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My First Million
#165 with Jack Butcher - Why Jack is Selling his Art for $76m, How to Research Wealthy People & How BitClout Went Viral
#165 with Jack Butcher - Why Jack is Selling his Art for $76m, How to Research Wealthy People & How BitClout Went Viral

#165 with Jack Butcher - Why Jack is Selling his Art for $76m, How to Research Wealthy People & How BitClout Went Viral

My First MillionGo to Podcast Page

Jack Butcher, Shaan Puri, Sam Parr
·
43 Clips
·
Mar 31, 2021
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Episode Summary
Episode Transcript
0:00
Do you see what jacket it's crazy. I thought he meant you selling one nft for like a hundred grand. I didn't or however much you sold that like what's the difference between a JPEG and I have to think I didn't see that you have one 476 million dollars. Just put it up this morning. Do you think that could work?
0:21
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all into it like a Days on the Road Less.
0:30
Never looking back. So I have just kind of an update on my bit Cloud thing that I wanted to talk about, but we can do it. Let me do later. If we want doesn't have to be the
0:39
beginning what I would rather you you to you lead it and lets you want talk about Jack butcher like we have a ton of like this is all related and crazy shit. Yeah, there's like the world is so weird right now and amongst our friends. I think that there's probably a tear or two above but we are in such an odd.
1:00
Tear where we have very close friends or you and me a little bit but less so have made a fair amount of money on all of this new stuff happen. Yes kind of crazy.
1:10
So I'll say if you're tired of us talking about Bitcoin and FTS and all the crypto stuff. There's probably nothing will probably skip ahead to the part where we're going to talk about, you know dictionary.com later. So so I would say we're gonna go we're gonna show you some range today. We're going to talk about a website that's like 25
1:29
Five years old and then we're going to talk about you know a website that's like 25 minutes old which is a big cloud. So let's talk about Jack first. Okay, so we have a friend Jack butcher who is he's behind this account. That's kind of very popular on Twitter called visualize value. He himself was kind of like a designer background so very like kind of artistic guy. And by the way, every time I say artistic, I think I'm about to say autistic. And so I have to like, you know catch myself each time make sure I didn't call.
2:00
Disick so it could be that who knows. I mean, I
2:02
actually see the thing about Jack. He's very smooth very smooth very low-key nicest guy in the world and
2:08
I met I met Jack a year ago a year ago. I contacted him and asked him to do this design stuff and then he was just up and coming right and Sarah and I my wife became friends with Jack and his wife and we they spent Thanksgiving with us down here in Austin where they just had a baby and we're been right friends with them talking all that stuff.
2:29
And he did his story is that he used to live in New York City him and his wife. He's British. He came here 10 years ago. They shared a one-bedroom or sorry a studio apartment that was 400 square feet and he was they were nothing. I mean they were they there they try to start an agency business. It didn't go so well and they were her last dollar and this is only like 18 months
2:49
ago. All right. Okay, so he kind of pivots to basically saying okay within the agency. It's work that I do the part that I like and I'm good.
3:00
And other people don't seem to like what they really want. Are these like pitch decks. I'm making I'm really good at making these slides where it's just a rectangle and I communicate some information on it. And so that's where the visualize value brand came from was. He's just putting out like lower the you know, like an image a rectangle that would take a concept and like bring it to life visually and so he started off getting Popular by just taking a bunch of Nepal's popular tweets, you know sayings is a little kind of one-liners and he would create a graphic out of it.
3:29
It and he has his one graphic style you if you're on Twitter, you've seen it says black and white. It's always a black background with white text on top and a little kind of like very simplistic minimalistic like graph or chart or drawing on top of it. Okay, so that's visualize value. So he does like the normal Creator thing. He gets a little bit of an audience his Twitter gross 200,000 people. He creates a course he creates kind of like a paid Community for people who want to learn this thing and he's doing well for himself, right? And that's where we met him.
4:00
Well, and he does he does north of a million dollars a year in revenue and the only expenses are like, I mean, that's why I saw her stuff and then him and his wife exactly and so
4:12
he's doing he's doing very well for himself. Right but it's all relative. She's doing much better now. So what happened this craze around NF T's came out and if you don't know what entities is just think of it like digital art that people buy and crypto people people really like it because it's virtual art and
4:29
the same way that crypto social to like a virtual money or a digital money. So anyways, Jack starts doing and FTS. So Jack basically takes us a more that he's posting on Twitter for free and he's like no now you can own this piece of art. Now you can open this post that I'm putting up and so he just dabbles, you know just doesn't experiment. I don't know what the first one sold for I think it was like one ether right one when he's hit two
4:54
or three thousand dollars. It was like, yeah just close
4:56
to 2 Grand and it was like 1.5 ether some like that.
4:59
Like to 3,000 bucks still pretty sweet, right like this is just a, you know dot PNG file that he otherwise uploads to Twitter for free and now somebody wanted to own the dot PNG file because they're fans of his and this meant to that something to them and they had a bunch of crypto gains that they could reinvest their cheese money, right? And so, okay. So now he's like stepping it up. So we'll fast forward. He does some more entities. He really is another and ft this one gets bit up and gets bought for 33 e which is I think something like
5:30
What is 3333 eith times like 70 grand like 70 grand? So he sells one of his images for 70 grand? Okay, I called him right when I
5:39
saw that I go check is this real to someone he goes? Yeah, it's crazy. Mate. That's all I said
5:44
my right exactly because he's not like he's not like a schemer in any way by think. He is smart and he's interesting he likes to dabble but like he wasn't he's not trying to pull a quick one. He's like putting his heart out there and people are buying it and I actually message the buyer and I go
5:59
What the heck do you buy this thing is some random random user name. He just goes on. You know, I love Jack and I think this going to appreciate in value and you know, I just really love this. Like I just love the I love the art and I was like, wow, okay fantastic. So that's the guy bought it for 70 grand. So
6:14
today he did something even crazier, which I'm talking about the paths. Do you know the packs?
6:21
Yeah, so to explain that one.
6:23
So the the part of this story is the the crate there's two crazy parts of the story the most recent thing that happened, which we'll talk
6:29
Talk but the first crazy thing is he was like, you know, what if I did like people love Jack he's got a cult following probably more than shod people love shot. They used to love be that they thought nah, they love Johnny love Jack and what he did was he created a website where you are buying a pack. He had 12 packs. All it said was Pack 1 pack to pack the rate. It looked like a imagine like a baseball car, but with a jack butcher cover on it. It was just black and it said visualize Value Pack 1 right and you would buy these packs having
6:59
No idea what the nft art was in it, right. He had 12 of them and people were bidding on them and each one sold for around ten to fifteen thousand dollars, which is I thought amazing right till we get to the final part of the story or at least the most recent part of the story
7:15
exactly. So he's so he gets to today. I log on to Twitter as I do first thing in the morning what's going on in the world today? Holy shit. Jack butcher has listed a new piece of art for 76 million dollars something like that 7 what is
7:29
it's almost the exact number 72 76 million. He basically and it's called Fame and what he did was the most the highest price 10ft thus far in the history of mankind was people the the artist people who's like Jack but even more popular so people had done a few drops those drops were like kind of in the 125 million ranges and then the most popular
7:56
and ft of all time was sold
7:57
for 69 million dollars recently and like
7:59
Some rumors that like that was sort of a manufactured sale like somebody came in and did it just to like they're going to like, I don't know these are rumors, but rumors were that they kind of made it a publicity stunt. So anyways, Jack basically says cool. This is a Nifty called Fame and wealth Fame is it will be the number one priced piece of artwork in a digital artwork in the world. Right? So he Praises it
8:22
above the people drop. I wasn't I wasn't referring to this. I was referring to what he did last. I didn't even see this. This is crazy today class.
8:29
Just last week what he did was he he wrote and he didn't end of T. And it says here's the difference between a JPEG and an mft and it just had a verified if he basically made a tweet and then he sold that tweet her like a hundred fifty thousand dollars, right which I thought was crazy. This is way crazier. Yeah, because if it's crazier because it
8:51
might work exactly so okay. So let's walk through this if your jacket why I'll tell you why do this and why it might actually work. Why do this well,
9:01
If nothing else this is just a great way to drive attention press and and just do something that's bold. Right. So pricing that, you know, pricing a piece of your artwork for 77 million dollars. It doesn't mean it doesn't even matter if somebody buys it just pricing it 477 million dollars is is already going to put you on the map. The second thing is this might be a you know, let's say take the three outcomes somebody actually buys it for 77 million dollars, right? There's been crypto punks now the the number one.
