Bankless - The Current State of the NFT Market with Garyvee

Episode Date: October 5, 2022

Garyvee joins us to discuss what the current state of NFTs is, what's he been up to since his 1st Bankless appearance, and huge news coming out of Gary's project, VeeFriends! ------ Galxe | Explore Crypto’s #1 Credential Network https://bankless.cc/Galxe   ------ SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  ️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across  BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave  NEXO | CRYPTO FINANCIAL HUB https://bankless.cc/Nexo  LEDGER | NANO HARDWARE WALLETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger  ️FUEL | THE MODULAR EXECUTION LAYER https://bankless.cc/Fuelpod  ------ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 4:18 What Gary's Been Up To? 14:00 What Makes an NFT Work 17:07 Surviving the Bear Market 20:27 All-in On NFTs 21:35 Speculation 23:00 Bigger Companies Entering 28:17 Huge VeeFriends Announcement 33:04 VeeFriends Community 34:15 NFT Project Advice 36:40 What Still Needs to be Built Out? 40:08 Being Quiet 44:40 Building Mode 45:55 Crypto Currencies 47:20 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Resources: Garyvee https://garyvaynerchuk.com/  VeeFriends https://veefriends.com/  Gary's 1st Bankless Appearance https://youtu.be/XrQHwjqCsDw  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. 

Bankless Nation, welcome to another State of the Nation episode. The question on the menu today is, are NFTs back? David, they had a fantastic week last week, but they've been down pretty bad recently. And we have brought the perfect guest on to talk about the future of NFTs, Gary V, Gary Van derchuk, which launched one of the most successful NFT projects that have been launched today. It's a project called VFriends. Now, he was here a year and a half ago, and he actually announced the launch of VFriends. partially on the bankless podcast. So we wanted to regroup with Gary and talk a little bit about the future of NFTs. David, what should listeners look out for in this episode, which should they

pay attention to? And why are we talking about this now? Yeah, there's two worlds of the NFT world. There are the internal to crypto NFT projects. And then there's the creators out there who are leveraging this new technology to express themselves to their communities and interact with their communities in brand new ways. And that is really the frontier that Gary is pioneering. how to have NFTs as a communication vehicle between him and his very engaged fan base. And so as NFTs have changed from the mania of 2021, that was, to the current build market that is of 2022, we want to pick Gary's brain as to what it's like to be an NFT creator in the era of 2022 NFTs. So that's what I'm paying attention to is how to leverage NFTs to engage with your fans now that the hype cycle is behind us, Ryan.

I think some of these build market projects, NFT projects are going to come out a lot stronger on the other side of this. And Vee friends maybe one to watch as well. Guys, we'll be right back with the episode Gary Vee talking all about NFTs. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. Arbitrum 1 is pioneering the world of secure Ethereum scalability and is continuing to accelerate the Web 3 landscape. Hundreds of projects have already deployed on Arbitrum 1,

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podcast, the first time he launched the VFriends NFT. We're going to talk about that. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's an internet personality, of course, the founder of V Friends, which is an NFT project that helps him enhance his community. Perks, access, got all sorts of things. We want to explore NFTs today, and including, I think, towards the end, Gary has something special to announce for the community. So we're going to talk about that as well.

Gary, what's up, man? Welcome back to Bankless. It's so good to be with you guys. Thank you so much. Thanks for everybody who's watching. It's a rainy day here in New York City. But I'm grinding along. It's been a big day.

Well, you know what? Grinding, I think, is a good theme, right? Because we're, at least in the wider crypto world, we're in kind of this bare market, you know? And so that's what people tell me anyway. I'm not feeling particularly bearish. But some people are. Prices are down in a lot of areas. It's been about a year and a half.

I think you came on in May of some time, 2021. In launching V friends during kind of this secular bull market. that we had in NFTs and crypto, like in general. Tell us what you've been up to since that time. Like, catch us up and give people a feel, if you will, Gary, for like, what is the VFEN's project itself? Like, what is the purpose of it? And what have you been working on since we last spoke?

I mean, since we last spoke a ton, because that was just the launch of Series 1. Since then that August, September, I created something called book games, where if you bought 12 copies of my latest book, you would get NFTs that I did on Immutable. which then became like functional for something I did in January where there was an exchange. And then that triggered advantages to get series two mints and special series twos that nobody else could get.

