Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPLive: NFT Basics and Beyond with Ben Yu, John Kraski, Brian Esposito, and Ashley France

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are one-of-a-kind digital assets that are bought and sold online. NFTs are changing the future of ownership, investment, and how we use technology. In this episode, Hala and NFT experts, educators, and creators, Ben Yu, John Kraski, Brian Esposito, and Ashley France define NFT, discuss why NFTs took off in 2021, talk about how to avoid scams, the importance of community, tips for beginners, how to stay up to date on NFTs, and so much more.  This is part one in a special YAP three-part series about NFTs hosted Live on Clubhouse.  Topics Include: - History of NFTs - Why 2021 is “The year of NFTs” - Pandemic’s play in NFTs - Why did NFTs take off compared to other crypto assets? - Different types of crypto  - Define NFT - What does fungible mean? - Why NFTs are hard to counterfeit? - What is the blockchain?  - Avoiding NFTs scams  - Steps on how to launch successful NFT - Why is community such an important element when it comes to NFTs? - How the community can help their NFT projects grow in value - What makes a good creator - Advice for new investors and creators - Where to learn about NFTs  - How big brands are getting involved in NFTs - Defining web3 - NFTs in the metaverse  - How will NFTs evolve?  - Q&A portion  - Tips for beginner and red flags  - Obstacles when it comes to NFT mainstream adoption - Importance of education  - And other topics… Ben Yu is a crypto-investor, entrepreneur, and founder of Curious Addys. At 26 years old, he became a millionaire by investing in cryptocurrency.   John Kraski is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at NFT Genius, a Mark Cuban Venture-Backed NFT Technology Platform. John is the Co-Founder of NFT Thought Leaders and the host of the NFT Heat Podcast.  Brian Esposito is the Founder & President of Esposito Intellectual Enterprises, LLC. He is the founding partner at BAPES NFT.  Ashley France is a Web3 Freelance consultant. She helps Web2 companies transition to Web3 through compliance consulting, business strategy, product launching, and marketing. Sponsored By: Athletic Greens - Visit athleticgreens.com/YAP and get FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. Mint Mobile - To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, and get the plan shipped to your door for FREE, go to mintmobile.com/yap Grin.co - Find out how GRIN can help you grow your brand. Watch the demo at GRIN.co ShipStation - Go to shipstation.com and use my offer code - YAP. Get a 60-day free trial. That’s 2 months FREE of no-hassle, stress-free shipping AsianBossGirl - Check out all 150+ of their episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Resources Mentioned: Curious Addys: https://curious.xyz/  “NFTs 101” by Ben Yu: https://medium.com/coinmonks/nfts-101-why-nfts-are-a-generational-innovation-4626ae803e3b  “Cryptocurrency 101” by Ben Yu: https://medium.com/@intenex/cryptocurrency-101-7197684775fd  Brian’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/brianjesposito?lang=en Brian’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianjesposito/  Brian’s Website: http://www.eie.rocks John’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkraski/  NFT Heat Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nft-heat/id1588592625  Ashley’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyfrance/  Listen to the Episode on Clubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/room/PA0Je0Ee  Connect with Young and Profiting: YAP’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting/     Hala’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/     Hala’s Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/yapwithhala/     Clubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/@halataha   Website: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. You can crush your fingers and all your toes during a data center migration. You can knock on wood, pluck a dozen for leaf clovers or look to your lucky stars for a successful office expansion.

You could hold your breath, shut your eyes, and say all the well wishes to help avoid cyber attacks. But none of that truly helps you. Because next level moments need the next level network. With the security, reliability, and expertise to take your business further. AT&T Business. The network you can rely on. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit.

Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the

right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of XFBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and bestselling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhanced and productivity, had to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button, because you'll love it here at Young and Profiting Podcast. Hey everyone, you are tuning in to a live episode of Yap Young and Profiting Podcast.

I'm your host, Talataha, and we are live today on Clubhouse in the Human Behavior Club. Today's episode is being recorded for the Young and Profiting Podcast, and we have recruited an expert panel of guests to discuss NFTs, and we'll be learning the basics behind these new digital assets. This is part one of a three-part series and in this episode we'll cover the definition of NFTs, why they have value and we'll understand the different applications that NFTs have.

We'll also unpack Web3.0 in the metaverse and how they relate to NFTs and so much more. In part two of the series, we plan to cover NFTs for content creators and in part three, we'll cover NFT investing and how to avoid scams. Each week, I'm going to bring you guys different experts based on the topic and we'll be hosting all of these YAP Live events right here in the Human Behavior Club, the number one club on Clubhouse every Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern. So make sure you guys give the club a follow so you don't miss out on these amazing events. I'm here today with a panel of experts on NFTs, including Ben Yu, who is an entrepreneur,

crypto expert, a former Hardvirt student. He also is the CTO of Curious Addies Trading Club, which is a game that teaches new users about NFTs and crypto. We also have John Krasky, my friend and co-founder of NFT Thought Leaders and Director of Strategic Partnerships at NFT Genius. We have Brian Esposito, another one of my friends, CEO and founder of Esposito Intellectual Enterprises. He's also a BAPES NFT and BAPES Clan Founding Partner.

And lastly, we have Ashley France, who's going to be joining us soon. And she is a Web 3 consultant that takes Web 2.0 companies and helps them bridge into Web 3.0. So I'm super excited for this session. And in terms of how it's going to work, we're going to have a guided interview with these panelists for the first hour. And then we're going to open it up to Q&A for the last 30 minutes.

I do love for these sessions to be super interactive. So if you have a question, just raise your hand, DM me your question. And if it's relevant, we'll pull you up if it will add to the conversation. So don't be afraid to raise your hand. We love to get interactive. So we have a ton of ground to cover. I want to get started right away. And I figured we could start off with the history of NFTs to warm us up.

So unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard about non-fungible tokens or NFTs and in many ways last year, 2021 was really the year of NFTs. NFTs is an innovation that gives creators the ability to monetize their work easily and it also provides collectors with an efficient way to purchase and store value. NFTs kind of seemed like they came out of nowhere in 2021, but they actually traced back to 2012. They were originally supported by Bitcoin and they really took off once Ethereum came out in 2015 and they grew solely from 2015 to 2020 and had an explosion in 2021 due to other blockchains such as Cardano starting to get in the game and also because

of Facebook renaming itself meta and moving into the metaverse. So it's super interesting to think about how NFTs really took off in 2021. So I'd love to hear from the panelists why they think 2021 really became the year of NFTs. I'm going to kick it over to Ben you first and then let's go to John and if you're on the panel and you want to contribute to this question, just flash your mic. All right. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me and amazing, amazing introduction into NFTs. And so yeah, it's way, one was just a fascinating year because the concept, like you said, of NFTs states years back and yeah, the last bull market that we had really in 2017, we started seeing the first mainstream time use cases of NFTs.

The first one was CryptoKitties at the tail end of 2017. Yeah, there had been today minted like 3 million CryptoKitties, but they were kind of flash and panning, never really caught on in the mainstream. And in 2021, we had the next major bull market. So Ethereum entered like a bear market along with everything else 2018 to 2020 towards the tail end of 2020. We started seeing just massive action of people being really interested for the first time on like a mainstream level in NFTs.

And so we had the massive people sale where at Christie's, the 5,000 every day is based sold for like 60,69 million, I think. And then after that, there was the NBA top shot, also just really brought this into mainstream. And I think the pandemic have a major part to play in it, where you can see collectibles across the board, Pokemon training cards, all this stuff, right? Just really starts skyrocketing to value.

And it became the natural outlook where people were like, oh, well, this is the first time that you can really have digital assets that have value. And you can buy these things and, you know, prove your ownership over them. And then there was just so much such a profusion after those like major stories came out, a crypto-punk sold for 7.5 million earlier in 2021, as the bull market happens, as people start talking about this, as people start hearing about it. Yeah, just a ton of people came into space and then we just saw so much innovation

when four of the Viacolub came out, there were just so many different PFT projects that started coming out of the wordworks and then one of one, our pieces, the Matherverse started becoming a big deal when Facebook launched, you know, they changed their names in META and everyone started jumping onto that.

And NFTs are the foundation of building block of the metaverse. And so I think a lot of different conflicts of events where the world is just progressively going more digital, sped up with the current virus. And then I'm making all these things, so it's just cause NFTs to kind of be a natural fit for 2021 and people to really start paying attention to. Yeah, I think that was an awesome explanation

in terms of why they really took off. John, I'd love to hear your thoughts. That was an amazing answer. Ben, I don't really have that much to add, but you know, you talked about the pandemic, and I really think that that did accelerate the growth curve because we were all hold up in our homes for the past three and a half years.

And I think that the community aspect is something that really, really kind of drove that growth because, you know, work human beings and we want to connect with others. And there's a huge community building aspect around NFTs. Most of the successful projects have that. And you know, on Discord, you know, people were able to gather and interact and socialize.

So I think that's something that really helped kind of propel NFTs into the mainstream in 2021. Yeah, and in my opinion, it seems like NFTs took off and gained traction faster than other crypto products did. So does anybody have any ideas in terms of why it really took off compared to other crypto assets? Yeah, so it's my point. The reason that I'm actually in NFTs and why we start curious,

I was training club and all of that is because it's the most compelling mainstream use case of crypto that I've ever seen. And so I'm someone who's never been into art, I've never collected physical art pieces or had any artistic taste. And so I always thought that other crypto products, the major use cases are crypto or you can buy. And so, cryptos, and then you can use DeFi, which is decentralized finance, which is where you can go off and lend your crypto to other people, you can stake your crypto and interest lots of things you can do there.

And then there's DAO's decentralized autonomous organizations, where you can basically create these democratic companies just run by people all over the world even anonymously. And then there are NFTs and those are three major use case areas that we're really seeing, kind of as a profusion of the smart contract work that's being done on blood chains. And out of those three NFTs are by far the most approachable where NFTs make a lot of inherent sense, and it appeals to an audience that's not necessarily extremely into the intricacies of the finance behind

crypto, which is what the DeFi audience kind of appeals to, and not necessarily into all the technical aspects of crypto as well. But really, the concept is a lot more intrinsically interesting in appealing, where it's bringing in an art and culture crowd. And the way that I actually heard it, which is very interesting from a friend of mine who runs Bospudies, and he's an artist and he's an inside-of-the-art, like NFTs were so compelling to him because it was this way that you can actually start making money if you're art. But it's similar to the Bohemian kind of city cultures where there may be like some places

in the city where artists first start to settle and then they bring culture into the city in that specific area. And then it kind of gentrifies over time and everyone also kind of comes in because it's become hip, it's become more popular and cultural. And I think that's really what NFTs are doing to crypto is it's bringing culture to crypto for the first time. And now there's something cool and hip that you can actually just kind of understand without actually knowing anything about the underlying technology.