9:29
Oh Punk sold for a bright. You look this up. How much does that Crypt at? The top crypto Punk sell for I think it was like seven seven million dollars something like that people sold for 69 million. So there is a chance there is a maybe five percent two percent chance that this thing actually sells for 77 million dollars, which would be incredible second thing. This might be a shoot for the stars you land on the moon situation. Yeah, the crypto Punk's over seven and a half million and the guy who bought it by the way, this is kind of cool. I don't know how you pronounce this, but the person who
9:59
Audit his handle is Perugia or Perugia some I don't know what it is. I'm not in the art world, but that's the same. That's an homage. Basically. That's the same name of the guy who stole the Mona Lisa which is what helped catapult the Mona Lisa to fame was when it was stolen and that was like part of the part of what made the Mona Lisa even more remarkable and more valuable now most valuable piece of artwork in the world. And so so, okay. So anyway
10:27
great usage of the word Oma's. Yeah.
10:29
Yeah, thank you. We're trying to class
10:31
it up here. So all right, so so he might not sell it for 77 million. But even if it sells for 1.7 million, that's one point seven million dollars that he just you know manufactured through his own creativity and that you know in probably I would bet you like four days of effort.
10:45
I got I have chills looking at this tweet that he put out the reason why this is so crazy is it might work if I want might be crazy enough to do this, right? He
10:56
basically has a no law situation and because Jack's brand.
10:59
Is because he is authentic he is not kind of like a you know, quick flash in the pan trying to make it quick quick dollar like he's literally almost like it, you know, it's more of an artist really than he is like anything else and so he's been doing this for a while. He's been creating daily content has been building up a following and so just like people did that people did people did a new piece of art every day for 10 years. And so it's like, you know, he's an overnight success 10 years in the making and I think Jack's very similar. So I see Jack
11:29
Having a no-lose situation and this is a Nifty Zara thing that basically fits his skill set. And so like there's a lot of reasons people kind of shit on nft. He's right now one is that it's overvalued. It's a bubble. What do you really own? Look I can just screenshot and boom. I own the thing to you know, like there's a bunch of ways you can make fun of this but one of the good things that came out of this is that you know, in most of these these like kind of hype Cycles. It's the suits on Wall Street that get rich this time, at least it's starving artist that get rich and so, you know,
12:00
At the very worst, even if the whole thing comes crashing at least few artists got paid and you know who can be really too mad at that I can't so so I think this is kind of like an amazing thing Jax doing
12:09
just boggles my mind. Should we ask him to come on? Do you want to come on? We should be friends with everyone. Are you friends with him? Yeah. All right. Not as close as you
12:16
guys but yes, we're cluster mechanism. We should save you he often see if you have fun today. Just be like you free to come talk about there being nothing for four or five minutes. Let's see if he hops on at the end of this.
12:29
All right. I just texted them. All right, we'll come back. We'll come back to that fucking crazy. I yeah and I almost have chills talking about it. Would it be weird going to a different topic or do you want to stay on and have teased and stuff like that?
12:46
We can do whatever you want.
12:47
Like, it's potato everything less success is everything less exciting. Well, I
12:50
think it's going to go to way so it's going to be if I'm listening to this and I'm most people who are listening to this are kind of like not as knee-deep into
12:58
This world as we are and and we're still like just kind of dabbling. And so the average person is probably not, you know familiar with all these things definitely not taking action and if they're not getting rich all all these things, so there's I think it's going to be kind of polarizing some people can think. Oh, wow. This is really cool. I should go check this out and learn more about this some people who like this is so stupid. I think this is all just like, you know a giant carnival game that you know, some kind of Ponzi scheme that I don't want to hear more about so I don't know it's
13:24
probably be polarizing. Let me move let's do a different one.
13:28
Let's do a different one and we'll always spend about 10 minutes on it. And then we're probably going to come back to this. Alright, it's time to come back to this. I want to go back to big cloud. I want to talk come back to angel investor. Okay? Okay, but someone I tune it out that I'm going to start a YouTube channel and someone said you should talk about your research process and that's really hard thing to talk about. But I want to bring up one one topic of my research process as well as one interesting thing that I found. So when I like to do is I like to find out who is buying different parts of real estate or
13:58
For Real Estate. So I go to the real deal.com and they're just one segment called. Yolanda says it's like this fake author name. Ulanda who goes I heard a rumor that this person is buying a house. The owner is this this and this Yolanda, here's that they're going to offer this much money. I have no idea you'll want as a fake person. It's just like a Blog a Blog to Governor's website Casablanca. Yeah, her real estate mostly in New York and La though. So they're kind of famous famous. He pursed people doing it. And what I love to do is find out who bought who's buying the real estate and then I go
14:28
Go and research them and the reason why is one of the best ways to figure out if someone's actually wealthy or not is by the real estate holdings that they own that's one of the few things that it's really hard to fake. I mean you could fake it but if someone has bought a 20 million dollar home the likelihood that they're worth a hundred million dollar plus is incredibly hot, you know, it's hard to like bullshit that right and so real estate holdings is one of the best way to get an indicator of someone's wealth or it's a great way not the best way but it's a great way and I found one that interested me a ton. This guy's name was Brian carriger.
14:58
And he bought a house in Malibu in 2019 for 20 million dollars. I hadn't heard Brian. I know a lot of Internet entrepreneurs I had heard of them. So I researched them and this is the guy who started dictionary.com kind of a crazy thing when you think about it because who really thinks of dictionary dictionary.com. So in the 1990s this guy started in 1995, he started a business called lexico publishing and lexico Publishing owed.
15:28
Source.com and dictionary.com any bootstrap it and he grew and he sold it in 2005 to IAC for a hundred million dollars and then two years ago. I see sold dictionary.com to Dan Gilbert You Know Dan Gilbert Quicken Loans? Yep, he's sold dictionary.com for or they saw dictionary.com for a hundred million dollars. So they didn't do a very good job with it. But dictionary.com gets around 40 dictionary.com. An thesaurus.com gets around 40 million uniques a month and does about 20 million in revenue and they have
15:58
The any employees I believe dozens of employees. It's incredibly fascinating because that's not the way I call
16:03
it. How do they make money? It's just add AdSense or is there something else
16:06
just adds? All it is is ads and it's an incredibly interesting company because it's one of the things that I call a for you let's call it. I call it a forgotten property like just things that you forget that even exists, but just quietly make money and are quite repeatable. They're not like the silly sexy. It's like two sweaty startup of Internet. Yeah. Yeah if sweaty startup means Lon landscape.
16:28
Business this is kind of like that for the internet sure and but they've done a really good job of staying relevant. So they do a word of the day which people like particularly love like it's a huge email list of we just get the word of the day. They also do a word of a year. We're of the word of the year. So when Donald Trump was president in 2016, I think the word of the year was xenophobic because a lot of people were searching with xenophobic means right this past year until the twenty it was pandemic and it was all it's almost like a recap of gear and it's actually kind of culturally relevant. And also what they do.
16:58
When someone like Kendall gender or Kylie Jenner whatever the woman is who is quote self-made, they'll do funny stuff. Like they'll tweet the definite they'll retweet a tweet of her calling yourself some self-made and they'll say actually the definition of self self made is Success on aided or something like that like that. Like they're pretty snarky. I find this to be incredibly interesting because it's something I didn't think about and
17:24
That's what a great
17:26
kind of cool. You went from a hundred to zero real quick there at the end. Yeah. Okay. We actually had a friend who was looking at buying dictionary.com, you know about this. No, we had a friend that was looking at buying dictionary.com and merging it with another business. Can't remember the name of it. Now
17:46
urbandictionary.com is another big one that one gets about 40 or 50 million uniques a
17:50
month and who owns that
17:51
wait just a guy a guy.
17:54
San Francisco Aaron Peckham, so there's a
17:56
similar you wrote another one on here that that's similar to me which is chest.com. And so yeah, I don't know as much about it as you do so fill in the gaps, but I was looking at it. I was like, oh man chest outcome is a great domain chess. Is this kind of like very quiet, you know, just like super sticky, you know, just relevant. It's a classic game right? It's just been relevant for so long and then with Queens Gambit it got like way more popular recently. There's
18:24
All these crazy charge spiking the trends of people searching for chess chess boards Chet how to get good at chess. Like what is Queens Gambit? How do you do a Queen's Gambit all those things?
18:33
And so it doesn't it had to have 200 employees. I bet you it's worth if you told me that I heard a rumor the thinking about selling and I would bet it would be worth a quarter of a billion dollars.
18:46
Exactly. That's what that's what I was gonna say. They have a huge amount of traffic. What's their traffic monthly? It's a
18:51
I don't I'll look it up, but they have around 50.
