How To Make $11 Million Overnight | The 3LAU NFT

It starts out we hit a million. Oh my god, this is amazing. Then we break the record of 6.6 and we're like then we just go quiet. Everyone was just watching silently as it just kept going and the timer reset every 3 minutes. So if any of the 33 bidders bid again in the final 3 minutes it would reset. So it gave everyone a chance to move around the board until they had their final price. Ultimately, you know, we all just sat there as it went from 1 to 6 to 11 and we were like when is this going to stop? And then it stopped and I was just like I didn't even know what to do. So that was my my weekend last weekend. Welcome back to the 43rd ever Ice Coffee Hour. My name is Blau and so far the podcast has made $46,000. That was great. Wow, that was the best one yet. Yes. I'm trying guys. I'm trying. Thank you for that. Thank you so much for coming on today. This is really exciting. It's crazy and we're neighbors. Yes. And we're neighbors. Finally, because we've been texting back and forth not texting DMing on Instagram for a while. Remember I met you a long time ago at Nate's concert audience. Oh dude, yes. time ago. that. Yes, I do. Yeah, we met once and then I think we followed each other on Instagram for a while. Went back and forth for like a year. the carrot guys as well. Yes. Cuz I saw that and we all have mutual friends. So now you're in Vegas. How do you like living here? Finally, I love it here. It's so nice. I honestly I prefer it here. The only thing I'm not used to yet is the dry weather. So I wake up and like my mouth is just like really dry. As soon as it You'll get used to having like multiple fridges around the bedroom instead of going back to the kitchen, you know, like it's it's useful. Yeah. Yeah, and that's the other thing too. The house is big. So it's twice the size of the place in LA and it's weird to have to like wake up and be like oh the kitchen is like 50 ft that way. It's strange. fridge in the bedroom solves all the problems, man. No, but that's the beauty of being in Vegas versus LA. I mean the value here for what you get is incredible. Yeah, how long have you lived in Las Vegas for? I actually dropped out of school before my senior year. I was 19 or 20 years old at the time. I don't remember and I moved back in with my parents because my DJ career was just exploding on the internet. This is back in like the YouTube, SoundCloud, Facebook days before Spotify even existed and I lived with my parents for about 6 months and I said, "I can't handle this. I got to get my own place." So, I dropped out junior year from Washington in St. Louis and then I moved into Queensbridge Tower condo cuz I was moving around. I'm traveling all the time. I didn't want the responsibility of a home. Finally, I got so lucky. I was I wanted a backyard and before COVID hit, January of last year, screw it. I want a place with a backyard. Bought the house and then COVID hit and I'm so thankful that I have a backyard now versus being stuck in a condo tower during this quarantine. So, great blessing in disguise and now we're neighbors. Yeah. You've had a very successful career in music and one of the reasons why we want to bring you on as soon as possible, you just sold $11 million in one night of your album NFT. Yes, 11.7. And I like to say that it's not one night. It was It was really 4 years of work to get to where we are today, but but good point. But good point. To everyone who's seeing it online, they're like, "48 hours, $11.7 million. How did this even happen?" And I'd love to tell you the story. tell the story. Remember to simplify it for Jack so Jack could follow along with this. Easy. Easy. Simple. So, the story The story's fun. We won't go technical at all. We'll We'll do some GaryVee references cuz he explained some of this stuff very well. Okay. It all started The beginning of the story is my favorite. It started in Mexico where I met the Winklevoss twins who, of course, every The Winklevoss twins of Facebook How do How do you start a story of just like, "Uh, Mexico, Winklevoss twins." How did I feel like you There's a story within the story. So, the Winklevoss twins famously discovered Bitcoin in in Ibiza, which is already crazy. And funny enough, that was long before I met them and then I met them in 2014. I was playing a spring break music festival opening up for Avicii at the time. Rest in peace, Avicii. And the Winklevoss twins and I just bonded because I have a background in finance in college. I studied index derivatives and economics. All right. You don't have to get into that. But I met them in Mexico. They invited me to stay at their place in LA during Grammy week just because they love dance music. They had a studio in their house. They're like, "Come use our studio. We love your music." I was like, "Sure, I'll come hang out with you guys." At the time they were building their crypto exchange called Gemini. Mhm. And I was first discovering what Bitcoin was in 2014. And I was fascinated by this idea of permissionless and frictionless value transfer. To simplify that, you don't have to wait you can send money on the weekend without waiting for the bank. Yep. What Venmo does but with crypto, right? That was just so fascinating to me because banks are pretty inefficient. Sending money across the world is kind of hard. Other families, like especially like families that moved to the United States that immigrate that want to send money home, it's very difficult to do that. And so this idea that you can do it via the internet, this magical internet money could exist, blew my mind in 2014. And that's when I made my first Bitcoin investment. Fast forward to 2017. We saw what you guys probably all know as the ICO boom, the altcoin boom, whatever you want to call it. And a lot of people made a lot of money on speculative ideas that really had barely any merit in the sense that they were just ideas. Kind of like what we saw in the dot com era with everything was just a website. No matter whether you needed a website for it or not, everything was going to have a website. Right. So, I was already kind of involved on a simple investment level from 2014. But in '17, I saw a lot of projects that made grand promises and had no execution. So, I had this very grand idea called Our Music Festival. The idea is really simple. You pool a bunch of people's money. The people who pool the money get to pick the lineup for the festival. And then they get to share in the profits of all the tickets sold. That but with a cryptocurrency, right? That was the concept. Of course, we learned after I hired great lawyers that that would be a security token, and it would be illegal to do an ICO in that way. So, we never did an ICO. I just raised equity for this company. And we threw a giant festival with Zedd, Big Sean, myself with uh simple wallet crypto rewards at the festival with QR codes. It was like kind of a playful game, and it worked out great, but at the time in 2017 2018, the regulatory environment was uncertain. The the laws surrounding this stuff were hard to really comply by. And I just wanted to do the right thing. So, we shut down the company and moved on. But, through that process, I made so many relationships with incredible people in the crypto space, one of whom Michael Saylor um who wish you would've been on that call, but we'll get you on with him again. He's brilliant when it comes to, you know, how he thinks about Bitcoin. But, I've also had the pleasure of meeting Fred Ehrsam, one of the founders of Coinbase, who's a who's a friend of mine, who's been kind of coaching me through what's happening right now. Are you in the IPO? Um no, I'm not. I'm not. I want to get in. If somebody could get me in on that. Listen, it's that's going to be that's going to be a big one. That's going to be a big one. I could always ask him, but I I don't I I wouldn't even want to ask him that question. It's a little bit too But, no, but but but Fred now actually um started his own fund when he left Coinbase called Paradigm and famously turned uh 300 million into to what is now probably worth 4 billion since March of last year. He took a big big bet when crypto crashed right when COVID hit. He was like, "This is the chance." He took the fund's money, poured it into Bitcoin, and just won big. And there's a Forbes article about it, and Fred's, in my opinion, one of the smartest people in the entire blockchain space. And so, he's been a trusted friend and advisor. So, I'm talking to him tomorrow about how to, you know, proceed with this NFT thing in the right way. So, now let's get to the why we're all here today. Uh-huh. Um $11.7 million for for the tokenized version of my debut album, which is called Ultraviolet. And the concept behind that was creating a collectible edition of something that's digital. What people really are confused about when they think about what an NFT