dover and then edison new jersey in 1982, where i really kind of you know started my american journey. I would say: um lived there for the next eight years before i moved to another part of new jersey, my dad, during that time went from being a stock boy in a liquor store to a store manager to eventually buying his own shop. I had very much discovered who i was in addison new jersey.

Lemonade stands baseball cards, shoveling snow, you know just incredibly intuitive to entrepreneurship and selling and buying and working. It was as fun for me to work. You know shoveling snow and washing cars as it was to play sledding and playing football or baseball. So um got into my teenage years started working.

My dad's liquor store all the time uh because you know oldest son, of a first generation immigrant family as a merchant uh fell in love with people collecting wine. That was a big breakthrough for me that people actually collected wine. The way i collected sports cards and that started a you know, 20-year passion of mine to build a large business for my parents. I was incredibly affected by having a great mother and having a hard working father, and i was just extremely grateful and i wanted to give back and i kind of knew in my late teens early 20s that i was talented in business.

I i thought it. I knew it. This is a very d. You know, you know this.

This was a very different era. The 90s 80s entrepreneurship wasn't as accepted it wasn't. You know this was the golden era of school and proper job. That's right so had a lot of adversity from voices around me: teachers, other friends, parents.

I was a dnf student and being told that i would never be anybody that i was. That was all about the credentials at that point. That's right! If you didn't have a degree or whatever you were nobody, that's right and uh. Luckily i had a mother who didn't make me feel that way, and that was enough.

You know all the voices versus hers and that - and i also i also had a real mission. I really really wanted to accomplish what i'm grateful that i was able to which was have a substantial impact on my family's business, and i did that and built my dad's business from a four to a 65 million a year business and then kind of embarked on. My own at 34., you know family businesses, don't pay super well, so i didn't really make a lot of money in my 20s and early 30s, which is why a lot of my content speaks about patience. I lived it.

I really didn't have a lot of money made some very smart investments with the money i was able to save in those 13 years, and facebook, twitter and tumblr is early. High-Risk angel investments changed the course of my career in a lot of ways: um and then my brother was graduating college. We wanted to do business together and we decided on a client service business, which you know at that point. A lot of my smart friends, including mark zuckerberg and others thought, was not a good idea.

Wasn't the highest way to make money, wasn't starting a vc firm, wasn't starting a company, but i was completely convinced that i wanted to build a communications death star, as i called it. I wanted to build what is today now vayner x. You know a global mexico city, singapore, london, new york, la over 1300 employee, multi-hundred million dollar a year revenue business. That really gives me a foundation v friends which i'm sure we'll get into you know empathy wines, which was you know, a substantial six to seven figure exit depending on how the urnette works.

Resi, the restaurant app nine figure exit um, you know and so uh excuse me, empathy, eight or nine figure ex. So you know i really i've built a infrastructure that i think is going to allow me to um, continue to grow and having a business at the size of vayner x and that the profit that keep the vayner x kicks out as a baseline as almost a Sun, while i create a lot of satellite opportunities where i develop talent, where i develop a totally different religion of marketing and attention arbitrage and contemporary communication, you saw that early on right, social media and the power of it for marketing the rise of the influence. So you are super early in all of that, and i've been very influential in other people. I think in that, as well yeah, if you read crush it, which i wrote in 2008 and came out in 2009, it's almost scary how right it is about what ended up happening with influencer marketing.

You know it's very similar to you know i'm starting to populate some of my 2010 11 tweets about virtual goods. You know farmville was enough for me to see to believe in nfts. It took an entire full decade before i got much louder about it, but i have incredibly uh and this is you know i i i don't love using the word luck, because i think it is then used as an excuse by people who don't want to put In the work, but there is no question - i've been gifted lucky to be gifted with some uncanny understanding of consumer behavior. I just my friend if i told you how comfortable i am with guessing what people are going to do and how often that becomes true.

It almost scares me now. I don't think the guessing is really guessing. It's that it's not you put in your 10 000 hours right, you're, an expert, that's what you do and even with that, even with this nft thing i mean i probably put in another 200 hours in in late december in december, through the first in the first Home in the last month of 2020, in the first hundred days of 2021, i spent almost every hour i had on nft research going backwards to. Why did larva labs did what they did with punks.

