There’s been an uncanny buzz around investing in the metaverse, and despite a pullback in the markets, that buzz is still going strong. For metaverse enthusiasts and builders there’s a sense of urgency to invest in what seems could turn into the next trillion-dollar opportunity. The internet and Web 2 builders encountered incredible skepticism and doubt but look where the believers ended up today. They are the titans of our economy (on a global economic scale). NFTs and crypto involve so more than just collectible art. They are part of a Web3 infrastructure on which to build business. With NFTs, you can own an asset that allows you to exist in a community. And then, you can build a game on top of that community. The limits of what you can build are only limited by our creativity. The opportunities are endless in the metaverse because it’s a digital re-creation of the world we live in today and offers many of the same opportunities and more. Join Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger as they talk to Mario Nawfal about building businesses in the metaverse. Mario is the co-founder and CEO of NFT Tech. At first, he too was a non-believer of NFTs but now he deeply believes NFTs are the future. Tune in to understand what’s incredibly appealing about investing in crypto, NFTs, and metaverse now to build the foundation for long-term wealth. Learn more about metaverse investing and marketing, OpenSea insider trading, the Vayner3 NFT consulting firm, and more.
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Mario Nawfal, Of NFT Tech, Pioneer Of Metaverse Investing & Marketing, Plus: OpenSea Insider Trading, Vayner3 NFT Consulting Firm, And More…
NFT curious readers, stay tuned for this episode to find out how our guest is achieving massive success in multiple domains and sharing his learnings with the rest of us.
Why #Blender is going to be trending on Twitter very soon?
How the unstoppable train that is VaynerX continue to grow its reach? All this and more in this episode. Enjoy.
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This sponsored-spotlight episode features Mario Nawfal, Founder and CEO of NFT Tech, a publicly listed metaverse NFT company with the ticker NFT. Mario is a seasoned entrepreneur who founded the Athena Group of Companies, a business conglomerate of fifteen-plus companies that operates in more than 40 countries. His experience set the stage for his now-massive influence in crypto, which includes Angel investment across a hundred projects or more.
Mario founded IBC Group, a top-tier consultancy that has also been a top-tier incubator since 2017, having invested in and/or marketed some of the industry’s largest projects. Mario is also a partner at International Blockchain Legal and a world-renowned international public speaker in both crypto and entrepreneurship. Mario, welcome to the show.
What’s up? Thanks for having me.
With that experience, I feel you should be walking around with like a heavyweight belt, a boxing champion or a black belt.
I hate being complimented. I completely screwed up because the more you speak about me, though, I’m getting anxious like, “Stop talking about me.”
It was great to cross paths briefly in Davos. What a killer week that was with some epic conversations. Shout out to the guys at Blockchain 2020 for hosting a panel you are on and some panels we were on. They did such a great job. It’s great to connect with you here.
I appreciate it. It’s good to see you again.
It’s good to have this common ground of Davos under our belts. Your background in business investing, as I mentioned, is extensive, and this is even before founding NFT Tech. Can you take us on the founding journey of NFT Tech if you want to throw in any of your previous founding? How did this all come together?
I’m very direct about how I do things, and I tell you when I’m pretty shit at something, and luck plays a role, etc. I got into crypto in 2017. I didn’t know anything about the ICO hype back then. I found out blockchain was exciting, and everyone was talking about Bitcoin. I wanted to get into Bitcoin in 2014 and should have bought it but my accounting team screwed up. I never got exposure to it, even though I thought I did. I got into it thinking I owned Bitcoin. I didn’t find out until 2020 that I didn’t have any. I have no clue what to do. I’m an eCom guy. I’ve built companies that still exist now in the eCommerce world.
I’m trying to understand the space. I came up with a concept that I now call drop servicing. I don’t teach a course or anything. I just like to call it that. Essentially, I get people that know what to do and how to run a business. I get people who know how to do the work, understand the space and put them together, build a system, and launch IVC. It blew up and became one of the biggest consulting agencies in 2017. It’s one of the few to survive until now, pivoted marketing from consulting to marketing, and now is a pretty big incubator and accelerator.
That’s how I got into crypto, and NFT Tech went public in Davos. When I was in Davos, where we met Josh and the team. NFT Tech went public that day on the New York stock market, and now it’s going public in Europe, funny enough. That was founded with two other co-founders and me, and we got the NFT ticker. It took us a year and a bit to go public. We listed one of the worst periods for the space, which is okay because the money is in the next bull run. It’s something in crypto that I learned. The people that made the most money in the last two years are people that planted the seeds back in 2017 and 2018. The people that will make money in crypto next time are the people that are planting seeds now.
One of the cool things about it is the secrets out of the bag. In Davos, no one is complaining about the market. Everyone is chilling, like, “I’m building.” That’s exciting because whatever happens next is going to be even 10X more epic than what happened over the last year.
Wahid from Faith, from one of our projects we are incubating, showed me his room. I did a video about his hotel room. It’s like a small cubicle. It’s tiny. He was paying $7,000 a day. Gaurav, my other friend who owns TDeFI, spends $30,00 daily. The reason I say this is that people that are in Davos generally are pretty well off. I want to empathize with everyone that were holding the bags or came in late, and got screwed by the correction. Anyone that has been in the space since the early days like Josh, Jeff, and Eathan, we’ve seen this before. For us, this is exciting because now we can buy a lot of cheap shit. Everything was cheap.
I must emphasize that you say the location in real estate but there’s also time. A friend of ours got an incredible room for $250 at one of those hotels after the convention was over. As long as the activity is not happening there, you can show up at Davos and have quite a life and inexpensive visit.