Series two came out in May of this year, or in April. And then the big play, the original premise of V Friends was to establish intellectual property, Smurf, Scooby-Doo, all that stuff. and Disney, Pokemon, like how substantial of a Sesame Street-like IP can I create? Because it's something I've always wanted to do. If you look at wrestling and toys and garage sales, this has been an obsession of mine.

I thought I was going to buy a nostalgic IP. This was something I talked a lot about in my career. Once I saw the NFT realities of 2021, it was funny when I saw CryptoKitties in 17, I was like, huh, but I just didn't really get, there, 2020, NBA top shot, and then that brought me quickly to Cryptopunks, and I was like, oh, and then obviously everything that happened that winter into 2021. So the mission has always been build intellectual property, things like the Uno collaboration, like I've got to build these

characters. Now, at a higher level, the characters are meant to do what Gary Vaynerchuk likes doing as Gary B, which is spread positivity and kindness and compassion and patience, but also tenacity and work ethic. And, you know, I think we've become so blue and red, and I'm so deeply passionate about purple, the world has become or it's really about and. And I have a substantial mission for V friends to be a positive impact on the universe, the way Marvel and Sesame Street and other intellectual properties have, done so. And so that's been the focus on top of that. To make the initial cost valuable to people, I did a three-year super conference, right, called V-Con. And so since we last talked, I think I had

one of the most substantial events in the space, which was in Minnesota at U.S. Bank Stadium. We had 7,000 and 8,000 people there. It was an incredible four-day weekend. We had an incredible amount of speakers and just enormous amounts of love and positivity and practicality. And, you know, to me, I'm very proud of the initial costs of VFREN's being valuable to the three events that people are going to. We'll be announcing VCon 2023, probably this month, which is way ahead of what we did last year. We've learned a lot.

Uno collaborations, merchandise collaborations, a Reebok sneaker collaboration that is coming, trading cards that if you go to eBay, right now have completely dominated, which has been huge for me. So, you know, like little subtle things, like you try to expand the IP, like I grew up loving Flintstone's vitamins. I did a collab with Mary Ruth.

Wow, that's awesome. You know, and so, you know, I've been doing a lot. What I haven't been doing is, look, I said my piece. I put out an obnoxious amount of content in the height of the height of the height, and I already see you smiling there, David,

so you know where I'm about to go. I have unlimited receipts of saying 99% of the projects that were booming in the boom were going to zero. So why I believe that? Because I saw the behaviors, I didn't feel like, I felt it was internet stocks. I mean, I said it constantly. You guys both know this.

So what I've been doing is the thing I said I was gonna do, which is operate and work. I've built a 45, 50 person team I've got another 30 hires. I have meetings every day. I raise capital from Andrews and Horowitz because I want to be around. I don't know how.

Look, we're in a bear market. I don't know who's excited. Forget about crypto. Is anybody paying attention to the severity of the war in the Europe, the macro politics there, the inflation, the underlining reports from FedEx,

housing's about to crash. I really believe that. a lot of companies, consumer confidence is down. And so, I don't know, like, I don't expect the great winter, you know, and so, like, it's not like this, my stock portfolio doesn't look good either compared to last summer. And my trading cards don't look great. And I don't know what, you know, people expect.

Like, the economies don't go on forever, right? And so, you know, what have I been doing? everything I said I was going to do, right? Which is like really work really, really hard, and I'm very proud of the work I'm doing, and we've got a lot of work to do and to get to the audacity of saying things like Marvel or Scooby-Doo or Hanna-Barbera or Transformers,

that's going to take the rest of my career. And that's what I plan on doing. This is forever for me. And I've got to create demand and interest and character development. Like I've got an ecosystem, and then I have to do incredible, interesting technology. One thing I've not alluded to at all,

I know my Discord's about to blow up. Let me go into my Discord to see if I need, because I know a lot of them are watching. You know, I've been doing a lot of tech innovation. We have a hefty tech team who's been building something I'm very excited about that will hit the day of life this year. And it's pretty advanced tech.