What was going on in every discord why crypto kitties? What was happening with flo? What are the other blockchains besides ethereum? What's been ethereum, what's ethereum been up to since i bought it in 2016., like just really went back and did a lot of homework before i felt comfortable saying you know what i'm going to talk on this in a much more significant way, and let's see where This takes us now. Let's start your crypto journey first, before we dig into all of this, when did that start? You said you bought ethereum when when did you start getting aware of the space and what did you think it meant then? And then, how did that change? As you start to see nfts and the tokenization of everything? There was a very, very, very in now, looking back very bougie, very a-list, very, very illuminati group of guys and gals that got together at south by southwest back in 2000. Nah uh 2011, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and it was. We called it.

The jam session and krasaka travis kalkanick founder of uber ashton, kutcher mark cuban sophia girlboss, uh and josh other people, maybe not as crazy names but msg and and josh ellman and aaron battalion and on and on and on and aaron battalion, is the reason that i Bought crypto so early, he was the former cto of living social, but he's a true technologist. You know like a real technical nerd and you know and in a jam session geez. You know uh. Quite quite a long time ago.

I listened didn't, say: goddamn word for two hours as they talked about bitcoin. It was first time i'd heard of it, and it was just so over my head for a couple reasons. Unlike you, my friend, even to this day, my ability, my knowledge, even my passion, around currency and let's say financier and financial, is quite low. It doesn't it doesn't grip me, it is not my deep passion or understanding it doesn't come natural to me even like the concepts of central banking or trading currencies.

It doesn't come natural to me um and i don't love it, but i was very fascinated by this concept of de-centralized servers. It was so profound at the time so that happened. I i bought some, you know maybe six or seven coins. I can't even explain how low it was.

It was just nothing i forgot about. It came back maybe a year or two later, maybe two years later jam session again and this time aaron battalion tells me about ethereum and that really caught my attention, because i remember thinking, bitcoin was really cool and amazing and obviously has gone on to become what It became - and i thought of it as like: okay, that needs to become a central brand like a nike like gold like, like god, like school, like a diploma, that's a harvard, that's a brand game, and if it wins that brand game that's gon na win and It by the way it went on to do that, yeah, uh ethereum. I was like oh building on top of it and like the scale and really i had these almost like apple versus android feelings about it. I remember thinking right: oh bitcoin could go on to be apple and ethereum could go on to being android like a player for everything else, and so i was very bullish on that and i bought a bunch of that.

I remember right around that same time. My brother aj and i got a bunch of dogecoin like for free or for a hundredth of a hundredth of a cent, and that was like a period of being hot on it and and then i would only check in when a tweet or an article for The next two or three or four years caught my attention. I was not going. You know.

I was very deep in my business. I was very deep in in content and social media arbitrage. It wasn't where i was spending my energy. I crypto kitties caught my attention later on, and i was like that really in the same way that i'm very hot now the same reason i'm like ooh, collectibles and trees because - and i think what's really interesting about your story - is you didn't come at this from Finance, you came with it seeing different stuff, and i think this is correct.

Important, because this is, i think, where the future lies so cryptokitties. You see that you're a marketing guy and you start to think - and i start to think. I know why people will buy that if this becomes like bitcoin the difference between an nft and let's say a currency is there's a social signaling and a need to communicate it. That is by default.

When you say to somebody when you drive a mercedes benz or you wear a rolex or you wear a four thousand dollar pair of sneakers, you don't have to say something to say something: yeah when you're sitting on 4 million or 40 million dollars of bitcoin, you Have to say, hey, i have you know, and i put you in a curious spot. That's why cash is different than assets and i under, and i understood that and that came natural to me, because humans love social signaling, it's a core part of being a human. It's the poorest. The you know like like to me communication is what human beings are completely predicated on.

It's why i bet the farm on social media. I knew i knew there was no way we were gon na. Let it be a fad, it's the same way that i know that nfts will not be a fad now much like social, much like internet 95, when i first got in and launched winelibrary.com in 96 and 97, which was crazy early to launch a liquor stores website. This is my third cycle back to pattern: recognition 10 000 hours.

My biggest concern is that i know 98. Maybe even 99 of the current projects of nfts will be negative investments for the people that view them as long-term investments. You know, i think, that i think that it's not sustainable around supply and demand, and we haven't even seen the greatest intellectual properties enter the space properly. We've not seen pokemon go properly, yet we haven't seen star wars, go pro yeah disney disney, go properly right and so and by the way, not to mention most sports outside proper football.

A little bit was so rare and obviously the nba with top shot. But we still don't have the nfl, we have a baseball product on wax, which you know is okay and in soccer they've got a bit on chili's, and so you know that's socio's project. But you know music. I mean where's, jay-z's, first nft or elvis presley.