The same room that I gave an example of when I checked it on the website is less than $200 because that day was $6,000 or $7,000 a day. You said something about time. I thought you were going to go down a different path, the importance of timing and business, so I lit up. If you listen to my podcast, I obsess over the concept of timing. Not many entrepreneurs talk about it.
There’s a great video. If anyone is reading, you want to thank me. It’s nothing to do with me. Go on YouTube and write, “Bill Gross TED” and listen to a speech about timing and the research he did. Timing is the most important factor for a business’s success based on his very in-depth and comprehensive survey. I’m pivoting away from the discussion but it’s an exciting topic.
We are talking about NFT Tech and this amazing project that you are building, gone public, and we are so excited about it. Let’s take a step back and talk about the moment when you realized that NFT was going to be a game-changer for you. What was that?
I’m such an idiot. I remember Decentraland being invited to invest in the private realm. I thought it was a gimmick. CryptoPunks, when someone was trying to convince me, I ended up buying one at an expensive priceable too. In the early days, I ignored them. It didn’t click because no one told me the NFTs concept is purely digital ownership. If someone said to me and I defined the NFTs what they mean around the world, I traveled the world and explained it to everyone. I do a podcast every day, mainly a non-crypto podcast, and have to explain what NFTs are. Almost everyone thinks they are collectibles and art, but this, for me, is so boring.
I don’t want to offend anyone. It’s boring relative to what NFTs mean because NFTs are digital ownership. I own these glasses, air pods, and phones. The concept of ownership is decentralized ownership, as the real ownership, not if a company says you own something. Now it’s possible on the web. If someone said this to me in 2017, I would be so much richer.
I would’ve bought every CryptoPunk I could see because then it would make sense but it didn’t click. No one explained to me what NFTs are. To this day, it’s unfortunate that if you don’t understand what they are, you wouldn’t be that bullish on them. When you understand what they are, maybe you wouldn’t be too bullish on the art and collectibles, and you think that’s hyped up. What about in-game assets?
What about someone’s identity, medical records, and the list goes on, everything you own in the physical world. You can own an equivalent or something similar in the digital world. People are betting on pictures now. Later instead of top-shot videos, they will be betting on watches. A watch could be turned into an NFT. You can flip anything as an NFT, purely digital ownership. You are flipping things. Instead of the physical world, you are flipping it into a digital world that has a lot more liquidity, and fortunately and unfortunately, it is relatively deregulated or unregulated.
In the immediate term, there will be some stuff coming out soon. We will talk about some of those markers or indicators that may be some regulation’s definition is forthcoming. Let me push you on that. It wasn’t like an immediate a-ha thing when you first heard about NFTs if people weren’t conveying it to you in a way that was resonating. A lot of people had trouble with it, dumbing this thing down into a single word, phrase or sentence that captures people’s interest. For you, where was that threshold? When was it that you realized through the culmination of these conversations that there was something there? It was as simple as this is digital ownership, and these are the implications of that.
In 2021, it clicked when I met one of a pretty big Punk Whale, and he’s a good friend now and advisor to NFE tech. He’s anonymous but started telling me the value behind CryptoPunks. I got obsessed. I started talking about it and had a TEDx speech about CryptoPunks. I talked about it at a few events. The first one was in Dubai. That’s when I got obsessed but I’ve never flipped NFTs. My company, not NFT Tech, IBC, has an NFT incubator. We incubate some of the biggest projects, and you can see them on the website. I have a team that does intubate NFT projects. They are completely obsessed with space.
What turned me off was I saw the same thing as 2017 happening again. I hated the ICO hype. I made a lot of money off it. I’m being honest because a lot of projects, and we only accepted fiat. We didn’t take any tokens but I hated how easy it was to make money. I didn’t think it will happen again. When I saw it happening with NFTs, I wanted to keep saying, “It’s not going to last.” I kept ignoring it until like, “It’s going to last.” I realized that it’s not just pictures. It’s not only people betting on those picture prices, profile pictures, collectibles or art going up or down.
Metaverse Investing: Everybody thinks NFTs are just collectables and art but it’s so much more than that. The concept of decentralized ownership is now possible on the web. You need to really understand what NFTs are.
Other than the fact that there’s going to be some blue chips that will be worth something decades from now. People reflect on NFTs. It’s a term later, no one will think about it. The same way the first gun and the first car in the world are sitting in a museum. The first few NFTs like the CryptoPunks will be sitting in a museum. Other than that, what clicked with me was I realized that NFTs are an infrastructure to build a business.
Initially, you have to build a business through a physical shop. Later, there have been a few alternatives to this. Franchising became a model to build a business, and then the web became a model to build a business. NFTs. The ability to own an asset that allows you to exist in a community and build a game and a metaverse on top of that community, build access, the ability to signal a certain identity, and build various business models.
When that clicked, I was like, “Now we’ve got something. I’m excited to incubate projects and launch my own NFT project because I see a long-term vision to this beyond flipping pictures.” I see it as a completely new foundation to allow me to build a whole empire and business. I’m pretty confident the next trillion-dollar business will be built on this or a similar foundation of either tokenized foundations or NFTs. They go hand in hand in many ways.
You look at what 10,000 owners of a collection of NFTs can do in terms of evaluation with the Bored Apes and other projects. It’s pretty incredible. Once you have that a-ha moment, what projects have you put your money behind and do some marketing for where you got pumped about where they were going in support of your thesis?