You know, you got a lot of Web 2, a lot of Web 3. We're playing a lot in Web 2.5. Do you need everything to be anonymous? that's how it felt 18 months ago now is username and sign and worth it to make the utilities of the things like it's super fun and then to your point what else have I been doing

I've been staying mentally strong while the market in the macro has been incredibly affected and I'm incredibly compassionate that there's anxiety and concern and angst and winter vibes I you know

I hope and pray that everybody heard rule number one, which was consistent, which is do not spend money you can't afford to lose in these high things. You know, a lot of people did. And, you know, I continue to try to provide value. Like, I love that you can continue to add utility, right? I did this incredible meetup at my dad's store, the wine library for people that had the wine cellar. It was a great time. We've done some great stuff with my pickleball team meetups. And then unofficial things. I'm in Germany giving a keynote. Let's go meet up with 200 be friends. holders. So just really focused, you know, just incredibly focused and focus like an athlete,

like my New York Jets who beat the Pittsburgh Steelers this weekend. They were down by 10 points very late in the game. The fans in Pittsburgh were cheering with seven minutes to go laughing at my Jets. The Jet fans were concerned, booing their own players. I have to be an athlete on the field. I can't, even my most ardent believers pre-V friends, have said things. and Discord and Twitter that hurt my feelings, but I understand why they have financial losses on paper if they haven't sold yet, and it doesn't feel good when something's worth something

and then it's not, but I have to stay focused on the field and tune out any positive or negative comments. Just like when I was getting the accolades last winter, I didn't hear it. I needed to focus on the mission, and that's what I'm focused on, like a falcon. Focus falcons, a big V-friend.

I'm focused like a falcon, and I'm going to let history be the judge, not me, fuck me, and definitely not anonymous accounts on Twitter who've got opinions who've never operated a paper bag, let alone a big company. Sure, Gary, there's a lot of just NFT projects out there. Some, like you said, have like, you know, trended to zero. Others are keeping their head above water.

Others are doing fine. What are you doing that you think is working? Like what's the secret sauce to make an NFT project work these days? And what things an NFT project need to jettison if it's not working? It's like what things are we keeping? What things are we doubling down on? What things are we jettisoning? I don't judge something working based on floor price.

Sure, yes. But like community energy, community like engagement, etc. You can't you can't value that either. Too many people are financially incentivized and everyone's getting smoked. And then like like it, I mean, okay, whatever criteria of success you want. Well, that's what I'm setting it up, right? Like, to your point, David, I think people are very confused about businesses.

Like, Facebook was a disaster this many months in. Like, I'm pumped for invisible people. I'm pumped for, you know, creatures. I'm pumped for world. People are working. The problem is they're all publicly traded company DNA now, right? Like, people care about it day to day. I just want to tell everybody because I was close to these companies.

They're the fucking receipts right there. This is, like, back. the receipts, I'm in the fucking Robert Salomon. This is an email from Uber thanking my brother for being the first rider of Uber in New York. Wow, that's pretty cool. These are fucking receipts, brother.

And I can tell you right now, 18, 24 months in, none of these companies looked great. I'm not fucking willing to judge fucking board ape yet. I'm not willing to judge any of these projects yet. And so I think, like, you know, I don't know, like what, to answer your question, the people.

I'm building an organization. I'm focused on the people, the process. You know, like there's missteps along the way. The gift goat has not gone as well as I want to. I've jumped in and tried to work it, but it takes months for these things to, you know, execute on. So I focus on that.

I'm excited about, you know, like the people I'm bringing in, the talent. You know, I just, my partner in Empathy Wine, John Troutman just finished his earn out. A consolation is coming to consult with feed friends. That's a note. You know when you're a head coach and you're bringing back one of your,

assistance, you know, like, I don't know, I'm fucking, I'm focused out here. So anyway, to answer your question, the things that are working, what you keep is the people on your team that can do shit. What's not working, people that can't do shit, and you've given them a chance, but they haven't, you've got to really go. And so, I'm an operator, like, and I'm not willing to put my head up from the sea and see what the stock ticker says. It has nothing to do with anything for me. Meaning, I'd love for everything to be rosy, but I'm not in control of that. I didn't call Putin and say go attack Ukraine. That wasn't me.

I've got to focus on fucking be friends. And what I'm doing is laying the foundation for a lot of people to care about these characters, which will build a real company, which will allow me to do incredible things for the people that hold the NFTs. What's interesting to me is, right, so as you said, like over 99% of these NFT projects are going to die this bear cycle, right? Like, we have to be real about that. But 1% might survive. It might be a fraction of 1%.

What's it going to take? What does it take to survive during the bear market? And Gary, what's it going to take to restore confidence in NFTs? Like, when are NFTs actually going to come back? Is there some feature that we have to unlock? Is there a focus area? Is it like all about utility now? Like, what's the new meta?