So we are in the dawn, dawn dawn of all of this, and people are spending a lot of money on tokens on intellectual property. That has a very high risk outcome. You know i i've i've jumped into a couple of projects recently more more because i just want to support more diversity in the nft space. You know i'm really enjoying some of the female-led projects, some of the minority-led projects.

I think it's important to because we you know collectively you know i i get an incredible high, my friend on the email of hey, you showed me this world teaching someone how to fish has been my life. I enjoy it, and so you know it's tough, though, with something this new, because you're yelling at one thing hey, this might be the big big big thing for the next two decades. Comma 99 of these things are gon na fail. So what's the entry point, you know it's a very tricky game.

I mean i totally agree. So what gives you the bravery to jump and say i'm gon na try this out, because that first step is the dangerous step, because, as you say, it's so nascent right now that you don't know where it's going to go. We've all got some ideas and we'll get into that, but how? Why did you take the first step or how lack of fear you know, i think, with v friends? It was uh right before valentine's day. I remember so it was like maybe the 13th or the 12th, and i just had that eureka moment i felt at that point.

I was ready. I knew enough. I knew exactly what i wanted to do dutch auction on chain. You know uh utility based heavily to hedge.

You know the fact that i wanted to build a 40-year intellectual property that i'm going to do cartoons of video games and sweatshirts and toys, and you know i i jumped in because i knew i wasn't gon na lose and more and more importantly, much more importantly, I knew that i was willing to die before i would let the people that invested it early on lose. I knew that i was willing to shut down everything that, if god forbid, i didn't see something or something was off that i was willing to stake. My entire reputation on the project, and that is why i did it, because i knew that i would go to zero, have a far less fancy life to rest assured that the people that went in won, because this is a key point - that i've got with the Spaces many people come to the nft space to extract value. They think they've got a community.

The first thing they do is that, as opposed to having any utility or any community value proposition, they just take money out the community, and we saw that with like kings of leon um and a few of these. Suddenly it collapses right, because what you've just done is take money from the community, give nothing in return. Apart from given one single person products and the idea is, you have to build value, you have to build real, meaningful community value for it to have true value. That's right, i think that i was very comfortable with some of the cynicism from the og nft community when i announced it or when i launched it, because i understood i didn't have the audacity to think that they should have spent 20 or 30 or 15 or 10 hours on who i am what my track record was how i've done things.

You know i'm stunned by people's anger, you're not entitled to people putting in that kind of work, and i knew that it would take five hours ten hours for somebody to really understand that over the last 15 years, all i've done is the reverse. All i've done is given more to my community than i've asked for in return, which is an incredible formula for your business. That's been your business model, it's been my business and, and it's been based on this concept of 5149. I have always felt that i was talented at such a level that if i was able to get 49 of the value of any interaction that i would have plenty, and so it's an incredibly simplistic mindset, but it's it's.

It's allowed me to have a far better reputation with anybody, who's actually ever interacted with me than the perception and and that's what one can only hope for too many people walking around earth right now who have good reputations on social media, but not with the people That actually interact with them, and i love what my reputation is with the people that interact with me, and i knew that i was going to bring that to the table and i knew what is happening now was going to happen, which was 60 days. 100 days. 600 days, a thousand days later, one by one, the individuals that took a on me or who spit at it. You know if they had the humility and if they were gracious, would come out and say, and i've been i've been incredibly flattered.

It mean i'll say this: it means the world to me when a stranger shits on me and says i'm the worst. I don't even hear it, but i'd be lying. If i didn't say - and i don't get the accolades either when people think i'm the great - i don't get high, but i i'd be lying. If i didn't say when somebody comes out and says, i thought you were a fraud or this was a rug, pull or a cash grab, or you were just another one of those and i've had a little bit of time to look into this wow or kudos Or hat tip, it means a lot.

It means a lot to win someone's respect, who has a bad feeling towards you, and i enjoy that feeling, and people have got to understand that you particularly put yourself out as the product. So if you were to betray that you've lost all trust and integrity, in which case your brand goes to zero, so you're highly incentivized to absolutely make sure it goes as well as you possibly cannothing can all be guaranteed as a success. The day before v friends launch is i'm at the height of my financial life, and that is completely built on my reputation yeah. So i think to your point, it's very clear to me that you have a good sense of this um.

I had everything to lose, but that was the best part, because i knew what i said to you was true, which was there just was no outcome. It's for some miraculous reason. 87 things went poorly that led to a show. I was going to give everybody their money back.

