Unchained - Can ‘Choose Rich’ Nick Create the Barstool Sports of Crypto? - Ep. 964

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

Thank you to our sponsor Uniswap! Nick O’Neill has become one of crypto’s biggest viral sensations over the past year with his “Choose Rich Nick” persona. But beyond a content creator, he is a business man and developer. In this Thanksgiving/Black Friday episode of Unchained, he discusses how he stumbled into internet fame, the man behind the persona and how he intends to become the Barstool Sports of crypto and NFTs. He also delves into what really happened at the controversial Avalanche yacht party and what it was like being viewed as “gay” for doing theater as a child. Plus how he feels about attacks on his looks and the secret to his success. Guest: Nick O’Neill, CEO & Co-Founder of BoDoggos  Links: Unchained: Avalanche’s Unlocked Supply of AVAX Set to Increase by $350 Million Coinbase Buys Cobie’s ‘Up Only’ NFT and Echo in $375 Million Deal Timestamps: 🚀 0:00 Introduction  🧏 1:42 How Nick stumbled into internet fame 🤔 9:16 Who is “Choose Rich Nick” actually? 💡 12:23 Where Nick draws the line with the ‘Choose Rich’ persona 💥 13:22 How Nick wants to create the Barstool Sports of crypto and NFTs 💃16:33 Nick explains the “hot girlfriend” arc and drama 🤯 20:31 What REALLY happened at the Avalanche yacht party 📽 30:06 How Nick got into crypto 😕 35:08 Nick on being viewed as “gay” for doing theater as a child 💡 38:43 How Nick feels about the jabs at his looks 🧠 43:25 The most important ingredient to his success Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I was like, I hope this goes viral. I was initially disappointed because it wasn't getting a ton of traction. And then Kobe posted that thing and I'm like, boom, we got it. Like we were like literally celebrating. There was definitely internal consternation at Avax because they're like, guys, this is not the type of marketing that we want, which is like literally a board member got involved. There was all sorts of stuff. But then the CEO played along and like tweeted something, which we didn't even ask him.

He thought it was funny. There was, Oh, my God. And then I was like, oh, I'm going to get lawyers involved with this. So I started building this whole thing. Then I had other sponsors that we work with, distance themselves from us, basically. So they would get more engagement. Hi, everyone.

Welcome to Unchained. You're no hype resource for all things, crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. I have to reveal that we are actually pre-recording this episode. And before we get started, I just wanted to give you a quick reminder that nothing you hear on Unchained is investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Heavy emphasis on entertainment today. For more disclosures, visit UnchainedCripto.com.

Are you a builder who needs to add on-chain trading to your product? The Uniswap Trading API from Uniswap Labs offers plug-in-play access to some of the deepest liquidity in crypto. It's on-chain execution at an enterprise level. More liquidity, less complexity. Visit hub.uniswap.org to learn more. I'm here with Nick O'Neill, aka Choose Rich Nick, CEO and co-founder of Bodagos. Welcome, Nick. Thanks for having me.

You are a widely known kind of crypto character, a sort of brash crypto character, and you go by this nickname, Choose Rich Nick, and you do funny gags and stunts, and you kind of take the piss out of people who take you too seriously. If I'm reading sort of like, you know, your origin story in the timeline correctly, it actually looks to me like your character was kind of created accidentally. Is that true? You know, go ahead and tell me the story of how, you know, your initial choose rich video went viral and how your character came to be.

So, well, I've been in content for a while. I mean, I would say that 2005, 2007, I was doing blogging, which was the thing at that point in time. And I built a blog network. One of the publications was one of the largest in the world at that time. It grew to, I think there was a site called Technorati at that time that would actually rank the publications. And I got up to like 60. And basically, so I've always. been in content. When NFTs came out in 2021, I switched to podcasting. I had been,

I go back and forth between content and development, software engineering. And so I had been through a multi-year stint focused just on software engineering, got tired of it, switched back to content, and that started as a podcast. Me and my business partner, Pio, created the podcast together. A guy easy on our team, joined very soon after. And through that podcast, we eventually ended up creating video content. I'd created video content a long time ago. I grew up doing like television production on local cable access stuff and things of that nature. But, and I aspired to do that in the future, but I didn't realize that was actually a feasible thing. But I natively had been familiar with using cameras and everything else. So me and Pio spontaneously

right before Choose Rich Nick had gone down to the Bahamas for FTX when that had imploded. And videos went viral. We got a ton of attention, but we didn't quite know, we didn't like double down on it at that point in time. And last year, during the beginning of the year, we went for a company offsite. We had continued during our podcast. The podcast was the main business. We also have NFT projects. We have two of them, Nifty Portal, which is our Heath-based one, Bodagos, which is our Salana-based. And we continued to just provide commentary on the market. And in March of last year, I had come down. I was considering moving to Florida. We did a company off-site here in Miami. And I got back from visiting friends in St. Bart.