And how do we get out of this? spare market. A couple of things. I want to apologize to Dewey Perrin who just said in the comments. I think this guy's inseparable. Inseparable. So obviously I want to apologize for that because I don't want to make Dewey upset. You know, I think people have to provide value. To your point, when Marvel comic books came out in the 40s, right, 30s, what have you, after years of cartoons and toys and other comics, people then cared and all of a sudden you cared to own, you know, a Spider-Man or a Superman DC or Batman. And so if you're talking about collectible value,

like I just want to own this, like an Andy Warhol or a Spider-Man number one or a Jordan sneaker, that takes decades. Which is why I made those videos about 99% to zero. Like it wasn't going to work. Like it went too high, more like Beanie Babies or stocks like Pets.com. In the short term, to your point,

it's going to be utility. What that utility is is access other items, physical items, community events, the thing that I started VeeFriends with. Like VeeFriends were sold with an underlying three-year super conference that justified the initial cost. Then shit got crazy. And depending on when you got in, it changed the variable. But the original layout was thoughtful to this moment because you need to provide value, right? And so I think, you know, every project needs to think about, this is the beauty of the blockchain.

Can I add more value for the person that's holding it? Value comes in a million different things. I just did something with the gift goats. I mentioned that I'm not happy with, you know, the gifts that I've been saying, I need to do a better job. I added NFTs as part of it early on. And I think that might have fucked with my psychology,

but they want the gift. And then I added a new thing this October, the gift goats and I are going to, be in Atlanta for two hours in an epic basketball court, right, with Shaquille O'Neal. That's just a very small group, probably only 100 to 200 of the 555 gift codes can make it because they're all over the world. You know, an intimate two hours of business Q&A, some fun in games, some photos, some hanging out, you know, like, how did you get, how'd you get Shaq on board? I use my business development skills. You know, I also have a lot of relations.

This is why I'm confident. This is why I keep believing in myself. Like, brother, I'm not going to stop until it's good. Like, I don't understand how anybody doesn't understand that. I'd rather fucking die than let cynics be able to write the history of Dufreds not being a good project. I can do this forever. I'm going to do this forever. So are you like all in on like NFTs? I know, I mean, I'm all in on NFTs. The NFTs technology is remarkable. It's an insane. Why don't people see it, Gary? Because a lot of people don't see it. Because the first year of people discovering it, their scamiest friend made $83,000 selling a penguin with a penis in its eye. Think about that. Of course people don't, normal people don't get it. They're right. It's the same reason people didn't get the internet in 99. You had normal people saying, how the hell is pets.com worth $85 billion? They haven't sold any stuff yet. I'm not even sure Chewy.com has that valuation, you know? So like, you know, because they're right.

The greed took over. The short-term flipping took over. And that shadowed the incredible, you know, black and white of the incredible technology infrastructure of a global scaled ledger that can affirm ownership that can unlock everything. You know what's interesting about this market? and it's maybe different than other businesses you've run, but like you tell me, it's like people aren't used to the volatility of crypto.

Like it messes with their minds. It messes with them psychologically, right? Right. We've seen the internet before, but like attaching prices and tickers to these things is weird. It's like throws people around. I'm empathetic, man. Money fucks up things.

Yeah. I mean, the highs are so high and the lows are so low. And just the sense of, they have to play with money they can afford to lose. It's a volatile asset right now. Do you see that ever changing? Of course. When this becomes normalized, you know, of course.

But I also think it changes in certain projects. Like, it has to be able to do something. It can't be a speculative thing. That's why I've always liked NFTs. I understood that the entrepreneurs could create the thing it does. Right? Like, whereas with, you know, And currencies can too, but I just think too many people relying on comic book and art and

toy flipping and baseball cards, not enough on operational business. Like, you need to think like Amex Black Card and Chase Rewards and Live Nation and Top and Mattel. Like, you have to think bigger business. Are you seeing these big businesses like continuing to build during the bear markets? So David and I just did an episode last week. And like we noticed like Disney is hiring lawyers, IP specialists to specialize in their blockchain IP technology. I mean, Sotheby's just rolled out an entire platform for NFT art.

