The Iced Coffee Hour - How To Make $11 Million Overnight | The 3LAU NFT

Episode Date: March 9, 2021

Lock in your best rate today and get your family covered with Ladder at https://ladderlife.com/icedcoffee Invest in private real estate at https://fundrise.com/icedcoffee Today we are speaking wit...h 3LAU who recently set a record for the most expensive NFT ever sold. Enjoy!  Justin Blau’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/3lau   Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Send any voice submissions to Grahamstephanpodcast@gmail.com  (10-15 seconds max) can be about anything- and we will respond in the next podcast! Get 2 Free Stocks on Webull when you deposit $100: https://tinyurl.com/yd9slfax Join the 2x weekly mentorship group: https://tinyurl.com/yaexko4o The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Rode NT1, Rodecaster Pro The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact GrahamStephanPodcast@gmail.com *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road, that's the Volkswagen Tiguan. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horsepower engine gives it a fun to drive edge. The refined Tiguan, you deserve more style. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SuvW, German engineered for all. It starts out we hit a million.
Starting point is 00:00:31 Oh my God, this is amazing. Then we break the record of 6.6 and we're like, then we just go quiet. Everyone was just watching silently as it just kept going. And the timer reset every three minutes. So if any of the 33 bitters bit again in the final three minutes, it would reset. So it gave everyone a chance to move around the board until they had their final price. Ultimately, you know, we all just sat there as it went from 1 to 6 to 11. and we were like, when is this going to stop?
Starting point is 00:00:59 And then it stopped and I was just like, I didn't even know what to do. So that was my weekend last weekend. Welcome back to the 43rd ever ice coffee hour. My name is Blow and so far the podcast has made $46,000. That was great. Wow, that was the best one yet. Yes. I'm trying, guys.
Starting point is 00:01:17 Thank you for that. Thank you so much for coming on today. This is really exciting. It's crazy and we're neighbors. Yes. And we're neighbors. Finally, because we've been texting back and forth, not texting, DMing on Instagraming on.
Starting point is 00:01:27 Instagram for a while. Remember I met you a long time ago at Nate's concert, audience. Oh, dude. A long time ago. I do remember that. Yes, I do. Yeah, we met once. And then I think we followed each other on Instagram for a while. Went back and we got connected through the carrot guys as well. Yes. Because I saw that and we all have mutual friends. So now you're in Vegas. How do you like me? I love it here. It's so nice. I honestly, I prefer it here. The only thing I'm not used to yet is the dry weather. So I wake up and my mouth is just like really dry as soon as it. You'll be like having like multiple fridges are in the, around the bedroom instead of going back to the kitchen,
Starting point is 00:02:03 you know, like it's useful. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the other thing too. The house is big. So it's twice the size of the place in L.A. And it's weird to have to like wake up and be like,
Starting point is 00:02:12 oh, the kitchen is like 50 feet that way. It's strange. I'm telling you, fridge in the bedroom solves all the problems, man. No, but that's the beauty of being the biggest versus L.A. I mean, the value here for what you get is incredible. Yeah. How long have you lived in like? Las Vegas far. I actually dropped out of school before my senior year. I was 19 or 20 years old at the time.
Starting point is 00:02:30 I don't remember. And I moved back in with my parents because my DJ Kerr was just exploding on the internet. This is back in like the YouTube SoundCloud Facebook days before Spotify even existed. And I lived with my parents for about six months and I said, I can't handle this. I got to get my own place. So I dropped out Juneer from Washington St. Louis. And then I moved into Queensridge Tower, condo, because I was moving around. I'm traveling all the time. I didn't want the responsibility of a home. Finally, I got to. I got so lucky. I wanted a backyard. And before COVID hit, January of last year, screw it. I want a place for the backyard. Bought the house and then COVID hit. And I'm so thankful
Starting point is 00:03:05 that I have a backyard now versus being stuck in a condo tower during this quarantine. So a great blessing in disguise. And now we're neighbors. Yeah. You've had a very successful career in music. And one of the reasons why we want to bring you on as soon as possible, you just sold $11 million dollars and one night of your album NFT? Yes, 11.7. And I like to say that it's not one night. It was really four years of work to get to learn today. Sure, sure.
Starting point is 00:03:32 Good point. But good point. To everyone who's seeing it online, they're like 48 hours, $11.7 million. How did this even happen? Yeah. And I love to tell you the story. Tell the story. Remember, to simplify it for Jack.
Starting point is 00:03:45 So Jack could follow along with this. Easy, easy. Simple. Easy. The story is fun. We won't go technical at all. We'll do some Gary V references because he explains some of this stuff very well. Okay. It all started. The beginning of the story is my favorite. It started in Mexico where I met the Winklewoss Twins, who of course, the Winklewoss Twins, who of Facebook. How do you start a story of just like, well, Mexico Winklewoss Twins. I feel like there's a story within the story. So the Winklewoss Twins famously discovered Bitcoin in Ibitha, which is already crazy. And funny enough, that was long before I met. met them. And then I met them in 2014. I was playing a spring break music festival opening up for Avecci at the time. Rest and Peace of Vici. And the Winklevoss twins and I just bonded because I have
Starting point is 00:04:31 a background in finance and college. I studied index derivatives and economics. Right. We don't have to get into that. But I met them in Mexico. They invited me to stay at their place in L.A. during Grammy Week just because they love dance music. They had a studio in their house. They'd like, come use our studio. We love your music. I was like, sure. I'll come hang out with you guys. At the time they were building. their crypto exchange called Gemini. And I was first discovering what Bitcoin was in 2014. And I was fascinated by this idea of permissionless and frictionless value transfer. To simplify that, you don't have to wait.
Starting point is 00:05:03 You can send money on the weekend without waiting for the bank. What Venmo does, but with crypto, right? That was just so fascinating to me because banks are pretty inefficient. Sending money across the world is kind of hard. Other families, especially like families that move to the United States that immigrate that want to send money home. it's very difficult to do that. And so this idea that you can do it via the internet,
Starting point is 00:05:24 this magical internet money could exist, blew my mind in 2014. And that's when I made my first Bitcoin investment. Fast forward to 2017. We saw what you guys probably all know as the ICO boom, the alt-coin boom, whatever you want to call it. And a lot of people made a lot of money on speculative ideas that really had barely any merit in the sense that they were just ideas.
Starting point is 00:05:47 Kind of like what we saw in the dot-com era with, everything was just a website, no matter, whether you needed a website for it or not, everything was going to have a website. Right. So I was already kind of involved on a simple investment level from 2014, but in 17, I saw a lot of projects that made grand promises and had no execution. So I had this very grand idea called Our Music Festival. The idea is really simple.
Starting point is 00:06:11 You pull a bunch of people's money. The people who pull the money get to pick the lineup for the festival, and then they get to share in the profits of all the tickets sold. but with a cryptocurrency, right? That was the concept. Of course, we learned after I hired great lawyers that that would be a security token and it would be illegal to do an ICO in that way. So we never did an ICO. I just raised equity for this company. And we threw a giant festival with Zad, Big Sean, myself, with simple wallet crypto rewards at the festival with QR codes. It was like kind of a playful game. And it worked out great. But at the time in 2017, 2018, the regulatory environment was uncertain. The laws surrounding this. stuff were hard to really comply by. And I just wanted to do the right thing. So we shut down the company and moved on. But through that process, I made so many relationships with incredible people in the crypto space, one of whom Michael Saylor, who wish you would have been on that call, but we'll get you on with him again. Oh, I remember. Yeah. Sorry, I was able to make that.
Starting point is 00:07:09 He's brilliant when it comes to, you know, how he thinks about Bitcoin. But I've also had the pleasure of meeting Fred Erism, one of the founders of Coinbase, who's a friend of mine who's been kind of coaching me through what's happening right now. Are you in the IPO? No, I'm not. I'm not. I want to get in. If somebody could get me in on that.