There's no outcome where my reputation doesn't trump, my bank account and that's not saying you think that the tokens can go up or down in value, but it means that you're there to guarantee the rug pull that this is not that it doesn't go wrong, whatever the Reverse in this space of a rug, pull is, is exactly how i went into it, which was, i was gon na backstop it financially. If something, if again many things out of my control went horribly wrong that i couldn't have saw. I also know that i'm gon na make empathy elephant and patient pig, and you know entrepreneur. Elf, literally commercial successes talk me through the vision, so you you create the characters.

You create the nfts. What are you going to do with all of this? Where is this going for you next phase, i'm going to build disney over the next 40 years, i'm going to make people care about my characters, whether through video game form, whether through book form, whether through iphone game, whether through vr, whether through commercials tv brand deals, Cereal candy, you know i am an incredibly well positioned individual to do so because of the way my actual business life works. So what you've essentially done is lay out your stall for a vision of the future to say, look, there's a great business opportunity here to do this. People can get a share in the value of that network that you're going to create and then you're going to go and create that and that's right if it works this one.

This was the this was the first time that people had an opportunity to invest. In me, in theory, right and and for me what i really like this is: where nfts really caught my attention, let's say we're trucking along my intent, is that these are the original disney cells. Let's start there right, no there's, no commercial rights. There's not! You know these are disney cells right, the original drawings.

That's why i drew them. I wanted it to have the real provenance. Like truth right, these characters from my drawings will develop into things that are far more beautiful for film and television and and merchandise. Right in 12 years, if i'm trucking, along with this project - and i don't like the price of the tokens - i don't feel that my community has extracted enough value that the rookie cards are just not worth as much as i had hoped for them.

Even though the enterprise is making hundreds of millions of dollars in these other activities in merchandise ip extraction - well, i i am in control. I can do a movie deal that is direct to you know that has huge economics. Finally, it hits. I have my big thing and if i decide that i want to give 20 of the box office to my token holders, i can you know, and that kind of that kind of power to support your community is extremely attractive to me, because i have the ability To make this community whole, if i don't like where it's at now the lucky part is for me is: i did a lot of things well and jim and everybody at nft42 deserves a lot of credit.

I did a lot of listening, i'm very happy. I went dutch auction it. You know it allowed a lot of people to get in. I also like that it was that my i had a glitch with my meta mask and the gas fees looked high and because it was a dutch auction, a lot of things started tracking down.

I also like the fact that the far majority of the people that actually bought it were people that i put into a discord months earlier, educated them on eth metamask. You know open c. So what i have now is a stunning percentage of the people holding the tokens were non-crypto native individuals. You know i'm very proud, especially as i watch all of them now diversify and get into all these other projects.

There's not a lot of people in 2021. Who've brought brand new people to the space. You know, and i i take a lot of pride in that. I think that is really going to be my legacy over the next 24 months between my public appearances, where my brand goes into different places.

My impact of working with brands with vayner nft, my consultancy company, you know i i i have a lot of pride in this statement. I think i'll be at the top of the list of the humans that brought more people into the space which inherently helps everyone. How are you thinking through when i look at this space? I think the biggest thing that's coming is community tokens overall. So, even when i look at you know facebook dm that's coming right.

People think it's this stable coin. It's actually the world's biggest community token yeah. It won't go up and down in value with the value of the network, but that's where this is all going right. You can coalesce massive groups of people with a community token share the economics and it drives network effects.

All they want to do is promote you and the product. In theory, it's actually a very simplistic concept right, if you decentralized well, what's left the humans that create the demand and the community that it supports. That's right right! So, for me, all those people who cashed in for a quick. This is why patience is the greatest gift.

I to me my ability to run a marathon versus a sprint. My comp think about think about. I mean the sheer economics of the people that have already won on my play and i haven't even launched the three super conferences yet and all the things i'm actually doing. You know, hopefully in three or four years to your point.

I fully agree with you. Hopefully, in three or four or five years when that becomes more obvious to everyone, my friend and becomes more real, you know if i have a project under my under my belt, that created extraordinary returns for the people. You know that made that bet. It surely puts me in a very good spot to get to the next level of scale, and i fully believe that's what's going to happen and i feel like the trust of sovereign nations, to create currencies that happen long long long ago will now happen around human Individuals yeah, i totally agree and around these communities, and i and i think it disrupts so many people it takes out so many middlemen on route and the other thing it and and generates, puts that money back into the community and it just creates very powerful future Economics for all of this, when everybody's incentives are aligned that that's extraordinary what it's going to do, it's extraordinary what it what it requires is the people that start the movement, the ip, the music the book, the recipe whatever it is.