And these things during the bull run, I mean, they were shattered from the rooftops. Everyone was talking about it. Now during kind of the bear run, some of the developments of these like companies are completely unnoticed. No one even pays attention. No one cares. What are you seeing from your side? Are big companies entering the game? it's like you know my energy is very matter of fact man because like it's almost as if nobody

heard all the logical conversation of last year for me or anybody else right like yes this is one of the biggest technology shifts of the human race but everything was so caught up in the short term flip game that just clouded yes to your point if you have google alerts on nfts right now and you read what's happening day to day, you would be bullish. You're not bullish because you bought a NFT for $8,000 that's now trading at $600 and you're mad. And you're supposed to be mad.

I get it. But I hope that you're also mad at yourself, that you knew you were taking a risk. Like, don't be mad at anybody but yourself kind of thing. Accountability is important. Like I have a ton of things that have gone poorly and I'm like, ugh, I got caught up,

I got excited. but I also was buying for different reasons I was trying to learn. This is why I was petrified. The only thing I tweeted more than 99% of golden zero was don't buy what I'm buying, because I know I was buying things because I wanted to learn how people were going to do things. And if it was in my wallet, I was in discovery mode, supporting people that I just met on Twitter because I want to because I want to. That's not a good investment thesis.

You know, I like this person. I want to support their art. Like, you know, so. There are worst investment thesis out there. than that though. Yeah, there is. And I think, thank you. And I feel good about it. But like, you know, I'm in a curious spot. I have a lot of eyes on me. And so I'm empathetic to it. But yeah, brother, like, Disney's really not fooling around. Mattel is not falling around. Like, you know, Pokemon's not full. Like, this is real stuff. Yeah. We've actually been given the privilege of having this embargo, now released announcement for what you were doing with Toys R Us, which is something we want to get into and how this is kind of emblematic of just more and more companies starting to. to take the NFT pill. So Gary, we don't want to talk about that, along with your very engaged almost 1,000 followers or like community members here in the YouTube comment. So we're going to talk about all of this and more right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show

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it today. This is a big V-Friends announcement. And this is on what we're we were just talking about big companies entering the game here. You've got a collaboration of collectible characters with Macy's and Toys R Us. Is that what's happening? It's a big deal for me. All 400 plus Macy's around the country that have Toys R Us store within stores will be getting V-Friends literally, you know, right next to G.I. Joe and My Little Pony and Transformers and Pokemon B-Friends end caps everywhere. plush and collectible and then blind bags, little ones. It's a huge deal.

It's also huge. I haven't talked about it. I'm giving you kind of the exclusive. The flow code is going to be a big deal. Right now it's a preview page, but long form content around the character development. Think He-Man. So He-Man came out as toys earlier than the cartoon was ready.

So they put little comic books in the toy so that you could get into He-Man because there was no way to get into He-Man. 99% of the people that are going to see this in Macy's Toys R Us stores around the country have no idea what V-Friends are. So kids are going to kind of like hopefully fall in love with the imagery.

This wizard is super cool. Right? And so like, you know, but the storytelling, like I'm really on this mission, guys. So anyway, a huge distribution on Macy's.com right now on pre-sell international. It's coming in two weeks on V-Friends shop. We'll be doing the fulfillment for international.

but this is how you do it. This is how you get people to start getting involved. And the more people fall in love with the be the bigger person character, right? The more things start to happen where I can do something with those 260 holders of series one and series two, be the bigger person. This is super exciting. I think people are missing what real operators are going to be able to do. And I think real operators have to build affinity in the character.

characters, toys, books, cartoons, movies, but then also build technology and utility for the original NFT holders. And I'm on that journey. So this is like, this is like an IP play almost, right? It's kind of like Marvel. It's kind of like Star Wars. So what's interesting about the way you're doing it, right, is like you start with the digital, the NFT. Yes. And you're working towards the physical. Whereas like traditional like a Disney or, you know, some other big IP player, they're starting with the character and then moving to another direction, right?

Well, they started with whatever they started with. Pokemon started with a card game and then a video game and then a cartoon. Like Harry Potter started as a book. Yes. Like, magic the gather,

like, you know, like so, no, you start with what you start with, right? I've got a huge thing coming out with Reebok, right? So Reebok, huge collaboration coming out. So I've got You know, with, again, the aspiring alpaca.

Like, I'm really, really trying to build this. And so I just broke a V-Friend. This is very upsetting, guys. Live on the air. Me trying to be cool. So there's no NFT element to these things. They're just the viso, uh, a, that's the intuitive iguana.

Oh my God. What happened? I did bad. Nothing. No surprise inside of there. What's it spelled like? But, okay. So with these products, there's no NFT aspect or like Web3 aspect.