which is a very ritzy place. I sort of was feeling the vibe and ritziness of the location. We got an Airbnb mansion that we had rented in a brickle here. And basically, we were making content. And the first video that actually went viral was me on a yacht. It was actually a photo of a selfie of me saying, this is who you're trading against. And it got like 45 million views.

And it was people just dunking on me for, look, these guys have no girls on the yacht. Oh, that boat's rented because they're literally accidentally there was, well, not accidentally. Without any like notice whatsoever, there happened to be like a rental, you know, safety agreement, essentially sitting on the table. There were other things that people are just like, this dude looks funny, blah, blah, blah. And so I started actually just getting attacked for this. this stuff. And when we had rented the house, I knew there was something in there that had, I choose rich every time of these lights that were in the backyard against this like green,

sort of fake grass wall that was in this house. It was honestly a pretty tacky house. And before we left, Jack, who was on our team, was like, we have to shoot a video in front of this. So the choose rich video after the yacht, basically became that and it gave me a way to interact with people who were talking about this photo, which was not at 45 million views or whatever at that point. It was at maybe like a million, which was huge for us. And we shot this video and it gave people the ability to basically be like, this guy sucks. And that was the entire foundation. That was the birthing of choose rich basically. and choose rich Nick, which was like that became the tagline and mantra of this entire thing.

And basically that entire campaign became something which was people felt like they were exposing me, even though I was like, yo, I'm making a joke to begin with. But then I'm like, all right, well, we're just going to roll with this. we had seen we had had the experience with FTX but didn't see that fully through i saw you at actually the sbf trial um and i think i was seated right behind you went in one of the places while you were taking notes literally um and so i'd gone down there to uh kind of do some follow up to that story uh because i still my background is doing like self-taught journalism essentially through my blogs.

And so I have this, like, direction for news. But this character became a little bit of a different thing, which is, like, frankly, acting and telling people, essentially, like giving them an opportunity to dunk on me and feel like they're exposing me for something. And that whole choose rich Nick thing basically became a, this viral moment with community notes where, they were exposing me for, I mean, stuff that was obvious, basically, where they were like,

oh, that bottle that he got is not of champagne that he bought at a restaurant, wasn't 20 grand. It's only two grand. I think I spent like $500 on the thing at a restaurant or something. Oh, really? I thought either one of the comments or community notes said it was $85. Well, I bought it at a restaurant. So it probably was like restaurant markup on whatever that. So you're probably right. Maybe I spent $2.50, but if you bought it retail, they had the wrong bottle, actually. So they were incorrect about the community note. They got that wrong. But that entire campaign became this back and forth conversation. And that's something that has become a repeated format for us over the years is really that dialogue, which I think X is particularly good at, is having that dialogue.

with the audience, no other social media platform comes close to it. Yeah. Honestly, when I watch your stuff, so okay, I have to admit the first time I ever saw one of your videos, or at least that I remember, I don't know if I got the joke immediately. And it reminds me of how, so when I was a freshman in college, you know, the initial dorm room was three people. And one girl and I in our dorm, we, in the room, we became best friends. She's still one of my best friends to this day. And then the third one, you know, wasn't as close, but like, we, you know, we were friendly. And one day the third girl said to me about my close friend, sometimes I don't know if she's

joking or if she's being mean to me because my friend's humor is so dry. Yeah. And I, so I think, like, you thread that needle so well, actually. So I'm so curious, if you were to describe this choose rich character, like, who is this person? And what persona are you trying to affect? So I've been working on actually shaping it more because I think there's a lot of really creative opportunities

online to build real true character development. The reality is there's a blending between myself and choose rich. And I'll describe choose rich independently and also describe like myself and how those two things came to. be. Between the two characters, I'll start with just choose rich, which basically, I mean, simply, it's a, the highest level is a rich douchebag is essentially what it is, who effectively has incredible levels of confidence, delusional confidence, to a degree where they think so highly

of themselves, yet essentially come across as a comical representation of themselves. Now, there's many things that I think about it, specifically about why the first version of Choose Rich went viral to the character is the integration with crypto. He's not just a rich person. He's a crypto-rich person, basically. And there are a lot of people that don't like crypto. And much of the source of disdain and frustration is when they miss out on unfathomable wealth. When they say that, man, I missed out on that opportunity and I'm so pissed.