It requires them to be able to create demand and ltv, and so i think one thing that a lot of artists need to be very careful of is this sounds tremendous. Everybody in the middle is getting cut out and i i in my community get to have the economics. There is an incredible skill that is associated with actually building a community. There is a there is a level of bringing such deep inherent value and then, by the way - and you know this - don't get confused by following count if you're just extremely attractive and that's why you have 11 million followers on instagram.

That's not necessarily going to put you in a position to create an economy around yourself. You know for me, i was very unique. I've spent the last decade creating free content that has impacted people to win mentally or financially without very little. Ask in return creates a very different relationship than somebody who, if i was had great abs and never had a shirt on and had a 10 of 10 face.

You know that's a very different relationship, that's right, because it's not adding necessarily value. It's adding pleasure because somebody wants to see somebody with good acts, but yeah and escapism is an incredible value proposition. I will tell you in my most stressed days, going to netflix and watching stand-up comedy brings me incredible value yeah. It really does i'm just not sure that i want to support dave chappelle's economy, not because, by the way i think jay chappelle is and the reason i use him as an example.

He might be one of the most thoughtful bright comedians i've ever seen in my life. I just don't have a great sense of. Is he willing to put in the time to his community ex? You know create access, create a monster monster relationship graph know how to build intellectual property that is scales outside of him. Those are very, very, very, very different realities, because most people have a one-way relationship with that audience.

They push content out and then get paid for it. That's it that's right and and and don't forget what famous people are accustomed to they're accustomed to taking a big bag up front and then an organism in the middle is actually figuring out those economics of leveraging the upfront right. You know what's been so great about my career. Is i've always done things for myself, but even when i play that role, let's say in my book life.

I always know that. I don't like my deal with my book publisher, but i've used it historically as an upfront cash flow model for me, because i was pouring all my money back into building my businesses, but today, as somebody who just finished their final book of their book deal. Harper collins is going to have to come to me with a very aggressive offer to take me out of the equation of launching my next book as an nft. You know i mean why i mean for because they're, instead of them being my upfront money, i can easily you know.

Nfts are absolutely now the the funding mechanism to projects. Well, it gets rid of vcs, essentially like we. I think we've raised all the money we've ever raised. Real vision about 60 million dollars has only come from our members.

We've never taken outside capital, there's no reason to that's the power of community. Now, if you tokenize, you have direct access to the capital of your community. What i love about it too, and it was funny where my brain just went i'll, go there again, because i don't think people talk about this. I love this idea of coming through.

For my community, no matter what let me give an example, this is very interesting. Actually, i have hated raising money. My whole life, i've done it a couple times for a couple startups and it's been the worst experience. I don't like asking for money so much so that both times rezzy and empathy rezzy, the restaurant app i sold to amx and empathy the wine brand dtc that i sold the consolation both times.

I secretly had a bank account that had the entire capital raise sitting in cash in in case i have to so. What i like about nfts, though, is, i would feel much more comfortable doing that i'll. Tell you why once they own the token i can work for them forever. I could fail on my book on my restaurant on my startup and still come back and say: hey if you still hold the empathy wine token go connect in here and now you're getting 20 of my speaking fees in 2024, like i'm in control of always making Good, so i think people like myself organizations like me, humans, like me, actually are in a much better place because i never ever felt great about raising capital but selling an nft that has a functionality to something.

I'm doing that. Even if that thing fails, my ability to come back and say i'm gon na do this is an incredible incredible opportunity, but the other thing that somebody brought up to me the other day is the fact that, because it's on the blockchain, this stuff never dies. So you're, 90 years old and you're still owing value to those nfts, it's quite scary. It's literally the best i i'll tell you one of the things i'm most excited about most excited about is the idea of buying some nf nfts that launched today in 31 years.

Like i've always talked about refurbishing old ip, what if ford api club doesn't make it and let's say it's dormant for 20 years, no different than the a team or happy days or smurfs. You know it's been so hot during this special year for nfts that i bet you in 22 years. If i bought that up and refurbished it and reminded people of the great year of 2021, the way toys work, the way nostalgia works. So i'm already i mean it's the reason: i'm buying up curio cards right, they're, incredibly underpriced, in my opinion, for the ability to eventually and maybe something pops up, because the archaeologists are still looking.