And that's been really compelling about entities. Howl, can I jump in a little bit here? Of course. So thanks again for having me. I really appreciate it. One thing to think about too is over the last decade, you have to understand the foundational work that crypto and digital assets laid, whether it's the platforms like Coinbase and you know, ATORO, whatever you may use, all the banking regulations and being able to put

digital assets in an account and trade it to FIA currency. And the marketplace, you know, OpenC allowed this to also explode and become accessible. So, you know, now it's at a position where anything that comes over top of what crypto and blockchain and all these digital assets movements that have happened over the last decade, things that come to the market now have a chance to explode very quickly. And then you start to attach very large audiences or celebrities or actors or actresses or athletes. And one of our holdings, Turntoyne, is now sitting just under a $15 billion valuation.

But it took us five years to develop the mechanism for people to buy virtual shares of people. And that's an NFT-based platform. But we weren't going to launch it in a market and not work with regulatory. So a lot of the things that companies and projects, like the ones that we do, we do it right, we take the long road, but all that foundation has already been built, the infrastructure has already been built. So that's why NFTs was able to really move a lot faster than crypto and move because that's set the stage for NFTs to be able to explode. Those are some really, really interesting points.

I'd love to hear from Ashley, and I was wondering if you could kind of take it back in that because we've got a lot of beginners, and I think we need to understand what NFTs are. So can you help us define what a non-fungible token is? Yeah, no problem. Thank you again so much for having me. I really appreciate

it. And I just wanted to piggyback off of the previous note that we were talking about in regards to white NFTs, we're taking off so fast. And I think one of the main reasons is that it's a lot easier for people to understand and conceptualize as opposed to I think like crypto coins in regards to really seeing how not only just for like artists but creators etc. can really utilize this tool to not only own the content that they'll be creating but also how to monetize it from years on. And then I think the second point also is actually the community that comes with NFTs in general. They've been super, super welcoming for people in regards to like teaching people how to, you know, set up their wallet, how to get started with NFTs, how to create

a minting page, what you need in your roadmap, etc. And I think because there's such an openness of let's teach people how to bridge into Web 3 through this space and let's teach people how to get set up with NFTs. I think that's something that's really helped driven and pushing people to want to actually get involved in this. I love those points. Great job, Ashley. And maybe Ben, do you want to define what a non-fungible token is?

I know you have a lot of courses and so you're a great teacher when it comes to NFTs. Appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. So non-fungible token, even the word itself right is kind of weird. We don't really talk about fungibility, so we can break it down.

So what exactly does fungible mean? Fungible means something that is perfectly interchangeable with something else. And the most daily basic example that we typically use is money. And so if you have one US dollar, it's perfectly unchangeable if any other US dollar in the world. Technically, you know, they're not exactly unique.

One might be crumpled, one might be older, whatever it is, but you know, no one really cares that you're giving them one specific US dollar versus another one because they have the exact same value. That's also true of things like cryptocurrency. So you have Bitcoin, you have Ethereum, no one really cares if you have one specific ether that was mined in you know 2016 versus one that was mined in 2018 because they have exactly the same value. So fungible things are things are perfectly interchangeable. So non fungible things on the other hand are things that are unique that are not perfectly interchangeable. And this is actually most things in the world. So if you think of, for example, dogs, right? Like if you've dropped off your dog at a dog hotel, and then you come back and they gave you another dog, you'd feel like, super upset, you'd be like,

you know, that's not my dog, right? And they're like, if they were like, what do you mean? Like all dogs are the same. You'd be like, that's totally insane. And it's the same thing. If you like, drop off your care that daycare, and like, yeah, you pick up your baby, and like, they give you another baby.

Like, all these things are a non-fungible, and we intrinsically understand that they're totally unique and just because they're all babies, they're all dogs, they're all homes, or things like that, you know, they're all of different value and they all have different properties.

And so non-fungible tokens just refer to digital assets that are unique and you can't perfectly exchange one for the other. And so there are a lot of different categories of non-fungible assets and so the most common ones that you can see in the NFT world deal with things like art. And so we're talking about images, we're talking about videos, we're talking about all these digital assets,

and you might have heard the things like crypto punks. And that's a collection of 10,000 just pixelated little punks, and they all look the same. So they're all part of the same collection, but each one is actually unique from another one, and they don't have the same value, because of that. Some of them are more rare because they have different traits, like there are very few alien crypto punks,

and so there's a worth a lot more money. And even among those, there are alien crypto punks with a pipe, and like with other pipe and things like that. And so that's what non-fungibility really refers to is the fact that these things are unique. And then there are other kind of non-fungible assets, like for example, digital land in the metaverse. And so there's a lot of virtual reality worlds

that are coming out that people are starting to basically be able to own lands in, just like you might own land in real life. And so owning a specific part of land is also non-fungible because it's value differs from a different piece of land based on the various environmental properties of where you are. For example, if you're in the middle, the heart of a central metropolitan area in the metaverse,

it's kind of like buying land in New York City versus like Arkansas or something like that. And so those are all the different concepts. And so a lot of the concepts of non-fungible assets in real life, like lands, like real estate, like pictures, paintings, or things like that, are now just being applied into digital assets in the form of non-fungible tokens, in any sense. Makes total sense, and that was an excellent explanation. So thank you so much. So let's talk about why NFTs are not easy to counterfeit. And what's the underlying support of NFTs that make them so valuable?

So why don't we kick that off to John? Why are NFTs hard to counterfeit? I think that's a bad question. I'm not even going to step on his toes with that. Ben knows the answer. Ben knows the answer. I mean, Professor Ben is in the house. I don't want to disrupt his flow

when it comes to the super technical stuff. So yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll say there are no experts in NFTs. We're all learning this because it's so new, but I appreciate it. But yeah, yeah, so why are NFTs. We're all learning this because it's so new, but I appreciate it. But yeah, yeah, so why are NFTs so hard to counterfeit? Well, that's really interesting because it is true. From technical perspective, NFTs are very difficult to counterfeit.

Way more so than in real life when you have one Gucci bag or something like that. Like, people can easily counterfeit these things or paintings. The Mona Lisa, they are like, replicas that no one can tell apart in museums. For example, literally it's been estimated that 20% of these are in museums is fake. And these are things that literally experts have just spent so much time with the best equipment trying to figure out if they're fake or not. And there's no way to really tell. And so on that, on that degree, blockchain technology makes NFTs a lot more easy to verify actual

truth of ownership and provenance. And provenance just means kind of the history of given art piece or any kind of digital asset or anything, painting in real life. Meaning, you know, when was it created? Who was it created by? Who first spotted? Who was a second owner? All of that stuff.

All of that stuff is extremely easy to verify with a NFT because it's all recorded on the blockchain. In order to understand why this is such a big concept, we have to understand what the blockchain is. The blockchain really can distribute a database and a database that's just a place where you store information. You can think of it and a database that's just the place where you store information. And so you can think of it kind of like a bank ledger, it records different transactional information,

like then sent one ether, one dollar, whatever it is to, you know, Hala and so forth. And so that information gets recorded in there. But then, you know, Ethereum's main innovation was realizing that not only do you, are you able to record just financial information, you're also able to record any kind of information. So now you can record information about creating a NFT, a digital asset, and also information

about who has owned that NFT for how much money you're sold and the entire history of it. And so when you look at a given NFT, like a crypto punk, and this is crypto punk, let's say 5,000 or something like that you can check a thing called the contract address which is a ethereum piece of code that's been put on the blockchain and with that contract address you can read a couple of functions on the code which are just you know programs that have been written so that you can check certain things and all NFTs typically follow a given standard. They're all interchangeable.

They have the exact same function. Any program, any person knows exactly how to check who the current owner is. Also, you can check things like who bought this token last and so forth. You can read this entire history of every single NFTs. If you like a crypto punk, 5,000, you check the code, you go back, you can see, oh, this was actually made by the first, the correct smart contract, the one that the original creators of crypto punks

kind of put on the blockchain. Okay, so you got that information. And then you can see, oh, okay, this was first sold to Gary Vaynerchuk for like a hundred of these for something like that. And then sold to this person, so forth. And you can say, have this whole whole record and so everything is perfectly transparent and every down the blockchain Can be viewed by anyone in the world and so it's this perfectly open database that anyone can see that just records a

Immutable transaction history of everything that's ever been done so in theory. Yes, NFTs are Totally easy to verify truth of as long as you can understand those technical details, or as long as there's an easy enough user interface that's been developed around like a simple website where people can just go and check these details, and plug it in, and so forth. Unfortunately, right now there are a ton of scams in NFTs, and it's because the space is so new.

And so for sure in the future, it's gonna be super easy for anyone to just know, oh, this thing has like the green check mark that you kind of see. Unlike Twitter, right? This is an authenticated real transaction from a real like an NFT collection and open see some of these major marketplaces already have these features, but they're not totally correct.

And so on the other flip side, anyone can create a smart contract to try to replicate and counterfeit a NFT. So it is possible for someone to just copy the exact same digital image of a crypto punk or all 10,000 crypto punks, right-flex save them, and then deploy them with a new smart contract, and then say, hey, this is a crypto punk's collection, and then try to give that to someone else. And if you are able to technically understand all the stuff that we just talked about, you'd be able to really quickly tell for sure that, hey, this is a completely fake crypto punk. But if you don't look at that, if you're just looking at the picture, there is no way

to tell the pictures apart or any of that. And so there's a bit of a nuance. It is very difficult to counterfeit. In the future, it will be basically impossible to have fake versions of these images and things like that once verification systems all that are much more in place. But right now you do have to be careful. It is possible to get scammed with kind of a fake NFTs. Hold tight everyone. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsors.

Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire University podcast. The Millionaire University podcast is a show that's changing the game for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Hosted by Justin and Tara Williams, it's the ultimate resource for those who wanna run a successful business and graduate rich, not broke. Justin and Tara started from Square One, just like you and me. They faced lows and dug themselves out of huge debt. Now they're financially free and they're sharing their hard-earned lessons with all of us. That's right, millionaire university will teach you everything you need to know about starting and growing a successful business. No degrees required. In each episode, you'll gain invaluable insights from seasoned entrepreneurs and mentors who truly understand what it takes to succeed.