I knew about Bitcoin. I knew about Ethereum. I knew about Salana. I knew about these things. And I didn't buy enough. And we all have those stories also. Everyone that's in the crypto space, I bought Ethereum at $8. I bought Bitcoin at $100, but was even familiar with it when it was at pennies and

tried installing the wallet on my computer, like very early on at the beginning. But I sold all those things for moderate gains, basically. I didn't think, oh, this thing's going to be $100,000. There was a meme around it being worth a million dollars, but it just didn't feel like that. So people have frustration over that. I can, there's other elements to the character, I would say, that I've been evolving over time. a big part of it, which was early on still, was not just the confidence, but this desire to flex on other people, which is not my own native persona. I lived in San Francisco and I grew up in D.C. or Arlington, Virginia, and no one there is generally dressing with Louis Vuitton or Gucci or any of these, like, you know, gaudy brands.

Miami has a ton of it. People in Miami love this. And I think that that's something that's very specific to Miami. And it also comes across as borderline abrasive when people see that. They're like, oh, look at that idiot spent $5,000 on a bag or like whatever it is, basically. So I adopted a lot of those things that I wouldn't have done or that a 15-year-old version of myself would have thought was cool. which is like, oh, you need the hottest chick. Oh, you need to have a ton of money. Oh, you need to have baller material things. And material wealth is all that matters in life, basically. Which I know definitively is not the case, which is not my sole mission in life. I'm someone who's done a ton of therapy and other stuff, basically. And I actually, like, you know, am really focused on emotional communication and things like that.

and that would never come across via this choose rich nick character basically um my own self i'm just someone who's like i'm an entrepreneur i'm like passionate about building things i'm passionate about creating things and i consider myself also this weird uh rare mix of uh creative talent and uh technical ability basically and technical talent which was just brute force me working on learning how to code when I was in college and building a social network before Facebook, for example, or building like all sorts of different, a textbook search engine or like all these things. I ended up getting good at engineering as a result of it, basically, because I wanted to go build something and I didn't want to work for somebody else.

And so I think there's a lot of that desire that still overlaps into the characters that you see today, whether it be an Andrew Tate who's just like, I mean, awful and also probably, not probably definitively morally reprehensible. And I think that's the limit where the line that I draw, which is like, can we avoid objectifying women is one of the things, which unfortunately there's been some, I just had this girlfriend, so that we kind of are on the like pushing the limit of that basically. And can we do things without basically taking advantage of our audience, which is something that I think is still rampant in crypto for better or for worse, basically. It's part of the foundation of a decentralized world. So I think that that's always going to exist. We want to do it in a way

where we don't come across as the infomercial type, which is what a lot of my comments are like, when is he going to drop the course? Like that's what they're expected. Wait, drop the course? Like an info thing. I'm like, here's how to trade. Oh, I see. So what is your goal like with the Choose Rich Nick character?

Well, we have a business entity, which is Bodagos. Bodagos is also the name of our Solana NFT project. The founding of this business was built on the premise. There were two. But the foundation was Barstool Sports for NFTs or crypto. There was another component, which was Bloomberg for NFTs. I built an entire analytics platform that was built into what we were creating. But Bloomberg still has entertaining content, not the type that I'm producing, but I also think that media is constantly changing.

I live through, you probably remember this from when blogging, having an inline ad, which was not just an inline ad, it became an editorial, was very, like, this was like a huge deal. And I remember BuzzFeed having really pushed hard and monetized heavily off of these advertorials, then became the standard of monetizing a lot of these publications. But at that point in time, people are like, well, this is unethical. Like, I can't do this particular thing. And I think the same thing goes today where we see.

that you have to bring an edge when it comes to social media. And that brings awareness and attention. And there's a funnel that exists from at the top, basically inflammatory stuff is borderline where you can go. We don't want to do things like racism, sexism, like anything that's really can actually offend people. We want someone who, if they're offended, they're offended by me, basically.