But as of this point, if that truly is the first nft project, the you know compare those prices to crypto punks, there's an incredible opportunity of that being in you know, and by the way that might be somebody in 11 years saying wait a minute and they're The madonna they're, the michael jordan they're, the lebron james they're, the whoever of that era, saying wait. A minute. Curio cards is first. This is the coolest i'm putting this on all my clothes, i'm getting a tattoo.

You know the post malone a little oozy vert of that moment or the kardashians of that moment. You know and that's amazing, because that's the beauty of authenticity on the blockchain and also the policy, the the the the value of nostalgia, considering we've just had the biggest age, demographic of all time, the millennials. Now we've seen what the boomers did to anything versus their generation, these millennials - this is their prime time right. They're earning their money, they've got their group of pop stars that they love that they grew up in.

All of this is going to be worth a fortune to them in future because it'd be the story of their lives. I think that's right. I think that you're also talking about gen z, coming up the ranks where they only know about spending money. To get a fortnight skin to get a roblox upgrade to get madden points to get mba 2k points to there isn't a 15 year old or under in the world right now that doesn't understand the logic of mom.

Dad give me your credit card. I would like to spend actual money to get these points in this environment, where i have my social currency. I have my identity wrapped up in and if i can get you know, they would rather get a hundred dollar skin in that game than a hundred dollar pair of sneakers. They'd probably want both because they're kids once that hit scale.

That was always my point about social media. My point in 2012 to a lot of people was, you do understand, there's an entire generation right now being affected and they're going to be 24 years old and they won't know any different and that's where we're living now. In 2021., you know: we've got an entire generation of 24 year olds, who started with social media at 11 or 12 or 13. It's just their life.

Nfts are just the completely scaled version of video game and gaming dynamics that have completely and utterly penetrated everybody on earth under 15. So they'll only live in this reality when they're 25.. So that's the next question is you're. Obviously, thinking i'm knowing you for the short period that i've known you you're, absolutely thinking about the metaverse as well, because that's where this is all going.

How are you thinking of that because, obviously you're creating these characters? They're not going to live on a cinema screen? They're going to live in the metaverse, that's right and and i'm a big fan of both you know, i'm a big and versus or guy you know i want you know one thing for everybody who's listening, because i know a lot of people can tune in given Our two worlds, this concept of ore is devastating. You know when, when you're long bitcoin and you should be, but if you're spending most your time on any alternative coin, that's bad energy spent. I'm watching all these people in nfts, saying kumbaya kumbaya, but the second that somebody promotes an identity that they're not a part of they on it, and it's so fascinating to me wrong. It's wrong.

It's just it's a bad way to play uh. It doesn't work out in the end, nonetheless, uh you're, exactly right and the way that i'm doing that is i'm already. You know i've done a couple of interviews in the metaburst, i'm spending a ton of time with uh facebook. I think facebook is way out in the head talk about a potential underpriced arbitrage.

I've been talking about this forever facebook they're so far ahead and if you know who andrew bosworth is baz who's leading kind of the oculus bra like he is going to introduce me to him today. Actually amazing he's so talented. It's scary he's truly one of the few people. I've met in business in 25 years that i would blindly bet on that gives me triple confidence.

I you know i've been looking at facebook at 375 dollars a share. Lately and again i told you earlier - i'm not that guy, i don't understand wall street. I don't understand this, but knowing what they're up to there, i'm like hmm, they are so far ahead. They own instagram, so they have this contemporary scaled machine it if they nail their timing, it's going to be a windfall, so you're right, i've been spending.

You know a ton of time with them. You know to give you a little exclusive, quite a bit about how v friends shows up in that world and i'll be there two years early, because the space is big, but what i'm really good at and what i really do focus on is timing. So when i say i'll, be there two years early i'll be flirting with it, i'm already having metaverse oculus deception, like i'm already doing plenty of things, the thing that everybody saw for me in january this year, where i'm like tada nfts. That may be three years away, because i don't like to do that until i think that there is a scaled consumer event going on.

Why? Because, if people jump in when you're too early, you lose the most and here's. Why? When you're too early you're going to lose on the economics and the opportunity and then the reason i say you lose the most is because then it really hurts three years later, when it happens, yeah exactly right, i saw a kid tweet today. He said guys. I'm really mentally struggling.

I had a 35 000 position on axi infinity three four six months ago, whatever he said, he goes it's worth. You know 1.3 million dollars right now and i'm a young kid with no money, i'm really hurting, and it just it hit me about timing. You know which is like and and really this one's different, because social when i was talking about social, it was about building brand the most important thing in the world. The problem with nfts is you're talking about transactional money, so the way that a sentence - maybe even a comment we make in here the way that triggers really scares me it makes me not want to talk.