From topics like how to start a software business without creating your own software, to more broad discussions such as eight businesses you can start tomorrow to make 10k plus month, this podcast has it all. So don't wait, now is the time to turn your business idea into a reality by listening to the millionaire university podcast New episodes drop Mondays and Thursdays find the millionaire university podcast on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts That was really really great and I know part three We're gonna really go into investing and scam So if you guys are interested in that make sure you stay tuned to another session coming soon. Brian, I saw you flashing your mic, and I know you just put out an NFT project. So I would love to get from you the steps at a high level to launch an NFT.

And if you wanted to add to what Ben said first, that would be cool too. on the scams, part of Ben Tusset at the end. It's, again, new, any new industry, everybody's got to get burned to learn what to look for. I think people get scammed when they're going through the pre-ment phase because the emotions are so high and they want to get it so quickly that they don't read the proper addresses. It'll make sure that everything's accurate. And I'll tell you what, these scammers are so good.

Even sometimes I thought it was our own stuff, I'm like this looks exactly like our project. So it is unfortunate, and there has to be some better systems in place to help protect people. But at the end of the day right now, everybody just needs to take a breath and read everything correctly, make sure to getting all the official announcements from that project, official Instagram, Twitter, Discord, pages or servers. So, I know I think probably 90% of people that are just jumping into the industry for the first time or buying an NFT have gotten scammed or burned.

So, it helps them look out for the next one, but just be careful everybody listening and take a second and make sure you're getting all the correct information directly from that project. But how we launched our Babes project, I can tell you, the steps that we did, it was quickly became one of the fastest organically growing NFT projects in the world. We looked at the entire market and we wanted to issue something very different, something that we believe provided an exceptional utility, enhanced value for the community. And we did that by a launching beautiful design, artwork by Tixar Disney in 21st Century Fox designers.

So that was our initial step was to give this market something really amazing graphics and appearances that really stood out from the rest. And then what we did was we went around and we pulled in what is known as a docs team. And we brought in 25 exceptional business people, leaders from around the world. We brought in people like the co-founder, E Entertainment, Larry Namer.

We brought in music, icon, and legend, Charlie Walk. We brought in just an assault of amazing people at the Ecotee J.L.S. here, an amazing PR and marketing and branding of a woman. Obviously, Hale, you were one of our babes ambassadors. So we want to cross the board into many different industries and we brought in leaders and we brought in seasoned leaders that have been in their industry or in their market for a long time. And then we picked some exceptional rock stories that we believe are the future of NFTs and crypto and digital assets.

And that allowed us to really stand out and build this movement. And what happened was the community just grew massively and too fast, honestly. We were not ready for the growth that happened. We went to nearly 100,000 members in our discord within a few weeks. Our Twitter also blew up at the same time.

We were also, I believe, the first project to successfully launch an NFT project on LinkedIn. We saw some amazing things happening there where everybody that uses LinkedIn, it's a professional network to do business. The key thing, how we talked about this on a previous Twitter spaces was the fact that people were changing their profile images to one of our babes designs was something I never thought I'd see in my life. When you're doing business in LinkedIn and you're connecting with people, you want people to see your face and make that connection and maybe do a business deal or maybe set up a meeting. And the steps that we did here was everybody worked 24-7. We did Twitter spaces sometimes three, four times a day.

Some of those Twitter spaces had over 8,000 people listening in to our babes ambassadors, to our founders and contracts and partnerships. We kept announcing almost daily. But we, you know, basically what I did was I took 20 years of work and all the mistakes that I made, don't do those, bring in amazing people and go into this market correctly, go in with seasoned professionals that know how to launch major, major companies projects,

technologies, partnerships. And we created what is known as the first meta-vester fund. So the utility behind the Bay of San Ft is that everybody is part of the growth of what we do. The Dow is set up to take a portion of the funds and invest into MetaVest or Web 3.0 projects, technologies, and companies to community votes on which projects we invest in. And we create MetaVests or MetaVents for the growth of those companies. So this whole thing is de-risk with capital coming in from the NFT sale we invest in and we create meta-words or meta-vents for the growth of those companies. So this whole thing is de-risk with capital coming in

from the NFT sale and an amazing list of business people to help support those startups that the meta-fund meta-vests in. So, you know, we looked at this thing very differently. We created something that I think is completely unique and I hope we set a benchmark in a precedent as to how future NFT projects are launched and do it better than we did and ensure that this industry needs to survive by successful NFT projects. It needs to survive by people doing good business and having ethics and morals

and values because if that doesn't happen, this as fast as it's growing, it can easily turn around nobody will touch it. So we want to make sure that we're doing it right. Yeah, and I can definitely attest to like, vapes was like an idea to like, oh my gosh, this is like happening so fast and there were so many people involved. So I can attest to how fast that grew. So this is a great segue to talk about community related to NFTs because NFTs can really function like a membership card and it can provide access to events and exclusive merch and special discounts.

It's like having digital keys to an online space where only holders can engage with each other. And because the blockchain is public, it's also possible to send additional products directly to anybody who owns a given token. So I'd love to talk about that in a little bit. But really, I want to talk, but really I want to talk about community and I want to talk about why it's so important for NFT creators to build highly engaged communities with their NFT projects and to support their brand. So I'm going to kick it over to Ashley.

I think you probably have a lot to say about this. Can you talk about why community is such an important element when it comes to NFTs? Yes, of course. So unlike in Web2, when you launch products or services and people will attach, random celebrities, influencers, et cetera, have been able to have successful launches, that is not the same in Web3, the whole point of,

or concept of Web3 is being decentralized and being community-based. So as as you're literally building infrastructures together, and community is the core in the basis of any major NFT project, right? The current Web 3 community, though, it's still super small. We're still super early. They're definitely welcoming more and more people

into this space, but they're also really being careful about the territory and making sure that those who are currently integrating into the current Web 3 space have good intentions. They're also really being careful about the territory and making sure that those who are currently integrating into the current Web 3 space have good intentions. They're providing value. And they want to do, you know, basically good in this space. So I would say not only building your own community for your project is super important,

but also taking the time to engage and bridge into the current Web 3 community because nine times out of 10 is something that you're doing. There's other like discourse or communities or groups that are already done or touch it. So definitely taking the time to engage into the current community, to network with people, be a part of conversations like this, Twitter, spaces, et cetera.

So you can have that boost in community to help you actually grow your project. And then along with your own current community, it's super important to take the time. And I want to reiterate again, taking the time to build your community because a lot of projects are people who want to put out projects that I talk to on a daily basis. They take months and months in regards to the back end of the technical aspect of their project, whether it's creating the NFT, the smart contract, minting page, etc. But then they don't want to take the proper time to actually build a community. They want to drop the next week or drop in two weeks. And unfortunately, it doesn't really work like that. You need to take the time to share rate content to attract your ideal audience. You need to take time to engage with people. You need to take time to actually provide to them. It's a two-way street in the space.

It's not the typical, you know, buy your consumer type of relationship. It really is a community. And people are buying into what you're doing. So if you want them to buy into what you're doing, you need to give them a reason to do that. You need to show them that, hey, what we're doing, we want you to come along with us. And this is the value and the utility

that you're going to be getting. So I really, really urge anyone who's thinking about currently putting out a project or has put out a project and kind of struggling with selling it to revisit the fundamentals and taking the time to actually think about who is your idol community, who do you want to be a part of this ecosystem that you're building, and what are different ways that you can reach these people and show them that they should be a part of this community, whether it's curating more content, engaging with them, partnerships, et cetera.

I love that. Great job. So I want to kick it over to Ben now. And I want to talk about how NFTs can basically endow their owners as time goes on with more value. And I think that's what makes NFTs really different from other things, is that you don't only just own the digital asset, for example, you can also get

access to events later on or new things can come about because the blockchain is programmable. So Ben, could you talk to us about that? Absolutely. Yeah. Now, this is one of the most amazing things about entities, exactly as to say. So I'm really glad that we're touching on this. A physical asset is fixed. It's like a painting can't really give you access to other things because it's just a physical

kind of object that hands on your wall. But in NFT, the skew morphe kind of, you know, initial understanding of NFT was kind of an analog to that where it's like, okay, now we have a painting. Now we make a digital. Now we give it ownership and that's an NFT. But then exactly as you said, because NFTs are programmable, we realize over time and we keep building in this ecosystem, it's like there's so many more things you can do with NFTs.

And the NFT itself, for example, can grow over time. NFTs are not always immutable, meaning that they're not changeable. You can have NFTs that can get animated over time, or can become 3D and things like that. You can change the metadata that NFT points to. And so that's one way that NFT literally itself can even grow. But speaking to your second point of how a NFT can give you utility over time,

an example is for us, for example, we have these curious Addy NFTs. There are these unique little people, the Oxford Buses at U. Buys, an image, and you get the image. But also with that, that image, that NFT is stored inside your Ethereum wallet. And so you have this Metamask wallet. It's a place where you can store pretty much

all your crypto assets like NFTs, like Ether and so forth. And when you go to specific different websites, you can connect that wallet. And when you connect that wallet and you can sign the message websites, you can connect that wallet. And when you connect that wallet and you can sign the message up proofs that you own that wallet, it's kind of like your access pass to anything that that website wants to offer. And so that website can be anything, or it can be even more than that.

And so for example, for us, we have a portfolio tracker. And if you go to portfolio.curiousaddies.com, you can see you connect your wallet. And as you connect your wallet, we check to see if you have a curious addy NFT. And if you have a curious addy NFT, then you're able to go ahead and use our portfolio tracker, which allows you to just, it pulls in all the data about your NFTs, how much you bought them for,

how much it worth now, how much money you've made, things like that. And there's no reason that any NFT, we partner with other projects, we let other NFTs also kind of use this as, you know, partners and things like that. And there's no reason that any NFT we partner with other projects, we let other NFTs also kind of use this as, you know, partners and things like that. And so that's one thing that you can do with this. You can even bring it into the real world. And sometimes, for different events, they actually check to see that you have a NFT and then you can go ahead and print a ticket to go to a real life event. So the kind of NFT can become an access pass

to any kind of event in the real world or even more digitally in the metaverse. You go into the central lands, one of these kind of virtual reality worlds and there are some events that you can just gate where they only let you in if you have the right NFTs. And so this is where a lot of NFTs are going is providing a lot of utility. It's not just that you're buying this image, and like Brian, you said, having an awesome image, like having really, really well-designed art is really powerful for a lot of these empty projects. But on top of that, you can just add

unlimited kinds of utility, electronics, applications, I think it access to events, I think it access to, even possibly giving them real physical prints, things like that, merchandise, a lot of things that people can do and have been doing to add more value to NFTs over time. A question that I have for the panel and I'll keep this a free for all you guys can just flash your mic if you want to chip in. I want to know why NFTs grow and value. How do NFTs grow and value over time? We did touch on it just now,

but I want to speak on it a little bit more. Does anybody wanna answer that question? So I think NFTs grow in value two ways. One, it's from the actual creator. So whenever I work on NFT projects, I focus not on the actual utility that people will provide in launch, but utility that we can continue to provide over time,

whether it be in the next three months, six months or four years. So continue to add value to those who hold the NFT holders. And then I think the second aspect is the actual community, whether it's the people who are actually joining the community and the size of the community. So I definitely think those two aspects are ways that have a really big impact on continuing to grow the value of the NFT project.