Starting point is 00:07:29 Gosh, I want it so badly. That's going to be a big one. I can always ask him, but I wouldn't even want to ask him that question. It's a little bit too. But no, but Fred now actually started his own fund when he left Coinbase called Paradigm
Starting point is 00:07:43 and famously turned 300 million into what is now probably worth $4 billion since March of last year. He took a big bet when crypto crashed right when COVID hit. He was like, this is the chance. He took the funds money, poured it into Bitcoin and just one big. And there's a Forbes article about it. Fred's, in my opinion, one of the smartest people in the entire blockchain space. And so he's been a trusted friend and advisor.
Starting point is 00:08:06 So I'm talking to him tomorrow about how to proceed with this NFT thing in the right way. So now let's get to why we're all here today. $11.7 million for the tokenizer. version of my debut album, which is called Ultraviolet. And the concept behind that was creating a collectible edition of something that's digital. What people really are confused about when they think about what an NFT is, they say, well, I can copy this file as many times as I want. So why do I pay for an NFT? Right. It's free. And the equation is very simple. The best analogy I like to give is the Honus Wagner baseball card
Starting point is 00:08:48 or even a Pokemon card. Great example. I could easily recreate a holographic chariot would cost me like a hundred bucks. I find a company to print it. Make a fake one. So why is it that the real one is worth $250,000, $350,000 when the fake one
Starting point is 00:09:01 costs about $100 to make? Because there's emotional sentimental value in owning something that's authentic. So now when you apply that to the blockchain to keep it as simple as possible, you have an official addition of a media file versus an unofficial edition of a media file. And if you give people the ability to show off their collection,
Starting point is 00:09:22 basically show off that they supported this artist or supported this piece of content, they are excited by the emotion of owning that content. Now, they might not own the IP rights or anything like that. They're just excited to say, I supported this person in their digital creative endeavor. The same way we see people tipping on Twitch, the same way we see that happening across
Starting point is 00:09:45 the internet in a lot of other ways. And so for all of you listening who don't know what an NFT is, the simple version is the acronym is non-fundable token. But what it really means is it's just a digital certificate of authenticity, like a land deed, but on the blockchain. So that really applies. Once you kind of understand what a digital certificate of authenticity means, it literally applies to everything. Not just art. Art is kind of the first step. So what did you sell exactly? What did people bid? I think the top bid was $2.3.3.6. $3.6 million.
Starting point is 00:10:19 Do you know, yeah. Do you know the person who bidd that top bid? Funny enough, I do not. The top bidder has kept his identity anonymous, which is very, you know, big of crypto. Still? Well, I mean, I have his email address, but beyond that, but he wouldn't think to like, be like,
Starting point is 00:10:36 yo, let me get on the phone with you. He's probably a pretty big fan, right? A lot of people who participate in this stuff really prefer anonymity because, you know, of the amount of money that they made in crypto, and they prefer to remain anonymous. A lot of them have pseudonyms. And Whale Shark,
Starting point is 00:10:53 who got the number two position, who ended up spending 2.5 million, has a very big public presence, but no one knows who he actually is underneath his pseudonym Wellshark. So he's got a Discord group of 4,000 collectors. We can dive into who these people are and what they're doing, but because I don't know who Bitter 65 is, 64, I forget,
Starting point is 00:11:13 But whale shark, though, and I had a relationship prior, and we talk a lot about collectibles and art. And I was very surprised by his just excitement about this. And now, you know, he was the one featured in the Forbes article because I, you know, I was able to introduce him. Right. At least on email to Forbes. Yeah. And yeah. So what do they get?
Starting point is 00:11:33 What do they get? Yes. Explain it. But first, we have a quick word from our sponsor. Ladder. Life is full of reminders of its beauty, whether I'm chilling by the pool, swim in some laps, or just having a good time. making videos about life insurance. Experiences like these are great reminders of how beautiful life is and exactly why it should be
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Starting point is 00:12:21 Go to ladderlife.com slash iced coffee. That's Ladder, L-A-D-D-R-L-A-D-R-Live.com slash iced coffee. Thank you so much, Ladder for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast. Imagine there's an official edition of a song. Now, you can go listen to a song on Spotify, but that's not an asset. You're just listening to that within Spotify. Imagine you have, like, think about the old days with real records. If you went to the record store and they had no more Nirvana vinals, you couldn't even listen to Nirvana.
Starting point is 00:12:50 So these records would trade in the aftermarket for crazy amounts of money. Now, today you can obviously still listen to any song on my album by going to Spotify, but it's impossible to verifiably own it, own an official signed copy on the blockchain of that song. So what people bought were audiovisual pieces of art that I created, digital art with the music in the background, but they also bought a vinyl NFT, which is redeemable for a real world vinyl. So they bought this digital asset
Starting point is 00:13:21 that they can use as a basically coupon to get one of the 33 vinals from my album, and they're the only 33 vinals we will ever print. Now, vinals historically have had crazy resale value, right? And so a lot of this is the idea that I've only made 33 vinals of my album. My album has accumulated over a whole. 100 million streams.
Starting point is 00:13:41 And so some people probably bought the collection for the vinyl. Some probably bought it for the collection of song NFTs, these official editions of the song. But I kind of surprised people in the middle of the auction and said, the top six people get all access passes to any show ever that I play in the future. What's the value of being backstage at EDC? Right? Not many people get that kind of access. And so my feeling is that people just wanted to participate in this auction to show that the music business is about to change in a huge way. These people all who've been on this, who ended up in the top 33, which I had no idea
Starting point is 00:14:15 it was going to go this way. What do you think? What do you think it was going to sell far? I would have been happy at $500,000 because my last drop we did was $250,000. Yeah. The auction mechanic, and this is like we don't have to dive too deep into Nash equilibrium, game theory economics. I'm a math guy.
Starting point is 00:14:29 We don't have to go there. But I designed this auction mechanic specifically for this reason, but I didn't expect it to succeed the way it did. But the reality is all these people, you know, they didn't just buy the digital collectibles, they bought a statement. They bought a statement to the music industry that artists have power to monetize themselves without a record label. People believe in that vision. So they, yeah, so they don't get to own the, like, the rights to the song. But that's next. That's next. Like licensing? Which we can talk about. Imagine a world. So this is step one,
Starting point is 00:15:00 owning a piece of unique digital content that can't be, you can't replicate it because it's code on the blockchain. It will only ever exist as that can't be duplicated. That's what an NFT means. It's just a code that represents ownership in something. Where this goes in the future, imagine you can invest in your favorite song and then collect a royalty on that song. Imagine you can invest in an artist that you like. In my case, the chain smokers and olenium both opened for me back in the day in my career. I believed in a lenium so hard when we started, you know, just when we met. And Elenium is very excited about doing his first NFT lunch, which I don't want to reveal too much.
Starting point is 00:15:36 But Elenium, if I could have invested in Elenium's music back when I believed in him, the royalties that I'd get from that today would be immensely valuable, right? I would own a piece of the IP. Now, the reason why that can't happen today is because of the regulatory environment, which is too technical. We don't have to go there. But that's the next step of this, actually owning rights in the music as a fan. Then you don't need a record label anymore because you could fundraise from fans.