is, they say, "Well, I can copy this file as many times as I want. So, why do I pay for an NFT, right? It's free." And the the the equation is very simple. The best analogy I like to give is the Honus Wagner baseball card, or even a Pokémon card, great example. I could easily recreate a holographic Charizard. It cost me like 100 bucks. I'd find a company to print it, make a fake one. So, why is it that the real one is worth 250, 350,000 dollars when the fake one is costs about 100 100 bucks to make? Because there's emotional, sentimental value in owning something that's authentic. So, now when you apply to keep it as simple as possible, you have an official edition of a media file versus an unofficial edition of a media file. And if you give people the ability to show off their collection, basically show off that they supported this artist or supported this piece of content, they are excited by the emotion of owning that content. Now, they might not own the IP rights or anything like that. They're just excited to say, "I supported this person in their digital creative endeavor." The same way we see people tipping on Twitch, the same way we see that happening across the internet in a lot of other ways. And so, for all of you listening who don't know what an NFT is, the simple version is the the the acronym is non-fungible token. Um but, what it really means is it's just a digital certificate of authenticity, like a land deed, but on the blockchain. So, that really applies what once you kind of understand what a a certificate of authenticity means, it literally applies to everything, not just art. Art is kind of the first step. So, what did you sell exactly? What did people bid? I think the top bid was 2.3 3.6 3.6 million dollars 666 Do you know Yeah. Do you Do you know the person who bid that top bid? Funny enough, I do not. Um the top bidder has kept his identity anonymous, which is very, you know, big in crypto. Still? Still? Um well, I mean, I have his email address, but beyond that But you would He wouldn't think to like be like, "Yo, let me get on the phone with you." He's probably a pretty big fan, right? Like A lot of people who participate in this stuff really prefer anonymity because, you know, of the amount of money that they made in crypto, and they like to they prefer to remain anonymous. A lot of them have pseudonyms. Um and Whaleshark, who got the number two position, who ended up spending 2.5 million um has a very big public presence, but no one knows who he actually is underneath his pseudonym, Whaleshark. So, he's got a Discord group. curious. 4,000 collectors. We can dive into like who these people are and what they're doing, but Because I don't know who uh bidder 65 is or 64, I forget. Um Whaleshark though and I had a relationship prior, and we talked a lot about collectibles and art, and um I was very surprised by his just excitement about this. And now, you know, he was the one featured in the Forbes article because I I you know, I was able to introduce him at least on email to Forbes, and and yeah, so What do they get? Yes. Explain. But first, we have a quick word from our sponsor, Ladder. Life is full of reminders of its beauty, whether I'm chilling by the pool, swimming some laps, or just having a good time making videos about life insurance. Experiences like these are great reminders of how beautiful life is and exactly why it should be protected. On that note, it makes sense why people get life insurance, especially long-term coverage, which is surprisingly affordable. 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If you went to the record store and they have no more Nirvana vinyls, you couldn't even listen to Nirvana. So, these records would trade in the aftermarket for crazy amounts of money. Now, today you can obviously still listen to any song on my album by going to Spotify. But it's impossible to verify you actually own it, own an official signed copy on the blockchain of that song. So, what people bought were audio-visual pieces of art that I created, digital art with the music in the background. But they also bought a vinyl NFT, which is redeemable for a real world vinyl. So, they bought this you know, digital asset that they can use to, you know, as a basically coupon to get one of the 33 vinyls for my album and they're the only 33 vinyls we will ever print. Now, vinyls historically have had crazy resale value, right? And so, a lot of this is the idea that I've only made 33 vinyls of my album. My album has accumulated over 100 million streams. And so, some people probably bought the collection for the vinyl. Some probably bought it for the collection of song NFTs, these official editions of the song. But I kind of surprised people in the middle of the auction and said, "The top six people get all access passes to any show ever that I play in the future. What's the value of being backstage at EDC? Right? Not many people get that kind of access. And so, my feeling is that people just wanted to participate in this auction to show that the music business is about to change in a huge way. These people all who've been on this who ended up in the top 33, which I had no idea it was going to go this way. What did you think? What do you think it was going to sell for? have been happy at $500,000 because my last drop we did was 250,000. Yeah. The auction mechanic, and this is like we don't have to dive too deep into Nash equilibrium, game theory economics. I'm a math guy. We don't have to go there, but um I designed this auction mechanic specifically for this reason, but I I didn't expect it to succeed the way it did. But the reality is all these people, you know, they didn't just buy the digital collectibles. They bought a statement. They bought a statement to the music industry that artists have power to monetize themselves without a record label. People believe in that vision. So, they yeah, so they don't get to own the like the rights to the song. But that's next. That's next. Like licensing, we can talk about. Imagine a world, so this is step one. Owning a piece of unique digital content that can't be you can't replicate it because it's code on the blockchain. It will only ever exist as that. Can't be duplicated. That's what an NFT means. It's just a code that represents ownership in something. Where this goes in the future, imagine you can invest in your favorite song and then collect a royalty on that song. Imagine you can invest in an artist that you like, like in in my case, The Chainsmokers and Illenium both opened for me back in the day in my career. I believed in Illenium so hard when we started, you know, just when we met. And Illenium is very excited about doing his first NFT launch, which I I don't want to reveal too much, but Illenium, if I could have invested in Illenium's music back when I believed in him, the royalties that I'd get from that today would be immensely valuable, right? I would own a piece of the IP. Now, the reason why that can't happen today is because of the regulatory environment, which is too technical. We don't have to go there. But that's the next step of this, actually owning rights in the music as a fan. Then, you don't need a record label anymore, cuz you could fundraise from fans. How did you come up with the idea to do this? This is something I've been thinking about for 6 years. This isn't This is a Before NFTs were even a thing. Yeah. I've been an independent artist my whole career. I've never given up I've given up rights on some of my songs. Yeah. Like, I did a song with Ninja, and you know, Ninja put this together with Astro Works, which is underneath a major record label, right? So, I couldn't really tokenize that song without their permission. But, my last album, I owned all the master rights. So, I have the ability to do whatever I want with it. And I had that vision for my whole career, and I was always in the public like encouraging people to own their master rights, own their master rights, because then you can control your own music. A lot of artists that are going to want to mint music NFTs now aren't going to be able to with their old music, because they're in a record deal. And the record label's going to want to take what they typically take is 80%. Mhm. Imagine if like 11.7 million that I did when 80% went to a record label? Oh my god. Do you have to split that NFT cost with like a cuz I know like some of the NFT companies out there will take like 50%. Did you Did you create your own or I So, that's also why I created this on my own website with a company that I invested a crypto company that I invested in. So, that I wouldn't have to pay a crazy fee. Wow. So, that's how it worked. Um but, I've been involved in this world for years, and having it come to the fruition the way that it did at this moment in time in the universe when everyone's been quarantined, and people are moving to the digital world in such