Awesome. Does anybody else want to add to that? Yeah, I'll apply it to our project. Again, I'm taking old school business practices and philosophies. It's demand and scarcity and tremendous utility. The things that we're doing, I could speak on and ever like to come up with opinions, but I could tell you we're adding Tremendous demand because we've included private aviation perks. We One of our business babes ambassadors is Rao Leo who's the CEO of the one hotel background tree houses So it will be doing some incredible travel and

personalized experiences for our babes community and our and our NFT project You know, we're also giving part of the part ownership in in our babes community and our NFT project. We're also giving part of the partnership in our babes world. We're all over NFT holders. We'll actually own a piece of real estate in the metaverse when they get an apartment with their NFT. We announced with Artemis Space Network that we're gonna be minting our Genesis 2 NFT project from the International Space Station.

So in our case, it's real value, it's opening up. What I love about the space play is that we're utilizing babes and our relationships with these amazing private space companies away for the regular public, which has been stuck behind a TV or a web screen or their phone since the 60s wanting to be involved in space. And it was only government agencies and then it was just the uber wealthy. Now with what we're doing and some other great projects we're opening up opportunities where the community can be part of something that they never thought they'd ever have any real connection to.

We also announced the music IP. One of our BAPES community members is a phenomenal singer, songwriter, and musician. And we rolled out the Vibe with the Tribe, which is actually kind of an anthem for our project. And we given the publishing rights minus all the admin fees, an IP ownership to all the NFT holders. So that's actually going to be earning

as that song is played or streamed or if there's live performances. So in our case, it's just business. You know, it's creating real value, creating real utility, and it's complete scarcity. If you think of public companies that have tens, hundreds billions of shares outstanding, and you look at those share prices,

and then you look at NFTs that have 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 10,000 NFTs issued. It's not a lot. And if you have a smart team that really respects the community, that's smart with their decisions and involves the community, you can always add value. And in our case, we don't want anybody to ever sell our NFT. We want them to treat it like Berkshire halfway class A stock and something that they passed out from generation to generation. I loved that example, Brian. Ben, I'd love to understand from you how communities can actually help and if their NFT projects grow in value. So actually owners of these NFTs can actually

increase their value just through their engagement. Can you help us understand that? Yeah, I think the best example of this is the original PFD project, CryptoPunks. I'll talk about this as I wrote an article called MFT's 101 Longest Piece. Anyone's followed to brand about MFT's 30,000 words. In there, I basically spent like half of it talking about crypto bugs, which is this original thing, which like on its space value makes no sense why it's more so much because you look at it and it's like it's crazy that someone has paid $10 million for this weird pixelated picture of a punk. And so why is that? Like why would

someone do that? And it really comes down to community. So one of my girlfriends is named still in field. He runs Tigma. It's like $10 billion company. He's the reason I kind of got into NFTs because I didn't understand it. I thought NFTs were toll scam and like, you know, just crazy that people are spending so much money like buying these. But this guy is obviously way smarter than I am. And so I'm like, all right, if he's into this, like, yeah, I'll take a look. And so he was one of the biggest people into this. He started buying crypto punks back in 2018 and they were like $100 for one crypto punk. And then he bought what he thought was the most valuable one, the Mona Lisa crypto

punk, 7-8-04, his way of calling the calls it, for like $15,000. It's a total of crazy amount of money. And then he sold it this year or last year rather for $7.5 million and that's that's so crazy and it's like yeah well what what happens what what changed the value so drastically over the last like three years and it really does come down to Greening and so he talks about this he has a great interview that you could read where he kind of

talks about why first he got into crypto punks and it was really because he got into discord he started looking at the community and he was like whoa these people are like got into crypto hunks. And it was really because he got into discord, he started looking at the community. And he was like, whoa, these people are like, they love it, they love this. And they're here not for the price paradoxically, not for any of the stuff,

they just genuinely love the other people who are in this community. And they're so dedicated to this project. And they were just like talking all day about the rarity and whatever, and like, oh, this one is like super cool for this reason so far If they just kind of create this like very passionate kind of like cult following behind crypto punks And then you know that that's sustained it to the point where his his whole thing is you know all these communities

That are really strong long term grow in this organic kind of slow way and you have this like sub culture like kind of forms around crypto Punks and then at some point you, you have this inflation point where it starts going mainstream. And so what happened last year to really blow up? Well, literally, Serena Williams, J.C. Snoop Dogg, all these like insane famous people start turning their images on Twitter to their profile pictures to crypto banks. And you look at these people, they have like tens of millions of followers. And's like how much money would you need to pay one of these people to actually advertise something to this level and to Literally do it's a point that they would change their actual profile picture to your thing right? It's like you can never pay enough money to get out of JC or something like that to go ahead and like change his like image to a

Adidas, like Nike or whatever it is, company. But they're doing it for free for crypto punks. And not only are they doing it for free, they actually themselves paid for the privilege of doing this advertising. They paid $500,000, $1 million to buy one of these images and they're advertising it.

And that's just so powerful. And that's really what NFTs have kind of done in this like mainly natural building thing is everyone has skin in the game. And when you have one of these things, you just kind of want to kind of increase the status of it. You want to share it with all your friends. You want to talk about it.

You want people to know about it. And that just naturally increases the mindset. And this goes back to, why does any art have value? And why is the Middle East so worth $800 million? And really, it's an accent. The Middle East itself, you can say, oh, it's because it's most famous painting in the world. And the question is, why is it the most famous painting

in the world? And then maybe the answer is it's because it's the best painting in the world. But if that were really the case, what's really interesting is the Middle East was unknown for 400 years. No one knew about the Mona Lisa outside, like the art intelligentsia, until one random little accident in 1911, and that accident was the Mona Lisa was stolen

from the Louvre by this Italian thief called Perugia, and Windau's stolen became this international overnight scandal, and everyone in the world started hearing about it. And then after that, it was kind of a blip on the radar, you know, like you hear about it, but then it would die away. But then someone made this really famous parody of the Melissa, like this original meme. And then that meme starts spreading like,

well, virally like wildfire. And then more people started memeing it. And now anyone in the world in Africa, Asia, Europe, America, you asked them about the Melissa and they know it. And that is extremely powerful. And you can even like put this into numerical terms. There is an estimate by the former art director of the Louvre that 80% of people who go to the art museum go there just to see the Melissa.

And you pay $20 ticket, there are 10 million people who go. That comes out to $160 million every year of people basically just paying to go see the Melissa. So when something is famous, regardless of what reason something is well known or has a mind share, it has real meaningful value that actually can't be translated even in like a direct financial case to real money. And that's what we see happening

with communities, the power of these growing communities with NFTs. When everyone in the world knows about crypto punks because all these people who own it are spreading the knowledge and like sharing and advertising for free, then these things become more so much more money and everyone kind of wants when it becomes a status symbol. It can become a vebblit and good things that paradoxically as they become more expensive become more desired and there's more demand for them because everyone wants it. And there are only 10,000 in the world. How many rich people are there in the world who want the size of being the owner of the original NFT profile picture?

And that kind of logic, that kind of scarcely plus a demand, plus a mind share, that the community can build is extremely powerful and can really increase the value of entities. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Your dog is an important part of your family. Don't settle when it comes to their health. Make the switch to fresh food made with real ingredients that are backed by science with

nom nom. Nom nom delivers fresh dog food that is personalized to your dog's individual needs. Each portion is tailored to ensure your dog gets the nutrition they need so you can watch them thrive. Nom nom's ingredients are cooked individually and then mixed together, because science tells us that every protein, carb, and veggie has different cooking times and methods. This packs in all the vitamins and minerals your dog needs, so they truly get the most out of every single bite.

And nom-nom is completely free of additives, fillers, and mystery ingredients that contribute to bloating and low energy. Your dog deserves only the best, and NOMNOM delivers just that. Their nutrient-packed recipes are crafted by board-certified veterinary nutritionists, made fresh and shipped to your door. Absolutely free. NOMNOM meals start at just $2.40, and every meal is cooked in company-owned kitchens right

here in the US, and they've already delivered over 40 million meals, inspiring clean bowls and wagging tails everywhere. Ever since I started feeding my dog Nom-nom, he's been so much more energetic, and he's getting older, he's a senior dog, but now we've been going on longer walks, and he's much more playful. He used to be pretty sluggish and sleeping all the time, but I've definitely noticed a major improvement since I started feeding him nom nom. And the best part, they offer a money back guarantee.

If your dog's tail isn't wagging within 30 days, they'll refund your first order. No fillers, no nonsense, just nom nom. Go right now for 50% off your no risk 2 week trial at trinom.com-shap. That's trinom.nom.com-shap for 50% off trinom.com-shap. Hear that sound, young and profitors? You should know that sound by now, but in case you don't, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the

commerce platform that's revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you sell edgy t-shirts or offer an educational course like me, Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Shopify is packed with industry leading tools that are ready to ignite your growth, giving you complete control over your business and brand without having to learn any new skills in design or code, and Shopify grows with you no matter how big your business gets. Thanks to an endless list of integrations and third-party apps, anything you can think of from on-demand printing to accounting to chatbots, Shopify has everything you need to revolutionize your business. If you're a

regular listener, you probably know that I use Shopify to sell my LinkedIn secrets master class. Setting up my Shopify store just took me a few days. I didn't have to worry about my website and how I was going to collect payments and how I was going to trigger abandoned cart emails and all these things that Shopify does for me with just the click of a button, even setting up my chat bot was just a click of a button. It was so easy to do. Like I said, just took a couple of days. And so it just allowed me to focus on my actual product and making sure my LinkedIn Masterclass was the best it could be. And I was able to focus on my marketing. So Shopify really, really helped me make sure that my Masterclass was going to be a success right off the bat.