I haven’t invested in any NFTs beyond CryptoPunks. I’m going to start investing. I have been saying this for a while. I’m waiting for blood to be in the streets. We’ve heard the saying before, “When there’s blood in the streets is when you should invest.” Warren Buffett coined that quote. I’m waiting for that. We are almost there. NFTs have a way to go. I’m going to be shopping like crazy. I’m going to be focusing on yield-bearing NFTs. Game assets excite me tremendously. We all know gamers are the early adopters of the metaverse, which I obsessed over. They need those in-game assets to obviously have the utility they need to participate in that metaverse.
A lot of them will be useless. Being in-game assets doesn’t mean the value should go up. It depends on what the asset and the utility are but I’m looking for yield-bearing assets that have utility. Every NFT now is building a metaverse on top of their pictures and the community. I’m excited but I’m excited less about them. Number one is in-game assets, yield-bearing assets. Number two would be collectibles and blue chips. Punks are my favorite but you’ve got a few arts, the Ringers and the Credenzas and all of them. I’m not deep in that space, by the way. I’ve ignored it for too long like an idiot.
The number three would be the community-based ones where they are building similar to the Punks and so the Apes where you are starting with NFTs. You build the metaverse and tokenize it. You’ve got that ecosystem and don’t know what’s going to happen next. That’s how I look at the space. I have been in the token space or tokenized businesses significantly longer than I have been in the NFT space. They are colliding because all these token-based projects and games, especially in metaverses, are launching their own NFTs and vice versa. NFT projects like Apes have started looking at launching their coin.
When you think about that yield-bearing ingredient, do you have any red flags when there’s too much? I’ve seen some of these highest-yield things going on, and in this pure cryptocurrency space, the hype lasts for a month or two. The actual value of the underlying token dropped until it seemed like you were going to have $7 billion after six months. All of a sudden, you have 20 from your 100 or something. Do you have any statistics there that you are looking for and say, “This is a reasonable amount or does this amount makes sense because of X, Y, Z?”
Everyone loves to say, “Ninety five percent of projects will go to zero.” How do you determine what that 5% is? That 5% when you get it cheap, anyone that’s looking at getting to nine figures, the easiest way, which is not easier said than done, is essentially looking for that 5% and investing early. The returns in crypto are stupid, complete insanity. I have been in business for almost a decade. How do you determine what that 5% is? I made a speech about how to determine what the valuable NFT is and what the valuable metaverse is. I look at it ignoring the technology, which we have to have a team to look at the technology. We look at the story first.
Let’s use the first crypto. Bitcoin started with a story. If you know about the ’08 financial crisis, that led to a lot of animosity towards the financial system. That’s why Bitcoin was born. You’ve had those anti-disestablishments, people that hate the establishment. They rallied around Bitcoin and the concept of why pay behind Bitcoin before there was money involved. That was the story of Bitcoin. A community was built around that story. Without that community, Bitcoin is worthless.
If people didn’t believe in the story, no one would buy Bitcoin unless people wanted to go pump and dump. It ends up to be a shit coin but the story was solid enough to build a community. Now the community gives it value. Obviously, technology has to sustain that. You look at NFTs, and it’s the same thing. The NFT has to have a story, a vision that people relate to it. Timing is important, having the vision that the Apes had back in 2021.
Timing is the most important factor for a business's success. Click To Tweet
If you have the same vision as the Apes had in 2021, now the timing is wrong. It’s not enough. I need a lot more than say, “Buy these pictures, and we will go and build a community around it.” It’s too many but they started with a story of what they stand for. CryptoPunks had a story, whether someone starts that story or that story builds within itself. That story leads to a community.
For me, that community brings value because you have the best technology. I have a company called Fruity that sells blenders and juices. I remember there was a juicer that was made. The juicer was incredible. It’s called Juicero, one of the most funded startups ever. They were our competitors. They raised nine figures, $200 million.
They went bust about a year later. If anyone’s heard of Juicero, it’s a famous story in the US. Juicero had an incredible product. You can make fun of them as much as you like. I loved the product. If I lived in Australia, I would have bought that product but there were no users. No one was using it. As perfect as it is, it didn’t have users. Metaverse could have the best technology but if no one is using it, it’s worthless. I’m looking for projects that have great tech but also great users. That’s why Axie Infinity is still number one.
From there, I start looking at assets that have a reason to exist. When I say yield-bearing, why is there a yield? They have to have utility. I wouldn’t like to buy land because it’s called land. I would like to buy land. We can mine minerals that allow you to build a spaceship, and that spaceship will allow you to travel between different planets, acquire land, and build an army, whatever the story is in that game or that metaverse. There’s a reason to buy this land. That excites me more. The machinery or the spaceship itself as an NFT excites me more.
In these metaverses that are clearly popping up everywhere, as you mentioned, it’s a big part of what you are headed into. We saw Meta over there at Davos, and having someone from Meta over at the Polkadot, I was talking, and as part of a panel or something, very interesting stuff. What do you see as the business opportunities in the metaverse for the up-and-coming tech generation of the metaverse?
I would love to answer this question because I’m an entrepreneur at heart. Even though I’m the CEO of a public company now, I love to build businesses. The public company I’m CEO of is building businesses plus investing. First, metaverse, there will be many of them. Some will be centralized and perfect. No harm in that. There’s a place for centralization. Some will be completely decentralized, even better, great experiment.
Most, in my opinion, will be somewhere in the middle. There will be many of them in an ecosystem that I call the multi-verse. I like to use the word multi-verse, which is like Earth or the galaxy that we live in. Metaverses are like countries or websites. When you look at the space, I get, “What can I do in this space?” You have no idea how many opportunities there are. The metaverse is essentially a digital representation of the physical world we live in now.