18:54
In registered
18:54
users, right and they're not just like it's not fly by traffic like dictionary.com thesaurus.com. They're going to have a lot more traffic but it's going to be fly by 200
19:04
200 million monthly uniques according to similarweb most of which is
19:07
direct incredible. Right? And so
19:10
200 million. They make money way more though, you know how they make
19:13
money. No, I well I can guess tell me if I'm right. So I would guess that basically they sell some kind of, you know course tutorial a way to get better at chess. Do they do
19:22
that?
19:23
Yeah, and so you can meet with coaches and you can pay coaches money.
19:26
Right? Can they do they also have some kind of like premium Pro membership where you get matched with better people in your stats get saved and something like that. Yep. Yep. Okay, so still dead simple business model around a classic game that nobody owns the IP to right? It's not like saying Monopoly. Well, you can't do Monopoly somebody owns Monopoly how you know, I don't know who has bro, or whoever owns Monopoly if you can do it with chess and this is one of the reason why we talked about religion as a really interesting fun, you know,
19:54
Fundamental or like base layer for any business because nobody owns religion, but it's highly recognized brand with super high Affinity. So I love businesses that are you know, like pray the app that's you know, basically calm for Christianity or there's versions of this for the Muslim religion. And so I love religion as one of the primary substrates because you have a billion people who know about it, but nobody owns the IP so you can use the IP and
20:18
so what what was our friend going to do who I wonder who our friend is
20:23
so I
20:23
Remember exactly. I don't know how much we can really talk about it but they're going to basically buy two properties at the same time dictionary.com and one other one because they're like look dictionary.com gets a ton of traffic but it's not so sticky of a service. It doesn't really have a great monetization potential is just display display ads and then this other thing is a great business model and has you know has great stickiness. Maybe we merged the two like let's just okay. Here's a hypothetical. I don't know if this is exactly what they said. But if you're grammarly would you pay for would you go buy it?
20:54
Not common to Source, right because you're going to go get 50 60 million people coming to look up words and find out what words mean and you could say hey, by the way, if you you know, if you ever feel like you want to sharpen up with this maybe you should install grammarly, which is a great way to write, you know, shoot better vocab. Right? Right and perfect grammar and become a better writer. Right? Like they have a business model attached to it that that that makes sense. And so I wonder if there were other things like that
21:18
maybe I would if I was greatly I would maybe by dictionary.com. I just thought it was interesting.
21:23
Because you don't really think about this another one that I've been I'm going to do research on is easy GIF dot Cobb, you know
21:28
that I know that one. Yes, I actually so I have a slack Channel called buyouts in my slack and I'd set my slack with Ben and we have a cycle buyouts which is basically company websites that I think would be awesome to buy easy GIF was the first one I ever put in that that channel because I was like, oh my God, I love this. I love this simple tool that gets a ton of traffic. It's zero no maintenance and and it can it makes money, you know.
21:54
You've got BG is another one like that where you can just remove the background of a photo and then you pay for credits. So it's like you don't need to know Photoshop to remove the background of a photo and I just think that's genius.
22:05
So easy GIF.com. It's the letter Z the letter Z and then GIF GIF.com 8 million uniques a month you go there and you upload a video and it turns it into a gif I was doing research on it. Looks like the guy it looks like it's only one small team a couple people made in Latvia.
22:24
Lots of overseas. Yeah, so overseas here's to
22:28
intriguing if I'm dictionary.com. One thing that they should do is they should take a page out of the New York Times playbook. So I don't know if you've you probably have because you're in the you know, you're in media you care about the stuff but most people aren't aware of how the New York Times really makes money what it what its business looks like today and a pretty large part of the business. I haven't done the research says it's off top of head, but very well I know tens of millions of dollars a year. I believe comes from their games division.
22:54
Particularly one
22:55
game crossword and so I play this game every single day the New York Times many crossword. It is literally a two-minute game that like kind of stimulates the brain and it's fun to do and it requires like know kind of hand-eye coordination type of thing and it's not you can't get super addicted to it because it's like one a day so many crossword is like they took the crossword which is a big part of the papers. Okay. Now the papers all digital, how do we make a digital version of the crossword and then they made me me so that it's actually like simpler for the average person.
23:23
To do you can like pretty much always win and super fun game. And so the I don't know what the other Revenue numbers of crossword on the games. I shook it up. So long gone. I'm not so five dictionary.com that's you know, whoever's a sea of dictionary.com pay free idea that I think would generate probably eight to ten million dollars a year. You should come out with your take all these popular games like word scramble or mini crossword or you know, all these different little word puzzle games that are very popular in the App Store and
23:53
Have trouble with distribution good games trouble with distribution. All you need to do is reskin that as the dictionary.com game and put it as a pop up for people coming to the site to hey download this fun game and you know, even if you're converting a half a percent of your traffic to this thing you're going to end up driving a lot of Revenue because this game is these games work and all they need is distribution and maybe people who come to dictionary.com or they subscribe to the word of the day email. Like I think they would like to play these little word games are very,
24:23
Popular even my mom plays these little word scramble games.
24:27
Okay, so some information on New York Times New York Times the publicly traded company. So this is what I'm getting some of the numbers but I don't always break out the revenue by segment. So I'm doing a little bit of guesstimation, but I would bet I'm right within ten to twenty percent. So 2020 New York Times said they had 600,000 people paying for the crossword puzzle only just crossword puzzle that was in 2020 2020 was a huge year for subscribe subscription wrapper everything actually.
24:54
Yeah, everything doubled but let's just run that up to 800,000 for 600,000. So 800,000. I believe it cost six dollars and 95 cents a month for a crossword puzzle. But so let's run that up to $7. So seven dollars times 800,000. We're looking at 5.6 million dollars a
25:09
month 60 million
25:10
more 67 million dollars a year and subscription Revenue only from crossword puzzles, right? That's it. That's just the crossword puzzle division right fucking crazy.
25:21
Right? Right exactly. It's and they're there.
25:23
Like I read an article recently where the guy was like, you know someone from New York Times like yeah, we're quadrupling down on games games exploded during covid crossword is already an amazing franchise for us. The next they have another game. I forgot what it is, but they have like, you know, a few staple games that are like these Classics and they're like, you know, we're actually a games company. They could guys literally said that you guys, you know, we we don't just you know, just put the game the same exact game on a phone. We like kind of reinvent it so that it's like even more fun on your phone. We try to like put a Twist on the game. We're not just
25:53
Come out with you know, the classic, you know, like for example 2048 if you replace that little numbers game where you slide the tiles and it like, you know, it adds up to 2048 the games awesome and so New York Times can come out with a version of 2048 which is like, you know their own twist on the game. So I found that to be pretty interesting and that's what I would do if I was
26:12
dictionary.com
26:14
So in this segment, the takeaway should be learn about real estate and read the real deal and Google all the entrepreneurs. And the reason why you do that is you're going to discover stuff like dictionary thesaurus.com and you're eventually going to learn about crossword puzzles. And the reason why this is important what we're discussing is just interesting stuff. But the reason why this is important is we are showing that you can make a killing a fucking killing hundreds of millions of dollars to the point where you're buying a 20 million dollar home on the beach front of Malibu.
26:45
More than most celebrities will ever be able to afford and you're doing it by building something that you're just like it starts as like a silly thing that you never would have thought I could actually become this big and when you see this stuff, it actually inspires you and or at least it inspires me knowing that like I can turn something silly into something profitable and that's a badass. That is awesome. Just knowing that that's possible. It is cool. It's kind of like, why does everyone why did why people break the four-minute mile?
27:14
In the same year when previously known had done it is because when you see what's possible and it pushes the boundary and it shows you what you can do, that's neat to me. So
27:22
we should also say so two things that I took away from that you are really good at figuring out like you sniff out these little interesting stories because you just think who's that guy as you drive that car, how much is that car? Yeah, how'd you get that money? Right? And actually there's a famous Tick Tock channel that just does it only this? I don't know if you think of it, but he goes up to people getting out of like
27:44
Lamborghinis or like you know, like just killer cars and just like hey man, what do you do for a living and the guys like what and you say, you know, what do you do for a living? I just I'm curious you guys like I'm in real estate real estate cool, man and his leaps right? This is that's it. Yeah kind of bothers him for a second though, you know, the personal be like, you know, I'm a cannabis entrepreneur. I'm a you know, I'm a hedge fund guy. I am a YouTuber. I'm a whatever
28:04
right? Well the joke of that channel is the people say one of two things the women say, I'm a wife. Yeah, they like joking and then they also or they'll say I sell drugs.