It enabled focus and focus is everything when it comes to entrepreneurship. With Shopify single dashboard, I can manage my orders and my payments from anywhere in the world. And like I said, it's one of my favorite things to do every day is check my Shopify dashboard. It is a rush of dopamine to see all those blinking lights around the world showing me where everybody is logging on on the site. I love it. I highly recommend it.

Shopify is a platform that I use every single day and it can take your business to the next level. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com.sash profiting. Again, go to shopify.com.sash profiting all lowercase to take your business to the next level today. and Crazy how community is just so important and fundamental to this NFT space. It's something that I feel like nobody has ever seen before. And it just gives a lot of power to people that own the NFTs are actually like investors in this project. The other thing that I think makes NFTs valuable is the creators themselves.

And as the creator kind of grows in popularity, the NFT goes up in value. So Ashley, I'd love to hear from you the importance of having a very great creator behind NFTs that are related to some sort of digital asset. Yeah, I think it's super important as any type of creator creating an NFT project to be in the forefront in regards to explaining who they are, what they do,

who they're serving, and the purpose behind the project. Not only to increase that autonomy with your current community or to grow your community, but also to increase transparency, as mentioned before on stage. There's been so many different scams and rug pulls in the NFT space, so I think it makes people feel a lot more comfortable and wanting to actually invest in your project to know exactly who the creator is behind the project. Now though, projects that have like celebrities

and big influencers behind them are cool and they do get more eyes on them quickly, but I don't necessarily think it means that you have to be like a famous person or have a lot of followers to have a successful NFT project. I think that you're intent with your project, IE, why you are doing it, as well as the utility behind it, keeping up with your promises, taking time to actually grow your community. To me, that would make you a good creator, not necessarily your current status online

or who you're associated with. But I've noticed, especially on Twitter, where there's thousands of creators who have less than 10,000 followers and are able to sell things for one either, two, and it's not because they have a bunch of followers or that they are attached to any type of celebrity, but it's the fact that they actually took the time to do the groundwork, they took the time to grow their community. They actually provided utility for their audience, et cetera. Just to give an example, there is a creator called Iman, Europe, and she actually was able to fundraise for a housewarming party where everyone who was able to chime in to fundraise for this, they were able to see her new home, they were able to watch a live performance, etc.

And I feel like these type of things where your actual community is not only investing in your career, but investing your lifestyle and being a part of your journey, you really haven't seen before. So I definitely think this creates a new space, not only for just influencers and celebrities, but also for independent artists and upcoming creators to be able to actually monetize off of this and have their community really, really invest in them. Thank you, Ashley. Does anybody else have anything to add when it comes to creators and how NFTs can grow and value based on the creators behind them? I'm helping a guy, I'm sorry, Don Wetrich, I've seen this and this has been kind of talked about that in the beginning so many NFT creators were, I think there's been a lot of copy

cat stuff where it is now seeing, unfortunately, as a get rich, quick scheme and I think that's why Ashley's credit, the people that are taking time to know their community is I think making people feel a little bit more comfortable. But I do want to ask Ashley and the panel, I talk to a lot of young people and the NFT space is now, this can be there, I can retire early. What would be some advice I could give to young people to not necessarily buy into the hype,

but look for NFT projects that are to have value? Yeah, no, I actually get this question all the time often, piece. Well, how do we find out about the latest and newest projects? One of the best places to do that, I would say, is Twitter, because a lot of not only just creators, but a lot of the creators on Twitter are also investors in other projects. So they'll host Twitter spaces on a daily basis,

discussing about different projects and things that they are investing in. They're allowing people who are putting out new projects to come on Twitter spaces and talk about their projects. So I definitely think that that is the really, really good space and resource to really understand, you know, what's new and certain things you can invest in. But also keeping your what's about it and saying, you know, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. So making sure you're doing your own research in these projects and seeing exactly, you know,

who's behind them? Do they have a good track record? What's up, the utility are they offering? Is it what they're offering realistic? I think a lot of projects, a good chunk of them have good intentions, but then a lot of them don't have the actual bandwidth are deemed to deliver on these promises that they have mapped out in the roadmap. So really just making sure you're taking the time to do your research, connect with people who are currently in the space and getting advice. And also, as I always say, don't invest money that you can't afford to lose.

Brian, did you want to add to that? Yeah, just something that I thought was really interesting. And I think worked out to the benefit of these creators or these young creators is one of our holdings is Somium Space. I'm a little biased, but I think it's one of the better VR and diverse worlds. And I've been part of that company for over three years, and it was like pulling teeth to get brands, IP artists into that world and have them understand. Here's a

new medium for you to value your work and to monetize your work. And I'm honored to know and work with some exceptional artists that their their workers in museums are in, you know, six star resorts. They're just very credible, amazing artists. And they couldn't get the head wrapped around it. And these are friends. And I think what worked out great is that these artists, these amazingly talented people that nobody's ever heard of were able to create such wealth with their talent and they were young and they were passionate and they used this new movement to become something.

I think that was fantastic looking back at it. I think if that didn't happen the way that it happened, there would have been another psychological block. Well, I can't do it because you have to be an already established artist or creator to be able to make money in this new space. So money, more than quarterbacking, I'm glad that it was the youth and people that don't have the credibility or the longstanding history that we're able to expedite this movement. Yeah, I think there's just some great points, Don. Did you have anything to add there or any follow-ups?

No, those were great. I echo a lot of the Sunday events. I, there's a lot of unknowns coming up. And it's been interesting because Gary Vaynerchuk has been, you know, sending the signals that there's going to be a lot of projects that are going to go to zero, but there's also going to be a lot of learning and shifting and pivoting on people figuring it out. So I'm very high on the space, but I'm very, well heck, I'm old enough to remember 1998

in the dot com era. I'm a lot like it. With you, Don, there's a correction in every industry. And if you have the resources to take advantage of it, there's always opportunities to pick up whether the distressed assets, it doesn't matter what market are industry. Corrections, unfortunately, people get hurt because they get into late, but they are healthy for markets.

They are healthy for people to get back in and to make it stronger. Hopefully, it doesn't drop to a zero number like some people are talking about. But I'm all for a correction. I've always turned it into a benefit and it does add value in the long run. Absolutely. Yeah, thanks so much Don for that question.

Speaking of questions, we're about to roll into our Q&A portion of today's segment. So go ahead and raise your hand if you have a question for our expert panelists on NFTs. Stick to the topic NFTs or cryptocurrency, but we're mostly talking about NFTs today. We covered a lot of grounds. So go ahead and raise your hand if you have a question

and we're going to do Q&A. First though, John, I have a question for you. I know you work with a lot of big brands in the NFT space, and I'd love to hear how big brands are getting involved. Absolutely. So my role, I'm director of strategic partnerships at NITGENIS, which is at Mark Cuba, a national culture, Deborah Labs, venture back technology platform.

And we've just launched a marketplace called Gaya. And it's focused on five key verticals, TV, film, music, sports, and pop culture. And my job on a day-to-day basis is talking to all these big brands in the music, talking all the big musical labels, in the entertainment, we're going to talk in all the studios, in the sports, we're going to talk in all the sports teams and sports leagues, and then in the pop culture, we're going to talk to companies and consumer products, auto-makers, and basically walking them through what an NFT is, how do you drop a

successful NFT collection? And it's pretty interesting because I've been having these conversations with all these big brands over the last year, and none of them still have fully immersed themselves in space. There's a lot of education, there's still a lot of concerns for big brands in terms of IP, environmental friendliness. Another big struggle big brands has is how do you build out internally an NFT team? What does that look like? Who do you hire? Is it a greater person, a community manager?

Who are these key resources you need? So at this point right now, I'm still educating a lot of the big brands. The crazy part is that if you look today, I think non-fungible release, NFT sales for 2021 and they were 17 billion and that was mostly from collectibles and gaming. The big brands at mass consumer adoption hasn't even happened. I think there's about 2.5 million crypto wallets. The population of the world is what? 8 billion. So I mean, we're super, super early still. And it'll be really interesting to see which big brands kind of make a push.

I mean, Nike made an interesting acquisition by an artifact. So they already bought a company that was existing in the space. Maybe some of these brands start to do that as well. It's just super interesting, just dealing with these brands and kind of another thing that the brands have a concern about is the community building aspect. Unfortunately, Discord is, there's a lot of issues

in terms of security and just controlling the brand narrative. And there's just a lot of concerns going in there. I mean, Discord was really built for video gamers. It was not built to really scale up community building in Web3. So, you know, as more smart money and smart minds enter the space, I think you're going to start seeing better solutions for Web 3. But, you know, I just, I don't think the infrastructure is there right now for a lot of these big brands

and just jump in 100%. I think there's a lot of A.V. testing. I think I still a lot of education. So, that's what I do on a day-to-day basis. It's fun, but it's still super early. I think what Brian's doing in terms of sort of a membership NFT experience, I think that's sort of the next way right now until the big brands really decide what they're gonna do.

And just one other thing, just kind of like step back a bit. A year ago, I literally didn't even know what an NFT was. And now I probably know maybe what 2% of NFTs are all about. And that somehow makes me an expert, because I know 2% more than 98% of the population. But anybody that's out there still trying to educate themselves, some of the things I did to just kind of get up to speed. I think LinkedIn is an amazing resource at the site from Twitter. I think Twitter, folks, is a lot more on sort of the collectors. I think LinkedIn, you're going to probably I think Twitter focuses a lot more on sort of the collectors. I think LinkedIn, you're gonna probably interact

with people in a little more of a business mindset. I think going to these conferences, like NFT NYC, NFT LA is coming up here in a couple of weeks. Miami NFT weeks coming up. I mean, these conference where you can interact with people in real life and connect with them on a more human level is super, super important.

A real easy cheat is just set your Google alerts for NFT. So literally, just put in NFT and get a daily alert and you'll get a download of every NFT article for the day. Great way to catch up to speed on what's going on in the space. I think that A60 and Z crypto cannon is another great source. It has links to articles, videos, really comprehensive. And then I think NFT podcast. I have a podcast called NFT heat where I interview

the top thought leaders in the space. And just through that, I've learned a ton about the NFT space. So I think those, you know, you don't have to do all five, but a few of those things, if you start to do them, you'll start to pick up kind of your knowledge on NFTs. And I just, I think we're all in it together, but it's still so new, it's so nascent.