When you look at that digital world, what can you do there? Look at the physical world. What can you do in the physical world? Let’s say you can run events, perfect. Run events in the digital world. You can run a club, run a club where people can flip together in the digital world. You can do meet-ups. You could sell cars. Cars in the digital world will be different from the cars in the physical world. The physical world has physics. The digital world has code. You code physics but you can sell assets similar to cars.
Sell real estate, real estate agents, and there’s a lot of demand for this. Designers and architects are exciting as hell. I know architects that move to the digital world, Web3 to the metaverse. They are charging so high. It’s insane because there’s no competition. Essentially, look at all the things you do in the physical world and see how that’s related. If you sell ad space in the physical world, I was talking to my team about this, sell billboard space in the metaverse ad space and the digital world.
Especially in the early days, the digital world would be very similar to the physical world because that’s how people relate to it. Over time, it will detach and become a world that we can’t even imagine, teleporting, breathing fire, and giving babies every day. It could be anything. The digital world has no physics and no limitations.
Our first instinct with new technologies is to apply them to the things we already know. Sometimes we highlight their drawbacks of them because we are comparing them to the things you already know. Over time, we find out all the things we don’t know, and those are some of the even greater opportunities.
Metaverse Investing: NFTs are an infrastructure to build a business. With NFTs, you can own an asset that allows you to exist in a community and then build a game or a metaverse on top of that community.
If you look at the internet, the internet was essentially an add-on to things we already did. Ignore now. The internet was a data entry and emailing. Anyone reading this, go back and search old, funny quotes about the internet, something like that. I listened to what people were saying about the internet back in the ‘90s. It’s insane. I look at the applications in the early days. It’s crazy. Look at it now. Even cars, people are like, “Why do we need cars?” We have horses. People were making fun of cars. They had reasons to do that.
The roads back then were not straight as they are now because horses don’t need straight roads. Cars would always break down all the time. You had many people to help fix the car again. It was a horrible technology. Look at them now. Decentralization there are a lot of flaws in it but try to detach it from the physical world if you want to think long-term. If you want to make money short-term, relate it to the physical world.
I still remember when I made my first online bank account or investment account online, eTrade or something like that, “These guys are going to run off with my money.” It’s a totally different world now.
Speaking of that, feeling like, “These people are going to run off with my money, and you hear about different scams.” If you are a third party, you have not bought any crypto or NFTs, what are the dangers and/or misconceptions about the metaverse and NFT land that we operate, and would you want to share with people that are out there looking in?
First, I want to say to all the scammers there that you annoy me so much. I’ve lived my life always doing the right thing, and I shouldn’t be annoyed because, long-term, I’ve done well financially. I’m very comfortable. I’ve built a reputation that I’ve obsessed over. I see the value in that reputation. Our plan is to be the next Animoca. To be that, people have to trust you. I’m fine. There was a news article about someone that worked at OpenSea that has had that early access to deals and someone that works at Binance that gets early access to all the projects doing an IEO on Binance.
I’m like, “This is unfair.” I hate unfairness. I remember like, “It’s okay, Mario.” This is important to read and do the research on people that scammed in 2017. To this day, they are being chased. A very small number of people, small scammers got ignored, and big scammers got screwed. It takes time. The SEC will catch on. Things on the blockchain are immutable. People will see it eventually. People will track it down. Your technology is catching on. You should be careful.
You are chasing short-term returns, giving up the long-term potential of being early. I said earlier that the first company I founded in crypto, IBC is one of the few that survived 2017 because we always did the right thing. We never took tokens because they could be securities. I wouldn’t have a broker-dealer to promote tokens that were considered security. We could have launched our own ICO. We avoided that. I had my team. Do you remember Petrocoin? Does anyone remember Petro back in 2017, 2018, by Venezuela?
Yeah, I totally remember that.
We were there. I sent my business partner to Venezuela. He was sitting next to the president. I probably have the messages like, “Mario, we are about to sign the piece of paper in front of me. Should I sign it? The president is next to me. They want me to go on TV.” I’m like, “Ignore that piece of paper. Leave. There are sanctions against Venezuela. It’s illegal to do it.” The other people with them got arrested. We avoided it. Doing the right thing pays off. Look at us now and look at the other people that closed the shop. Your question about misconceptions about the metaverse, there’s a lot like, “Is the metaverse a fad?” No, we are already living in the metaverse. We have this interview on Zoom.
I’m not face-to-face with you guys. All of you are on Zoom. None of you are in the same place. Most of you know, after reading this, you will probably go on Instagram, check if you got any new messages, check your WhatsApp and Twitter, and see the next drop. This is all a digital world. What are you doing in the physical world? You signal your identity, whether you want to wear a Rolex to signal wealth, colorful clothes to signal a certain identity or look sexy to signal that, whatever it is. You signal identity. You want to belong in a community.
You want to create value and build a business. It’s an instinct of us as a species. Your survival doesn’t count because you can’t survive in a digital world the same way. You are building community signaling. Entertainment is another one. Think about all these points. We do everything now in the digital world, entertainment, YouTube, and PornHub signaling an identity. Instagram photos belonging to a community. How many groups are you part of?
We’re already living in that world. I call it the Web2 metaverse, and it’s evolving into a Web3 decentralized metaverse that allows for ownership to exist, which now makes it a digital representation of the physical world because you can own things in that digital world the same way you own things in the physical world.