28:14
Doug's right, right exactly and then they're like Zoom away. And so I love that channel. I first I think that's just a really simple fun idea for Tick-Tock Channel and then but there is some like kind of Merit to that and it's really helped me in life, which is basically anytime. You see somebody who's got an interesting lifestyle. I like to figure out two things one. Is is your whole day like this. What's your day? Like, what do you do? How do you do that? And I like to see how people architect their life right like and that sort of like it's like like you said about the four-minute mile open your mind to what's possible so recently,
28:44
Got this like private Chef person who's like making meals for me. They don't work. They don't come to my house and I'll make me food in my house, but it's like a delivery service meal prep service, but let's call it a private Chef right? Because it's not door - it's somebody who's giving me a menu. You're giving feedback. Yeah, you're doing the same because I'm doing it for you. Try to fit your trying to do this for the same reason you want to eat healthier and hey, if you can afford it, that's a convenient way to do it right where we you know, you got the p word privilege to be able to do it. And so the reason I think that's even possible our realize that was because
29:14
Was the investor in my last company he had a private Chef that was like a former Michelin star chef at a restaurant Sky Elgin amazing Chef who was like would be at his house. He would make lunch and dinner for them every single night. And I was like, well, I didn't even realize people have that and it's not that oh, you know, I want that but it's I didn't even realize that's a possibility of a lifestyle that you could have. It is a upgraded part of your life. And so there's all these little examples I've had in my life of like
29:43
Like I have a cousin who has like a virtual assistant the Philippines I asked him. How do you do? What do you do with that? How do you set it up? How'd you find the right person? Right just get real curious about different people's Lifestyles and how they architect how they designed their life. And you kind of you can pick and choose from there. What works for you what you want out of your life. The second thing is why did the guy behind dictionary.com like make it work right? Because it's like kind of a simple idea. Well, he was early to a platform, right? So to get the domain dictionary.com you couldn't do that today, but you could do it with the web.
30:12
Was early and not everybody believed which is a perfect segue back to bit clout new
30:18
plans. By the way, speaking of big cloud. I texted Jack while we're talking he's going to be joining any
30:23
second now. Oh perfect. So we brought this up on the last podcast because Ryan be woman came on a friend of ours came on and was like, dude. I haven't had this much fun on a product since like the early days of Facebook. I'm obsessed with this thing and he was asking us like are you going to use it? Are you going to claim your account? So if you missed that episode, let me
30:42
Of you that like 10 seconds of what this is imagine, you know if like Robin Hood and Twitter had a baby. So it's basically a stock market for people so you go on the App bit cloud.com and you just see all these people and you can buy instead of just following them or just liking their content you can actually buy into their stock essentially you can by their creator coins and so you could buy their coins and every time you buy the price goes up and every time you sell the price goes down and so it's kind of like a stock market for people's reputations.
31:12
And and so when we did the Pod my my coin was about fifteen hundred dollars at the time while we were recording it and Ryan was like my fourth biggest holder. He had bought up a bunch and he was like, are you going to use this thing or not? I said sure I'll give it a try and I'll see what happens. Of
31:26
course, dude. Yeah, you know like there's guys who take like my friend Jack takes every vitamin if you're like, hey, I have this vitamin pull don't take it. Right? Like if he takes every vitamin D takes every type of supplement you could ever you are like that with Bitcoin or
31:42
Type of like this isn't bad but like schemes so it's like hey, there's a thing called Big Club. Okay, hang on. Yep. I just uploaded hundreds of thousands of students hundreds of pounds not doing time in that is you you try
31:55
every I learned I learned from those all the best. Well, I don't think it's all the best but I do at the beginning, you know at the beginning it makes sense to be optimistic when everybody else is, you know, pessimistic or skeptical
32:07
here I cost you all to this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. That's your
32:11
people.
32:13
No, no by default is I'm game to try it and then if it starts to have some Merit, I'm like, okay, you know, what's really cool about this XY & Z even if a b and
32:22
c suit how people perceive it. I had people message me after our thing saying like why the hell is Sean pumping this big long thing? It's a Ponzi scheme and I was like, I don't know. He likes it. That's just writes. Its opinion. You liked it at it they were mad at me because we were promoting this and I was like, I don't know. So let me
32:40
explain so we have two friends so you have
32:42
When your best buddies is Jack Smith and Jack he came on the podcast. He we did an episode with him back when this was an interview show and I asked him I said well, how did you create this bungle thing that now sold four out of seven hundred fifty million dollars or something like that and the root of his thing was I try every platform early as soon as something comes out. I want to try it and in fact, yes, if you go on big cloud Jack Smith owns two cents of my coin he was there before me, of course, he was right on product and he became the number one power users soon as products on came out.
33:12
He used it every single day with NF T's and collectibles. He's like the number one power user on all these different platforms for a digital for fractional ownership and
33:21
collectibles on Rally Road. He's the number one buyer.
33:24
Exactly. And it's a that's what Jack does and and it's not that all of these will work. It's that you only need one to work for it to pay off big right if you were early in Twitter, you know even just as a user you would have a big following if you were early as an investor in any of these companies is if they hit it gets very big so that was the
33:42
First
33:42
kind of huh? I noticed that from Jack then I saw that I was talking to my friend furqan. He's the CTO and was co-founder of my previous company. Probably the best kind of Technology guy. I know and for cons always dabbling. So he was the one telling me about Bitcoin and etherium before anybody else before and I didn't listen to him. I didn't buy and he was just buying like he put like 5 grand into a theory and the Ico or something like that, you know like and so, you know, the Ico of a theorem was 17 cents and now it's cells and now it's every either is
34:12
$1,700 right so you can see the type of appreciation you get when one of these hits and he's had you know for everyone that one ether that hits big like that he has, you know, maybe 50 or a hundred things that don't fully pan out. Like for example, he's huge on VR. He bought me an Oculus and was like, dude. Let's play VR poker together. Let's try VR and like VR hasn't hit in a big way yet and he spent you know thousands of dollars on VR he spent, you know hundreds of hours building in VR and so far that's yielded. Nothing, but I asked him. What's your deal?
34:42
This is it because you like am I dumb? I don't think the Ours Big you you seem to be all over it goes know. What I do is anytime there's an interesting technology. I'm just curious about it. And therefore I'm liking the first 10,000 people that really understand every new technology. He's like because of that one of those Technologies is going to be big. So right now for example, he's super into vertical farming and like hydroponic farming and he's just like all about indoor farming all about vertical farming and like so he's we have this one hour a week called the cool shit our or I just sit back on Zoom.
35:12
And he just kind of shows me the cool shit. He's been trying out this week. And this week was all about vertical farming and blew my mind. I didn't know anything about it and you're telling me
35:20
all the reasons. It's awesome. Why is this just not an episode that we do
35:24
it should it really should because it's so good. It's kind of my Edge right now because he tells me about shit and then I go take action on it and like he's even earlier than me so he gets more upside but I'm still very early just by being buddies with this guy. So anyway, that's a long way of saying
35:38
It in technology, it pays to be optimistic. It pays to be an early adopter. If you're willing to look stupid sometimes by putting some time or money into things that fail you can you will net out way way ahead just by being early into a bunch of interesting things at the very least you learn but at the most one of these hits and then you gain a bunch of like you build a big Network there or you make a bunch of money because you invested in it. So anyways, that's that's my overall philosophy. I
36:07
I totally see the people who are like bit cloud is dumb. This is a scam. This is a sham. This is you know, this will never work. Hey, I think there's Merit to all those arguments but for my opinion, I just thought this sounds interesting sounds very different than anything else that's out there. I tried it and I immediately liked it. So the first 24 hours, I was hooked by the second 24 hours. I put $100,000 into the platform, you know, don't tell my
36:33
wife. So right now my
36:37
You is a that's a lot of money. So I'm not acknowledge is it's a lot of money. So let me tell you why.
36:46
It is our funding right now. My thing is my market cap on here is is goes one seventy two hundred thousand. I sold some of my stuff and that guy why are sent me money on coin pings?
36:59
$10,000, right?
37:02
Yeah, Mike. I think this is silly but like I told you this is silly and you're still gonna give me money. Okay, fine. I'll take it. I sold some of mine.
37:10
Yeah, you sold some of those I have not sold any of mine and instead I actually invested money into the platform.
37:15
Bought a bunch of people's coins, including yours. And so so I own a bunch of coins for all these different people that I think might appreciate and so I would say there is still a I would say in the long run this working in the long run. I think there's like a less than 2% chance to switch some along if it does work my hundred thousand dollars is going to be worth tens of millions of dollars, but that's the that's the long run 2% case. Okay. Well, I wouldn't put up a hundred grand for a two percent win because I actually have a second way to win in this.