I mean, nobody like Ben said is really an expert. So I think we're all here to support each other and just try to figure it out together. Yeah, John, those are some great resources. Thank you so much for sharing. We are going to get into the open Q&A. So if you're in the audience and you have a question, just raise your hand and we'll bring you up on stage before we do that, I do have to address something that we didn't

define. And I know Ashley is an expert on this. And that's Web 3. It's text hottest buzz word. The term seems to be evolving rapidly. And I would love to understand the difference between Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. Ben,.0. Ben, do you want to unpack this? Sure. Yeah. Web 1, Web 2, Web 3. The terms don't refer to like a specific technology, but rather a concept of the urnf.

And so Web 1 was the early days where you could only read information. Web 2 is when you can read and write information. And Web 3 is when you can read, write information and Web 3 is when you can read and own information data in the internet. And so what does read, read, write, read, write, own, really mean, if you go back to Web 1, it's really those static kind of news portal sites that you remember, like AOL.com, right? Yahoo.com where you're just consuming information and there's like a central party company like AOL, that's writing all the information and that's it. That's all you can do on there is you just consuming information, and there's a central party company like AOL, that's writing all the information, and that's all you can do on the internet,

is you just read the information. Web 2.0 was a huge innovation, that's really what we're seeing here, right? Like Clubhouse is like Web 2.0, and like Facebook is Web 2.0, and all these interactive things that you can do on the internet, where not only are you consuming data, but you're also producing data,

you're posting, you're talking to people, you're uploading images and Instagram, things like that. And that's extremely powerful because now most of the internet is like user-produced information. That's like where we spend all our time, Facebook, Twitter, Discord, Clubhouse, Reddit, whatever it is, right? It's all just random people on the internet coming together and naturally producing stuff, YouTube and so forth. And so that's really powerful, but the problem is,

you don't own any of that information, right? And so this is a huge thing with content creators. It's like, after you're on YouTube, YouTube takes like 40% of all your revenue. And like Facebook does the same thing, and all these platforms have this monopoly effect because you can't leave it, right? Because where are all your followers, right?

If you, like, are like, hey, crap, I want to make more money on YouTube, and like, YouTube's taking 4% cut, or like Twitch or whatever it is, you can't leave because we have all your followers, we own all your data and everything. It's all on our platform controlled by our databases. And if you go somewhere else,

you're gonna have to start from scratch and you are totally screwed, right? And so Web 3.0 is really a complete re-understanding of what the Web can be where there no longer exists these massive monotheistic platforms that kind of own all this information, rather you can own everything yourself. And so we're seeing a lot of different ways that this is coming about, and NFTs are really central to this entire

concept, where NFTs are the real building block that give you digital ownership over assets. And that asset can be anything from the actual content that you produce and so forth to the followers and all this stuff. And the way that the Web 3 kind of world is written is a lot of stuff is made at the protocol level and not the application level. And so what that means is it's kind of similar to a torrenting. So I actually started another blockchain company back in 2017

that literally our goal was to try to do this web 3 push word. We were breaking the platform lock-in fact and allow content creators like yourself, like things like that, people will follow this following to be able to own your own following. And like have that following follow you across different applications as opposed to being just locked into Facebook

or clubhouse or so forth. And how that works is think of it like torrenting. When you torrent something, you have ciders and leachers, right? People who own this like information on their own computers and then they share it with other people. And you have this little torrent file. And that torrent file, really you can plug into any application. It doesn't matter which torrenting client you're using.

If you're using you know, you torrent or azurus or Q-bit torrent or whatever it is, you have access to the same underlying data, the same sea, there's in leachers. And so this is something that in Web3, kind of like, you can do things this way, where everything is on this protocol level, where the application doesn't own the followers or the content or things like that. It's the underline blockchain or the technology built on top of the blockchain, just one layer up. And then you just have complete control of your own information.

And you have the same thing with NFTs on the more basic level, Web3 is things like just NFTs at the top is you're the one owning your own assets where before you post all these amazing art pieces that you make to Instagram and Instagram is the one making all the money from it. Instagram's like a $100 billion company, but all these artists aren't making anything on Instagram, right? Because Instagram, when you post it to that, you like share in the terms of service, the rights for Instagram to kind of partially own some of the copyright and be able to like profit off, showing all your work and things like that. Whereas with NFTs, you can sell your NFTs to someone else and you take all the profit

yourself. Those are kind of the powerful concepts coming out in Web3. That was such a great explanation, Ben. Something that I just want to chip in here that's super interesting to me is all of these NFT land purchases happening right now. So they have these NFT metaverses, like NFT world and decentralized land and the sandbox, and you can actually buy land in the metaverse with NFT. So to me, that's kind of like the future of how NFTs will evolve.

Does anybody have any thoughts on that? Yeah, super interesting. I think they don't think the land thing in the Mathverse is just we're just at the basic starting line of what NFTs will be in the world where I really think the overall total value of NFTs will exceed the value of like actual physical assets and the large part of that is the Mathverse and things like land in the Mathverse where the physical universe is pretty constrained like there's only so much room on earth and it's actually difficult to to get to most places on Earth, right?

There are only a few like major cities that people live in. And the rest of it is just uninhabited. And you have to travel by a plane, cost a lot of money. They can only hold so many people, whatever. All those constraints don't exist in the digital world, where you can literally teleport into Central Land. There's just like a little jump button. And you go, boom, and then you go like,

anywhere in the world, right? And so there's no constraints geographically anymore. You can have a concert in the metaverse where literally you can have people from Asia, Europe, Africa, America all together in one place. And you could hold it for like a million people, right? And it's just like, it's like possible. There's no physical constraint.

And because of that, like arguably, you know, maybe this land or digital assets on top of that land, in the metaverse, are worth more money than in real life. And the thought experiment is, maybe there's a billboard. And what's the value of a billboard, if you buy one in real life? Well, it's really that people see it, right? And it's an advertisement. And maybe 20,000 people pass it.

And maybe that billboard is worth $20,000. Who knows? But in the metaverse, theoretically, you can have a billboard that also 20,000 people might see. And that's that's true. Then there are actually that billboard should have the same value as a billboard in the real world, right?

Because it's the same kind of power. It's a mind share, you know, people are actually seeing this and the advertisement spread. And maybe it's even more powerful because you can target more specific or more broad demographics. So you could have a billboard

that's seen by a global audience, rather than just literally people in L.A. or New York or something like that. So there are just so many possibilities that we're just starting to see with land and assets in the metaverse. And I think that's super, super exciting. It's definitely one of the cool things happening. I agree. Awesome. So guys, we're moving into the Q&A portion.

If you have a question, just raise your hand and we'll bring you up on stage. Dimple, you're up first. What is your question for the panel? Yeah, thank you so much, all. And I came into the room late, so I don't know if this was answered, but for beginners, when it comes to determining which NFTs they should be buying or investing in. they should be buying or investing in, what are some tips for the process that they can go through to determine that, and maybe what are one or two red flags that they should look for when they are doing their assessment of which NFTs to invest in. Great question. Just splash your mic if you wanna answer that.

Yeah, happy to crack it. And yeah, yeah, no, I love the question to me. It's one of the most important things. I love that you're looking at both red flags as well as the positive flags. I think Brian actually covered a lot of the really good ones before. You definitely want to look for things where there's a team with a doxed background where you can see everything that they've done before, they're anonymous, and they're clearly experienced in building, and they've done before, they're not anonymous, and they're clearly experienced

in building, and they've done companies before. And none of two projects isn't so different from making a company. It requires long-term commitment and a long-term vision for what someone wants to do. And also, having good values behind something where the red flags that kind of I stay away from projects that focus solely on the price, or how much money you can make off this thing, right? And there's kind of a paradox where the red flags that kind of I stay away from projects that like focus solely on the

price or how much money you can make off this thing, right? And there's kind of a paradox where the projects that tend to do the best are the ones that care least about the price and think of the prices basically kind of a byproduct of their success at actuating an actual mission that they're trying to perpetuate in the world. And by default, I'd like doing that. I think one of the women, for example, is a really good example of this. They really just want to set a powerful example

for women to make the world more inclusive, more equitable, bring more people into Web 3, that are women and so forth. And as a consequence, it's become this massively successful project for every single one that's worth tens of thousands of dollars. And it's straight like hundreds of millions of dollars. And it's not that they've ever focused on the price but just by

really having a mission and a vision that people align with, values that people align with, the community you know really resonates with it, it grows and there's something that I kind of like say is and I personally don't try to get into anything where I would sell it if it went up 10x or I would sell it if it went down 10x. And if I personally have that much attachment to something and the powerful thing with NFTs is, you know, they're emotionally sticky, more so than ethereum. Like I hold ether just because I think it'll make me rich someday and I like really won't be sad if I sold my ether. There's no emotional attachment there. That's totally untrue for my NFTs. I've never sold the single NFTs actually ever. Collected over 30,000

in the last four years and like, I hold all of them. I'm going to hold them for five, ten years at least because I would be extremely sad if I sold them for any price. If I sold them for 10x, I would be sad because I was losing this piece I loved and I could sell them for like a 90% loss and of course I would also be sad. And so if I feel that way about something, I feel that that's a good sign that chances are other people are going to feel the same way. And if that's true of all the people who are kind of buying into a project, no one's going to sell if it goes up or if it goes down, then chances are, you know, as more people grow and get into this project and know and selling, the price has naturally, place to go. And that's pretty up.

And so that's kind of how I really ultimately, I think everyone has to do their own research. That's the big, big space. And assess the project. And the best way to assess it is just to see how you emotionally feel about the project and truly, genuinely, if you want to hold onto this thing for a long term. And if you really do and you really believe in it, chances are, other people feel the same way. And it'll be a good project. Thank you Ben. So I think you're saying like basically, you know, go after the causes that you

really truly believe in and that's going to lead you in the right direction. Exactly right. Yeah, thanks for summarizing so much better than me. Brian, what would you like to add? Yeah, I just just want to pin the ad and then test on the first proposal and say find things that you're passionate about. And what I've experienced with some of the NFT projects we've created, a lot of the value is the friendships that you're going to make inside of that community.