Starting point is 00:16:00 How'd you come up with the idea to do this? This is something I've been thinking about for six years. This isn't, this is a... Before NFTs were even a... thing. I've been an independent artist my whole career. I've never given up, I've given up rights on some of my songs. Yeah. Like I did a song with Ninja and, you know, Ninja put this together with Astroworks, which is underneath a major record label, right? So I couldn't really tokenize that song without their permission. But my last album, I owned all the master rights. So I have the ability to do whatever
Starting point is 00:16:27 I want with it. And I had that vision for my whole career and I was always in the public, like encouraging people to own their master rights, own their master rights, because then you can control your own music. A lot of artists that are going to want to mint music NFTs now aren't going to be able to with their old music because they're in a record deal. And the record label is going to want to take, what they typically take is 80%. Imagine if like 11.7 million that I did when 80% went to a record label. Oh my God. Do you have to split that NFT cost with like a, because I know like some of the NFT companies that we'll take like 50%. Did you create your own? So that's also why I created this on my own website with a company that I'm,
Starting point is 00:17:06 a crypto company that I invested in so that I wouldn't have to pay a crazy fee. Wow. So that's how it worked. But I've been involved in this world for years and having it come to fruition the way that it did at this moment in time in the universe when everyone's been quarantined
Starting point is 00:17:24 and people are moving to the digital world in such an extreme way. It was a moment. And Logan kind of had a similar moment. And Grimes did 5.5 million in NFT sales and people. you know, had a, people sold, for those of you who aren't familiar with people,
Starting point is 00:17:40 let's talk about people for a second, because he is also a pioneer here. People was a digital artist who made, had a huge Instagram account for a really long time, like just lots of followers, never really got paid fairly for this work that he did that he spends hours and hours and hours on. And he sold a piece for the election.
Starting point is 00:17:58 It was this brilliant concept. It was a digital, programmable digital art where if Trump won, it would turn one way. If Biden won, it would turn another way. So when Biden won, the NFT became, it changed states, right? It became the Biden video clip, the Biden victory video clip after the election. And that piece sold for $66,000 originally. It sold for $6.6 million three days ago.
Starting point is 00:18:23 Do you worry that we're in a bit of a bubble? Yes, I know. I think that it's the same with the real art world. So when people, I'm sure you all have seen, or maybe you know the Japanese billionaire who bought a hundred million dollar basquiat painting was that the one on his amex i'm not sure okay it's possible yeah a japanese i think so it's possible pretty sure he bought it on the amex to get the points i've listened i thought if i believe it or not you're going to find the article put it up here that's genius i'm pretty sure he got the points on the card you're probably right you're probably
Starting point is 00:18:55 right but what is the value of a bosquiat painting it's the what did it cost him to make it was the canvas cost 100 bucks the paint What are you buying when you buy? You're buying a feeling. You're buying an emotional connection to a piece of art that someone else made. There's no other reason why you would pay $100 million for something that you could replicate.
Starting point is 00:19:17 If you go on Amazon right now, this is my favorite example. You can go on Amazon and buy the Mona Lisa. You know how much it costs? 53 bucks. It's exactly the same as the original Mona Lisa. Same size to the T. It's exactly the same.
Starting point is 00:19:33 But why would you want to own a, fake Mona Lisa. But wouldn't you argue that those pieces of art have had probably a hundred years to appreciate? I don't think those pieces just went from being worth, let's say, 60 grand to 6 million a year. Right. I think that that appreciation is pretty nuts. But I also think that people believe in people as being like the first pioneer of this entire movement. And that's why after that sold for 6.6 million, he actually has an auction going on with Christie's right now that I think, don't quote me on it. I think it's up to 2.8 already for another piece.
Starting point is 00:20:08 So clearly there are multiple people that are interested in owning this historical work and people are interested in owning my music in a collectible way. You can't deny the market. It's there. How much speculation is there? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:20:21 But I know that I own a people. To give you an example, I own a people that was $969 that I could sell today for $170,000, but I'm not selling it. Can I see it? Can you pull it? Yeah. I am so curious to see like what this looks like.
Starting point is 00:20:36 Absolutely. It's a piece called Into the Ether. Is there any way you could screen record this? Or just like, or do a screenshot? That way we could just put it up on. Hold on. I'm so curious to see this. Okay.
Starting point is 00:20:51 So there's another problem with the crypto universe, which is that there really isn't a good way to mobily display all this stuff yet. And we're everyone in crypto is building these tools right now. Yeah, I would love to see. see like a digital museum. Like an app working on this stuff. You click on it. You could look through, scroll
Starting point is 00:21:09 through the museum. Maybe you put on like a VR headset and you could walk around the museum. Hold on. I'm logging and this is going to take me a second to log in here because I want to show you the official version. I'm not going to show you just a picture of it right. All right. Let's see. Just logging in here. Give me a moment. But there are virtual museums
Starting point is 00:21:26 and they are sick. If you don't have a VR headset, Graham, I'm buying your Noculus 2. I don't have a VR headset. That's just my gift free. me something. I'm getting that for you right after this episode. Give me a moment. I have to prove.
Starting point is 00:21:41 It seems like everyone that I've talked to about NFTs so far are all selling NFTs. Like I haven't talked to a single person that's buying NFTs. So I'm showing and buying. I have 50 pieces that I own and I also sell my stuff. I love it. In my, like, if you ever come to my house, you'll see I have digital screens all over the house that I display my art on.
Starting point is 00:22:01 And it's just like, imagine that you came into my house. house and you looked at this TV screen that looks like a piece of art. And you're like, what's that? And I'm like, oh, it's just like an image I found on the internet. Or I'm like, oh, it's this artist that I bought that. And they're like, how did you buy that? I'm like, oh, I supported the artist. I bought this piece of digital art. And when you come over to my house, I hope you have that experience where you kind of get it. Where you're looking around at all the screens and you're like, wait, Justin owns this stuff. I would think NFTs are valid. Like, I totally think it's a, it's a reasonable, like legit thing. but at the same time it seems like the demand is coming out of the woodworks.
Starting point is 00:22:35 It's like, and maybe that's just because the whole anonymity thing like with crypto or anything, but it. I would be the type to have a screen now and just change the picture every day. I'd be like, yeah, I bought that. But you can, but that's what you can do, right? Like all the pieces that you own, you can display on one screen. They don't have to be on separate screens. No, I'm just saying I just find a random picture on Google. I'll be like, yeah, I own that.
Starting point is 00:22:56 They'll be like, what, you own the picture? No, the TV. At some point, at some point someone's going to figure out whether or not. not it's legit. Unfortunately, I can't log into my account right now. Oh, is it's slow Wi-Fi? What I can screen record this later. Fair enough. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Yes. Cool. And then you'll see like the addition number and then you'll see how much it's going for in the aftermarket and you'll see the price that I paid. Is there a price that you would sell that for? How much? To be honest, I probably won't because it means something to me. I mean,
Starting point is 00:23:27 maybe if you spoke to me before this latest sale, maybe I'd feel differently just because of the change in my life. But even then, I probably wouldn't. There's some pieces that I would. Not every piece do I feel like as a piece for life, but owning one of the first people pieces in years from now, I mean, these things appreciate incredibly. Art does. Real art does. And this is the first form of digital art from one of the most well-known digital artists. So I would love to pass down to my kids.
Starting point is 00:23:57 To be dead, you know, I would like the way people have passed down Picasso's. Right? I really believe that. And I know it's kind of crazy. But what I would suggest to you guys is you can buy digital art for way cheaper than some of the prices you're seeing. Find an artist that you think is interesting. And just try it. Pay the $300. See if it makes you feel something. And I guarantee you it well. What are you going to do with all the money? But really quick, we have a word from our sponsor, Fundrise. In 2021, a truly diversified portfolio needs more than just the traditional mix of stocks.