They think that I am a, like, more so disgusted than offended, I would say, or just turned off, basically. Like, that guy's a loser. That guy's whatever, basically. And that's me being the butt of the joke, which is different than a lot of things where I see where there's other communities and people who are the butt of the joke, which is what we want to avoid. And so that inflammatory stuff leads to eventually, I'll do a news video about what's going on the state of the market. and I get more and more people that watch that video as a result of it. And they say, oh, I didn't realize that this guy knew what he was talking about or had any sort of like, you know, head on his shoulders. Like he just seemed like a complete jerk.

Wow, that's interesting. Consider me a fan or something like that. Okay. So you're basically like trying to get attention for yourself that will then kind of trickle down to your business. And our business is a network of personal brands. So Choose Rich Nick is one of those personal brands. PO, my business partner is one. Clemente is another.

Easy Eats is the fourth main one. And there's a guy who does ops for us that sales ops and other operational things that he's building his personal brand as well. And so maybe he becomes a creator at some point as well. And we work on these deals together to promote crypto brands. And then when you talked about how the recent viral series of posts that were about your new girlfriend, you know, it was a picture of you with this woman saying 43 years old, new girlfriend, new yacht, no kids, crypto millionaire. And then I don't, so I don't think this was planned, but then

the actual real person at a certain point when she realized this was going viral said she was paid, she wasn't your girlfriend, all this stuff. And then you made some video saying, hey, you're harassing my girlfriend. This is somebody I loved, blah, blah, blah. And then after the whole thing, then like it was like, what 10 days later or something, you posted a photo of yourself with another, what you called new hotter girlfriend. So anyway, you just said, though, that, like, you don't want to get into sexism or whatever, and you said you push the line with that. So talk a little bit about, like, what that setup was, like what you were thinking,

what you were going for, and whether or not you felt like you threaded that needle. So we hire actors and actresses. Like, let's start with that. When we create content, that's fundamentally, like, we can be always the, the creator, but you need other people to participate. And the reality is, is young hot people can get attention, but that's not the foundation of it. Like the foundation is not, she actually was really good at acting. And we have a bunch of videos that came out with her where I thought she was doing a great job. And the premise of that was not all girlfriend content, basically. You know,

this is a conversation I have with other female creators actually. It's like, well, what is the thing that we can do together? And I'm like, well, would I have given a guy the same opportunity to be in that sketch? And how does, how does gender play a role in that? I think we're feeling our ways through it, our way through it. But she wasn't supposed to be the butt of the joke at any moment and time at the beginning of that entire thing. She then, after texting her, ghosted me, basically, and this is in a professional context. I've paid you money as a paid actress. We're going to pay you an hourly rate.

You're going to come show up. We're going to create content. But did you tell her that you were going to say that she was your girlfriend in the post? Everyone on the team was pretty sure. I don't have a recording of her sitting there. But we thought we all wrote that tweet while she was there and then posted. and she laughed about it, basically. So, like, my understanding was that she knew.

I'm going to be very explicit in my agreements, like, you know, like in everything to make sure that there's, like, there's no ambiguity. But we showed her our content and we've showed her some of the viral stuff that's happened and how that's gone down. So she seemed like she was totally down to play along. But, and her issue wasn't actually that we, that I called her my girlfriend, actually. The bigger reason was that I didn't tag her. And she was pissed that I wasn't tagging her. She texted me that. And I was like, so it's hard to do that on it.

Like if I were to tag you in the original video, that video would not have done as well. Hands down. Like, or sorry, photo. It wouldn't have done as well because it was more around the dunking on me than it was about this girl. But it then became about that girl when she wrote her post. the only reason that post got surfaced was because I sent it to somebody else to say, yo, do you want to dunk on me?

Here's her post. Because no one had it. No one followed her. They didn't know who she was. She had just created that account. Okay. Okay. So I took advantage because I was like,

well, if you're going to be unprofessional, I was like, I'm going to fully take advantage of this moment and like turn it into a drama. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it was a drama. All right. So in a moment we're going to talk about, another drama that, I don't know, maybe went a little too far, but first we're going to take a quick word from the sponsors to make this show possible.

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So stop worrying about liquidity infrastructure and focus on building your product. Get access to the same liquidity that powers billions in swaps through one powerful API. Visit hub.uniswop.org to learn more. Back to my conversation with Nick. Okay, Nick. So I have to ask you about the Apex Yodd episode. So I just need to say because we are going to be airing this on Black Friday, which is the day after Thanksgiving. So if you are a parent and you are listening to this with your child who is at an age where they are in an institution that might say that they, you know, could be, I don't know, gotten into trouble for some reason. You may not want them to listen to this because they might get ideas in their heads.