a such an extreme way, it was it it was a moment. And and and Logan kind of had a similar moment. And, you know, Grimes did 5.5 million in NFT sales. And, you know, and Beeple, you know, had a Beeple sold For those of you who aren't familiar with Beeple, let's talk about Beeple for a second, because he is also a pioneer here. Beeple was a digital artist who made had a huge Instagram account for a really long time. Like just lots of followers. Never really got paid fairly for this work that he did that he spends hours and hours and hours on. And he sold a piece for the election. It was this brilliant concept. It was a digital programmable digital art. Where if Trump won, it would turn one way. If Biden won, it would turn another way. So when Biden won, the NFT became it it changed states. Right? It became the Biden video clip. The Biden victory video clip after the election. And that piece sold for $66,000 originally. It sold for $6.6 million 3 days ago. Do you worry that we're in a bit of a bubble? Yes and no. I think that it's the same with the real art world. So when people I'm sure you all have seen or maybe you know the Japanese billionaire who bought a $100 million Basquiat painting. Was that the one on his Amex? I'm not sure. Okay. It's possible. Yeah. A Japanese billionaire It's possible. sure he got it on the Amex to get the points. I I've listen, I've I've I've Believe it or not, believe it or not, you're going to find the article, put it up here. That's genius. I'm pretty sure he got the points on the card. You're probably right, but what is the value of a Basquiat painting? It's the What did it cost him to make it? Was the canvas cost 100 bucks, the paint? What are you buying when you buy You're buying a feeling. You're buying an emotional connection to a piece of art that someone else made. There's no other reason why you would pay $100 million for something that you could replicate. If you go on Amazon right now, this is my favorite example. Mhm. You can go on Amazon and buy the Mona Lisa. You know how much it costs? 53 bucks. It's exactly the same as the original Mona Lisa. Same size. At to the T. It's exactly the same. But But why would you want to own a fake Mona Lisa? But wouldn't you argue that those pieces of art have had probably 100 years to appreciate? I don't think those pieces just went from being worth, let's say, 60 grand to 6 million in a year. Right. I think that that appreciation is pretty nuts. Mhm. But, I also think that people believe in Beeple as being like the first pioneer of this entire movement. And that's why after that sold for 6.6 million, he actually he actually has an auction going on with Christie's right now that I think don't quote me on it, I think it's up to 2.8 already for another piece. So, clearly there are multiple people that are people that are interested in owning this historical work, and people are interested in owning my music in a collectible way. Mhm. Um you can't deny the market. It's there. How much speculation is there? I don't know. But, I know that I own a Beeple. To give you an example, I own a Beeple that I that was $969 that I could sell today for $170,000, but I'm not selling it. So, Can I see it? Could you pull it? Yeah. I'm so curious to see like what this looks like. Absolutely. It's a it's a piece called Into the Ether. Is there any way you could screen record this? Or just like or just do a screenshot. That way we could just put it up Absolutely. Um Hold on. I'm so curious to see what this looks like. Okay. So, there's another problem with the crypto universe, which is that there really isn't a good way to mobilely display all this stuff yet, and we're everyone in crypto is building these tools right now. Yeah, I would love to see like a digital museum. Like there's people working on this stuff. You click on it, you could look through, scroll through the museum. Maybe you put on like a VR headset, and you could walk around the museum. Yeah. Yeah. I'm logging in. This is going to take me a second to log in here cuz I want to show you the official version. I'm not going to show you just a picture of it, right? let's see. Just logging in here. Give me a moment. But, there are virtual museums, and they are sick. If you don't have a VR headset, Graham, I'm buying you an Oculus 2. I don't have a VR headset, so you could you could buy me something. All right. I'm I'm getting that for you right after this episode. Um, give me a moment. I have to prove. It seems like everyone that I've talked to about NFTs so far are all selling NFTs. Like I haven't talked to a single person that's buying NFTs. So I'm showing them I have 50 pieces that I own and I also sell my stuff. I love it. In my like if you ever come to my house, you'll see I have digital screens all over the house that I I display my art on and it's just like imagine that you came into my house and you looked at this TV screen that looks like a piece of art. And you're like, "What's that?" And I'm like, "Oh, it's just like an image I found on the internet." Or I'm like, "Oh, it's this artist that I I bought that." And they're like, "How did you buy that?" I'm like, "No, I supported the artist. I bought this piece of digital art." And when you come over to my house, I hope you have that experience where you kind of get it. When you're looking around at all the screens and you're like, "Wait, Justin owns this stuff." I would totally NFTs are valid. Like I totally think it's it's a it's a reasonable like legit thing, but at the same time it seems like the the demand is coming out of the woodwork. It's like and then maybe that's just because the whole anonymity thing like with crypto or anything, but it I would be the type to have a screen though just change the picture every day. Be like, "Yeah, I bought that." But you can but that's what what you can do, right? Like you can all the pieces that you own, you can display on one screen. They don't have to be on separate screens. No, I'm just saying I just find a random picture on Google. I'll be like, "Yeah, I own that." They'll be like, "What? You own the picture?" I'm like, "No, the TV." At some point at some point someone's going to figure out whether or not it's legit. Unfortunately, I can't log into my account right now. So Oh, is it slow Wi-Fi? Cuz it's really slow. I can screen record this later. Is that helpful if I put it later for you? Yes. Cool. And then you'll see like the addition number and then you'll see how much it's going for in the after market and you'll see the price that I paid. Is there a price that you would sell that for? How much? To be honest, I probably won't because it means something to me. Um, I mean I maybe if you spoke to me before this latest sale, maybe I'd feel differently just because of the change in my life. Um, Um, but even then I probably wouldn't. There's some pieces that I would. Not every piece do I feel like is a piece for life, but people like owning one of the first people pieces in in in years from now, I mean these things appreciate incredibly in value. Art does, real art does, and this is the first form of digital art from one of the most well-known digital artists. So, I would love to pass it down to my kids. To be dead you know, I would like the way people have passed down Picassos. Right? I really believe that. And I know it's kind of crazy. But what I would suggest to you guys is you can buy digital art for way cheaper than some of the prices you're seeing. Find an artist that you think is interesting and just try it. Pay the $300, see if it makes you feel something. And I guarantee you it will. What are you going to do with all the money? But really quick, we have a word from our sponsor Fundrise. In 2021, a truly diversified portfolio needs more than just the traditional mix of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. It needs private real estate. 