You know, i really don't i i i don't. I'm very fearful of the platform that i have i have i, and even though i say 98 are going to fail, and even though i say every day, please only put money into this that you can afford to lose. This is an extremely high risk category. Right now, for a million reasons, regulation supply and demand issues; timing, we're in internet 95, 99 like it's early, even though i say all these things.

I know, if i say, hey, i like fame ladies squad, and these are really good art and i love more female projects that potentially hundreds if not thousands, of people go and buy them blindly. Even though ev please do your own homework, i'm always wrong. I say all these things at nausea, but people don't hear it. I have the same issue and it's really it's scary and yet that's i've taken very responsibly to say.

Listen, i don't know, i think i know, and i've got a lot of experience, but i don't know - and i could be wrong and i'm wrong a lot and you know because you know people carry their hopes and dreams, particularly in a space like this. That's so new and moving so fast people really want to be involved, and i get that. But you know, as you say, you've got to do your own homework, there's a way to be involved right. There's an incredible way.

It's called spend money that you can afford to lose. I mean wax is an incredible blockchain with incredibly good nostalgic ip with very low costs. You don't have to go, buy a 3 000 eth. You know launch token or 800.

You know 0.35, as we saw with stoner cats, or even with d friends was very expensive because i attached you know what in essence, gon na end up being 15 million dollars worth of three-year events for me, so i really need to generate dollars and and there'll Be more, i think, as people dissect the friends over the next three or four years, six to 12 months, i think more people will look at it and understand it and i think you'll have more expensive nft projects, because it's not just about the art right now. You have a flooding of people that have copied board api clubs naming dynamics, and now you have skinny snail thursday club and you have like extremely happy hamster crew and you know, and everyone's and you've got and there's very little underneath other than we'll. Let you share in the economics. Well guess what owning fifty percent of something that's worth.

Zero is zero. Ninety-Nine percent of these people are not going to be able to make their ip mean something, and what is bad about this space is everybody? Will lump everything in together? So we know one of these big projects is going to go to zero correct and they will go to you and say see gary. It's all a bunch of you're, just conning people, and this is the annoying thing and i'll say if i was making content in 1999. When i told everybody, the internet was the most important thing that had ever happened in our lives and the stock market collapsed, and it was death on wall street and everybody who invested in pets.com shares went to zero.

I would say: okay, but guess what amazon's five bucks a share. I think you should buy it yeah exactly right, because when you look back on the chart of the nasdaq back in 2000 and it's feel really dramatic, it now looks like a little small bump on the road. Because what came after it was in that - and i think what keeps me calm at night lets me put my head on my pillow - is there is no way nfts or if, by the way the word nft could change. That's how early we are.

Oh yeah. You know we called we called social media web 2.0 right. We, we called the internet, the information superhighway, we used to say, go to http colon www, like i don't care what you call it. I can tell you right now that in 2039 people will use digital assets the way they use physical assays to communicate to each other and there's no doubt in my mind and physical assets will also be recorded on the blockchain as tokens as well.

So we could all buy a property together in manhattan. That's a 50 million dollar apartment and share amongst 100 people, and you know all of this changes dramatically in a real. You know your your point. There was funny back to aaron battalion.

His first point was lisa's mortgages like when he was explaining the smart contract. It just blew my mind. I'm like this is incredible. Like yeah, i don't think we've even begun to to innovate.

How about this? How about, if you're lucky enough today to sit with an incredibly unusual property like a home, let's just say, you're an extremely wealthy person and you have just a very unique home. Well, i think you blockchain it and when you sell it, you put in a royalty that says you make two percent on every transaction of this home in perpetuity like i, and you know, maybe eventually, why wouldn't you like? I can tell you right now. If you decided to sell it, let's say we became friends over next 15 years and i wanted to buy it for some reason right when you're like hey by the way, there's a one percent royalty in the contract. It's not going to matter to me not, but i'll.

Tell you what's going to matter to your great great great grandchildren when it changes hands for the fifth time and for some reason they get a 800 000 check in the mail or an 80 000 check in the mail they're going to be awfully happy with great Great great great great granddaddy figuring out why he understood the blockchain. The other thing i'm looking at is also ip rights. So let's say you're a pop star. You've just started your career and to your community.

You sell the first year's ip rights you share in them and you they pick the song that they think is going to be a hit. There's going to be millions of people on tick, tock, trying to explode the content, getting it everywhere, because that's their job. In that i could i i couldn't agree more early on back in december january. Early on six months ago, i was trying to explain it to friends.