So, okay, assuming those kids have departed. Now, Nick, tell us what the F happened at this Avalanche yacht party. Well, A, nothing. That's not what it looks like online. Yeah, so let me explain what took place. Okay, okay. A team member, we were hired by Avalanche. Uh, to create,

you were hired? Yeah, they were, they were one of our partners up until last month. They, uh, got a new, um, leader of marketing who came from Solana, who's not as centered around just creator, uh, programs. And so they've kind of abandoned that for now. Um, but yeah, we, we are partners with AVEX. Uh, they pay us to make content. We had done.

So this was this whole thing was manufactured? Yes. Oh my God. Okay. Okay. Well, keep going. Keep going. So we were on the yacht. And, well, before the yacht, a team member there was like, Nick, I need, I said I was going to have, you know, five million impressions on this. We are nowhere close. I need something that's going to like, like, do really well. And I was like, he was like, you're the best at the viral side. Like, we need to figure something now. So we went on, I was like, dude, I can't guarantee anything when it comes to like content and performance because you just have, you don't know, you just set it up so that you hope that it has the result you're aiming for. So I went to him and I said, well, actually, no, we got on the yacht. It was not actually Avax yacht. It was a say, I think was actually the official sponsor of it, but it turned into Avax's yacht.

I don't know if we have beef with say or whatever the situation is. A couple of people from Avax were there. I don't know how much of this they want me sharing, but I'm going to share. So they, basically, I had an idea when we were on the yacht. I was like, so I need to get thrown off this yacht. And I was like, I sat down and I, there were two other creators that were on the yacht. I don't know if I should be sharing. Crypto-Kalio and the Wall Street best guy, basically.

They were on the yacht. And so I came up with this idea to develop an incident, of which we would never define. It would never be defined what the incident is, but something really bad went down, basically, was what I was going to say, which is like a canvas for the internet, basically. So I go and say, I shoot a video. Well, I go and tell, I tell Kaleo, I tell Wall Street bets, and I tell some other people. So I'm going to get thrown off this yacht or thrown off. I'm having a jet ski.

Take me away. And then we're going to shoot that. You all are just going to shoot it on your camera. And then I'm going to see who has the best one and we'll get something that feels like really realistic. And I had, I worked with AVAX to draft a legal official legal statement, distancing themselves from me, basically. So I was like, so this is going to play out in a series. And I was like, if all goes well, the internet will take the bait. So, so, we shoot the, we shoot the video.

I have Wall Street bets, the guy who runs that account, president, I think it's called like, Presidentes, something like that. I was like, tweet out, I can't believe, you know, what this guy did. Oh my gosh. And he did his own version of it. It did very well. He went into group chats that he was in and started being like, this guy's disqual. disgusting, like, I can't believe he did this and never says what the thing is, basically.

So suddenly all the comments initially are just like, what is this thing, what is this thing, what is this thing, what is this thing? One replyer, not Kobe, another person came up with the idea that never got credited that basically came up, put the idea of art basil together and made up this story, which was essentially based on the banana tape to the wall, which is this iconic sort of art piece that I think the founder of Tron bought, I think Justin's son bought it for like $250,000. He did.

And then, maybe. Yeah, I think it could have been more. Yeah. Someone in the comments was like, yo, this is, Nick pulled out his junk,

taped it to a piece of cardboard and walked around the yacht with it, was what they came up with. Oh, and painted it yellow. And I was like, So that's ridiculous. I laughed because it was just an initial comment, like that someone had, like, written. Kobe sees that comment, takes it, amps it up, basically, and turns it into this entire thing.

By the time I was, like, walking around Bloomingdale's in New York for Christmas, I had a family come up to me and be like, are you the guy that got thrown off the yacht for showing his junk? Like this whole thing, this guy, his girlfriend, his mom. And I'm just like, that. That is me. That didn't happen. But yes. Okay. Okay. So here I am, like almost a year later and I'm doing research for this interview. And here I am being like, oh, so Kobe's tweet says, for anyone that is out of the loop, he taped his penis, painted yellow to the wall like that banana art that Justin's son recently bought. And this has 1.9 million, sorry, 1.9,000, sorry, 1.9,000 likes and almost 70,000 views.