37:45
Case which is that I have now been an early adopter of basically every crypto thing over the last added OC 5 6 years and some of them are dumb some of them work. Whatever and what I've seen is that any time a kind of new exciting disruptive idea comes out whether it's ico's or NF T's or whatever pick your favorite acronym. There's like a hype cycle that takes place. There's the people who are there's a people who make it there's the people who buy in at the beginning and get get access and then there's like a bunch of crypto enthusiasts who are believers in the
38:15
All like Innovation space of crypto that then say. Oh cool. This sounds fun. I want to go try it and that's happening right now with nf2 you like we talked about our friend Jack you're selling a bunch of nf2 use for you know hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. It's because there were in crypto enthusiasts who say and if these are really cool. I want to invest in that
38:32
my book and going through serious are not many of them hate bit
38:36
Cloud. Yeah. Sure So Many Many of there's crypto Enthusiast is not one group of people. It's broken up into like big what flow
38:45
called Bitcoin maximalist. They don't want to talk about anything except for Bitcoin and they don't want to they want to invest a hundred percent into Bitcoin. Then there's etherium people who are like all about etherium. There's people who are just just try to degenerate Lee gamble across all the different like different crypto projects that exist. I'm talking to you more about them the gamblers because
39:02
I understand a gamble or money. Have you made more money off Bitcoin than you have selling your company? No,
39:08
that'd be cool. If you did it would have been sweet. I think in the long run I will but as of now no, but
39:15
If you project forward five years, I would almost certainly my crypto Holdings will be worth more than what I sold the company for when I got out of the sale.
39:22
Do you think that what percentage of your net worth you have a crypto?
39:26
So I I tweeted out that I was moving 25% into my net worth into Bitcoin and Bitcoin and not just like not just liquid net worth just net worth. I ended up getting about 20% in but the prices kept Rising as I was doing it. So my overall My Average by
39:45
This is about $11,000 per Bitcoin. But anyways, my Holdings now are like I don't know almost 50 percent of my net worth just because crypto has appreciate it. So I didn't put in as much as I said I was going to it was a little bit less, but it appreciate it too. Now it makes up more and I didn't sell I didn't like sell to rebalance. Let's put it that way.
40:05
That's crazy.
40:06
So anyways, the thing I want to tell you about is
40:09
So that's my general. My let's play out three scenarios. Scenario one. Let's say with bit clap. This is a scam. I don't believe it's a scam given that they have backers and investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia to moth coin, you know coinbase Capital the winklevosses like basically like everybody who's legit in technology / crypto space like these are Tier 1 names that are invested in this thing.
40:35
I don't think it's a scam. It's definitely not a scam the sense of that's like it's malicious people.
40:39
All right, so that's that's like one one thing that does happen in the crypto world people take your money and they fucking run away, right? That is yeah, that's that is literally happened so that so I don't think it's that and I'll bucket in the you know, one of the big criticisms is you can't withdraw your money. Yeah, you have a huge amount of value in there, but you can't withdraw yet. I would bucket that into the scam argument. Like if you think they'll never allow you to withdraw. I think that's silly that would be a scam been after that podcast. I kind of understood what the heck bit clout was which is it's basically a social.
41:09
Where you can bet on the people who are going, you know, and their reputation and so as a as a as a participant you could say Okay instead of just following Sam if I think Sam is awesome and Sam's going to only get more popular over time. I can actually invest in Sam which is a little bit different than like patreon or sub stack where it's like, I'll pay you for your shit. That's different. That's like, okay. Do I want to buy this content or not Instead This is I'm a Believer in you and so like back to that thousand true fans concept as I find.
41:39
I'm a Believer in you I can invest in you and as more people realize that you're the shit your price will continue to go up and I will actually I'll go up with you. I might my stocking you will appreciate so I can actually make money being a curator being somebody who recognizes Talent before others do recognizes reputations that are on the rise. So I think that's really cool. That's a new thing. You couldn't do that before if I was an early user of Snapchat or like Twitter or Facebook or whatever it was.
42:09
But like I didn't actually gain anything from it financially if I discovered Jack, you know, you said you met Jack when Jack had a kind of smaller following you didn't gain financially from Jack's following growing. And so I think that's a new thing that that that's a really cool mechanic now on the other side. Let's say you're a say the Critter let's say you're a jack you can basically go on and say cool. You know what I'm like a little mini Warren Buffett. I want to have my Berkshire Hathaway Summit my my shareholder meeting so you can basically
42:39
I say cool for my top 25 coin holders. I will meet with you personally and you know in a zoo more in person somewhere and that's a privilege you get by being one of my top shareholders or I can say hey, I'm going to produce some premium content and instead of having to set up a whole different app like sub stag or patreon or something else like you just say great if you own over ten of my coin you get this thing and so it gives people a way to not just by the content but to be a long-term holder of you
43:09
I think that's really cool to as a Creator. And so
43:12
so you're and your market cap right now is like $600,000. How did it I did it get that high because you bought your own stuff
43:18
or I've only bought met one coin of mine. So
43:22
why are people buying you or how they even hearing about her body on the
43:25
pot? I think so, I think that was one thing but then otherwise they're just people hearing about big cloud because a whole bunch of people join right like so even just in our little Network right Andrew Wilkinson join two days ago, and he's a super legit person and he tweeted out today.
43:39
I woke up at 5:00 in the morning think about big clouds and he's like in and not just all good things, right? He said like the design kind of sucks. I kind of hate the name. I wish I didn't feel so shady because of the way they're doing this this and this but here's some things that like the Mind virus has infected him was like wait this does open up Pandora's box of a whole bunch of new capabilities and things that just kind of couldn't do before and definitely couldn't do in a platform that had any legs and this has legs about a hundred seventy million dollars has been deposited onto this most of that is from their institutional backers like in
44:09
Horowitz and Sequoia and those other guys but but the rest has been you know, maybe eight to ten million dollars has come in from from users who are buying into the platform the CTO of HubSpot our mesh. He's on there every day me and him were chatting on there all the time because he's like he's posting like, you know, he's a daily user of this thing because I think it's a cool new technology cool app and he's playing with
44:30
it. He bought money he bought my stuff exactly and so
44:33
I've had a lot of fun basically speculating on people buying a bunch of people's coins and I
44:39
Think I think those people are awesome or undervalued. So for example, I'll give you I'll give an example. I saw this guy on big clout and he was posting a bunch of analysis. So he's like exploring the blockchain and he's he says look because this is built on the blockchain. It's all public. You know, if I go to Facebook, I can't tell you how many daily active users Facebook has they have to disclose that information for me to know it but with things built on the blockchain you just see it and so so he this guy's posting like look here's how many new people signed up today. Here's how many posts have been and so you can see like how much
45:09
Engagement this thing has or if it starts to fade, you'll be able to see it fade. So I bought this guy bought a fuck ton of this guy's going about $10,000 of this analysts point because this guy was super low price because nobody knows who the heck this guy is, but I knew that if if there are people who are power users of the platform, they're enthusiastic about bit clout. They're going to love all the information the 24/7 news cycle about bit Cloud. They're going to love this guy's analysis because it's not easy to do. It's not easy to go on the blockchain to figure this stuff out. So I thought oh this guy is if this guy's going to put reports up every day. He's gonna get
45:39
Get popular and so already I've doubled my money on this guy just because I was able to like have a strategy have a skilled gamble was what I'll call it. Right same reason. I love poker same reason. I like investing in startups and the stock market is because there's definitely this like d pichet scratches of like trying to put in money and triple it and make more money combined with some skill. There is a strategy to it. It's not just a slot machine or you just pull the lever and you hope for the best so for
46:09
For whatever reason for some combination of reasons. This shit is so addictive to me and maybe this will fade. I'm only three four days in but man I've used the hell out of this thing in three or four days and I don't know what's gonna
46:18
happen only known it for three or four days. But my life this is my vocation. I found it. That's that's what I hear from you.
46:24
Well, you hear what you want to hear. I didn't say that when I started was I've had an amazing three or four days and this might fade but I view it as a kind of an asymmetric bet if this fails I lose. What are you lose 1 times my money.
46:39
If this succeeds I'm going to make more than 10 times my money and so that's what I think it for me.