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Starting point is 00:25:08 It takes just a few minutes to get started. Go to fundrise.com slash iced coffee today. That's fundrise, f-und, d, r-I-S-E dot com slash iced coffee. Fundrise.com slash iced coffee. Thank you so much, Fundrise, and back to the podcast. I'm curious. So what's your plan with this? foundation. This is, you know, however, this ticket as you will, like this is obviously a great amount of money, but I've also been a Bitcoin investor for a very long time. And my mission is to support other artists. So even before my, you know, auction, we did a clubhouse room where I was like, I'm going to spend $33,000 on your digital art if you're a new artist. Come up to the stage and pitch it to me. And I didn't end up buying every, everyone's pitch. I bought like maybe five things that I really liked. So I'm definitely going to take a big portion of this money and support the new NFTR community. Um,
Starting point is 00:25:54 I've, you know, my record label that I built, we donated over, you know, $330,000 to building schools in Guatemala with an organization called Pences of Promise. I'm always about giving back. And this, obviously, we're going to be giving back in a big way with this kind of money because it's crazy. I mean, the community came out to support me in my vision. But what I do want to really stress is this feels like it's a little bit speculative. I would encourage you to just buy something for $50. To give you an example, I bought my friend Slime Sunday. I bought one of his, pieces called the last stand of the nation state for $40. And I, as a joke, put it up for sale at $8,000. There were only 400 editions ever minted. My price got hit and I panicked because I actually, I like did it as a joke. I'm just going to put this up for resale for $8,000. That's insane. And now it's 19 and it's 19 today.
Starting point is 00:26:45 Where do you buy it? Where do you buy an NFT? How can do this? You can go to Nifty Gateway. You can go to Zora. You can go to OpenC, Foundation, Super Rare. those are all the main platforms. Nifty Gateway enables credit cards so you don't have to know anything about crypto to start collecting. But I want to say this, don't buy to make money.
Starting point is 00:27:03 Like a lot of people are thinking to themselves. This is going to be a profit. No, buy stuff that you like the same way you buy real art. I mean, I buy real art. I have a lot of real art in my house. I buy it because I love those artists and I don't like plan on flipping it. So I would say like if you, if something is digitally interesting to you, just explore like 40 bucks. I'm not a skeptic at all of like NFTs and I think it's a it's a move in the right direction to move it to move it like online. I think that's great because like it's kind of weird but like we live in a finite world but we have like infinite desires and aspirations right. So to move everything onto a digital platform where we can expand infinitely I think is a great idea. And also I love the idea that it's it can be one of one and not you know like it's it's the true valid like. So now imagine something else, right? I want to take this to the next level beyond the investment part, which maybe that resonates with you,
Starting point is 00:27:59 like owning the royalties of a song. You know, some of my music has generated significant royalties. My song is at love has generated over, you know, $330,000 in royalties just for that one song. What if you, what if I told you Graham? Like back when I made it, if you liked it, you could own 5% of that, but you could own it for like 500 bucks.
Starting point is 00:28:15 Like that would be totally a great investment, right? And so thinking about it in that way, that's the future. But there's another way to think about it too. What if owning an NFT gives you, you access to both exclusive digital content, but also gives you access to things in real life. For instance, imagine an NFT unlocks all my unreleased songs on my website, which is what we're doing, by the way, with this. You can listen to all the ideas that I'm working on in real time when they're not finished, and only these 33 people will have that ability. But they have to have
Starting point is 00:28:42 the Ethereum token in their wallet. They have to sign a message to Ethereum to prove. Now, could they rip it? Yeah. But look how much money they paid. You think they want to show that to everyone. They might show it to their friends when they're over, but they're not sharing that. Yeah. And if someone else tried to get on the website, they physically couldn't because they didn't have the token in their wallet. Take this a step further. Let's say you're at one of my shows and you own an all-access NFT.
Starting point is 00:29:05 I have, like, I'm going to let you backstage because you can prove to me that you own it by signing a message on your phone that shows that your wallet owns the all-access NFT and I can take you backstage. We only made six of them ever. So let's say you want to go backstage at DEC. You go, you experience it. Now you can resell it. And every time you resell it, I get 10%.
Starting point is 00:29:24 How incredible is that? So these things have real world functionality, not just digital functionality. Gosh, you know, we should do that with a mentorship group, man. Honestly, it's just create a hundred NFTs that we could just basically do like a once a month sort of like mastermind. That's smart. I like that. How do we do that, man? We'll talk about it.
Starting point is 00:29:46 It's a long conversation, but like RAC is another artist. Yeah. who has tokens that unlock access to a Discord server that is a direct channel of communication to him. But you have to own it. That's exactly what we should do that. All right. That's our idea.
Starting point is 00:29:59 So this makes a little bit more sense as you. Well, for that, I'd say it makes sense in the sense. And it's just, it's security. I like that. It's resellable. I like that. And I guess that's what I like about. So let's talk about you first.
Starting point is 00:30:17 Sure. Okay. This is a great example. All right. How many of the people watching would love to have a community around you. Only 100 people get direct access to you. Maybe you don't talk in this Discord server every single hour of every day. But every night before you go to sleep, you go through the 100 people that might have questions for you. What's the value of that
Starting point is 00:30:33 pass for your fans? What do you think that might be like? Well, like for a person? How do you, how do you, how do you say this is for life? Like, how do I know I'm going to be like 80 years old and like Discord's still going to be a thing or like, it's your commitment. It's your commitment you have to make to them. Yeah. You can create a, you know, terms and conditions, just like anything else in the world, you can say, listen, this gives you access to this Discord group. I can guarantee you I'm going to be popping in at least once every week.
Starting point is 00:31:01 But now you build a community around you of people that can talk to each other that are your biggest fans. So whether you pop in every week or not, they can talk to each other. I don't want to throw out a number because then I'm setting myself up for that number. It's, we should do that. Honestly, don't throw out a number. But let me tell you something. first NFT. Some of them sold for 200 bucks. They're selling for five to $10,000 now. Why?
Starting point is 00:31:24 Just because honestly, people believe in my vision for the future of music, which I've expressed on Clubhouse. I've talked on a lot of podcasts like A. Pompolino. I've talked on a bunch of people's podcast just describing what I think the music business will become. And people believe in that vision and they want to support that vision. And that's why they're buying this stuff. And I'm hopefully going to shape that. I mean, that's kind of what happened this past week. again, which is honestly like the craziest moment of my life. I don't know if you saw, but in my high school yearbook, it says like, life saw that to revolutionize the music business.
Starting point is 00:31:56 And like that's literally like I'm on cloud nine right now because I feel like I didn't do it yet, but I took a big step. And the reality is creators like yourself are we've been dependent on platforms for so long. When you have a token that someone else owns, you have direct access to those people. You don't have to go through a platform. And that's a whole other conversation that we, we can dive into. Let's say you make, let's say you make 10,000 NFTs for your truest fans. You can send them messages on the blockchain without even emailing them.
Starting point is 00:32:27 And it's all decentralized and no one can stop you from doing it. No one can ban your account no matter what. And so giving creators that kind of power going direct to fan is unstoppable. That's interesting. I want to do that. I want to do that one. That, that I think has a lot of utility. There's an application for everybody. Yeah. There's an application for everybody. All right. I like that. You convinced. me. That's what I'm here for, man. That's why we're talking. You're revolutionizing the mentorship group now too. Honestly, like, if I was a young kid who wanted to follow in your footsteps, you're extremely
Starting point is 00:32:59 successful. You speak so well to both investments, real estate. There's so many people out there that would love your perspective on either a one-on-one basis or a one-on-a-hundred basis. I mean, if I was a younger kid and I would save money, I would pay five to ten grand for that. But you should say like 50 or 100, we're going to... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold on. Maybe, like, you know, are those kids going to be able to afford it? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:33:22 But maybe you get, maybe it starts out there. But remember, like I sold some of my first stuff for 200, you start out in a place that makes sense. But if the demand is there, you expand. Right. People sold his first piece for $1. And it's going for $100,000. And he's capturing 10% of all the resales every time it resells.