They're just a physical product of a Metaverse NFT. My job is to bring value. Now, if you own these characters in an NFT form, you're getting this stuff for free. But I'm doing two things at once. One, access. If you own the wine cellar background in Series 2, you came to the store, you got a free wine, you got a few Q&A, experience, right? and then building affinity.

This collaboration, this execution is about getting many, many, many more people in the world to care about these characters, which manifests in many different ways. Ultimately, for me, the catch-all is the people owning the NFTs, especially Series 1. I stay up at night thinking about this.

I've got 40 years, 50 years, you know, I'm 46, 40, 50, 60 years, and I've got to do as much demand creation much affinity, storytelling, and I've got to do a lot of technology and utility, and I've got to bring value. What's a typical V-Friend holder like? I mean, you must have, you probably...

I ran the gamut. You know, as you guys know, I brought so many new people into the space because I had a big audience, and they run the gamut, like true investors, collectors, flippers, just people that have appreciated my content that just want to own one for collectible.

The same reason I collect jets. I mean, why do I have this Carmelo Anthony? He brought me happiness. Carmelow brought me happiness. You know, the next didn't, you know, he, I like him. So I buy that. Like a lot of people like that I taught them common sense. And so they're going to buy this. You know, there's like, there's a lot of different reasons. But, you know, and then just other people in the space that, you know, I think there's a lot of people that are starting to realize during this, you know, not as hot market that it will come down to the operator. Like everyone's like the community, the community, well, what happens when the community loses 90% of its value? The community turns on the project. And I think, you know, it's up to the operator to rechange that momentum. And so I've been, I've been quiet, you know, I've been quiet because I've been focused, just very, very focused on what I have to do here. In the chat, we got Brian Lowe and also me asking this question. What would you say, what do you have to say for a 20-year-old like me who wants to start his own NFT project?

are perhaps somebody like bankless or somebody who is in content or media or just like adjacent. Create. It's like making an app. Everybody wanted to make an app when apps exploded. Everybody asked me, Gary, what app should I make? I said one that brings people value. Nothing changes. What should bankless do?

Like, I don't know. Like, you guys have a real fucking show. I have a funny feeling that people would like to come and see it live. Create an NFT that gives the, you know, access to 12 live appearances in 2023. where there's a party and guests. I think I can get Ryan, Sean Adams, so leave his house 12 times in 2020. That'll have to be at your house, man.

I'll just be in somewhere. So, you know, I think, I think yes to the 20-year-old. I also would say to the 20-year-old, you know, I worked in my dad's liquor store for 14 years, building it for my dad. And, but I earned my stripes and learned operations. And so, you know, one thing that a 20-year-old should consider is, especially right now, where a,

a lot of people are not hiring as much. They can probably use good, young, aggressive talent, maybe go get a job at one of the top 100 projects and get paid to learn. Like, I don't understand. People are willing to go into massive debt for college to learn something fake, but like then normatic companies,

when they don't pay them as much as they ideologically think, yet they're learning a ton. I'd much rather, if I'm a 20-year-old curious in the space, get paid minimum wage to work for doodle, than to go into debt at Wisconsin. Totally agree. I mean, fuck. The time to do it is now, too.

It's the bear market. It's not during the bull run. By the way, it's always the bear market that's awesome. I'm so pumped right now. Like, I'm loving this. Like, nobody's, like, I'm just trying to, like, work and build and make good decisions. I mean, I made a decision for gift goat this morning that won't manifest until August of next year. And it's a good one that I really need for that, my,

micro community, but like they're not going to, you know, I'm not going to get the benefit of that until August, but that's what it requires. And so you have to have the stomach to deal with people being patient. So I'm excited. Like you mentioned, you mentioned like technology a couple of times. And I'm curious from your state, as an operator, as a builder in the NFT space, like what still needs to be built out? Like, what's hard? Like, I mean, we're trying to do things around. Things that eliminate friction, right? For example, we're going to have a mass. of upgrade to our website, like, we're going password and email for the people that want to do it

because, and that's a Web 2 function, but that was like, you can't do that 18 months ago. It had to be all Web 3. So I think what I call Web 2.5, a lot more Web 2.5 strategies, I think matter. But there's a lot of things that quote unquote need to be built. Warm wallets, right? Like, you know, like are starting to room,

like there's just a lot of cool stuff, like unlimited stuff, like, NFT readers, QR readers are nice now, right? Credit card with chip readers are nice right now. Both those didn't exist 10 years ago in America. Europe on the chip, right? Like, that stuff's way better. And so, like, we need more of that, right?