Gamers are the early adopters of the metaverse. Click To Tweet
One question the audience asked when I was in Davos on a panel and moderated was, “If you could do anything to a smart contract to improve life in the metaverse, what would you do?” I, for one, get super overwhelmed by all these different social channels. You got to pick 1 or 2 but it’s fun to fast forward to a place where maybe we can integrate all of this stuff into our brains through some metaverse experience.
The other part of the metaverse that is forthcoming is this hyper-realistic visualization. Our friends at Frogland that came on the show have worked on that while the world is cooking up some incredible visualization. I would love your perspective on where all this is going in 3 or 5 years’ time. Let’s predict the future together. Maybe you were right. Maybe we were wrong. Who cares? It would be good to get your thoughts anyway.
People in crypto might not like my answer but realize I’m not saying what I want. I’m saying what I expect. I’m pretty objective. I don’t go one way or another. I’m a realist and see where the world goes. There will be a lot less emphasis on a decentralized metaverse and more emphasis on how immersive a metaverse is. People will start caring less about it being decentralized and want it to be more immersive, which is where Meta and others are focusing on. That’s short-term.
Long-term, after it becomes immersive and people start using it, then we will start looking at the decentralization because now we are using it. The same way with the web launch, everyone thought the web will lead to decentralization. It led to more centralization. After decades of the web existing, we are like, “I don’t mind giving my data away. I don’t mind giving so much influence to the fake companies.” You start realizing, “This needs to change. There is a growing movement against the concept of centralization.” That will take time. We need users. We are at 150 million users or so, maybe a bit less or more. I don’t know which is where Facebook was in 2008, which is small but Facebook had more than doubled by 2009.
To play with your thoughts there a little bit, you are of the mindset that history will repeat itself. When a Web1 went to Web2, and now it’s going to Web3. We realize the pains. Don’t you think there’s more consciousness and awareness of the pitfalls of centralizing everything, and then it’s going to be more about interoperability? If so, why not?
That’s long-term. I’m a big fan of interoperability but it’s technologically so far away that we are still figuring it out. If you talk to all these games and stuff, if you mentioned to them, “We are invested in over 200 companies,” when I speak to those projects, I’m like, “What do you think of interoperability?” Especially when it was a buzz term, they are like, “Mario, are you crazy?” Especially those techie guys, they are like, “We are trying to figure out talkonomics within our own game and making sure that doesn’t flop.”
I said, “Enough of a challenge. You want me to look at how I can integrate assets from another game into my game.” Interoperability is extremely complex. Interoperability in the physical world is very easy. If you want to wear Nike shoes to an Adidas store and Matthew Ball gave this example, love this guy, very smart guy.
He’s like, “If you were Nike shoes to an Adidas store in the physical world, it’s immediately interoperable because of physics. Physics has existed for millions of years. If you want to wear Nike shoes in a digital world, Nike metaverse is fine. When you want to move to the Adidas metaverse with the Nike shoes, it’s not automatically interoperable, as you know.” Adidas has to willingly link their metaverse technologically to allow you to use the Nike shoes, and they can choose what utility it has within their metaverse.
It’s going to be a lot harder to allow interoperability in the digital world at such an early stage. That’s what is going to be less of a concern, and centralized metaverses will play a bigger role in the short time. If you want a long-term bet, decentralization is going to catch on. Not complete decentralization but at least partial decentralization. It’s going to be a fascinating long-term experiment but I want to correct myself one thing.
I say all the time, “The human brain overestimates the short-term impact of innovation and underestimates the long-term potential.” I want to add one more point to this. I always fuck up. I’m always expecting things to take longer in crypto, and I’m always wrong. They move a lot faster than I expect them.
It’s a high-quality problem, and these aforementioned projects illustrate Bored Apes and CryptoPunks.
Metaverse Investing: 95% of projects will go to zero. Great. So you’re looking to getting 9 figures, you have to determine that 5%. And, you need to invest early because the returns in crypto are just stupid.
In 2017, every project wanted to tokenize. Airbnb and Uber tokenized. Every single business wanted to be tokenized. Everyone wants to motion to NFT, and now every NFT wants to have a metaverse.
That’s an easy one to put on the roadmap. Speaking about the breadth of things now, before we head on over to our Edge Quick Hitters coming up, which will be fun, what is inspiring you outside of what you are doing? What other projects? What trends? What’s going on? Where are you impressed?
What’s inspiring me from a business level? I’m a big fan of Web2 companies looking at integrating Web3, especially IP. I’m interested in looking at dead IP and reviving it. Through the acquisition, we acquire the IP and build something out of it in Web3 because Web3 makes it so much more interesting and easier to build a community around it. Getting those Web2 companies and reviving them through Web3 and allowing that I’m excited about.
Another one is M&As, Mergers & Acquisitions. We have projects we are incubating. Some of them are pretty big. Some of them are small. Especially the big ones that raise a lot of money and names that everyone would know, we are working with them to start acquiring smaller projects similar to how Apes acquired Punks and Meebits? That fascinates me a lot. These are the two main things that excite me now.
I think about that a lot when my son was at the age where he’s getting into little shows. He’s watching Thomas the Train. I think, “It’s fascinating how that falls.” The guy who wrote a book, probably it was for his grandchildren or something. I don’t even know if he intended on publishing. People are expounding upon it. The actual trains are kids. They make all these modifications and developments to all these brands. I’m like, “What happens in twenty years when he’s an adult and reminiscing on Thomas the Train. There are some NFT integrated things that are involved with it without a doubt.”