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This this is you know, however this ticket as you will. Like this is obviously a great amount of money, but I've also been a Bitcoin investor for a very long time and I've my mission is to support other artists. So, even before my, you know, auction, we did a Clubhouse room where I was like, "I'm going to spend $33,000 on your digital art if you're a new artist. Come up to the stage and pitch it to me." Mhm. And I didn't end up buying every everyone's pitch. I bought like maybe five things that I really liked. Um so, I'm definitely going to take a big portion of this money and support the new NFT art community. Um I've, you know, my record label that I built, we donated over, you know, $330,000 to building schools in Guatemala um with an organization called Pencils of Promise. I'm always about giving back. And this obviously, we're going to be giving back in in a big way with this kind of money because it's crazy. I mean, the community came out to support me and my vision. But what I do want to really stress is this feels like a little it's a little bit speculative. I would encourage you to just buy something for $50. To give you an example, I bought my friend Slime Sunday. I bought one of his pieces called The Last Stand of the Nation State for $40. And I as a joke put it up for sale at $8,000. There were only 400 editions ever minted. My price got hit and I panicked because I ac- I like did it as a joke. I'm going to just going to put this up for resale for eight grand. That's insane. And now it's 19 and it's 19 today. you buy it? Where do you buy an NFT? How can we do this? Nifty Gateway. You can go to Zora. You can go to OpenSea, Foundation, SuperRare. Those are all the main platforms. Nifty Gateway enables credit cards so you don't have to know anything about crypto to start collecting. But I want to say this, don't buy to make money. Like a lot of people are kidding themselves. This is going to be a profit oppor- No, buy stuff that you like the same way you buy real art. I mean, I I buy real art. I have a lot of real art in my house. I buy it because I love those artists and I don't like plan on flipping it. So, I would say like if you if something is digitally interesting to you, just explore. Like 40 bucks. I'm not a skeptic at all of like NFTs and I think it's a it's a move in the right direction to move it to move it like online. I think that's great because like it's it's kind of weird but like we live in a finite world but we have like infinite desires and aspirations, right? So, to move everything onto a digital platform where we can expand infinitely, I think is a great idea and also I love the idea that it's it can be one of one and and not, you know, like it's it's the true valid like imagine something else, right? I I want I want to take this to the next level beyond the investment part which I'm maybe that resonates with you like owning the royalties of a song. You know, some of my music has generated significant royalties. My song is at love has generated over, you know, 330,000 in royalties just for that one song. What if you What if I told you Graham like back when I made it, if you liked it, you can own 5% of that? But you could own it for like 500 bucks. Like, that'd be totally a great investment, right? And so, thinking about it in that way, that's the future. But there's another way to think about it, too. What if owning an NFT gives you access to both exclusive digital content but also gives you access to things in real life? For instance, imagine an NFT unlocks all my unreleased songs on my website, which is what we're doing, by the way, with this. You can listen to all the ideas that I'm working on in real time when they're not finished and only these 33 people will have that ability. But they have to have the Ethereum token in their wallet. They have to sign a message through Ethereum to prove. Now, could they rip it? Yeah, but look how much money they made. You think they want to show that to everyone? They might show it to their friends when they're over, but they're not sharing that. And if someone else tried to get in the website, they physically couldn't because they didn't have the token in their wallet. Take this a step further. Let's say you're at one of my shows and you own an all-access NFT. I have like I'm going to let you backstage because you can prove to me that you own it by signing a message on your phone that shows that your wallet owns the all-access NFT and I could take you backstage. We only made six of them ever. So, let's say you want to go backstage at EDC, you go, you experience it, now you can resell it. And every time you resell it, I get 10%. How incredible is that? So, these things have real real world functionality, not just digital functionality. Gosh, you know what we should do that with a mentorship group, man. Honestly, it's just create a hundred NFT uh hundred NFTs that we could just basically do like a like a once a month sort of like mastermind. smart. I like that. do we do that, man? I We'll we'll talk about it. It's a long conversation, but like RAC is another artist who has tokens that unlock access to a Discord server that is a direct channel of communication to him, but you have to own it. That's exactly what we want to do that. All right, that's an idea. This makes This makes a little a little bit more sense as you as you It makes sense. Like for that, I'd say it makes sense in the sense and it's it's just it's security. I like that. It's resellable. I like that. And uh I guess that's what I like about it. Yeah. talk about you first. Sure. Okay. This is a great example. How many of the people watching would love to have a community around you? Only a hundred people get direct access to you. Maybe you don't talk in this Discord server every single hour of every day, but every night before you go to sleep, you go through the hundred people that might have questions for you. What's the value of that pass for your fans? you think that might be? Like Well, for for per person? How do you How do you say this is for life? Like how do I know I'm going to be like 80 years old and like Discord still going to be a thing or like that's your commitment you have to make to them. You have to you can create a you know terms and conditions, just like anything else in the world. You could say, "Listen, this gives you access to this Discord group. I can guarantee you I'm going to be popping in at least once every week." But now you build a community around you of people that can talk to each other that are your biggest fans. So, whether you pop in every week or not, they can talk to each other. to throw out a number cuz then I'm then I'm setting myself up for that number. Okay, it's uh we should do that. Honestly, don't throw out a number, but let me tell you something. Our first NFT Yeah. some of them sold for 200 bucks. They're selling for 5 to 10,000 dollars now. Why? Just because honestly, people believe in my vision for the future of music. Uh-huh. Which I've expressed on Clubhouse. I've talked on a lot of podcasts like a pomp, pompelino, you know, I've talked on a bunch of people's podcasts just to describing what I think the music business will become. And people believe in that vision and they want to support that vision and that's why they're buying this stuff. And I'm hopefully going to shape that. I mean that that's kind of what happened this this this past weekend which is honestly like the craziest moment of my life. I don't know if you saw but my in my high school yearbook it says like lifestyle that the music business and like that literally like I'm on cloud nine right now because I feel like I didn't do it yet. But I took a big step. Uh-huh. And the reality is creators like yourself are we're we've been dependent on platforms for so long. When you have a token that someone else owns, you have direct access to those people. You don't have to go through a platform and that's a whole other conversation that we can dive into. Let's say you make Let's say you make 10,000 NFTs for your truest fans. You can send them messages on the blockchain without having even emailing them. Like and it's all decentralized and no one can stop you from doing it. No one can ban your account no matter what. And so giving creators that kind of power going direct to fan is unstoppable. That's it. I want to do that. I want to do that one. That that I think has a lot of utility. everybody. There's an application for everybody. All right, I like that. You convinced me. That's what I'm here for man. That's why we're talking. Revolutionizing the mentorship group now too. Sure. Honestly, like if I was if I was a young kid who wanted to follow in your footsteps, you're extremely successful. You speak so well to both investments, real estate. There's so many people out there that would love your perspective on either a one-on-one basis or a one-on-100 basis. I mean, if I was a younger kid and I would save money, I would pay 5 to 10 grand for that. Mhm. But you say like 50 or 100 we kind of Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe like, you know, are those kids going to be able to afford it? I don't know. But maybe you get maybe it starts out there. But remember like I sold some of my first stuff for 200. You start out in a place that makes sense. But if the demand is there, you expand. Right. People sold this first piece for $1, and it's going for 100,000. And he's capturing 10% of all the resales every time it resells. So, let me ask you a question. Would you rather underprice yourself and capture 10% of every other transaction, or overprice yourself so much that maybe you don't attract a buyer? 