46:44
Speaking of betting on people Jack we are talking about you earlier. Basically Sean. I didn't know. So basically we gave your background. We said that you and Celia lived in a shitty apartment a little Studio 5 450 square foot Studio or something like that and Brooks and tried to make it sound like
47:00
Slumdog Millionaire. He was like, he's like, you know, they shared one ramen noodle each and yeah
47:07
Jack was I right? Was it 400 something? That's where feet
47:11
450 and bad neighborhood Crown Heights, right. I mean it was it was all right.
47:19
And basically start an agency. It was only going okay not going that great and then like over the last 18 24 months. You've just knocked it out the park yada yada yada. I didn't realize until Shawn said it when he said do you see what jacket it's crazy. I thought he meant you selling one nft for like a hundred grand. I didn't or however much you sold that like what's the difference between a JPEG and I have to think I didn't see that you have one for 76 million dollars. Just put it up this morning.
47:46
What do you think that's gonna work?
47:50
Okay. So Jack, can you tell us about the 77 million dollar one? What's the thinking behind that and then just in general? What's the nft experience been like she was kind of
47:58
mind-blowing. Yeah, I think interestingly enough this text message that got me on this podcast is kind of evidence for the strategy behind the 77 million 77 million dollar and ft which the thesis is
48:16
Um, it's rounded up from the highest bid on that be for color. So it was sixty nine point three obviously tracks to the price of etherium. But anybody who would been on this would be you know, the owner of the most expensive nft in the world. So, you know part press play Park commentary on the world of NF t s artistic statement. I have very very very, you know,
48:46
No, the the idea of that selling is obviously absolutely ludicrous. But the fact that you can do something like that without permission and make a statement like that. I think is like that's that's the intent behind the piece itself and the nft space like the last three pieces that I've been working on the last three pieces. I've launched have been sort of a commentary on the world of n of T. So the first one Sam talked about was like, what's the difference between a JPEG and nft?
49:16
That image on Twitter and got a great response. Someone commented and said you should make this 10 ft. Say no more made it known of tea and opened it and then the second one just finished today. There's like a comment on the idea of non fungibility, right? So anybody can save this JPEG but what we're really talking about here is like this mimetic status game. That's all these different incentives coming together to some people are buying these because they love them. Some people are buying them in the same way that
49:46
betting on a Creator like a bit clout the same thesis behind a bit cloudy by this thing you assume this person is going to keep creating for years and maybe they emerge at the top of the space and then your investment increases in value. I think there's a lot of parallels of what you're talking about with bit Cloud its visualize value sort of
50:07
Was almost a layer on top of the business. I was operating so it's making these Graphics to create things that will get people's attention to then put something else in front of them. We like hey, here's this thing so like my background is marketing and advertising and that's how that work. Right you make stuff to get people to look at other stuff. But now there's like this convergence of you can get paid directly for the things you make which is completely different right PEC. I think, you know,
50:35
No patreon. What do you think? The odds are that? Someone is going to buy this? I mean impossible to say 0.00 High Why know
50:44
what's happened since you since you
50:54
can you see any of the activity of like
51:03
And what's your what's your dad people would visit a few thousand think is this like caught sofa and I think it's like it's also has an inside joke as well. Right? Like you have to have the context of the be poor thing Mario. Yep, who Sean? I saw you saw that tweet. He added this layer of context to it, which is like the reason, you know, it's very minimal in its execution. But when you have that additional context, I think it's like there's a light bulb moment that goes off so I
51:31
thought the
51:31
My respect is that it's all or nothing if you had done it where it's like, oh, well, hey may not get 77 million, but I'll take you know, 77,000. Well, then it's sort of like okay. He's just, you know, it doesn't have the same artistic balls that it takes to say. No. This is the we're either breaking the record. It was the most valuable piece of digital art in the world over not and it's a commentary on the whole Madness of the situation. It's like we're either going all mad over laughing about how mad this Russian that we're not doing anything in really and I'm not this is not a
52:01
This is not some you know quick sale here
52:03
again another parallel with bit Cloud it either goes off or it just you know, it just stays there forever as a memory,
52:11
right? Yeah as I that's why I tweeted I said this is either going to be an amazing investment or amazing lesson learned for me and and I mean that because I intentionally invested in amount of money that would hurt for me to lose it. Like I would really have to like lick my wounds if I lost this amount of money because it's not going to just go down by
52:31
Like 10% it's gonna go down by a hundred percent or it's gonna go up by like ten thousand percent. And so, you know, either way I'm going to learn something out of this whole process. It is so polarized and clear and I had to write down why am I doing this? What do I believe about this and what part of the why I'm doing this wasn't just here's all the great reasons to do this. It was like, well, you know, I kind of sat on the sidelines at this other thing that I was early on and I missed out on this big wave and a bunch of my friends made a bunch of money doing it. And so I've kind of waiting for the next one and like now
53:01
This one's here. I'm kind of over overcompensating for it. So I was really honest with myself about what would what are the psychological drivers and I'll put put two things together one is one. Is that which is like here's the Dark Side of why I'm doing this meaning like here's the not-so-great reasons, but true reasons that I feel motivated to do this write my own psychology put on a piece of paper. The second thing is
53:25
Maybe this is you guys have probably all heard this I Know Jack you have for sure Sam, you know the thing about the four levels of luck.
53:33
No, I
53:33
guess the four levels of like I forgot who Marc Andreessen shared this from somebody else and then of all shared it and that's how I heard it. But basically it's like there's there's dumb luck or you just you're standing still and luck just hit you upside the head something really lucky. Just have you have struck by lightning right? That's just dumb luck. You did nothing and something happened. Then there's like the second level which is you're moving around like crazy and you're doing a bunch of shit and in doing a bunch of shit, you kick up a bunch of dust you move a bunch of things around and actually have a higher percentage chance of colliding with
54:02
Because you were taking so much action, right? And so that's kind of like, you know, you know the luck favors the Bold basically you took a bunch of action there for you more lucky than somebody who didn't then there's a third one, which is luck favors the prepared mind, which is you're moving but you're also looking and when you see something you recognized luck before others saw it and so I would say Jack is a good example of this which is he had the artistic ability to create really compelling visuals, but he also
54:32
At the like business brain and like kind of tech savviness and was in the tech World enough to CN ftes as this opportunity that he could marry his two things together and give it a try. And so that's where you recognize luck for what it is. And then the fourth one is reputational luck, which is you have built up such a big reputation that luck finds you. Well, that's where some and some great company says Sam. We would love to have you on board because we've been reading your content for years. You're such an amazing copywriter and we just think you could really help us out with that, you know, and so
55:02
boom Luck came to your door step and that's that's sort of the analogy that Neva gave or whatever was like someone finds a sunken treasure and they come to you because you're known as the world's best scuba diver. So to me, this is like luck level three and maybe a little four but three in that luck favors the prepared mind. So what I realized when I looked back at Bitcoin, and I said, I was being told by smart friends back in 2013-2014 that Bitcoin is amazing.
55:32
And at first I took no action that cost me, you know, the price was I think $70 at the time so I let it go from 70 to 700 and then I bought in at 700 and even then I bought in such a small amount that it wasn't going to like change my life. Either way. I wasn't going to care if I lost I wasn't going to be rich fat one and I went I look back I said well, why didn't I take more action at that time? Right? Let's let's do that the hindsight game and one thing I realized is that
55:57
in order to I didn't bet on it because I didn't have enough conviction. I didn't have enough conviction because I didn't even understand what the heck it was. So part of that as I didn't take time to understand it, but II was Bitcoin was one of those weird things that you had to have two totally different skill sets in order to appreciate the how great this thing is you had to be really technologically sound and your brain to even under even understand it and be able to go by the thing or mind the thing it took real Tech savviness to do it at that time the
56:27
Because you had to really understand macroeconomics and very few people had that combination and the people who did have become billionaires and have been very wealthy people now, but most people who had one or the other or neither they didn't they didn't benefit right? So you need to you need to understand that. Wow, this solve the Byzantine generals problem. This is a computer science breakthrough and now we can have trustless systems without any Central entity. But you also need to understand that. Hey the government prints all this money and it has this inflationary effect and the
56:57
reason that you know, and actually this thing that we all take for granted the US dollar or currency has really only been around in its current form for I don't know 70s years and and you know before that we had gold and before that we had shells and money actually does evolve over time and maybe this is the new form of money and here's why it's a more sound money than these other things. I'm familiar with right so very few people had that overlap. I see the same thing happening with bit Cloud, which is on one hand you had to understand the financial incentives that this like the token economics.