Starting point is 00:33:43 So let me ask you a question. Would you rather underpriced yourself and capture 10% of every other transaction or overpriced yourself so much that maybe you don't attract a buyer. 10% of five times, you know, 50, like if it goes for 20 and then 30 and then 50 and then all, if it changes hands all those times,
Starting point is 00:34:02 but it started at one, well, you get 10% of every time it changes hand. Why not just do the bidding system like you did? Give, like the top 50 or top 100 and the number one person gets like a once a year meet up in person, something like that. That's exactly what we did,
Starting point is 00:34:17 which is like hardcore game. theory economics that I studied in college and that's why it worked. But it's also very risky and we didn't know it would play out. There's a lot of math behind it. There's a lot of like special features that the collectors know that they have that no one else knows yet. Because now I've created a community of 33 people who changed my life. And so I'm going to make sure their investment in my art is worth something. And they're going to get so much other that we didn't even announce yet. So you know, you can play this however you want. The beauty is it's not like YouTube or Spotify where I upload a song and then I let the algorithm decide what happens. I have full control
Starting point is 00:34:50 over the engagement with my community. And that's the power of this. So it's not like whether you price it at a thousand or five thousand. The beauty of it is the fans can decide what the value is. And you'll capture all of it as it changes hands. So to give you perspective, before this 11.7, we had done about 1.1, me and my art director combined. So pretty big jump. Like all of the other ones were 1.1, then this was 11.7. Kind of crazy. But that 1.1 has resold in the resale market with 4 million of sales volume after we sold it at its initial prices, which means that people value this stuff. Did you do any marketing ahead of time? Because I saw you in Morning Brew. I loved that. I read Morning Brew pretty much every morning saw you on there. And I'm wondering like...
Starting point is 00:35:38 We did marketing before the auction because I went out on my own. I didn't use a platform. Like platforms have built in audience. Like Nifty Gateway has an audience of people that literally just buy everything because they love this stuff. I had to basically gather my hardcore fan base and bring them to my own website and hope that they were going to bid. And so we did some marketing because I was nervous that we were going to host it. I was the first NFTRS ever to host a sale on my own website. Like Shopify versus Sotheby's, right? And I was nervous.
Starting point is 00:36:08 But they showed up. But I had no idea, man. Yeah, I had no clue. Right. Once it hit, my family was with me in the house. And it starts out, we hit a million. Oh, my God, this is amazing. Then we break the record of 6.6 and we're like, then we just go quiet.
Starting point is 00:36:27 Everyone was just watching silently as it just kept going. And the timer reset every three minutes. So if any of the 33 bitters bit again in the final three minutes, it would reset. So it gave everyone a chance to move around the board until they had their final price. Game theory, Nash equilibrium. You guys, if you're curious about the math behind it, you can just Wikipedia, game theory, and Nash equilibrium. And you'll figure out how I designed this.
Starting point is 00:36:51 But ultimately, you know, we all just sat there as it went from one to six to 11. And we were like, when is this going to stop? And then it stopped. And I was just like, I didn't even know what to do. So that was my weekend last weekend. Did any of it not feel real? It didn't. I felt like I was, the past four days, by the way, this is the first conversation I've had
Starting point is 00:37:11 with someone in real life. all I've been is on the phone with other artists, musicians, people that want to get involved, not to name any names, but pretty much like everyone who you know, who you like, musically, is probably going to be doing this very soon.
Starting point is 00:37:23 And how did you get, oh, also, if you think everyone's going to get on board with like selling NFTs, kind of asked you a little bit before we started recording, but do you think that that would create
Starting point is 00:37:33 a too big of supply where the prices would go down? It depends. Just like YouTube. How many YouTubers are there? A lot of YouTubers. but people choose to follow you because they believe in your message. The same thing will happen with NFTs.
Starting point is 00:37:47 There'll be a lot of noise. People won't be able to sell stuff. But if it's meaningful to someone else, it will sell. Just like any other market. Just like for musicians, how many musicians are there on Spotify that have less than a thousand listeners? It's just like anything else. So will there be an overflow of supply because people think they're going to make money?
Starting point is 00:38:04 Yes. But as bigger artists do this and their fans come on board, maybe fans start to really see the value. and as more big people, big artists come, more collectors will come. And eventually it'll balance out. But there is a lot of hype right now. We can't deny that, right? We can't deny that.
Starting point is 00:38:20 What was the music industry like before all of this? Let's go back when you were like 19. How much were you making back then? Like, how did you get your music out there? How did you grow as an artist? So I disclose this on NBC now. So I'm happy to kind of disclose a little bit. But, you know, outside of my investment portfolio, I like you.
Starting point is 00:38:36 I admire you because I watch some of your videos and you are a saver and an investor. and I didn't buy any luxury goods until this house that I just bought, like nothing for eight years. Like, you know, I'm very like-minded to that sense. Put most of my money that I made over the years in multifamily real estate assets and in Bitcoin. Like, that's pretty much it. Not really many equities. I trade equity derivatives. It's a whole other conversation.
Starting point is 00:38:59 But, or index derivatives, not equity derivatives. But when I started out, I was 19. And that year, I made 400 grand. How? Playing shows all around the country at colleges. Really? In front of thousands of people. How big of a following did you have back then?
Starting point is 00:39:13 Just Facebook following of like maybe 50 to 100,000 people. Are you serious? How much would you get per show? It would range anywhere between three to 10,000 for the first eight months, and then it would go, and then it went up to 12, and then it went up to 15, and it went up to 20, and then over the years it just keeps going up because people pay for tickets. It's simple.
Starting point is 00:39:29 People buy a ticket, and if I sell this many tickets, it generates this much money, and then after everyone else is paid, you know, what's left to me. Yeah, how did you get a following of 50 to 100? 100,000 on Facebook. I made mashups. I mixed popular songs with popular vocal, popular dance songs and popular vocals.
Starting point is 00:39:47 And one just went viral on YouTube. And then I was playing colleges for, well, it started even lower than that. It started 500 bucks. I was like a kid in college. I was a junior year. And I would go out on the weekend to get to make like $1,500 bucks. Like I fly to like Georgia Tech University and play a fraternity basement
Starting point is 00:40:03 slept in the, you know, slept in one of the frat brothers like beds and the, like that's where it all started in fraternities and all around the country and sororities and then it went up to like opening up for whiz caliphah at university of Connecticut opening up for macklemore at duke how do you go from that to mcclemore my agent who i've been with this whole time at the time edm was barely a thing it was like right at the start of a vici this is like 2008 2011 11 12 yeah is when it really started to hit got it and there weren't that many american artists that were doing it at the time so i i just had good timing i guess um but yeah my
Starting point is 00:40:37 when i was 19 400 000 dropped out of school. My economics professor convinced my parents to let me drop out of school. And then it was all, you know, upward from there. Every year doubling, doubling, doubling. And then over the years, not spending my money on anything, putting it into Bitcoin, putting it into real estate, and just understanding that money doesn't really come overnight.
Starting point is 00:40:55 And then all of a sudden this happens. How much you charge per show now? There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family whatever you want wherever you're going
Starting point is 00:41:22 start your search at autotrater.ca canada's car marketplace ranges it ranges it's definitely a lot more than it was i don't i don't want to like give a specific number because it ranges depending on how far i have to travel right the demands are but you know it's definitely a lot more than what he used to do. Let's say I wanted you to DJ like a like a house party here, like play music for me. But pretend we weren't friends and we're like, hey man. I mean, my agent's going to kill me for disclosing that. No, it's, unfortunately I can't disclose what it would cost today. But I can tell you that there was a time, there was a time that it went from 500 bucks to 3,000 to 12,000 to 15,000. You know,
Starting point is 00:42:01 like there was a time in my career where that happened. Now it's a lot more, but it depends on the circumstances. You know, like, to give you an example, one of my best friends who helped me in the crypto space early on, Keith Rubei. I'm sure you've heard of him. He started a company called Open Door. He's one of the original PayPal Mafia guys. His birthday is in Miami. I'm going to get my second shot.