10% of five times, you know, 50 like if it goes for 20 and then 30 and then 50 and then all if it changes hands all those times, but it started at one? Well You get 10% of every time it changes hands. Why not just do the bidding system like you did? Give give like the top 50 or top 100 and the the number one person gets like a one once-a-year meet-up in person or something like exactly what we did, which is like hardcore game theory economics that I studied in college, and that's why it worked. But it's also very risky, and like we didn't know it would play out. Like there's there's a lot of math behind it. There's a lot of like special features that the collectors know that they have that no one else knows yet. Cuz now I've created a community of 33 people who changed my life, and so I'm going to make sure that their investment in my art is worth something, and they're going to get so much other that we didn't even announce yet. So, you know, you can play this however you want. The beauty is it's not like YouTube or Spotify, where I upload a song and then I let the algorithm decide what happens. I have full control over the engagement with my community. And that's the power of this. So, it's not like whether you price it at 1,000 or 5,000. The the beauty of it is the fans can decide what the value is, and you'll capture all of it as it changes hands. So, to give you perspective, before this 11.7, we had done about 1.1, me and my art director combined. So, pretty big jump. Like, all the other ones were 1.1. Then this was 11.7, kind of crazy. But that 1.1 has resold in the resale market with 4 million of sales volume after we sold it at its initial prices, which means that people value this stuff. Did you do any marketing ahead of time? Cuz I saw you in Morning Brew. I loved that. I read I read Morning Brew pretty much every morning. Saw you on there, and I'm wondering like We did marketing before the auction because because I went out on my own. I didn't use a platform. Like, platforms have built-in audiences. Like, Nifty Gateway has an audience of people that literally just buy everything because they love this stuff. I had to basically gather my hardcore fan base and bring them to my own website and hope that they were going to bid. And so, we did some marketing because I was nervous that we were going to host it I was the first NFT artist ever to host a sale on my own website. Like, Shopify versus, you know, Sotheby's, right? And I was nervous. But they showed up. But I had no idea, man. I had no clue. Right. Once it hit, my family was with me in the house. And it starts out we hit a million. Oh my god, this is amazing. Then we break the record of 6.6, and we're like then we just go quiet. Like, everyone was just watching silently as it just kept going. And the timer reset every 3 minutes. So, if any of the 33 bidders bid again in the final 3 minutes, it would reset. So, it gave everyone a chance to move around the board until they had their final price. Game theory, Nash equilibrium. Um you guys, if you're curious about the math behind it, you can just Wikipedia game theory and Nash equilibrium. Um and you'll you'll figure out how I designed this, but ultimately, you know, we all just sat there as it went from 1 to 6 to 11, and we were like, when is this going to stop? And then it stopped and I was just like, I didn't even know what to do. So, that was my my weekend last weekend. Did any of it not feel real? It didn't. I felt like I was I The past 4 days, by the way, this is the first conversation I've had with someone in real life. All I've been is on the phone with other artists, musicians, people that want to get involved, not to name any names, but pretty much like everyone who you know who you like like musically is probably going to be doing this very soon. Mhm. So. And how did you get Oh, also, us. If you think everyone's getting get on board with like selling NFTs, kind of asked you a little bit before we started recording, but do you think that that would create a too big of a supply where the prices would go down? It depends. Just like YouTube. How many YouTubers are there? A lot of YouTubers. Mhm. But people choose to follow you because they believe in your message. The same thing will happen with NFTs. There'll be a lot of noise. People won't be able to sell stuff. But if it's meaningful to someone else, it will sell. Just like any other market. Just like for musicians. How many musicians are there on Spotify that have less than a thousand listeners? It's just like anything else. So, will there be an over flood of supply because people think they're going to make money? Yes. But as bigger artists do this and their fans come on board, maybe fans start to really see the value. And as more big people big artists come, more collectors will come and eventually it'll balance out. But there is a lot of hype right now. We we can't deny that, right? We can't deny that. What was the music industry like before all of this? Let's go back when you were like 19. How much were you making back then? Like how did you get your music out there? How did you grow as an artist? So, I disclosed this on NBC now, so I'm happy to kind of disclose a little bit. But But, you know, outside of my investment portfolio, I like you I ad- I admire you because I watched some of your videos and you are a saver and an investor and I didn't buy any luxury goods until this house that I just bought. Like nothing for 8 years. Like, you know, I'm I'm very like-minded in that sense. Um put most of my money that I made over the years in multifamily real estate assets and in Bitcoin. Like that's pretty much it. Not really many equities. I trade equity derivatives. It's a whole other conversation. Um but or index derivatives, not equity derivatives. But um when I started out I was 19, that year I made 400 grand. How? Playing shows all around the country at colleges. Really? of thousands of people. How How big of a following did you have back then? Just Facebook following of like maybe 50 to 100,000 people. Are you serious? How much would you get per show? It would range anywhere between 3 to 10,000 for the first 8 months and then it would go and then it went up to 12 and then it went up to 15 and then went up to 20 and then over the years it just keeps going up because How did you more people pay for tickets. It's simple. When people buy a ticket and if I sell this many tickets it generates this much money and that's that and then the after everyone else is paid you know, what's left goes to me. Yeah, how did you get a following of 50 to 100,000 on Facebook? I made mashups. I mixed popular songs with popular vocal popular dance songs and popular vocals and one just went viral on YouTube. And then I was playing colleges for well, it started even lower than that. It started at 500 bucks. I was like a kid in college. I was a junior year and I would go out on the weekend to get to make like 1,500 bucks. Like I'd fly to like Georgia Tech University and play a fraternity basement, slept in the you know, slept in one of the frat brothers like beds in the Wow. That's where it all started in fraternities and all around the country and sororities and then it went up to like opening up for Wiz Khalifa at University of Connecticut, opening up for Macklemore at Duke. How do you go from that to Macklemore? My agent who I've been with this whole time at the time like EDM was barely a thing. It was like right at the start of Avicii. This is like 2008? 2011. 2011 is when it really started to hit. Got it. And there weren't that many American artists that were doing it at the time. So I I just had good timing I guess. Um but yeah, my when I was 19 $400,000 left school dropped out of school. My economics professor convinced my parents to let me drop out of school and then it was It's you know, upward from there. Every year doubling, doubling, doubling. And then over the years, not spending my money on anything, putting it into Bitcoin, putting it into real estate, and just understanding that money doesn't really come overnight. And then all of a sudden this happens. How much do you charge per show now? It ranges. It ranges. It's definitely a lot more than it was. I don't I don't want to like give a specific number because it ranges depending on how far I have to travel, what the demands are, but you know, it's definitely a lot more than what it used Let's say I wanted you to DJ like a like a house party here, like play music for me. Like and but pretend we weren't friends and we're like, "Hey man, uh I mean my agent's going to My agent's going to kill me for disclosing that. No, it's it's I I unfortunately I can't disclose what what it would cost today, but I can tell you that there was a time There was a time that it went from 500 bucks to 3,000 to 12,000 to 15,000, you know, like there was a time in my career where that happened. Now it's a lot more, but it depends on the circumstances, you know, like I'm To give you an example, one of my best friends, um who helped me in the crypto space early on, Keith Rabois, um I'm sure you've heard of him. He started a company