We need, we need, like, could you imagine you have an NFT, there's a replicant made that can sit in a hot wallet that doesn't allow somebody to steal your actual NFT, that's validated, that you go to Madison Square Garden right there. I'm looking at it. And if you own the common sense cow, you can see the cows, the hottest band in the world, perform. I'm making up that the cows are now a hot band. But like, you know, there's so much, so much. And wait to Apple and Facebook and Google. Like, I mean, I don't know. Did you see this, Gary? So it's been in beta previously. But last week, it looked like meta just rolled out NFT validation for Instagram.

So now you can like, and like that's huge, man. I mean, Instagram is what? It's $1.5 billion, something absolutely massive in terms of its reach. And they are now supporting NFTs. And this is happening during the bear market. They're all going to do it. They're all going to do it. It's, it's, look, the conversation isn't about the underlining tech or the smart

strategic operations. It's about speculation of pricing. It's almost like everyone's paying attention to the value of the. value of the comic books, not the ability to print, you know, paper. If paper wasn't invented yet. Like, like, you know, the analogy is like, everyone's worried about, you know, it's why Wall Street fucks me up. Like, everybody worrying about the stock, all my clients at VaynerMedia have worse

businesses than they could because they all care about their stock price every 90 days instead of building a real business. and so I think that's my hope that more operators focus on not so many you see this you guys are paying attention so many projects are doing such short-term things to appease a small percentage of people in their discord who are fudding who aren't who don't necessarily uh aren't necessarily doing the wrong thing they're worried about their self-interest they should they're human beings but that's a bad job by the operator. Can you imagine every head coach in sports listening to the crowd and making his or her decisions on the next play based on that? Like steering, steering, it's a tail wagging the dog.

100%. And it's only the operator that's going to have the vision for the long term. How do you like corral your community or just like get them to see the same vision that you do? Are there, is there a trick to this or is it just like straight up being like raw and authentic? Yeah. And just like limiting. I think I would. was too involved in the community early on, meaning like I was like part of it. I almost forgot it was mine. I was like, we're fucking,

you know, I think for example, Jayward just had hand waved away, the only semi-technical softball question, G is here to pump a bag. Jay Edwards said like, I'm really not. I'm like, because it's not gonna work. I don't think people understand. Like there is no pumping.

Like there is no pumping in this market. This is why I've been so utterly, quiet. I just fuck with you guys and like I had to go somewhere to talk about the toy drop, right? And I needed somewhere to like allocate some time and talk about what I've been up to because I've been quieter. But like my preference is to stay unbelievably quiet. And I'll tell you why. What's cool about when you're quiet is the real ones who really believe actually support. And then you're pumped when you know you're fucking got it. I know I got it. But to me like, you think it's going to matter

what the fuck anybody says anywhere? It's not going to matter. Just like when I fucking sit this weekend at MetLife Stadium and eat my fucking popcorn and talk shit about Teddy Bridgewater, it's not going to stop Teddy Bridgewater

from playing a good football game or bad footballers my chance. And so for me, for me, I'm actually looking to get super duper quiet because there's an incredible feeling of knowing what I'm actually doing and then letting the people that have held all the way through

or the people that are coming in when it's least obvious, like you're happy for that. The thing that only part that hurts me right now is watching people sell for no reason. You know, it's one reason. Somebody sold recently and I emailed him and said, I'm happy you sold, I think you need, I get that you need it.

I was happy. But people that are selling out of just like some randomness thinking that's going to mean anything, like trying to, a lot of people. just sell because things drop. That's why they sell. Somebody email me and said, Gary, I'm emailing you.

I'm selling these three to make a point. And I replied and I was like, to make a point about what? He's like, well, you need to be. I'm like, I am. And then I reminded that gentleman, I got on the call with him and reminded him that I've been building businesses for 25 years. What you want the person operating to do

is different than what an operator may want to do. When you say I am, is that instant messenger? Mm-hmm. Okay. I'm sorry. DM, DM. DM, okay, right. They just wanted you to be interacting with them in the community. Do you have a community manager who, like, fills the void in your absence, or is it actually?