I’m so excited about this. I took a note. I’ve got my team living with me here in a place next to it. I’m going to message them after this and have a meeting because the NFT team lives at the NFT incubator. I’m going to bring them here and like, “Guys, we need to double down on this because I have been talking about it for a while but haven’t taken action.” Anyone reading this that knows interesting IPOs doing the same thing, I would love to shoot the shit and talk about it because I wouldn’t say it’s the next big hype. I don’t think there’s going to be any big hype for a few years but it’s the next way to create long-term value.
For me, it makes sense. It’s bridging the Web2 world to the Web3 world, which is what we are doing in general as the crypto world corrects, finally, and all the shit shakes off. We are looking at the Web2 world as, “Now is the time to enter this space. The hype is gone. Now it’s time to build. Now I can give them the speech about NFTs being the foundation to build the business. I can give them a speech about how easy it is to build a community, how everyone is going to have a metaverse like everyone is going to have a website.
Do you want a business idea, everyone? It’s a sick ID. If you want to do this ID, please message me. I don’t feel like crap. We can do it together. I want to triple down, go to all the big websites and say, “We will help you turn your website into a metaverse.” Everyone who has a website will want it to be more immersive, but now, the metaverse is sexy. We will turn your website into a metaverse, a more immersive experience for the consumer. That’s an incredible idea. It’s bridging the Web2 world to Web3.
There it is. It’s a spark of inspiration for sure, Mario. We appreciate it. Thanks for giving us those insights into NFT Tech and everything you are planning. We want to shift gears a little bit. We want to get your perspective on some personal questions, straightforward individual questions that we like to call Edge Quick Hitters. We are looking for short, single-word, or few-word responses but we will dive in a little deeper here and there. Are you ready to dive in on these things?
Let’s do this.
Question number one, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
I don’t know. I wish I could give you some sexy answers. I remember the first thing I ever sold was cassette tapes. When I was a little baby in a very poor country, I would put on a table and sell cassette tapes. When my family goes to church, my family is religious. I got my bag of cassette tapes but I don’t know what I bought. I sold shit. I sold anything I could get my hands on.
That was question two. We got it nailed. Let’s go to question number three. What is the most recent thing you purchased?
I buy things every day. I’m deep into biohacking. I did IV Drips. That’s a significant thing. The last thing I bought, you know what it is, Jeff, is a Bubble Tea. That’s waiting in the fridge for you.
Question number four, what is the most recent thing you sold?
It will probably be a blender because my team keeps selling blenders. We sell hundreds a day. It’s my team selling a blender. I don’t sell things personally.
I believe that is the first blender that’s made its way onto Edge Quick Hitters, so mark the moment. Question number five, what is your most prized possession?
I like my Punk and have a couple, one publicly and others anonymously, because I love the concept of building up a pseudo-anonymous identity. I love it. I want to build a few of them. It’s one of my CryptoPunks.
Question number six, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service or experience, that’s for sale, what would it be? What do you have your eye on?
A lot more CryptoPunks and BoardX, to be honest, and a few other blue chips. I want Ape so hard into the metaverse. I want to sell things that I have that no one knows about. I’ve got a few businesses, and I don’t want to sell. If you can believe that, that would be great. To use that money to buy a lot of in-game crypto assets, a lot of lands, becoming a real estate mogul in the metaverse. That’s my goal for the next few years.
I ran into somebody at Davos. The last time I saw him, he had like two Bored Apes. It’s among his company, and they’ve got fourteen.
He’s a very smart person. He’s going to diversify. I don’t know how much capital they are sitting on but they are very smart. I want to DCA, Dollar Cost Average, into the space over the next few years. I’ve got time.
Metaverse Investing: There’ll be many metaverses. Some will be centralized, some will be decentralized, and some will be somewhere in the middle. And, all these metaverses will live in an ecosystem, called the multiverse.
Pay attention, folks, this is important stuff. Question number seven, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
It’s not being binary. Funny enough, one book says it’s the most common characteristic among billionaires, not millionaires. “No one is good. No one is bad. Nothing is good. Nothing is bad. Nothing is right. Nothing is wrong.” It’s usually somewhere in the middle. Generally, the people that are intellectual understand that. People that are not too emotional understand that. Look at things in crypto. Don’t call everything a scam. I don’t think everything is legit. It would be somewhere in the middle.
No one crypto is bad. No one is good. What if someone rug pulled you? I will rug pull at any time if my brother has cancer and I have no money to support him. I don’t give a shit. I will rug pull everyone. Call me bad but my brother has cancer. Later, will I try to pay them back? It’s 100%. I’m financially extremely comfortable, so that will never happen. What I’m trying to tell you is I’ve tried to empathize and put yourself in people’s shoes. Don’t judge too quickly.
Question number eight, the flip side, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would it be?
I’m too aggressive. I get myself in trouble a lot. Some people know me as successful, etc., but in the early days when I wasn’t too successful, even when I became successful, I would get too aggressive. I was on a platform called BitClout. Very prominently, I spent a lot of time there. I used to. In the early days, everyone on BitClout knew this, “Mario was the person making a lot of noise.” When you come in making a noise like a bulldozer, even if you are doing well, you are bound to step on toes. In other industries, it’s fine. People respect it. In crypto, it usually turns people off because everyone is weary. Anyone that’s too loud or you are a scam. Be more cautious if you are in crypto, and don’t be as excited, driven or make as much noise as I used to do. Now, I’m a lot calmer.
It’s funny. Someone said they liked our show because we were eating kale but not boring. There’s something to that.