57:27
Crypto economics that exists here, what are all the incentives and why would this thing go up and when you if you understand the Crypt economics the token incentives, you're like, holy shit. This is so well designed. This is a high very high likelihood of going up if it's going up a lot if it becomes a thing the other side is just understanding how social networks start and when I saw that oh, this is like probably the most brilliant growth hack I've ever seen these people whoever made this is very aggressive and very smart they're aggressive because
57:57
cuz they went and scraped Twitter and to put all of our profiles on their website and said come by there coin without anyone's permission that took a level of aggression and sort of like willing to operate in the gray that most people wouldn't really have and then the smart thing was they said well, how do we make this network really valuable? Well, if we get really valuable people on it, how do we get really valuable people on it? Well, let's do this. Let's go to really legit investors. So big-name investors that adds credibility. Let's go get a hundred million dollars.
58:27
From them and then let's invest that hundred million dollars into the accounts of all the influential Twitter people. And so when I went to the website without ever having used the damn thing my account had $55,000 sitting in it. All I had to do was tweet it out and say hey I'm using pink Cloud come use it with me basically, right and I had to tweet that to my hundred twenty thousand followers in order to claim this $50,000 that was sitting in there this like kind of imaginary $50,000. I was sitting there and okay so that I was like that's going to work a lot.
58:57
Of influencers are going to go see a hundred thousand dollars sitting in their account and they say all I got to do is tweet this thing out like done like Sam you think that thing's fucking stupid, but you did it anyways because you're like shit. I got 35 Grand sitting in here. I'll take that and Jack how much money do you have sitting in your thing
59:12
about 150? I think last time I looked at it.
59:15
It's $150,000. Maybe it's sitting in your account and have you verified your account? Your don't find it?
59:21
Do you plan to
59:23
I'm still I don't know man. I'm getting text messages and phone calls and being invited on podcast to talk about bit clouds and maybe I got
59:30
ya maybe you do and maybe you have a pretty big fucking incentive to do it, which is that there's only 50 Grand sitting there just for just for tweeting the thing and it's so then you so then you go like layers deep you say, okay, so they're going to Tweet it out. They're going to claim their money and then they have a big following so then their people are going to say, oh if Jack says it, I trust Jack and Jack is Jack is using it then I should probably use this thing.
59:52
They go on and because there's no withdrawals right now all the prices just go up. And so everybody's going to get all these paper gains and then they're all going to talk about how this is the greatest thing since sliced bread because they're just make it all this money on here. Right like our friend Ryan who came on was like dude. I'm making a killing on this thing and then other people are going to say oh shit, my friends making a killing on this thing. I should go do that to I don't want to miss the next Bitcoin already already miss Bitcoin. Now, I'm going to miss the next one and they're going to get on and that's going to drive the price even higher and so what I saw was that this thing was brilliantly designed
1:00:21
Signed from kind of like the game theory perspective now that state let's table like the moral questions and like is this a Ponzi scheme and like there's a whole bunch of other questions, but at the very minimum I thought wow this game is architected so that these numbers are going to go up. This is going to have a hype cycle very likely chance at having a hype cycle. And if it has the hype cycle these things just like Bitcoin Bitcoin is only valuable because everybody believes in it now and the more people leaving it the more valuable it gets the more certain its own success becomes the same thing is true for any network any social network to the
1:00:51
Jet people believe in it and want it to succeed the more likely it is to succeed. And so then there's actually a chance that this does become, you know, a new wave of social networks. Anyways, that's my
1:01:02
whole Sherry. I've known you for some maybe eight years now. It was early on when I met you that you had some type of it factor and that you were at least mildly smart. What what bit clout a Bitcoin has done for you has basically like brought out all of your
1:01:21
evidence and all of your speech giving abilities now the whole of high IQ thing and if you're right thing TBD, but your ability to convince people that it's awesome Barry Barry. Hi, I congratulate you on your confidence and your ability to persuade people. I think it's I think I think it I think you finally have come out of your shell now are the whole are you right thing? Well, that was like we're gonna
1:01:45
keep saying the thing which is there's a very low chance at this exceeds of a long run. If it does you're gonna get paid super handsome.
1:01:51
My very similar to bitcoin back in 2013-2014 a very similar to the hundreds of other crypto projects. I have the same promise and didn't pan out right? So that's the thing with low odds. Usually they don't pan out when they do you can get paid handsomely there's a middle ground here where if this goes 3 hype cycle there is a good chance that even if it doesn't succeed in the long run and the short run there's a bunch of money to be made that is the degenerate Gambler side of me and many people anybody who is in the in the Game Stop anybody who's you know going and trading
1:02:21
and a lot of people have fun speculating and trying to make money and they're not necessarily trying to be long-term holders. That's situation to it situation 3 is it just flops? It goes to 0 there are all three scenarios on the table. What I'm trying to say is the probability is I'm not saying this is likely or definitely gonna succeed what I'm saying is I find it super interesting from a product point of view how they made it and I think there's a good chance it goes through the hype cycle beyond that. I don't know.
1:02:48
So Jack, what does this mean to you? What side are you on? I'm just still waiting for it to show you how I guess I think the first time that came across my feed was like the ultimate bear case like, you know, this is broken the Commandments of crypto. Therefore, you should not go anywhere near it and my understanding of the like mechanics of pre-mining and all of these like I wasn't paying attention to the I co cycle when it was happening.
1:03:17
Years ago, so I just felt pretty unqualified to make a bet on it. And I think to your point Sean. There's like reputational Risk in endorsing it to before it gets to a point of I don't know some of the things that are left unsaid or haven't been clarified are clarified. So I'm on the sidelines for the time being.
1:03:39
Yeah, I think that's smart. I think that's the risk I run which is I think that when I say hey, this is a this is a gamble. You can lose all your money. It's not
1:03:47
You to succeed that there is that there could be some money to be made. Here's my exact Holdings. I feel like I'm disclosing everything and smart adults are gonna do with that what they want do your own research? Don't rely on me and come to your own conclusions. I'm telling you what I've come to thus far three days in and so I'm always like people will get all that in reality. All anyone's gonna remember is dude. You were super excited about that thing and either I look like a fucking genius why I look like an idiot scam artist. That's the sad part about it is that nobody's going to remember any of the nuance?
1:04:17
Round how I was thinking about it. Anybody just remember dude, you sounded so excited. You said you put a hundred grand in and either, you know, that's why you're the hottest thing since sliced bread if that becomes a 10 million dollar stake or it's going to be I lost my life savings. How could you you told me this was going to work? And unfortunately the way I wish the world the way I wish people listen to it is not going to be how people who actually listen to it as my
1:04:38
guests. Are you the biggest
1:04:41
The biggest bit Cloud will win the world shop not even
1:04:46
close like Craig Clemens who's you know, friend of ours been on the Pod. He was on it before us he's invested. I don't know how much money but he's like the biggest way. Are you going to anyone's account? He owns smells like the majority of their coin like he and he's like, yeah, I'm bullish like, you know, he can speak for himself how he's thinking about the calculated risk, but like, you know, he's got a huge stake and I'm you know envious of how early he was on a how Belushi
1:05:10
was early because it's already he's got a lot of paper games. Let's put it that way as far as and then there's of course a bunch of other people like, you know, there's there's a big the the whale guy I forgot his name is Big clap. Well, I don't like that he put a million dollars into his own coins. And he's the he also has you know, the biggest kind of like nft collection heater. I think
1:05:31
well that guy bit he bought he wired me I keep saying wired, but he sent me 10 grand a material difference.
1:05:38
So one guy is the guy who's providing
1:05:41
Secondary Market liquidity. That's the guy you worked with then. There's this guy who basically has the whale calling that's a community token a separate thing. He owns two million dollars worth of nft Art and he created a coin that makes it says hey, I collect this art if you own my coin you own a part of my art collection and and so he's made he's made it big and he's made a bunch of money crypto. He reinvested into nft. He's now he's reinvested at least a million bucks into big cloud as well. So there's a bunch of people who are very very bullish on this thing, you know, but and you
1:06:11
But I also say like, you know, what are the downsides right like a if you go use the thing you'll notice three things right away. It requires a password to join that's already has blocked like 80% of people now, you could find it if you just Twitter, but clap have you Googled big cloud password? You'll find it easily. But today that's a that's a challenge its password protected because they're not ready for scale, which is the second part you go use the thing and it's so it's like under such heavy load all the time that like I click the follow button and the thing fucking spins for 30 seconds. It's like super annoying that it's not
1:06:41
Faster app. It's like the thing is always going down because they can't handle the scale right now
1:06:46
Jack. Are you going to make more income from ft's in 2021 the new thank you will from your real job.
1:06:56
Or your normal business rather probably.