Yeah, we have tons of mods. But like, I want to do a lot of the speaking, but like Andy, the president, May. There's plenty of them doing some speaking here and their course. So many others, Daniel, Tyler. But I like doing the speaking, but I'm not so soul. that you gotta find the right balance of speaking. You know, like you want to speak when there's something to speak about.

You know, to me speaking about the Toys R Us Macy's collaboration makes sense. Like it's a significant distribution deal. This is not a direct-to-consumer thing that we've seen from every other project where you have to send your audience to your dot com. This is hundreds of thousands of people in the next hundred days during the holiday season

are going to stumble on these characters, click the QR. Art codes fall in love, Google, buy NFT. Like, this is real. Yeah, I think the only thing that can be done at some point with all of the skeptics and all the people who throw fud and shade is just like outbuild them, right? And show them on the other side. And sometimes that won't even shut them out.

But, you know, that's what we're going to do. But I like that. I like the fud. Yeah. Does it fuel you? Does it make you like more excited to build or does it like, because I know some people who just They see that negativity and they discourages them. No, no, no.

That's someone who's got to rethink what they're doing. Why should that discourage you? These people are entitled to their opinion. It's wonderful. Like freedom of thought, you know? Gary, who else is in the crypto world, NFT world, creator world doing cool stuff that you like? What other projects are out there that capture your attention?

You know, I'm not sure. Like, I'll give me an example. I know more what my mod Crystal does and her incredible talent in my world than I know what my homie Kevin Rose is doing with moonbirds right now or like me cheering heavy for World of Women, Women of Weapons, Doodles. Like, there's so many people that I hope are crushing. I'm not in the phase right now where I have a great read of what you know, you know, the projects are doing.

Like, you know, I'm aware that Poob's NFT is ninth on open C right now because I can look. I can look at ABC, Ragnah, I can look at all this stuff. I see it. I just, you know, I just don't have the time right now. I'm not in collector mode like I was a year ago. So I wanted to know everything about every project. I'm in building V Friends mode for real, for real. And that's where I'm at.

Gary, this has been a lot of fun, man. Thanks for updating us on so many things. Last question for you, just to kind of round out. We've been talking NFTs. We've been talking to NFTs. We've been talking V friends. But zoom out to kind of crypto for a minute, if you will. What's your temperature on like crypto assets these days?

You know, like the bitcoins, the ethers in the world? Yeah. Cryptocurrency. If you look back to 18 months ago, I've never really spoken about it. currencies. I don't have a good read. You don't even have a read. I really don't. I own those two. I own Salana. I don't know what else I own. And it's not where I feel comfortable because I understand branding and human behavior and what the creators of a project can do for utility. With currencies themselves, there's a lot of need for it to do something. And I'm sure those

things will come. It's just not my passion place. I've never been a financial engineer. It's not what I'm good at. I think the D5 stuff is super fascinating, but it's a little too math for me in a world where I love the art and the human, meaning I love the math of it. I think it's very fascinating. Your community builder at your core. Yeah, I'm a storyteller. I like marketing. I know why Nike's worth a trillion. I know why that's shooosh matters. I know what I'm doing and what I'm doing. And so I try to stay where I'm comfortable and that's a much more comfortable in NFT land than I am in cryptocurrency land. That's cool. Well, thanks for stopping by. And so refresh us again. When can people see Vee friends at their local Macy's? Mid-October, October 17th, I think is when they really start

supposedly hit the shelves. I'm a retailer, so I know some people will keep it in the back until the next week. But, you know, every Macy's that has a toys of the rust inside of it. And Macy's.com right now. And please, Gary VEE.com slash discord, come and hang. Like that's where all the alpha, all the links, you don't have to guess around or Google. Quick question from YouTube. Will the toys be available in the UK? Yes. V Friends Shop is going to launch on the 17, the day they physically hit stores with pre-sale and actually purchase for international.

So we're going full international as well. That's awesome. Gary, thanks for hanging out. And guys, yeah, go stick around. We'll include a link to the V Friends Discord. Take care. Bye, Gary. our time to remind you bankless listeners of course risk and disclaimers none of this has been financial advice

eth is risky so is bitcoin my god nfts are volatile as well david he was not told this uh you can definitely lose what you put in but we're headed west this is the frontier it's not for everyone but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey last thing if you are new to bankless make sure you like this episode make sure you subscribe if you're listening to this podcast rate and review on youtube that subscribe button we'll see you later