I agree. I like this. It’s very different because you are so chill and go deep into things. You are listening. There are three of you. Most of you are muted most of the time because you are listening. That’s a compliment to you guys.
There are no air horns here but they may incorporate them soon. We will see.
I had a crypto interview probably sitting somewhere on YouTube. The person interviewing me was based in Australia, which is where my first company was. He’s like, “I’ve had your blender for six years.” I’m like, “What’s up? “
It’s good stuff, quality, and durability.
I’m like, “That’s right. I should use that as an ad.”
Question number nine, easy one, what did you do before joining us on the show?
Gym, that was the thing that I mentioned I did before this.
Last one, question ten, what are you going to do next after the show?
Drink my Bubble Tea. It’s waiting for me in the fridge.
That’s the reward.
Right after that, I’m going to call the NFT team to remember for the IP ID.
Do the IP, get them down, and execute.
I wasn’t joking. I took a note. I’m going to do it. I walk the talk.
We got to do this. We are going to throw in some bonus questions. This is above and beyond. Not going to be the same every week or anything like that. I got to ask, what kind of toothbrush do you use?
I’m obsessed with my house. I have an electric toothbrush that measures how much you brush each tooth with an app and tells me if I didn’t brush one too long. I have three of them because I keep breaking them but that’s the type of toothbrush I use. I recommend it. It’s pretty good.
I’ve mentioned my toothbrush five times, at least, on the show.
Metaverse Investing: People that scammed in 2017 are still being chased. You just have to be careful when you’re getting early access. You’re chasing short-term returns, while giving up the long-term potential of being early.
I appreciate all the insights and sharing. We have a couple of hot topics we wanted to touch on pretty relevant here. I don’t know if you want to open the door to some of these bad boys. The headline is Former OpenSea Exec Charged with NFT Insider Trading. We’ve heard this type of thing from OpenSea before. Let’s dive in here. “Department of Justice has indicted,” that does not as a good. “Former OpenSea head of product, Nathanial Chastain, with insider trading in connection to NFTs. In Manhattan Federal Court on Wednesday, Chastain was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering.”
“According to the indictment, Chastain was accused of buying dozens of NFTs with the prior knowledge that the assets would be featured on the NFT marketplace. He then sold them at a profit 2 to 5 times the original price using anonymous digital currency wallets and anonymous accounts at OpenSea.” It’s not anonymous enough, apparently. We heard OpenSea chastising their own employees for doing something similar at an earlier time. It makes it even worse, I suppose.
One side, yes, if you want to touch on a second. On the other side, there’s this formation of rules that are starting to come together around NFTs and the perspective of the government on them. To a degree, certainty is helpful around how they view things. We are not going to have 100% certainty on it but it defines the rules. You can navigate rules once you know what they are. There’s something helpful there.
That was one of the big triggers coming out of 2017 and ’18, and crypto was like, “What does the government think about this? Is an ICO legal or not? Is it security or not? What is this? What’s going on?” That plus a few other things that happened like the move of institutional investment, all these things changed, and there’s something good about that.
I want to add one thing. People knew that most ICOs were securities. All they had to do was ask any lawyer, and they will tell you, “Yes, it’s a security.” People knew insider trading was illegal. Most people know this stuff most. There are a lot of young people in the space. Saying, “We didn’t have clarity,” is a way to pretend you are ignorant when you do something wrong. In most cases, I feel bad for those people but I also feel good that at least the people doing the right thing are being rewarded, and people that are not doing the right thing are not getting away with it. It’s like I’m split but it’s needed.
I hate regulators as much as you like. People love to hate regulators when they are making money. Like in ’08, everyone with financial crisis I watched a documentary about it called Inside Job. After the crisis happened, everyone was like, “Regulators, where the hell was you? Why didn’t you protect us in 2018? Regulators, SEC, why don’t you stop all these scams?” When you are printing money in 2017 or 2020, 2021, “Regulators, leave us. We are printing money now. Come later when everyone is losing money.”
That’s part of it. You know what’s weird too. I have a pretty extensive real estate background. It’s interesting because of the treatment of NFTs relative to physical assets because if I’m a real estate developer. For example, I can do all things in the background. I can buy up a ton of property with the knowledge that I’m going to go rezone that property and create an entire talent center that’s going to increase the value of it based on my actions. In real estate, there’s no insider trading. If that were security, that would be insider trading. It would be very different.
The rules of the game are different, with a lot of physical assets relative to digital assets, derivatives or things of that nature. It’s interesting to call out some of the differences there. I don’t know that there’s necessarily a good reason for it other than precedent in history. There are some meaningful differences.
Let’s talk about Gary Vee went to Veecon on our minds here. He filed a trademark for Vayner3 NFT consulting arm. “The NFT influencer, Gary Vee, is launching his own NFT consulting arm. This was a scene on a May 25th trademark filing. The farm will offer technical consulting in the field of NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and other metaverse and Web3 activities and assets.”
“The company would be the latest project on Gary Vee’s growing list of NFT ventures, along with VeeFriends, and Veecon, which was in Minneapolis.” We attended, at least Jeff and Zach did, and, “FlyFish Club, NFT catered restaurant.” No surprise that Gary’s continuing to expand into the NFT space, making his mark, and taking advantage of all sorts of opportunities. Consulting is a great business to be in. Certainly, he’s one of those people that has a lot to share.
He has been deep in the space for a while now. It sounds like a good thing to trademark for someone like him. It doesn’t sound like a crazy thing to claim the word internet or Web3, like Vayner3. It’s his own name with the three next to it. I dig it. It’s a cool name. The balancing act for someone like Gary, which he’s learning on the go, is the power and the responsibility of carrying so much weight with him as he moves around the Earth. There’s a moment in time where everything he recommended people did.