And I've seen some incredible things happening with our own projects where people are meeting people for the first time because of our NFT projects are building amazing friendships or helping each other. So, you know, that's, I think, a piece of the value when you get involved with these NFTs in addition to the utility and the potential increase of monetary value may have, I think, inside the right community where you love the people,

it's positive, it's engaging, you'll feel really great about being part of something. That may be worth more than any money attachment that this thing could be worth a year, a 10 years down the road. And I would, you know, in my own companies, I never look at, I never compare or really compete with anybody else. I don't like to look at others because it takes away the value and the self worth that you have. So if you get involved in a small project, that's fine. Don't compare it to any of these big ones that are selling for millions or tens of millions at a time so you'll never feel good about what you're involved with. So I would suggest starting small, finding things that you're passionate about.

And it's okay to get burnt once in a while. Just do it up a very small risk appetite because that helps you learn. It's like buying a stock. If it's a New York Stock Exchange Stock, a Nasdaq Stock or a Pinksheet Stock, you're taking different types of risks, some are a little bit less volatile, but just just go into this market with the idea that you may have a winner, you may lose everything, but there may be other reasons

why you find value spending your time here. Yeah, and I feel like such a theme in this segment and episode is the fact that NFTs really have more value than just simple ownership over a digital asset. It's this whole community aspect and providing value by the people that you meet and who's behind it and the engagement of the community and the things that you can offer that community.

There's so much more than just that piece of artwork or music that's behind it. So I think that's really interesting and if there's one thing that you learned today, I hope it was that and you understand and if he's a lot more. So let's go to the next question. Ease, you're up next.

How can we help you today? How you doing? I got a question that touches on a point Ashley Brungup in terms of you and the project and the role map and seeing if it's realistic or not. My question is directed to Brian. I'm a part of Gates. I support you along with the community.

My question is, how did you deal with having a role map that a lot of people looked at and talk negatives about in terms of being able to pull it off? And how could you respond to just how the team dealt with that and how you actually did pull it off. And how could you respond to just how the team dealt with that and how you actually did pull it off because you did? Thanks, Pa. And you are one of our most biggest supporters on Twitter. So thank you for everything

and being part of this journey with us. The team is amazing. We have people that have been through so much in their career. I'm used to problems. It was going so fast, so positive, so quickly, that was actually making me more nervous because I was like, there's gotta be a problem where it was a problem.

And we ran into our initial problem with we went after to launch this thing on Polygon, we had Twitter spaces with their senior management. And I think we were part of breaking their system and we overloaded their network. And most projects would have failed right then. But we quickly moved it over to Ethereum less than 24 hours and we had a successful launch

half a day later. But we didn't give up. We don't quit. Problems are, that's part of life. That's part of business. That's just the reality. I personally don't look at people talking negative. I can't stop that.

If somebody has an issue with what we're doing, I can't focus on that unless I know we're doing something wrong. The only way that I can earn trust in any of my companies, including the CINET space, is to execute, is to continue to add value, continue to move forward if we have hurdles, get over them. And that's how we're going to ultimately have the best group of holders in our BAPES project that believe in us, but we have to perform.

And we are. So, at the end of the day, to answer your question long way, there's always going to be people that doubt people. I'm sure there's people that say negative things about Elon Musk, but he's doing quite well. You know that you can't stop people being negative on things. I wish they would spend their time rather than being negative on something, find something that they love and spend that time being positive with it, but I can't change people's demeanors or where they want to do or what they want to say. I can't allow that to affect anything that I do except prove them wrong.

But that's not the motivation. That's not the motivation. The motivation is to build something great. Have a great team, build a great community, provide exceptional value. And in the end of the day, the negative people are going to get bored with us doing what we say we're going to do, and they're going to go bother somebody else. So that's where my mentality is. And thank you again for your tremendous support.

I mean, so well to us. Thank you. You're welcome. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Yeah, bam. If you're ready to take your business to New Heights, break through to the six or seven figure mark or learn from the world's most successful people, look no further because the Kelly Roach show has got you covered.

Kelly Roach is a best-selling author, a top-ranked podcast host, and an extremely talented marketer. She's the owner of NotOne, but six thriving companies, and now she's ready to share her knowledge and experience with you on the Kelly Roach show. Kelly is an inspirational entrepreneur, and I highly respect her. She's been a guest on YAPP. She was a former social client.

She's a podcast client. And I remember when she came on Young and Profiting and she talked about her conviction marketing framework. It was like mind-blowing to me. I remember immediately implementing what she taught me in the interview in my company and the marketing efforts that we were doing and as a marketer, I really, really respect all Kelly has done all Kelly has built in the corporate world Kelly secured seven promotions in just eight years, but she

didn't just stop there. She was working in I to five and at the same time she built her eight figure company as a side hustle and eventually took it and made her full full-time hustle and her strategic business goals led her to win the prestigious Inc. 500 award for the fastest growing business in the United States. She's built an empire she's earned a life-changing wealth. And on top of all that she maintains a happy marriage and a healthy home life. On the Kelly Road show, you'll learn that it's possible to have it all. Tune into the Kelly Road show as she unveils her secrets for growing your business.

It doesn't matter if you're just starting out in your career or if you're already a seasoned entrepreneur. In each episode, Kelly shares the truth about what it takes to create rapid, exponential growth. Unlock your potential, unleash your success, and start living your dream life today. Tune into the Kelly Road Show available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hey, Yap fam! As you may know, I've been a full-time entrepreneur for three years now. Yet media blew up so fast, it was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit, and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate. And I recently had bestselling author Kim Scott on the show. And after previewing her content in our conversation, I just knew I had to take her class on master class, tackle the hard conversations with radical candor to really absorb all she has to offer. And now I'm using her radical candor

method every day with my team to give and solicit feedback, to cultivate a more inclusive culture, and to empower them with my honesty. And I can see my team feeling more motivated and energized already. They are really receptive to this framework, and I'm so happy because I really needed this class. With masterclass, you can learn from the best to become your best anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace. And we all know that profiting in life doesn't just mean thriving in business. With Masterclass, you can brush up on your art skills or your cooking skills or even your modeling skills. With over 180 classes from a range of world-class instructors, that thing you've always wanted to do better is just a few clicks away. On Masterclass you'll find courses from many Apple Alstair guests like Chris Voss and

Daniel Pink. I've been taking their sales and negotiation classes and I've been feeling like a real shark lately. I've totally leveled up my sales skills. How much would it cost you to take a one-on-one class from the world's best? A lot. But with Masterclass annual memberships, it just cost you $10 a month. I have to say the most surprising

thing about Masterclass since I started this incredible journey on the platform is the value. For the quality of classes, instructors, the platform itself is beautiful. The videos are super high quality. You can't beat it. Gain new skills and as little as 10 minutes on your phone, your computer, tablet, smart TV, and my personal favorite way to learn is their audio mode to listen on the go. That way, I can multitask while I learn. Get unlimited access to every class and right now, as the app listener, you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com-profiting. That's masterclass.com-profiting. That's masterclass.com-profiting for 15% off an annual membership.

Masterclass.com-profiting. So I'm going to piggyback off that whole conversation point. And I have to say, from my personal experience, crypto technology is not that user-friendly. There's so many different exchanges and wallet providers. Things seem to glitch all the time. I want to talk about some obstacles when it comes to NFT adoption. Anybody who hasn't talked in a while,

maybe Ashley, Ben, John, anybody want to chip in in terms of obstacles for mainstream adoption with NFTs. One of the newest things that I've seen in regards to even like Web 3 websites, whenever I try to go on one on like Chrome or on my desktop, it doesn't work. So even having to deal with the smallest things is like going to certain like websites or trying to see people's roadmap. I guess the browsers are not really catching up. Sometimes when I go for my phone,

that's an issue, but obviously that's just something that technology has to catch up on. I know another issue that we've been seeing is the hacks and discords and scans, especially since when people usually join, they don't really, you know, understand how it works, and they're super excited about getting engaged

into the community. And they click on links, and then people's wallets will be wiped out. understand how it works and they're super excited about getting engaged into the community. And they click on links and then people's wallets will be wiped out. Unfortunately, there was like a really, really bad situation with Ozzy Osborne. He had to make like another discord and people hacked like all the hundreds of thousands of people in his first discord. So I've definitely seen like that be an issue. Also when people actually like launching collections in regards to like crashes are different sites,

whether that be open sea foundation that is not released to having that much traction, all at once the site may crash or people may not be able to actually connect their wallet at all. So there's tons of different bugs. I mean, whether that be with Web3 or even Instagram, Twitter, they still

have, you know, malfunctions all the time. So I definitely think that people need to keep that in mind that this is technology, which means it's not perfect. And there's going to be, you know, issues at hand, but I feel like as long as creators and people are putting out projects like accurately communicate with people, then 90% of the audience will understand. Yeah, exactly to Ashley's point, just piggy your backing off of that, because this is our huge passion point. It's literally why we created our project, Curious Studies, is the main obstacle we see is it's such a steep learning curve, technically it's against the space, yet to understand things

like, you know, what's a private key? How to keep a private key secure? Why do you need to use a hardware wallet? Like, what is gas? Like, why do I have to pay so much money to like send a transaction? All these like totally insane things that like in the future should be abstracted way, where, you know, just like the ear and that. It's like using the internet in 1995 before there's like a browser and you're like using a terminal command line and you're like typing in like a crow command like go get a page and it's like

all this crazy stuff that like almost no one could use the ear and that back then. And yet now any like grandmother can use like TikTok and like you know post a video, it's just much more simple. And so the long term solution, the major obstacle is we have to abstract away the difficulty of all this technology. No one should need to understand where private key is, how to keep your stuff secure and like you know do all this stuff. But unfortunately that's going to take at least another five years as the verb map that

kind of I see because we're literally still building out the fundamental blockchain technology today, right? Ethereum itself is still going to e2.0 and it's not even called e2.0 anymore. It's a consensus layer. All this stuff, they're still trying to figure out the technology. What we see as the real obstacle, the thing that we're trying to solve at Curious Addies, is to educate people, to teach people how to safely get into space, to avoid number one, most importantly, like Ashley said, are the scams, right? How to teach people, not to fall for discord scams, how to teach people, not to get hacked with their wallets,

how to teach people, not to go on fishing sites, not to accidentally sign a transaction that's fake and so forth. And those things come down to, we made curious to xyz where it's a site that you can go to and you can literally just go and learn from the ground up. If you've never touched crypto before, you never set up a wallet. We walk you through every step of how to set up a wallet, how to mint your first real NFT. We actually air drop you some mat like for free on Polygon and then you can go and mint your first NFT.