1:07:00
And that's it. Sounds fucking crazy three letters. You can even know last year. Yeah different Market man different Dynamics. Very crazy. Would you say 3 years ago? Where were you? What where were you at? Was it now fit in March?
1:07:16
I was just starting my agency. So I was shooting a car commercials on the like for just running around the desert with a handheld camera trying to make a car
1:07:28
commercial.
1:07:31
Isn't it crazy how much things have changed in such a short amount of time the last couple months has been like compressed a ton of just Leaps and Bounds of technology and culture and last year obviously shifting to doing work fully online. I think was one jump and now like the normalization of crypto is just feels like another like rocket and stuff like
1:07:59
like what we're talking about here is like it feels like that stuff is just not just creeping into the mainstream, but just a burst pipe now right like the Topshop thing just went absolutely bananas. Then this big cloud thing is going to pull on the same like cultural levers that Topshop there. Maybe it's successful. Maybe it isn't but it's like the cat's not going back in the bag at this point, right? So Jack, let me ask you
1:08:25
because I feel like I feel a little torn right because I come on the pot because
1:08:30
I come on the pot today and I say oh I got to talk about big cloud. Why because a I've been using it a bunch of last couple days. One of the more interesting projects I've ever seen but be I'm like kind of embarrassed to even talk about it because there's such a good chance that this thing fails that it's gonna look pretty stupid and big cloud is even more it's gonna look even more stupid when it fails then like let's say like, I guess like what I'm getting at is
1:08:59
I think that it's you know, it takes a long time to build a reputation of being smart and trustworthy and it's easy to lose it in a day. You know, I think Warren Buffett said that once and you know takes it takes it a decade or whatever to build a reputation in a day to lose it. And so I kind of feel that way with with Bitcoin to Cloud crypto in general. It's all such uncertain territory uncharted waters uncertain territory. Nobody really if anybody tells you they know what's going to happen. They're definitely not saying, you know saying telling the truth
1:09:28
For speculated people have fun talking about a people place their bets and then the chips will fall where they may now do you feel that way with nft? He's like do you feel almost embarrassed or slightly guilty, you know selling a file for $150,000 and you know, let's say next year the nft market comes down to earth. Like I think right now Top Shot is top shots getting slaughtered. It's going down like 30 percent month-over-month because all the whales are like, hey cool, we've made millions of dollars. Let's just do a coordinated sell-off and like, you know, like let's sell this baby. Now, we're
1:09:58
Let's take something off the table and so top shots at cratering right now. And then as a search of crater all the people who thought I was going to fail or like see, you know, Told You So this was silly to begin with as somebody who's selling digital art for hundreds of thousands of dollars. There's a part of you worry, like what happens at year from now when you're the same nft, you sold 400,000 dollars is worth $1,000. And what do you I guess how do you think about
1:10:23
that thought a lot about it? I think.
1:10:26
Coming into it originated zero expectation of like the level of investment that people would be willing to commit to something like this. One thing I will say is I've like I have a relationship with every single person who's bought one. So because yeah the Twitter layer on top really and ft layer you there's often they have links to Twitter profiles obviously introduce yourself everybody that builds on the work and I think that to me is you know,
1:10:56
You have a relationship with the person that collects the art that's different then throwing it into this Anonymous market and you know profiting X offer. I also think there's an argument to be made for like my background is commercial advertising right? So I know you guys spoke to Michael sailor a couple weeks ago and I just have this like I guess Loop and my head on this thing. I'm thinking about around.
1:11:21
What is a marketing expense relative to a like a technology in general? So if you're an etherium like way or let's say let's say you have a ball X number of thousand Theory I'm at 7 cents or whatever. It was back in the day and you want to see the technology you believe in the technology that made you wealthy adopted by more people. You want to like spread the gospel as it were feels to me. Like there's a lot of people participating in
1:11:51
This market for that reason so the nft explained piece which was by far the most expensive although the largest sale of the last few I've done I think I got four million impressions on Twitter. So if you think about it will cost you to buy 4 million impressions on Twitter or if what it would cost you to develop something that has that level of resonance. I think it's easy to get distracted from that as as like the three of us have
1:12:21
but that is a valuable thing right to own something that has that level of cultural velocity to me is you know, I don't want to say it's underpriced but I think it's like I think it's a
1:12:36
It's a legitimate bet like if you can see that this thing has this thing resonates with people and that's the beauty of having Twitter. So visualize value you can see this image that you own.
1:12:49
3,300 or 4,500 people clicked on it said I like this thing. So there's also a mega Advantage there having that layer on top where you can evaluate how like how much this thing resonates before you Cel. Does that make sense?
1:13:03
I yeah that does make sense and I jack as like I consider Us close friends. I wanted to like by I wanted to I was willing to spend around $5,000 to buy one of your things just because I like look up to you as like a Creator and I actually think your hearts badass and I think you're gonna be like a far more important person than you already are I was willing so I get the sentiment now without sounding like a douche like I have money, right and I was will only willing to spend five.
1:13:32
Brand the way the re the way that someone was gonna spend a hundred fifty Grand that either they're like way better than I am or they're just crazy. That's what I like. I don't understand 250k, but like maybe some people don't understand that I was willing to do 5K. So these are the people who bought it very very wealthy could like do your etherium wallet sleuthing and figure out how much people have but well you said you know them right now I have like I know I'm gonna talk
1:14:04
But like
1:14:04
a normal person to do what we do
1:14:08
if you know that like I don't have to I don't have to know someone I'm like, oh, well, the guy drives a G-Wagon he's from Dubai to go back and forth and Twitter DM some people don't have their real name, but it's like hey, you know you develop a
1:14:21
relationship. Am here's how it works. The guy who bought the people artwork for whatever 69 million dollars or something like that my kind of my me mixing it up, you know meet
1:14:32
Even that says
1:14:33
handle well, I just read about him. He started him. I mean, he's probably worth hundreds of millions of dollars through Bitcoin. So he's leaving this 5,000 to do it as a
1:14:42
$5,000 into Bitcoin and is worth over a billion dollars based on when he invested. So that's pretty vesting. Like I said you go to Chuck E cheese. You are great at Skee-Ball you hit the $5,000 jackpot the ticket starts spitting out of this machine. You don't think about it like spending $150,000 you think about it like spending 70 either and you have
1:15:02
70,000 ether or whatever, right? So spending a fraction of his like giant stockpile of crypto bucks and it feels
1:15:10
different. There's that and I'm shocked there's that many people that like Jack butcher which who's like a relatively he's not be pole but he's like kind of a big deal that there's that many people that will just buy his thing for a hundred hundred grand. I'm just shocked at that. There's that many people who have that amount on their own control and if Jack if
1:15:32
If you do sell this thing for 76 million dollars, I mean like obviously like who cares about history and how neat that is. I mean that would like that would be generous. I mean that would be the butcher family would be famous for five generations. I mean that in the most absurd let me crazy time
1:15:50
perhaps
1:15:54
It would be it would be just so wild and so funny. I hope it works. I kind of in actually in a way maybe I actually hope it doesn't work because you know what they say about people who you're not exactly this because you worked hard for it. So be like selling a company for you, but you know what they say about people who like win the lottery and how like a huge sum of them is huge number of them, they end up becoming mathematics and or they get their breaking depressed are doing this. Yeah. Yeah, like they're already messed up a little bit and now there's even more there.
1:16:24
They're messed up times the amount of money. They are like, I don't want that to have no, I don't think it would happen to you is like, you know, the fact that there's even an outside chance of it happening. Is this the most ludicrous thing it's supposed to be like a piece of art in itself, right? But nobody interacts with commentary on the space, but the fact that it exists on a platform where a transaction could actually happen. Is it quite like just unfathomable and that would like definitely walk
1:16:54
Your experience of the world and I can't even fathom what's on my that would be like but yeah, yeah aliens will ban before they happen to me. That's
1:17:04
crazy. Okay, we should wrap
1:17:09
this. Yeah. I don't know where we go from here. But Jack winter coming on what a week. We
1:17:14
texted you like 30 minutes ago or 40 minutes ago be hot dogs. I appreciate that was fun. I hope somebody buys the thing. I think that would be fucking amazing. I think you couldn't happen to a better day.
1:17:24
So I think I think there is a hope I get a text that's like holy shit. And if I get a text that says, holy shit from anybody. I know what has gone down. So I hope it
1:17:35
happens. It's hard to grow your podcast is the hardest thing I've ever
1:17:38
done easier to just sell a picture for 77 million dollars to it is to get create a top 10 business podcast I shit you not it is actually easier to do one of the other funny now,
1:17:54
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like all Days on the Road Less Traveled never looking back.
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