I was like okay, i had one friend very into music. I said you know how you like, find new bands and you love that you take pride in it and when they get big you get upset and they've sold out. I go you're not going to care you're not going to be upset anymore, because what do you mean i go? Let's play it out. Let's say nirvana decided to give up 20 of their ip in nft form to fund them, so they didn't have to sign a record deal.

Let's say today that you were one of those earliest fans in the grunge movement in seattle and you bought some tokens. Let's say today every day you wake up and you look at your bank account and spotify, because teen spirit is being streamed as many times as it is every day and you own 0.3 of the royalty that they're getting. This is going to be the greatest revolution of people being able to support artists they loved and actually make incredible economics for being right, but also it makes culture an investment, and it's also because of that by the way, by the way, let's stop there right now. I just want to make sure everybody who's listening and obviously, if you're listening at least half of you, because i'm sure i'll bring plenty of people to this.

Your your incredibly handsome smart host here just said the only thing that actually matters and it's the reason i'm so in the only thing i've ever understood is the stuff. That's unseen the reason the black and white of finance world never clicked for me is because i was the best at gray, and i understood it so well that it just became my passion and my my obsession when, when our great host here says what he just Said and that's why i had to jump in and there's a lot of ramifications about this by the way you know, there's a whole counter to what we're about to say that will play out 20 years from now that will change the world in a way that You can't imagine the purity of culture has been incredible because it wasn't economic between the end audience and the person there was always something in between, but over the next 30 years. Here's what will happen first in the first 10 to 15 years is what we just talked about. Culture will become financialized value, community brand, it will be, it will become more literal, the back half of that 30-year period.

People will start to gain that and the purity of it will actually have an issue and that'll be very interesting to watch what that actually manifests. But let there be no confusion. That statement was the most important as much as i've been yapping. The tokenization of culture is exactly right.

It's the only thing. I've been thinking about the whole time and uh. It's gon na be a big deal. It really is it's the biggest thing.

I've looked at this whole crypto space. I've been in it since 2012 and i've been excited about the whole thing, and all of it is less exciting than this tokenization of culture, the kind of nft plus community stuff, that's coming plus the metaverse is like the biggest thing i've literally ever seen. I think that's right and i think you know i i don't know if i have more respect for the og or enthusiastic bitcoin community. You know they get mad at me when i do podcasts, but i always say to them: please don't be mad, i'm genuinely i'm.

Actually complimenting, i think, it's so big that i'm just curious what sovereign nations are gon na. Do i don't know what else to tell you it's. You know it's. It's actually the greatest compliment.

It's not an insult. I don't not not get it. I think i get it so much that i'm like curious, because i think it's you know a big big big deal and really cool, and i love that. But i do think that what is a far bigger conversation is the tokenization of the gray of society, which i think is a good trillion dollar industry and i think, we're in the pre-dawn of it and i think the cat's out of the bag.

And i think these next 30 years are going to be iconic and hopefully we'll both be at the forefront of it yeah and hopefully, for me i'll, be honest with you, i for a long time ago realized i was going to make all the money i ever Wanted for myself, because the truth is the only number i ever had in my mind was 100 000 a year. I came from very humble beginnings. That was the only number that i really thought about. I definitely want to be at the forefront, but i want to bring the most people to the forefront, so it completely changes their lives, and i you know one of the reasons i chose this podcast out of all the ones that i got bombarded with is uh.

I i really appreciate what i think you're doing for your community as well, and i understand how you navigate, which is probably why you understand how i not navigate, and i uh and i cheer for people like that. So thank you for having me on. I hope this discussion helped some people and uh. This was fun yeah.

Thank you for coming as well and look you know. I think this is really important for people to understand what is going on is a big opportunity and it doesn't matter if you're, rich or poor, everybody can participate. Look at axi look at board api club. These are things that were incredibly inexpensive, and this is a very.

This is a transcending half decade in front of us around this, with with the potential of an 18-month winter within it, which is going to be an incredibly fun thing to watch of people who they have conviction and who doesn't, and so i just wish everybody great Luck but, most importantly, do homework, do not be influenced by me him or anybody else do your homework. Do your homework rely on your strengths, make your own decisions and play with things that you can afford to lose. I i think the opportunity is real as well 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. I also want to ask you please subscribe, because my commitment and exploration of youtube is about to explode stories, polls, more content, more engagement, more surprise and delight. This is the time to subscribe. I hope you consider it, and i hope i see you soon.

You.