Starting point is 00:42:21 I'm going to go play his birthday party. I want to go hang out because I'm celebrating this event. And all my friends are down there. He ain't paying for that. I wouldn't charge him. You and I will become friends and, you know, throw a party. You're my next door neighbor.
Starting point is 00:42:32 Yeah. I enjoy DJing. I tell people I don't get paid to DJ. I get paid to put my body through. hell traveling to DJ. Yeah. That's the hard part. Like, I get offers sometimes to go to India and they're really big offers, but like the 48 hours
Starting point is 00:42:46 of hell to go and come back is hard. So unless I have multiple shows in India lined up so that I can, you know, go hit them all at once, it's hard to get me to go there for, you know, 24 hours. I get that. So it's really just a fair. Price is a function of anything else. Like, you know, if someone wants me to go who's a friend who wants me to do something, my buddy Matt Como, who's a big Instagram, you know,
Starting point is 00:43:09 photographer, videographer. He just said, dude, like all of our friends are going to, I'm throwing a birthday party in L.A. It's in Venice Beach. You want to come? You want to play it? I'm like, yeah, I do.
Starting point is 00:43:17 All my friends are going to be there. I'm going to go play. You don't have to go play or anything. Right? So I always tell people that I DJ because I love DJing. I make music because I love making music. I get paid because I hate traveling. I hate it.
Starting point is 00:43:27 So my shit has been kind of nice. That makes sense. Makes sense. What was I, are you finally spending your money now? Not really. No? Besides the house,
Starting point is 00:43:36 do you splurge? I just, I finally bought a car. Finally bought a car. What did you get? The new F8 spider. But outside of that, like, I don't, I prefer investing in people. I like investing in people with crazy ideas.
Starting point is 00:43:50 And so like Carrot, great example, right? Like, I'm investing in Carrot because I believe in Eric's vision, right? You know, I like investing in things that will shape the world for the better. That's the best thing about capital is deploying it into ideas that change the world. And so I like to be a part of that story. and like things are nice. Like I don't really own a nice watch. Maybe I'll go, I've never been a watch guy,
Starting point is 00:44:11 but now everyone's like, oh, you should go buy this AP. You should go buy this, you know, Pat Tech. You should pay tech. You go, I've never been a watch guy, but like, you know, it's a store of value because what's happening with the dollar right now, right?
Starting point is 00:44:22 Yeah, right. Like maybe the watch is actually a better decision than holding the dollars. Get the Zenith Rolex Daytona. Yes, that's the one you want. Versus an AP? I was looking at, okay. Yeah. Dude, we'll talk about watches because I don't know anything about watches.
Starting point is 00:44:35 Maybe you'll give me some recommendations. That's the one. Am I spending my money now? No. I'm definitely excited. Aside from the car, like, I'm mostly excited about investing in young ideas, young artists, investing, you know, investing in, I'm going to create a foundation. I already had a non for profit. Now I'm going to create an actual 501c3 foundation and do a lot of really cool stuff to help new artists that can't pay for, you know, just can't pay to get, don't even, you know, have the ability to buy the software, right? Like, someone could be so talented, but maybe they can't afford to pay for Adobe. I want to help those people and pay it forward.
Starting point is 00:45:08 And so that's really, you know, how I think about money is, is I want to use whatever money I have to create more value in the world for other human beings by believing in people. And real estate assets. That's why we're right. And real estate assets, right? How much real estate do you on? How do you get into that?
Starting point is 00:45:23 I would say half of my net worth is in multifamily real estate. Okay. We all know 1031 exchange, you know, and how powerful that can be. I own a lot of units in Texas and Florida. I'm not going to tell you exactly how many, but I'm a lot of units in Texas and Florida across different properties that I've invested from day one. First 400 grand,
Starting point is 00:45:43 200 into multifamily real estate when I was 19. Like literally been doing this. How'd you learn about that? My dad is a real estate guy. I'm very thankful. You know, he guided me when I started making any money. He was like, Justin, this is how you do it. Like, don't spend it.
Starting point is 00:45:58 Don't be in debt. Don't buy the car. And I, you know, I haven't bought the car of my dreams until today. after all this time because the compound interest is such a powerful thing. And there's a lot of really interesting stuff happening in the cryptocurrency space. For those of you who want to get involved, it is easy to take the first step.
Starting point is 00:46:19 It's hard to take the second step, which is really understanding how all this stuff works. But NFTs make it simple because unlike a cryptocurrency where you look at Bitcoin and someone's like, this is like $50,000, how am I going to buy one of them? You can't think about it that way. You have to think about it as it's okay to own point. 0.001 of something. We just haven't been trained that way. Austrian economics, this idea of dollars and cents is just a theory someone came up with a long
Starting point is 00:46:43 time ago that doesn't really apply to anything today. And once you start like thinking about it and really diving in, it all starts to make sense. And you'll, you'll have, and I hope you have, Michael Saylor would have helped you on that call. And I'll get you on the phone again. Next one. Next one. He speaks so well to the aha moment that you have, one like pennies don't really make sense anymore. The idea of a penny. I've been a big proponent of getting rid of the penny. Let's be real. I think we should let's abolish the penny. Canada did it. It works really well. We don't need the penny. It's a, it's a, lose money. How can you trust a financial system that has no backing? We keep printing dollars. Like it's nothing. So what do I do? I want to invest in ideas,
Starting point is 00:47:28 in art, in Bitcoin, in real estate. Why do I invest in real estate? Probably for a similar reason to you, everybody needs a place to live. Right? No matter what, you need a place to go, home to. And that's why real estate has been such a powerful asset over the years. But, you know, for anyone who's watching who's a young entrepreneur, who follows you, and you're a great voice for that young generation. Thanks.
Starting point is 00:47:50 You really are, man. I got a hand to you. I've watched your videos. Thank you. You're teaching people to be financially responsible with their success. And, you know, before YouTube, a lot of people would just blow their money on it. Right. And it's nice to splurge sometimes, but within reason. Invest. That's your mission. That's your, that's your message. Invest. Right. Right. And we all know how powerful that is. So props to you,
Starting point is 00:48:14 man. Thank you. What do you do for fun? I make music. Really? I make music. What about besides music? I am. My girlfriend and I are pretty low key. Like, she's an actress. She's got a really awesome trilogy coming on on Netflix this summer called Fear Street. You guys should check it out. She's awesome. And, you know, we... Tell us about her for a second. How long have you guys been together? A long time.
Starting point is 00:48:40 Okay. It's been a long time. But she's actually, she would have come, unfortunately. But she's home with the family. She went home, unfortunately, and missed. We didn't know that this was going to be such a big deal, but she missed the auction moment, unfortunately. But you'll meet her in person at some point, I'm sure.
Starting point is 00:48:53 But I think that, you know, the reality is that happiness manifests itself for people in different ways. the way I feel like I'm happy is when I make a positive change in the world. And hopefully what happened this past weekend influences other artists not to sign that record deal. That was always my mission in life. Record labels have taken advantage of artists for years because artists just, they want their shot.
Starting point is 00:49:20 They want to get some money so they don't have to go to their day job and they can just be creative. But they can get that money from fans if they even just have a little bit of a following. There's this artist fuchsious. great, great NFT artists. Highly recommend you guys check them out. Fiosius is 18, makes really abstract work,
Starting point is 00:49:39 and turn to crypto art just because they're one of the earliest adopters of this stuff, 18 years old. On average does between a million and $3 million dollars every drop. They make abstract art. They came from a family here. They actually from Las Vegas.
Starting point is 00:49:56 I think they moved to Seattle and just kills it because people believe in their mission, like believe in their artistic integrity. And like, it's hard to argue with that when you believe in a story, when you believe in a narrative. I mean, look at Elon. My favorite example is Elon, right? I don't want to bash Tesla or anything, but Tesla doesn't make any money.