And I was like, oh, Kobe always knows like everything that happens. I'm sure somebody told him what really went down. So I assume that's what happened. And I was like, what the? So I was like, that's where the improv part starts. So I was like, I hope this goes viral. I was initially disappointed because it wasn't getting a ton of traction. And then Kobe posted that thing.

And I'm like, boom, we got it. Like we were like literally celebrating. there was definitely internal consternation at AVX because they're like, guys, this is not the type of marketing that we want, which is like literally a board member got involved. There was all sorts of stuff. But then the CEO played along and like tweeted something,

which we didn't even ask him. He thought it was funny. There was. Oh, my God. And then I was like, oh, I'm going to get lawyers involved with this. So I started building this whole thing. Then I had other sponsors that we work with,

distance themselves from us, basically. so they would get more engagement. But like they were in on it. They all were in on it. Got it, got it, got it. Okay, okay. Okay, well now the inside story is revealed to everyone.

Oh my God, that's so funny that I had this like warning on here for parents. Because, because, but like, I don't know if anybody knows like a little, a child who is, especially with the male variety. Like sometimes they, they get ideas in their heads and they think things are funny. And then they take it before. And then they like get in big trouble, like, like actual real trouble. Yeah. So I just was like, okay, I feel like I need to put a warning.

Well, that would have been an actual crime had that had that occurred. But part of me as that went down based on the fact that everybody assumed that that was the case, like literally to this date, people still are like, isn't that the guy that whipped out his junk on the Avax yacht? And I think from that standpoint, I was like, maybe I should have just done it basically. like I'm not the type of person to do that, by the way. Like, but it started like, maybe I'm that kid that shouldn't be listening to myself right now because that, like, I'm the person that's like, you know what? Maybe that is a good idea, right? Like, as long as nobody's hurt in the process of it, like, part of me was like, yeah, I should like, like, who cares? Like that, but anyways.

Yeah. And by the way, Justin's son bought that banana for $6.2 million. That's insane. So yeah, it is insane. How did you get into crypto? The beginning was, well, the first time was my roommate came and told me he was in a lot of like, he used to play World of Warcraft. He was in these like different forums online.

And he told me about Bitcoin. That was the beginning of it. He was quite early and he bought it and held it and did pretty well. That was like pre-mount Gox, then Mount Gox, then there was. then there was, well, Coinbase came out. And once I was living in San Francisco at that time, I just sold this publication. And I was like, okay, I'll put some money into this. But I did not put enough.

And I was like trading, which in hindsight was the dumbest thing. Like I ended up learning from that entire process. It took me many years later, actually, to understand the power of just investing versus, you know, trading. And yeah, it was, it ended up not doing great. Then in 2017, when I was in San Francisco, a buddy of mine who's actually an investor in us that I hang out with periodically still,

he did an ICO. And I was like, yo, these ICU things are scams. Like, this is ridiculous. Like, I can't believe these people are, you know, raising all this money off of just, just absolute garbage and nonsense. And I started making actually at that time video content, which was news videos about crypto in these ICOs, basically,

because I thought that that was, it was just fascinating to me. It was the same way that I got into technology and startups. I was really interested in software entrepreneurship, but I didn't know anything about it. So I started blogging about it. And I started interviewing people. I ended up interviewing Mark Zuckerberg, Cheryl Samberg, like a lot of tech luminary people, basically, that I met through my publications that were reading me. Like, they were reading these posts.

And I was starting to break news. I was getting other things like that. And so that became my path rather than software entrepreneurship. I have tried repeatedly to make software entrepreneurship succeed. I have failed every single time outside of. I ran a software development firm that I launched, and I built products for other people, and most of those startups were acquired.

And so that was awesome. And I take a lot of pride in that. And the last company I was at before this company started, I was called Growth Product Manager, but I did software development stuff there. Also, I helped them build their mobile app. That company went from $10 million a year to a billion, or sorry, hundreds of millions and their valuation being worth over a billion.

And so that side of things, basically, when the NFTs came back, I got back into crypto once again. So I had gone through the founding of it, kind of missed out on it. ICO days, traded it again, did okay, nothing big. And then 2021 came in. I was like, you know what? I'm going to stop asking questions about this and just give it a go. And there's a guy I know Mike Lazaro who sold Buddy Media to Salesforce for like, I think, $750 million, $780 million. And I almost was a co-founder of that company, actually, because of my blog, randomly enough.