called OpenDoor, he's one of the original PayPal Mafia guys. He's His birthday is in Miami. Uh I'm going to get my second shot. I'm going to go play his birthday party. I want to go hang out cuz I'm celebrating this event and all my friends are down there. He ain't paying for that. I wouldn't charge him. You know, you and I will become friends and, you know, we'll throw a party. You're my next-door neighbor. right? Like I I enjoy DJing. I tell people I don't get paid to DJ. I get paid to put my body through hell traveling to DJ. Yeah. That's the hard part. Like I get offers sometimes to go to India and they're really big offers, but the 48 hours of hell to go and come back is hard. So unless I have multiple shows in India lined up so that I can, you know, go hit them all at once, it's hard to get me to go there for, you know, 24 hours and come back. So it's really just a fact The price is a function of anything else. Like, you know, if if someone wants me to go who's a friend who wants me to do something, my buddy Matt Como, who's a big Instagram you know, photographer, videographer, he just said, "Dude, like all of our friends are going to I'm a birthday party in LA. It's in Venice Beach. You want to come? You want to play?" I'm like, "Yeah, I do. All my friends are going to be there. I'm going to go play. You don't have to pay for anything." Right? Like so, I always tell people that I DJ because I love DJing. I make music because I love making music. I get paid because I hate traveling. Hate it. So, that's why this has been kind of nice. Makes sense. Makes sense. What was I Are you finally spending your money now? Not really. No? I Besides the house, you splurge? I finally bought a car. Finally bought a car. did you get? F8 Spider. Um but outside of that, like I I don't I prefer investing in people. Mhm. I like investing in people with crazy ideas. And so, like Carrot, great example, right? Like I'm I'm investing in Carrot because I believe in Eric's vision, right? You know, I like investing in things that will shape the world for the better. That's the best thing about capital is deploying it into ideas that change the world. And so, I like to be a part of that story. And like things are nice. Like I don't really own a nice watch. Maybe I'll go I've never been a watch guy, but now everyone's like, "Oh, you should go buy this AP. You should go buy this, you know, Patek. You should Patek. You go I've never been a watch guy, but like, you know, it's a store of value because what's happening with the dollar right now, right? Like maybe the watch is actually a better decision than holding the dollars. Rolex Daytona. Is the Zenith Rolex Daytona? Yes, that's the one you want. Versus an AP? I was looking at Okay. Yeah. Dude, we'll talk about watches cuz I don't know anything about watches. Maybe you'll give me some recommendations. But am I spending my money now? No, I'm I'm definitely excited aside from the car, like I'm mostly excited about investing in young ideas, young artists, investing you know, investing in I'm going to create a foundation. You know, I already had a a non-for-profit. Um now I'm going to create an actual 501c3 foundation and do a lot of really cool stuff to help new artists that can't pay for, you know, just can't pay to get don't even, you know, have the ability to buy the software. Mhm. Right? Like someone could be so talented, but maybe they can't afford to pay for Adobe. Like I want to help those people um and pay it forward. And so, that's really, you know, how I think about money is is I want to use whatever money I have to create more value in the world for other human beings by believing in people. And and and real estate assets. That's why we're and real estate assets, right? real estate do you own? How do you get into that? I would say half of my net worth is in multi-family real estate. Okay. Um we all know 1031 exchange, you know, and how powerful that can be. Um I own a lot of units in Texas and Florida and I'm not going to tell you exactly how many, but I have a lot of units in Texas and Florida across different properties that I've invested from day one. First 400 grand 200 into multi-family real estate when I was 19. Like literally been doing this How did you learn about that? My dad is a real estate guy. I'm very thankful. You know, he he guided me when I started making any money, he was like, "Justin, this is how you do it. Like, don't spend it. Don't be in Don't buy the car. And I, you know, I haven't bought the car of my dreams until today. Yeah. After all this time. Because the compound interest is such a powerful thing. Mhm. And there's a lot of really interesting stuff happening in the cryptocurrency space for those of you who want to get involved. It is easy to take the first step. It's hard to take the second step, which is really understanding how all this stuff works. But NFTs make it simple because unlike a cryptocurrency where you look at Bitcoin and someone's like, "This is like $50,000. How am I going to buy one of them?" You can't think about it that way. You have to think about it as it's okay to own points 0.001 of something. We just haven't been trained that way. Austrian economics, this idea of dollars and cents, is is just a theory someone came up with a long time ago that doesn't really apply to anything today. And once you start like thinking about it and really diving in, it all starts to make sense and and you'll you'll have and I hope you have Michael Saylor would have helped you on that call and I'll get you on the phone with him again. next one. Next one. He he speaks so well to the aha moment that you have when like pennies don't really make sense anymore. The idea of a penny. Like I've been a big proponent of getting rid of the penny. Let's be real. I think we should Let's Let's abolish the penny. Canada did it. It works really well. We don't need the penny. It's a It's a useless money. How can you trust a financial system that has no backing? We keep printing dollars like it's nothing. So, what do I do? I want to invest in ideas, in art, in Bitcoin, in real estate. Why do I invest in real estate? Probably for a similar reason to you. Everybody needs a place to live. Mhm. Right? No matter what, you need a place to go home to. And that's why real estate has been such a powerful asset over the years. But, you know, for anyone who's watching, who's a young entrepreneur, who follows you, and you're a great voice for our for that young generation. Thanks. You really are, man. I got to hand it to you. I watch your videos. You You're teaching people to be financially responsible with their success. Mhm. And you know, before YouTube, a lot of people would just blow their money on Right? And it's it's nice to splurge sometimes, but within reason. Invest. That's your mission. Like that's your that's your message. Invest. Right? And we all know how powerful that is. So, props to you, man. Thank you. What do you do for fun? I make music. Really? I make music. besides music? I have a my girlfriend and I are pretty low-key. Like uh she's an actress. She's got a really awesome trilogy uh coming out on Netflix books this summer called Fear Street. You guys should check it out. She's She's awesome. Um and you know, we Tell us about her for a second. How long have you guys been together? A long time. It's It's It's been a long time. But, she's actually She would have She would have come, unfortunately, but she's She's home with the family. She went home, unfortunately, and missed We didn't know that this was going to be such a big deal, but she missed the the auction moment, unfortunately. But, you'll meet her in person at some point, I'm sure. But, I I I I think that, you know, the the reality is that happiness manifests itself for people in different ways. The way I feel like I'm happy is when I make a positive change in the world. And hopefully what happened this past weekend influences other artists not to sign that new record deal. That was always my mission in life. Record labels take have taken advantage of artists for years because artists just they want their shot. They want to get some money so that they don't have to go to their day their day job and they can just be creative. But they can get that money from fans if they even just have a little bit of a following. There's this artist Fewocious. Great great NFT artist. Highly recommend you guys check check them out. Fewocious is 18, makes really abstract work and turned to crypto art just because they're one of the earliest adopters of this stuff. 