Starting point is 00:50:18 People believe in Elon's vision for the future. Is there anything wrong with that? Not when the government keeps printing dollars. There's nothing wrong with it. And so it's a cycle. I can talk about the economics of that forever. but the reality is people invest in narratives that they believe will make the world a better place. That's how I invest. Or real estate, because people need it. Right. That's my feeling of the world.
Starting point is 00:50:39 I mean, I don't know. What's your feeling of the world? How do you feel about crypto? How do you feel about all this stuff? Oh, man, I look at it from too logical of a standpoint, like very traditional. So I see Bitcoin now as a store of value. Originally, I saw it as too speculative. And I didn't get that people couldn't spend it. It's not really a spendable currency. So I didn't truly get it. And I'm like, how do you value it? It doesn't produce anything. It doesn't pay you off dividends. It's not backed by anything. Currency is the worst
Starting point is 00:51:08 cryptocurrency is the worst word to ever happen to crypto. Right. Crypto comes from cryptography. The cryptographic code that all of this stuff runs on. The word currency is just an incorrect way of characterizing all of this technology.
Starting point is 00:51:24 Blockchain technology. Distributed ledger technology. That's the stuff that's really cool. Currency is just a word that made crypto into a 4x game, but like not. And you're right. A lot of this stuff isn't efficient to spend. There will be ways in the future that I think will make it more efficient. But right now, you know, you're right. Right. So. But yeah, now I'm seeing it more as a store of value that a lot of people just basically feel safe with their money in there, that it's not going to be devalued to inflation. So that's why I'm seeing it too. So right
Starting point is 00:51:58 now I'm getting close to 2% of my total portfolio in Bitcoin and Ethereum. And that is a great start. For me, it started at around 2 to 3 to 5%. And now what is it at 50? It's a little bit, no, it's not quite 50. No, it's maybe third, well, excluding this last event. Right. Just exclude that for a second. Right. 50% multifamily real estate assets.
Starting point is 00:52:26 and that three to five grew to 30. And then the rest in cash, plus my personal home, right? How much in cash do you keep? Not a lot. Okay. I'm not going to disclose that, but I don't, I mean, enough that if everything went wrong, I mean, when I say not a lot, I mean, that's relative, I guess, right? Five million dollars.
Starting point is 00:52:51 Peanuts. My perspective is a little bit. My perspective is warped there. When I say not a lot, I mean, enough for me to live the rest of my life very comfortably. Right. So whatever that means. Very common. I mean, that sounds like that. I love the answer. Whatever that means. But no, I like investing in people and ideas. And I like particularly defy protocols, which is a whole other, like, rabbit hole of crypto that we don't need to get into. That is using stable dollar. So the question is,
Starting point is 00:53:17 how much do I keep in cash? I view my crypto cash as equally as valuable as cash. That's fair. So if you counted that, we'd be at a whole different. Then that's a lot. We're talking about like, USDC or like, okay. 8% interest on USC. Is that what you're doing? It's just USDA 8%. On compound. Yeah, you can earn 8% interest.
Starting point is 00:53:34 Is it BlockFi? No. So BlockFi is centralized. Okay. BlockFi is like a bank account. So what do you use to get 8%? Compound. It's just called compound.
Starting point is 00:53:43 It's called compound. It's C-Fi protocol. It's very complicated. Don't recommend it. So don't do. You don't, I'll teach you. I don't.
Starting point is 00:53:50 I'll bring you over to my place. I'll show you how to use a ledger, the security of it. It's like very complicated. But you can, and 8% on compound. So I'm doing BlockFi. That is,
Starting point is 00:53:59 you're saying this bad? No, BlockFi's fine. I mean, BlockFi is a great company. What do they pay six? Six and a half. No, no, no.
Starting point is 00:54:06 No, no. U.S. DC, I think, is like eight. Okay. But Bitcoin Ethereum's about six. So the difference to BlockFi and Compound is BlockFi
Starting point is 00:54:12 custodies your crypto. They actually have your crypto. Compound, I still have the right to claim my crypto from a smart contract that exists on the blockchain. So no one else can touch it.
Starting point is 00:54:23 Whereas BlockFi, if they went bankrupt for whatever reason, you're screwed. Right? With crypto, like I, the blockchain determines it is impossible for anybody to change the fact that I have a call on this money. So you're saying I could put like a million bucks in compound. I mean, 80 grand a year.
Starting point is 00:54:41 Yeah. Risk free. The risk. What's the risk? The risk is a hack, which happens. But why is compound so valuable? It's one of the first protocols that does this very securely. What's more likely a bank getting hacked or?
Starting point is 00:54:56 my account, my compound account getting hacked. Well, so you, the real question is what's the risk? What's the difference between counterparty risk and smart contract risk? And now we get really technical. So we don't, I mean, I can dive into it if you want. Can we simplify like 30 seconds? Like one does this, but the other one is 30 seconds. I wanted to make a real estate investment.
Starting point is 00:55:15 And I rolled down to Bank of America here in Las Vegas. I wanted to make a big real estate investment. I was putting half a million dollars in a property in Florida. Okay. And, you know, I'm, going to wire this money. And there's no one in the branch that has the authorization to wire this money. I need to get it in by Friday. It's Monday. Okay, come back tomorrow. Whatever. First of all, I should be able to do that online. That's ridiculous, right? And I moved
Starting point is 00:55:39 everything to J.P. Morgan now. Baker of America is a horrendous, terrible situation. J.P. Morgan, awesome. J.P. Morgan, awesome. J.P. Morgan, awesome. So, Monday, try to make this investment. Oh, we don't have the right authorization. Okay. Come back tomorrow. Oh, they're on vacation. So you might have to wait until next week. Are you kidding me? I'm it's my money dude what are you joking I I canceled everything and moved yep and even then like so that's counterparty risk in a sense right like what if I miss that investment opportunity because someone else had custody of my funds with crypto you custody your own funds it's like having a gold vault and I don't like making this analogy because crypto is not similar to gold in a lot of ways
Starting point is 00:56:19 and similar in other ways but it's like you have a gold vault in your house and you imagine you could like imagine you had dollars which are, it's, like diamonds is a better example. You have a vault of diamonds that you could actually spend on something. The bank isn't holding it. You have them in your house and it's safe, right? Like the idea that with BlockFi, you're keeping your money with a counterparty who has certain rights on the, you know, has a reserve requirement,
Starting point is 00:56:45 but otherwise they do something called hypothecation, which, you know, we don't have to go into details. Sure. Okay. Like how banks work is like Banks, banks suck. This is why I've been involved in the crypto space because it's more efficient. So you ask a few questions, Jack.
Starting point is 00:57:02 Jack always answers to... Yeah, I have a couple questions. Sure. So how do the funds settle? Like after you sell your NFT, obviously, I mean, you receive everything in like Ethereum. What if you receive it all in Ethereum? And then there's like a 30% plummet.
Starting point is 00:57:16 Like, or do you immediately sell? So that's a great question. So you can program the smart contract to automatically swap. So this is where the, like the computer nerd comes out where like internet money can do whatever you want it to do so i can program a smart contract to immediately convert it to a stable asset when it hits my wallet after a sale in my case on my website we built a platform where it's all stable coin and credit card right so none of it actually you could you could you could deposit it for you when you deposited it but you could only bid in stablecoin
Starting point is 00:57:46 you know what i'm going to tell you so i was curious how these bids i i didn't believe the bids in the beginning and I thought like, what can anyone just go on and type in whatever number they want? So I logged in, I made an account, and I just wanted to see if I could place a bid.
Starting point is 00:58:01 And I was like, then it would be like how realistic is it or people really putting in money. And sure enough, as soon as I went to put in the bed, it's like link your account, USDC, like the support of coins. It's all legit.