But I turned that down. I don't know which was the better outcome, if I'm being completely honest. But, I mean, if I had a huge chunk of equity, it would have been great, but I don't think he ever offered me a serious amount. But I watched him, and he's a very smart guy, and he said something which was like, I'm making a categorical bet on Facebook and social media. I don't know what we're building. I'm just betting on this space. I'm an operator. I'm going to go make money.

And then he got Mark Pinkis, Peter Thiel, Reed Hoffman, and all these other people to invest in him. And I was like, well, that's insane. I mean, this guy is clearly so well connected. I looked up to him, and I still do, as someone borderline kind of a mentor. And I saw that and I said, you know what? I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to pull to Mike Lazaro and make a categorical bet on this space.

That's it. And let's go do it. So that's what brings us to today. So I have to say, you are a pretty good actor. I don't know if you have any training, but I noticed you can do different voices, like different types of accents. I guess you would say. I even noticed, and so I'm not, like, I have friends who are actors,

but I don't know a lot about it, you know, myself. But I do think you even could be called like a good physical actor. Like, you do physical things. I mean, even just really simply, like, during this interview, you've done kind of like this sort of, I don't even know what it is called with your hands. Chesterous. Yeah. But then in the one video that you did where you pretended to be,

this Salana soldier and you were like marching like a soldier and dropping to the ground in the forest of New York City's, Washington Square Park. You even do these sort of like gangstery access. I know there's kind of just a lot of like I can always sort of tell which character you're evoking. So just tell me a little bit more about that. Like do you have any training or is it just like a natural thing?

Or do you work on it or? I did children's theater. I did some local cable access stuff. I used to be in place. plays that were not even beyond children's theater. It wasn't the most, it wasn't viewed. I mean, time has progressed a lot, but you get this especially in poor neighborhoods,

especially where it was viewed as gay, basically, is the way of describing it. And so if you were a boy, like I did a bunch of acting when I was little and nobody thought that I was gay, but anyway. Yeah, it's viewed as this feminine thing, It's actually not. It's more about, well, it's, it's, emotion is viewed as a feminine thing because men are not raised in a way to be able to communicate what they're feeling.

And I mean, that's like literally a crisis that exists in society right now. Agreed. And so being in touch with your feelings is viewed society-wise, societally as feminine. And so that's something that's interesting. As I've gotten older, I've always had a very emotional side of me that, like, connects with that. But I've also learned the language of emotion, which has been great for relationships, not that I have a string of success there. I'm single. But the reality is that's been one of the strengths all along. And to be able to dig into what you're feeling is really,

for me, actually, probably one of the most fundamental things where you can, and I can exaggerate that stuff. It's basically to say, what is this feeling? Take that to a thousand, essentially. And there's one other person on our team, Clemente, who is phenomenal at the physical side, to a degree that I would almost argue is potentially better than me. He's very good at it. Now, we all have our own. I think what you get with a lot of people, same with actors, is you, in acting and especially in like Hollywood and places like that, people just get typecast. Like, it's basically this is how that person is, so I'm going to hire them to do that. Same with artists. If you want to hire an illustrator for your, for,

your publication, you go find the style you like and you say, I want more of that, basically. And so you kind of have to stick to the character. I would argue that a lot of actors that you see that are like really well known, they've kind of just played the same role over and over and over again. And so some of this stuff just came from my childhood, the neighborhood that I grew up in, the kids that I was associated with. and then having a degree of experience with acting was helpful as well. I also think some people are just natively have more experience with being able to do some of this stuff.

So I want to kind of dig in a little bit more on that feelings bit. And this next question is a little bit uncomfortable for me to ask. But, you know, basically when I saw this, I really wondered, you felt about it and you might have seen that Kobe recently tweeted something that was pretty direct. He said, quote, the reason I am now a large fan of Nick is because his entire bit only works because he looks a bit like a creature from the David Bowie movie Labyrinth or perhaps from the dark crystal. He is so curious looking that it transcends unattractive and becomes almost science fiction. His face unsettles you and most of humanity has the same reaction to it. I deeply appreciate that

someone is able to know this and commit to exploiting it for internet jokes. Would not work at all if he looked like a human being. Didn't get it for a while, found the trawling a bit bland or obvious, but watching him breach containment into Normie Twitter a few times has made me a big fan of his art. How do you feel about that? That, uh, I almost agree with him, but hold on. I'll get to that one statement.