18 years old. On average does between a million and three million dollars every drop. They make abstract art. They came from a family here. They're actually from Las Vegas. I I think they moved to Seattle. And just kills it because people believe in their mission. Like believe in their artistic integrity. And like I It's It's hard to argue with that. When you believe in a story, when you believe in a narrative. I mean, look at Elon. My favorite example is Elon, right? I don't want to bash Tesla or anything, but Tesla's made money. People believe in Elon's vision for the future. Is there anything wrong with that? Not when the government keeps printing dollars, there's nothing wrong with it, right? And so it's a it's a cycle. We I can talk about the economics of that forever, but the reality is people invest in narratives that they believe will make the world a better place. That's how I invest. Or real estate because people need it. Right. That's my feeling of the world. I mean, I don't know what's what's your feeling of the world, Dave? How do you feel about crypto? How do you feel about all this stuff? Oh, man. I look at it from too logical of a standpoint. Like like very traditional. So I see Bitcoin now as a store of value. Originally I saw it as too speculative and I didn't get that people couldn't spend it. It's not really a spendable currency. So, I didn't truly get it. I'm like, how do you value it? It doesn't produce anything. It doesn't pay you off dividends. It's not backed by anything. So, is the worst cryptocurrency is the worst word to ever happen to crypto. Right. Crypto comes from cryptography. The cryptographic code that all of this stuff runs on. Crypto current The word currency just is just incorrect way of characterizing all of this technology. Blockchain technology, distributed ledger technology. That's the stuff that's really cool. Currency is just a word that made crypto into a forex game, but like not. And and you're right. A lot of this stuff isn't efficient to spend. Um there will be ways in the future that I think will make it more efficient, but right now, you know, you're right. Right. So, But yeah, now I'm seeing it more as a store of value. That a lot of people just basically feel safe with their money in there that it's not going to be devalued to inflation. So, that's why I'm seeing it too. So, right now I'm at like I'm getting close to 2% of my total portfolio in Bitcoin and Ethereum. And that is a great start For me, it started at around two to three to five percent. And now what is it? 50? bit No, it's not quite 50. It's maybe third Well, excluding excluding this last event. Let's exclude that for a second. All right. 50% multifamily real estate assets. And that five three to five grew to 30. Hm. Um and then the rest in cash. And plus my personal home, right? How much in cash do you keep? Not a lot. Okay. I'm not going to disclose that, but I I don't I I mean enough that if everything went wrong, I mean when I say not a lot, I mean, that's relative, I guess, right? $5 million peanuts. Sorry, yeah, my perspective is a little bit My perspective is warped there. When I say not a lot, I mean, enough for me to live the rest of my life very comfortably. Right? So, whatever that means. I mean, that sounds like that. I love the answer. Whatever that means. But, but no, I I I I like investing in people and and and ideas, and I like particularly DeFi protocols, which is a whole other like rabbit hole of crypto that we don't need to get into that is using stable dollars. So, the question is how much do I keep in cash? I view my crypto cash as equally as valuable as cash. That's fair. Um so, if you counted that, we'd be at a whole different then that's a lot. We talking about like USDC or like Okay. 8% interest on USDC per versus Yeah. Is that what Is that what you're doing? Is just USDC 8%? yeah. You can earn 8% interest interest on USDC on No, so BlockFi is centralized. Um BlockFi is like a bank account. So, what do you use to get 8%? Compound. It's It's just called Compound. It's called Compound. It's a DeFi protocol. It's very complicated. Don't recommend it. Like So, don't do You don't You don't don't I'll teach you like I don't do Compound. I'll bring you over to my place. I'll show you how to use a ledger, the security of it. It's like very complicated, but you can earn 8% on Compound. So, I'm doing BlockFi. That Is it You're saying it's bad? no, BlockFi's fine. I mean, it's BlockFi's a great company. What What do they pay? Six? Uh six and a half. No, no, no, USDC I think is like eight, but Bitcoin and Ethereum is about six. difference between BlockFi and Compound is BlockFi custodizes your crypto. They actually have your crypto. Compound, I still have the right to claim my crypto from a smart contract that exists on the blockchain. So, no one else can touch it. Whereas, BlockFi, if they went bankrupt for whatever reason, you're screwed. Right? With crypto like I The blockchain determines it is impossible for anybody to change the fact that I have a call on this money. So, you're saying I could put like a million bucks in Compound and earn eight eight 80 grand a year risk free. The risk Well, what's the risk? The risk is is a hack. Which happens. But But why is Compound so valuable? It's one of the first protocols that does this very securely. What's more likely, a bank getting hacked or my account my Compound account getting hacked? so you The real question is what's the risk? What's the difference between counterparty risk and smart contract risk? And now we get really technical. So what we don't I mean I can dive into it if you want. Can we simplify like 30 seconds? Like one does this but the other one does that like 30 seconds, yeah. to make a real estate investment and I rolled down to Bank of America here in Las Vegas. I wanted to make a big real estate investment. I was putting I was putting half a million dollars in in a property in Florida, okay? And you know, I'm going to wire this money and there's no one in the branch that has the authorization to wire this money. I need to get it in by Friday. It's Monday. Okay, come back tomorrow. Yeah, whatever. First of all, I should be able to do that online. That's ridiculous, right? And I moved everything to JP Morgan now. Bank of America is terrible. JP Morgan now. Bank of America is a horrendous, terrible situation. JP Morgan awesome, Chase awesome. So Monday, trying to make this investment. Oh, we don't have the right authorization. Okay, come back tomorrow. Uh oh, they're on vacation. So you might have to wait like till next week. Are you me? I'm It's my money, dude. What Are you joking? I I canceled everything and moved moved. And even then, like that So that's counterparty risk in a sense, right? Like what if I missed that investment opportunity because someone else had custody of my funds. With crypto, you custody your own funds. It's like having a gold vault and I I don't like making this analogy because crypto is not similar to gold in a lot of ways and similar in other ways. But it's like you have a gold vault in your house and you imagine you could like Imagine you had dollars, which are It's It's hard like with diamonds is a better example. You have a vault of diamonds that you could actually spend on something. The bank isn't holding it. You have them in your house in a safe, right? Like the idea that with BlockFi, you're keeping your money with a counterparty who has certain rights on the, you know, has a reserve requirement, but otherwise, they do something called hypothecation. Which, you know, we we don't we don't we don't have to go into the details, but like how banks work is like banks banks suck. This is why I've been involved in the crypto space because it's inefficient. So, uh to you want to ask a few questions, Jake? Jake Jake always answers to Yeah, I have a couple questions. Sure. So, um how do the funds settle? Like after you sell your NFT? Obviously, I mean, you receive everything in like Ethereum. What if you receive it all in Ethereum and then there's like a 30% plummet? Like or do you immediately sell? So, that's a great question. So, you can program the smart contract to automatically swap. So, this is where like the computer nerd comes out where like internet money can do whatever you want it to do. So, I can program a smart contract to immediately convert it to a stable asset when it hits my wallet after a sale. In my case, on my website, we built a platform where it's all stablecoin and credit card. Right? So, it none of it actually you could you could deposit ETH, but it swapped it for you when you deposited it, but you could only bid in stablecoin and USDC. I'm going to tell you. So, I was curious how these bids I don't I didn't believe the bids in the beginning and I thought like what can anyone just go on and type in whatever number they want? So, I logged in. I made made an account. Mhm. And I just wanted to see if I could place a bid and I was like then it would be like how realistic is it or people really putting in money? And sure enough, as soon as I went to put in the bid, it's like link your account USDC like the these water coins like it's all legit. Like you have to have the money to go in there. So, if you use the