Starting point is 00:58:11 Like you have to have the money to go in there. So if you use, it's incredible. So something happened in the auction. This is a great point. Someone, there's a pre-off on the credit card for a low number,
Starting point is 00:58:19 but we don't charge it until the end. right in good faith we assume someone put fat put a fat finger 413,000 dollar bid on the first day we charged the card got declined cancel the bid immediately now if that happened towards the end of the auction would have been really bad right leaderboard so we actually disabled like credit cards were enabled for anyone that first used credit cards and wasn't irresponsible so we kept it enabled for those people um but on the second day of the auction towards the end if you wanted to create a new account you had to use the stable coin smart because we found this error. Now we know how to fix it in the future, which is we do basically you set your
Starting point is 00:58:55 max, we pre-off that max, and then you can bid with those funds, right? But it's already authorized and done. Whereas instead of us hitting the stripe, you know, which we did when it hit 413, we hit it and canceled it within 30 minutes, you know, but if that had happened at the end of the auction, it would have been an disaster. But this is our first time building this tool. So it was a great learning experience, but it worked flawlessly and it ended up being great. But yeah, no, I mean, we built it on the website. So. And then what's the difference between compound and cold storage? So compound is a defy protocol.
Starting point is 00:59:28 Cold storage just means that you store the private keys, the passwords to your crypto wallets on a hardware device. Oh. Totally different. Defy protocol is like a pool. It's liquidity pooling. It's like there's a lot there. Unfortunately,
Starting point is 00:59:45 I'm happy to come back on and talk about. But cold storage is something that everyone should consider when you buy Bitcoin or something. Ethereum or have stable coins. You get a ledger. I recommend ledger. There's also Treasurer, but I recommend ledger. And it's literally a little USB device that encrypts the passwords to your wallet on the
Starting point is 01:00:03 blockchain. So it's not like you're storing the money on the USB drive. Like people think that you actually put the Ethereum on the USB. No. It just is an encrypted code that unlocks your wallet on the blockchain. It's almost like the keys to the car. That makes sense. I always thought that like you stole the Bitcoin on the...
Starting point is 01:00:22 That's what I thought. I thought you take the code and you put it on this little thumb drive. That's what I thought. Well, you used to do that. You could take a private key and put it on a thumb drive, but that's super not safe. So Ledger is an encrypted device that you can't read the data from it. It can only send data. Well, it can only send data.
Starting point is 01:00:41 You can't take the data off of it, which is why it's encrypted. It's encrypted cryptographically the password to your wallets, but you're wallets all live on the blockchain. So if I'm checking my accounts, I can literally look at my wallet address, but only I have the device that unlocks that address. It's just like an unlock. It's not like you store the Bitcoin on the hardware. Yeah, yeah. It's a big misconception. Very worth, you know, worth mentioning. One more thing. Where would you say is the best resource and most unbiased and objective resource that people can use to get more knowledgeable on crypto, NFTs, and like that whole like universe? Because there's so many people telling you their thing. And there's a lot of
Starting point is 01:01:20 bad information. And I'm probably going to take a large portion of this 11.7 million. I'm probably dedicating a million to crypto education tools, like developing a website that has, that answers a question. Wow. Wow. I don't have a YouTube channel, man. But I'm going to probably develop an education ecosystem that just has like very, like I'm going to get all my friends in crypto that are, you know, very reputable like Fred Erzum who started Coinbase, like just to co-sign that all the information is correct and basically write a little bit of a Bible, a beginner's guide. because people, there isn't a good place to learn. Coinbase has great resources.
Starting point is 01:01:54 And if you want to learn more about NFTs, OpenC has the NFT Bible, which is a great place to start. But you kind of needs to be, think about learning about crypto like math class. You can't just jump straight to calculus. You have to learn addition and subtraction and multiplication and PEMDOS before you go to calculus and derivatives, right? Like you can't understand what the derivative of X squared is
Starting point is 01:02:18 until you even understand like variables and functions, right? So think of crypto as like this new mathematical language that everyone's going to at some point have to learn, but they don't have to know everything. They just have to know the basics. Like you know how to, when you're paying for something in the store, you have to know addition and subtraction
Starting point is 01:02:36 and know that they're charging you the right thing on your group on your bill. Everyone knows that. Right. There's going to be certain basic crypto knowledge that everyone's going to need to know. But beyond that, it's just up to you to know it.
Starting point is 01:02:46 Right? Like the knowledge that you spread about real, state and earning compound interest and returns. Like this is stuff that you're doing a service for the community because a lot of kids don't even know they just keep their money in the bank account. So you're already taking them to step two. With crypto, there just aren't that many resources that take you to step three and four and five.
Starting point is 01:03:03 So I'm definitely going to take a big portion of this money and build educational tools for people. I think it's so important. And I'm already like talking to my team about like, who do I want to hire to build this for me? Because I obviously don't have the time, but I can review it, fact check it. And I want to build like, I don't. I don't know what the name of the website is yet, but like just crypto at crypto.
Starting point is 01:03:21 crypto.edu or whatever. And like maybe I'll buy that domain. It's probably worth a probably very expensive domain. But crypto. dot edu. And it's just a beautiful website that says, this is what an NFT is. This is what Bitcoin is. This is what Ethereum is a store of value.
Starting point is 01:03:35 Ethereum is a protocol for decentralized applications and defy products. Like all these words that I'm saying to you like what the hell am I. This is what defy means, right? Like if you Google Defi, like five million things come up that like are all different. it is really complicated. But for our generation, and I'm 30, I don't know. 30. You're 30.
Starting point is 01:03:53 How old are you, Jake? 22. 22. Even more important for you. Like, learning about this stuff in 10 years is going to be like knowing how to use the internet. It is. We've proven that. Bitcoin went from zero to 50,000 in 10 years.
Starting point is 01:04:08 So inevitably, you have to just bet on technology going exponential because it always has, historically. Right. So eventually, you know, if you guys learn sooner than other people, you'll have an advantage and hopefully you'll make more money. Perfect. So that's the hope. We love it.
Starting point is 01:04:24 Last thing, look into that camera. Tell everybody to smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm. Everybody smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm right now. And subscribe. And subscribe. And get your two free stocks down below in the description. And get your two free stocks. Down below in the description.
Starting point is 01:04:42 Hold on. And get your two free stocks down below in the description. Perfect. Thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate it. This has been so much fun. What is this? Two free stock thing?
Starting point is 01:04:51 It's Weble. Weble. You need to deposit $100 in the platform, they'll give you two stocks worth all the way to $1,000 to $850. Weeels. Is you a referral code? Yep.
Starting point is 01:04:59 Link down below in the description. Jack usually wears his Weebel shirt, but not today. Weebel. Awesome. Thanks so much, man. Thank you. Thank you. Of course.
Starting point is 01:05:09 You have to do the introduction. It's a thing with your guests. You have to say, hi, my name is Justin. If you want to serve Justin Blow. Welcome to the 40, let's say 42nd ever
Starting point is 01:05:23 episode of the iced coffee hour so far the podcast has made we'll give you the amount and then Jack will say wow that's a really good introduction welcome back to the 43rd ever episode of the iced coffee hour and then that's the guy
Starting point is 01:05:38 yeah solo welcome back to the 43rd ever iced coffee hour my name is Blow and this episode wait and what is it Welcome back to the 43rd ever episode of the iced coffee hour. My name is Blow,
Starting point is 01:05:51 or Justin, aka Blow. And so far the podcast has made that much. You got this. I'm so sorry. Yeah. Say it one more time. Welcome back to the 43rd ever episode of the iced coffee hour. My name is Justin, aka Blow.
Starting point is 01:06:08 And so far the podcast has made. Welcome back to the 43rd ever episode.

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