The first time Kobe, when Choose Rich went live, he basically was posting a lot of negative stuff. and that actually hurt more than anything else, I think, was seeing people who I respected say negative things about me in the sense that I don't care if you don't actually, well, either you get it or you don't. And there's a certain level of, it's not even, it's not standard intelligence. It's not like, this is not a thing where you deduce it based on logic and reason, basically. it's one where basically you have a connection where you can see through me and understand

what's on the other side because you're in you're intuiting the fact that that actually is an act and some people immediately are able to intuit that and some people don't uh there's no doubt that my face plays a major role in it and the reality is like i can't get a nose job right now as far as i'm concerned because i think my nose is a key component of of pulling people in. There is a unique state to that. But many successful actors are well known for their look. And so whether it's someone who's Brad Pitt or George Clooney,

who's known as the best looking man in the world, there are many people that are competing for that specific thing. I don't believe that I'm in competition for the ugliest person in the world because I do not believe that I'm the ugliest person in the world. I also find myself to be the older that I get. I think that like having comfort with yourself and having just the feeling good in your own skin is really the ultimate superpower. So there's no, it doesn't matter really what you actually look like.

You know, there's all these like stories of, you know, at least I'm not like in a place where like I can't imagine if I was like crippled or something like that. Not because I don't think it would do better, but because I'd be suffering in pain as a result of the condition that I'm, you know, that I'm sitting with. So I don't feel that my nose or face is a condition. I feel that I'm a very smart and motivated individual. I think that I natively also have an understanding of humor that I think someone like Kobe is not as able to deduce no knock against him. But if it weren't for people, people like Kobe. If it weren't for people that frankly have a tinge of, call it autism,

essentially, I don't think I would be as successful as I am because it actually tends to infuriate people who can't read certain degrees of my performance, basically. And so what he needs to do is he needs to logically conclude why I'm succeeding. And it's not as much. And so like, I mean, since when was Kobe the expert on? on, you know, acting. Like, I never viewed him as, I never looked at him for, like, movie reviews. So I'm not, like, I don't really care what his take is

on my performance in something. And it's unsurprising that he mentioned some movies that I would think would come across as quite geeky, quite nerdy, which I don't view geeks or nerds as bad. I consider myself both myself. But I also don't think. that they're inherently the best judge of the art of comedy. Okay, yeah, I think this goes back to what I was saying about that old roommate who,

like she, she would say about my good friend, I don't know if she's being mean or, or funny. And for me, I found this person hilarious, like just so deadpan and so funny. So I think you're right that there's, um, I do think that's partly why your things go so viral, because half the audience doesn't get it and they're outraged. And so they engage with it on that level. And then the other half gets it and finds it hilarious and engages with a totally different level. A thousand percent. One last note on that.

That actually is the most important part of the success of this content is that there are people that can't read through it. Now, there's people who I think are able to or eventually they, understand it. And I'm always concerned that that'll become too much, basically, that there will be, that that percentage will be 90%. Right now, it's gone from, you know, the origin of choose rich. I'd say 25% got it. Then now I would say that I'm at 50 to 60% actually getting the shtick. But yeah, that actually is a fear. But the reality is, I think there's legitimately people who their condition that they're that I said it was autism. I think it's something that's similar to that.

And this isn't a knock against autistic people. It's just there's some people that take things at face value and that's all that they can see. And that's how they digest and consume information. And that's just native to them. That's how they communicate. That's how they understand the world. And so this just exploits that, which I'm perfectly.

fine with. All right, Nick. Well, it's been such a pleasure having you on Unchained. I'm so glad we got to have this chat. It was so fun. I appreciate it. If you ever want to talk to the business side as well, I'm happy to do that as well. I'm obsessed with, well, there's the media side. I could interview you on that side, actually, because I have so much curiosity. I respect you for your journalism. Your journalistic integrity goes beyond borderline what I would consider reasonable for most people, especially in the crypto space, because I think you've missed out on a lot of opportunities as a result of it, but I still respect it. And I grew up in a space when I was self-taught on that, where I learned from people like yourself who really are hard-nosed journalists that understand,

you know, really strive to understand what's going on in a market and an area with an unbelled. biased view. So I really respect you for that. Thank you. All right. Well, everyone, thanks for joining and hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving. Happy Black Friday. And we will catch you later. Unchained is produced by Laura Shin with help from Matt Pilchard, Juan Oranovich, Margaret Curia and Pam Majumdar. Thanks for listening.