credit So, something happened in the auction. This is a great point. Someone There's a pre-auth on the credit card for a low number, but we don't charge it until the end, right? In good faith, we assume someone put fat put a fat finger $413,000 bid if on the first day. We charged the card, got declined, canceled the bid immediately. Now, if that happened towards the end of the auction, it would have been really bad cuz it would have affected the leaderboard. So, we actually disabled like credit cards weren't enabled for anyone that first used credit cards and wasn't irresponsible. So, we kept it enabled for those people. Um but on the second day of the auction, towards the end, if you wanted to create a new account, you had to use the stable coin. Smart. we found this error. Now, we know how to fix it in the future, which is we do basically you set your max, we pre-off that max, and then you can bid with those funds. Right? But it's already authorized and done. Right. Whereas instead of us hitting hitting Stripe at you know, which we did when it hit 413, we hit it and canceled it within 30 minutes, you know, but if that had happened at the end of the auction, it would have been a disaster. But this is our first time building this tool, so it was a great learning experience, but it worked flawlessly and it ended up being great. Um but yeah, no, I mean we both did it on the website, so. Smart. And then what's the difference between compound and cold storage? So, compound is a DeFi protocol. Cold Cold storage just means that you store the private keys, the passwords to your crypto wallets on a hardware device. Oh. different. DeFi protocol is like a pool It's liquid It's liquidity pooling. It's like there's a lot there. That unfortunately I'm happy to come back on and talk about, but um cold storage is something that everyone should consider. When you buy Bitcoin or Ethereum or have stable coins, Mhm. you you get a ledger. I recommend Ledger. There's also Trezor, but I recommend Ledger. And it's literally a little USB device that encrypts the passwords to your wallet on the blockchain. So, it's not like you're storing the money on the USB drive. Like people think that you actually put the Ethereum on the USB. No. It just is an encrypted code that unlocks your wallet on the blockchain. It's almost like a uh the keys to the car. You you know, That makes sense. I always thought that the Bitcoin on the I thought you take the code and you put it on this little hard thumb drive. That's what I thought. Well, well, you used to be you used to do that. You could take your private key and put it on a thumb drive, but that's super not safe. So, Ledger is is an encrypted device that you can't read the data from it. It can only send data Well, it can only send data. You can't take the data off of it, um which is why it's encrypted the crypt it's encrypted cryptographically the password to your wallets, but your wallets all live on the blockchain. So, if I'm checking my accounts, I can literally look at my wallet address, but only I have the device that unlocks that address. It's just like an unlock. It's not like you store the Bitcoin on the hardware. Yeah, yeah, it's a big misconception. Very worth, you know, worth mentioning. One more thing, where would you say is the best resource and most unbiased and objective resource that people can use to get more knowledgeable on crypto, NFTs, and like that whole like universe because there's so many people telling you their things and I have no idea who to trust. information and I have I'm probably going to take a large portion of this 11.7 million and probably dedicating a million to crypto education tools, like developing a website that has that answers a question in a simple do that but I'm going to probably develop an education ecosystem that just has like very like I'm going to get all my friends in crypto that are, you know, very reputable, like Fred Ehrsam who started Coinbase, like just to cosign that all the information is correct and basically write a little bit of a Bible, a beginner's guide because people there isn't a good place to learn Coinbase has great resources and if you want to learn more about NFTs, OpenSea has the NFT Bible, which is a great place to start, but you you kind of it kind of needs to be it think about learning about crypto like math class. You can't just jump straight to calculus. You have to learn addition and subtraction and multiplication and PEMDAS before you go to calculus and derivatives, right? Like you can't understand what the derivative of x squared is until you even understand like variables and functions, right? So, think of crypto as like this new mathematical language that everyone's going to at some point have to learn, but they don't have to know everything. They just have to know the basics. Like you know how to When you're paying for something in the store, you have to know addition and subtraction to know that they're charging you the right thing on your group on your bill. Everyone knows that. There's going to be certain basic crypto knowledge that everyone's going to need to know. But beyond that, it's just up to you to know it, right? Like the knowledge that you spread about real estate and earning compound interest and returns. Like this is stuff that you're doing a service for the community because a lot of kids don't even know. They just keep their money in the bank account. Right. So, you're already taking them to step two. With crypto, there there just aren't that many resources that take you to step three and four and five. So, I'm definitely going to take a big portion of this money and build educational tools for people. I think it's so important. And I'm already like talking to my team about it. Like who do I want to hire to build this for me cuz I obviously don't have the time, but I can review it, fact-check it, and I want to build like I don't I don't know what the name of the website is yet, but like just crypto crypto.edu or whatever. And like maybe I'll buy that domain. It's probably worth a probably very expensive domain, but crypto.edu and it's just a beautiful website that says, "This is what an NFT is. This is what Bitcoin is. This is what Ethereum is. Bitcoin is a store of value. Ethereum is a protocol for decentralized applications and DeFi products." Like all these words that I'm saying to you, like you're like, "What the hell am I This is what DeFi means, right? Like if you Google DeFi, like five million things come up that like are all different because it is really complicated. But for our generation, and I I I'm 30. I don't know what 30. You're 30. How old are you, Jake? 22. 22. Even more important for you. Like learning about this stuff in 10 years is going to be like knowing how to use the internet. It is. We've proven that. Bitcoin went from zero to 50,000 in 10 years. So, inevitably, you have to just bet on technology going exponential because it always has historically, right? So, eventually, you know, if you guys learn sooner than other people, you'll have an advantage and hopefully you'll make more money. Perfect. So, that's the hope. We love it. Last thing, look into that camera, tell everybody to smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm. Everybody, smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm right now. And subscribe. And subscribe. And get your two free stocks down below in the description. And get your two free stocks. Down below in the description. Hold on. And get your two free stocks down below in the description. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. This has been so much fun. two free stock thing? Uh it's WeBull. WeBull. Yeah, when you deposit $100 on the platform, they'll give you two stocks worth all the way up to $1,850. Do you have a referral Do you have a referral code? Yep. I'm in. Link down below in the description. Jack usually wears his WeBull shirt, but not today. WeBull. WeBull. Awesome. Thanks so much, man. We really appreciate it. You have to do the introduction. It's a thing with our guest. You have to say, "Hi, my name is Justin." If you want to say Justin Blau. Welcome to the 40 Let's say 40 42nd. 42nd ever episode of the Iced Coffee Hour. So far the podcast has made We'll give you the amount. Yeah. And uh then Jack will say, "Wow, that's a really good introduction." Welcome back to the 43rd ever episode of the Iced Coffee Hour. And then that's the guy. Yeah, solo. Cool. Welcome back to the 43rd ever Iced Coffee Hour. My name is Blau, and this is Wait, and and Welcome back to the 43rd ever episode of the Iced Coffee Hour. My name is Blau, aka or Justin, aka Blau. And uh so far the podcast has made that much. You got this. sorry. Yeah. Say it one more time. Welcome back to the 43rd ever episode of the Iced Coffee Hour. My name is Justin, aka Blau. And so far the podcast has made Welcome back to the 43rd ever episode.