And we kind of do these interactive tutorials to walk people through the process of the technical difficulties and abstracting those away. And then we also were building a Q&A site that you can go to our Discord right now, Discord.gg slash CATC. And then there, you can ask any question. We have a service where literally we our entire community just like answers questions. And right now, another thing we see is there's just no good place where people can go and ask questions about anything from the technical difficulties to help they got to scan, what do they do to like, how do I evaluate this project

as a liquid jit, like all these things, we're building out a full-fledged website to that. Right now, it starts with the discord kind of bot that we created where you can ask question and anyone gets an answer and you can search all the questions up in that before. But I think just more education in the space is super critical for those reasons

to get people to safely understand and into a space. Yeah, and Ben you is like super well known for being an educator in this field. So thank you so much for joining us today. And that's curious Addy just so that's super clear for everyone. It's curious Addy. Just Google that and you'll be able to find it. So we're going to move along to our last question of the night. W.O. How can we help you today? I was just sitting back listening. I am interested in NFT. You know, I'm interested in the data lock. That's the most important thing I'm interested in as an artist and as an educator and a content

creator. I would like to just own my own stuff without having to go through the data being, you know, hijacked online, you know, and I think somebody was talking about this earlier today, like how our data is really not hours when we write something on different platforms and how, even if we write it to ourselves, when we say, oh, it's only our eyes, it's only sanded this. But then we start hearing things that we wrote out and being utilized to make other people's monies and fame and fortune and not being compensated

and not having any way to come back that. So I just wanna know how can, when is a user-friendly version of this? Like you saying, nobody should have to know what a private key is, but I do what what I would like to know all of that information. So I know what goes into building something like that. But when is that going to happen? Or how can you work together to make that a reality where you can easily access

or it's more user friendly. Because I was approached to go on, I think it was just rough art and I didn't see a way that I could interact with them. Well, one thing that I want to add is that we're going to be back here on March 17th, 8 p.m. in the Human Behavioral Club and we're gonna be going over NFTs for content creators. So we're gonna be going over the minting process. There's gonna be a lot of artists on the panel who are really gonna help us understand

how to use NFTs as a creator. So I think that will be a great session for you. I'm not sure if anybody can actually answer your question because I think it involves everybody in this space. And so I don't know if there's any clear answer to your question, but Ben it involves everybody in this space. And so I don't know if there's any clear answer to your question, but Ben, I'm sure you have something smart to say about that. No, I think you, you said all the smart things, so I have nothing left to say.

But yeah, no, I think these, like sessions like this are so helpful, right? And it's so amazing that you're doing the solids to educate people in the space. And the next session, the three-part series is perfect, right? They'll just walk through all these things. So, yeah, I think it really, to your point, exactly. It requires all of us working towards us to make the space a proper time and like more easy to enter and like all these things. And we're getting there.

Thankfully, like this year is much easier than like four years ago. It's like nine and a different. So it was totally impossible to do anything like, you know, back in 2017. And it's getting better, it's gonna take a lot more time, sadly, with the technologies, it just takes time. And the meantime, what we're doing, you know, is to try to educate people, we put out content, we have a NASA Academy course on NFTs,

that kind of makes it easy. If you wanna learn all those things, like you were talking about the private key and all that, like the curious.xyz website, if you go there, curious.xyz, we walk through and we have explanations interactively so you can learn by doing so as you actually meet your first entity, as you set up your wallet, you can click and learn, oh, what is a private key? Why do I need one? Why do I have to pay gas, like all those things?

So we're trying to do the education, but hopefully over time there are just tools that are also built that abstract all that way and it makes it really easy where you mentioned you know you we're trying to join the project and it was just very difficult to know how you can actually interact with it. Hopefully in a few years we'll have just ways to make it very simple to onboard and so forth. In the meantime, I think education is a big one. Things like these call house spaces and so forth. Thank you so much. Thank you, W, for your awesome question. All right, guys, we're about to wrap this up to close this out. I want to give all my panelists an opportunity

to let you guys know where they can be found and where you guys can connect with them. So why don't we close this off with a round robin? Why don't you guys tell me why you think NFTs are gonna be so impactful in 2022 and beyond and where people can go find you after this? Why don't we start with Brian and then we'll go to John Ben and Ashley Yeah, thank you again, how long you invested this amazing panel Brian Jaspersito I typically only use LinkedIn and Twitter for all of my

Communications my corporate websites EIE dot rocks EIE dot ROCKS I'm O'Brien, Chancellor Zido. I typically only use LinkedIn and Twitter for all of my communications, my corporate websites, eie.rox, eie.rocks. It is a holding company now that consists of over 85 entities, over 150 joint ventures from around the world and proudly operating over 25 different industries. And I believe as long as projects continue to do things correctly in the NFT,

and also the crypto space, with the right team, the right execution and treating people's harder and tax money with respect and dignity. I think we can create one incredible market that continues to create value utility. And I'm honored to be part of this market with some exceptional projects

and talented people out there. Thanks, Brian, for joining us today, John. Final thoughts. Fantastic panel, Paula. Final thoughts? Fantastic. Panel, Paula. I love just listening to all the panelists. I learned so much, actually. So you can find me on LinkedIn.

That's where I spend most of my time, John, and the last name is CraskyKRASKI. I mean, since I've been in the NFT space, I literally grew my LinkedIn falling from about 10,000 followers. It's almost 25,000 followers in just a year. So LinkedIn, there's a lot of great activity going on, so definitely check me out there. I post almost every day.

I also host a podcast called NFT Heat. We just released our 40th episode, focused on top thought leaders in the space. And we really focus on female and diversity inclusion. That's super important to me. So as part of my community building NFT thought leaders, I'm really focused on representing females and unrepresented voices. And we're also going to be hosting an NFT super conference as part of NFT thought

leaders in October. It's going to be in Austin. And the whole lineup and panel panels are really going to be focused on that female and diversity inclusion. So, you know, we're building right now Web 3. So from the ground up, so why not address this issue right now as opposed to Web 2 that you want to kind of address it after the fact. So, that's super important to me, but again, amazing stuff, Paula. Awesome, and also I'm excited to know that Ben, any final words from you? Yeah, first, yeah, thank you so much again, Carla.

This is amazing. And actually, John, huge run plus for you. It'd be awesome. I should connect you with RCEO, actually, my who's a woman really. This entire curiousized project. And yeah, it's awesome. I totally agree with you.

But inclusion is like, we have a chance to completely change the makeup of Web 3 from day one. It's really important. It requires people to actually do that work. Like you are. So, really cool for you doing that. Yeah, so, we're curious at ease. You can find the Securious Addies on Twitter. That's curious ADDYS. And Discord is discord.gg slash CATC. And so, that's where you can go.

You can ask any question that you have on Web3. We'll get answered. 95% questions can answer in six hours if you use our question service. And to answer your question, I'll have like, what we see and where we see NFTs going in 2021. Last year, NFT, crypto at large, crypto.com did report in January of 2022.

300 million people are in crypto now, up from 100 million in 2020. And this year they actually see that accelerate to a billion people. So it's the first time that we're actually seeing on the scale of hundreds of millions of people coming, people coming into crypto. And they're not going so deep yet.

Like the active monthly users in OpenC are still like half a million people, but it's growing exponentially. And this is really the year that I think we're going to see a lot of people come into the real use cases. They're coming in at the top of the funnel into buying crypto, and they're starting to dip their toes. Last year, they dip their toes into NFTs.

This year, I think, is the year that they're really going to start coming in in a real way. Where we're seeing major companies come into space, brands, Nike, Adidas, so forth, and they're a lot more of that. And I think it's going to be really exciting to see the space really go mainstream and so a lot of ways. It is super exciting. Ben, you dropped so much value. And I hope you join us for the upcoming sessions as well because you are just like such a knowledge base. So thank you so much again for your time, Ashley, any final thoughts from you? Yes. Thank you again so much for for your time Ashley any final thoughts from you. Yes, thank you again so much for having me and you guys can connect with me on LinkedIn. It's just

my first and last name Ashley France as well as Twitter and Instagram. It's the Ashley France. I really, really focus on discussing the launch and marketing aspects of NFT projects and also teaching small business owners creators creators, et cetera, how to integrate NFTs into their current business. So definitely make sure to connect with me on there and sign up for my email list. I'm gonna be dropping gems on there as well. And in regards to the NFT space,

I definitely think NFT memberships is going to take over this year. We've definitely progressed since the start of crypto punks and board apes and more and more people are seeing the importance of not just buying the NFT, but what you can get after purchasing it. So I definitely think NFT memberships are going to be taking over this year. Amazing, Ashley, also so much value. Thank you so much to all of our panelists. Again, we had an amazing conversation today. We talked about what an NFT is, we talked about the different applications, community

involvement, web 3.0, the metaverse. We talked about so much, it was so great. So I know all of my young and profitors out there are really going to enjoy this episode and I encourage you to rewind it a few times because there was a lot of information packed in this one. So thanks again. This is Hala and friends signing off until next time. Thanks everybody.

Thanks for listening to a live episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. I wanna thank Ben, John, Brian, and Ashley for having this conversation with me and for helping to explain and simplify NFTs. The NFT world is changing super fast. It changes every day, so understanding the basics is crucial for anyone

wanting in on this space. From defining what an NFT is to understanding why they're valuable and how they grow in value, to getting insight on the community aspect to understanding how they're used in the metaverse, we covered so much in just part one of this three part series. And remember, there is episode two and three coming out soon, be on the lookout for that in April. And part two is all about NFT for artists. So we'll cover the minting process. And part three is all about investing in NFTs and how to identify scams or rug pulls. So I can't wait to continue this conversation. Again, part two and three is coming out in April. so be on the

lookout for that. Thanks as always for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to drop us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform, or you can DM me on Instagram or Twitter at Yappeth Hala. Thanks again for listening to this live episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. And until next time, this is Hala, signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project.

And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Rubin Podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits.

Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time, energy, or money. Suggestions such as follow the one-minute rule. Choose a one-word theme for the year, or design your summer. We also feature segments like, know yourself better,

where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever? And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick, easy shortcut to more happiness. Listen and follow the podcast, happier with Gretchen Rubin. Don't you see it? Free days are now the coolest days. In this summer's hottest blockbuster, guaranteed to keep you cool. The savings are coming from inside the house!

Open it summer path, energy savings are the best so cool. Yes you energy, energy for everything. Captain Banner now to learn more.