Metaverse Investing: Acquire dead Web 2 IPs and build something out of it in Web 3. Web 3 can make an IP so much more interesting. It’s also easier to build a community around it.
That’s precarious because these are small-cap projects. They are very volatile on top of the volatility of crypto, the overall market, and the unknowns that are associated with any project in the team as they are experimenting with all this new technology. As Gary goes about this voyage of consulting, he’s going to have to be careful about the clients he takes on, the promises that he makes, and how he lets his ripple effect impact the broader ecosystem. There are quite a lot of consequences that come with a sizeable force that is VaynerMedia.
I’m also thinking Jeff is our resident web domain snatcher. I’m sure he’s getting Vayner4 and Vayner everything else now.
I’m already deep down that rabbit hole. Seriously, if you look at it, you are like, “He established the Blank 3 program for websites.” It establishes right there. Think about it, use it, leverage it, and pick all the good stuff. There are all kinds of stuff floating around out there.
Vayner, it sounds like a noun that’s going to take on meaning at some point, if it hasn’t already.
It’s going in the dictionary soon.
It’s either like, “Don’t be a Vayner,” which I mean that it has such a good sound to it, although he’s such a positive guy, so maybe it’s like, “Nice one.”
They’ve got such an amazing umbrella of different companies and segments that they are focused on. When we have three different verticals within our organization, we’ve got our tech product, our show, and events. There are different partnerships and collaborations we do as well. That’s a lot. We got a big team focused on that. He’s got ten legitimate subsidiaries of VaynerX that are out there moving the needle in big ways. People talk about focus a lot, and there’s a lot to be said for that.
By the same token, this guy is out there making it happen with a big team. We’ve interacted with a lot of those team members, a very solid group of folks. He’s going to make some waves there. I don’t know, Mario, on this front, you’ve done a lot in the way of advising, incubating, and helping folks out. You get a lot of rich knowledge that can help people in the world of Web3, metaverses, and NFTs. Is there a pure advisory arm in the works?
Vayner could do anything, and he could make a lot of money. His brand is so powerful. He could genuinely do anything. Another thing I have been proven wrong, remember when Gary started getting into crypto and I was already in crypto? Most crypto people are rolling eyes like, “Here we go, Gary, doing it.” He’s getting into NFTs. I’m like, “You don’t even know what NFTs are.” He launches VeeFriends. I’m like, “That’s embarrassing. Come on. Silly cartoons of VeeFriends.” He’s proved me wrong for that. I’ve known Gary but not personally. We’ve crossed paths a long time ago. My team has a call with him, and it’s a very positive interaction. I’ve always doubted him, and he’s always proven me wrong.
It’s like many things prove me wrong. I’m so impressed and humbled by what he’s achieved and that he always gets it right when I always think he’s wrong. It’s insane. I got into consulting and crypto because it’s a way to understand the space and wet my toes. It’s not the way to make money. Generally, in most industries, consulting is not the way to make real money. It’s very hard. You don’t hear the next billion-dollar consulting firm except in crypto because you get tokens.
If you are consulting, advising or incubating, you would make a lot of money. Gary is Gary, and he’s not going to focus on crypto projects. He’s going to focus on Web2 projects because they have the people that already are his clients and move them into Web3. He’s on the ball with this. That’s what we are doing. It’s impressive.
Metaverse Investing: No one’s good, no one’s bad. Nothing’s good, nothing’s bad. Nothing’s right. When you look at things in crypto, don’t call it a scam, but don’t think it’s legit. Be somewhere in the middle.
It’s always moving the needle at the forward edge.
I’m sensing a new section to our newsletter called Mario doesn’t get it but this is the next big thing.
I’m not that bad. If anyone wants the next big thing, social tokens are way underrated. Social tokens, tokenized NFTs, and yield-bearing in-game NFTs are the next thing. Tokenize, NFT everything, NFT, physical assets, and they are flipping them. I get some things right but obviously, Gary does small things right than I do. Gary is killing it.
Before we let you go, we want to make sure folks know where to follow you for all the latest and greatest on what you have going on in your world. Where should we direct them?
I give you guys a hack. Anyone readers, giveaways work so well on Twitter. I looked at every Twitter account that does giveaways. I’m like, “That’s cheap.” My team is like, “Mario, we should do giveaways.” I’m like, “I don’t want to cheapen my brand.” We did the first $10,000 giveaway, blew up, and got other influencers to share it. Earlier before this episode, we decided to do a giveaway every 48 hours. We will do one for readers when this comes out. If you go to my Twitter, that’s what I’m focusing on to build @MarioNawfal. We are going to do a giveaway purely for readers. I haven’t ever done this on a show. I’ve done almost 200, 300 podcasts.
Go on Twitter, follow, and turn on notifications. Josh, that’s the hack we talked about earlier. You have to turn on notifications and retweet my pinned tweet, which is probably a giveaway. If you do that within an hour from this, when it comes out, the team will choose one person. They get a $5,000, and we will have to check where you heard about us? You have to say Edge of NFT. If you do that and you do everything I said, “Follow, turn on notifications, and retweet,” you will get the $5,000 giveaway.
If you already have a lot of money and $5,000 doesn’t mean much to you, we can jump on a one-hour call if that means anything to you as well. I will throw that in. For anyone in crypto, Twitter is the best place to follow me. I’m doing my big show there that I used to do before. I’m starting it again, which is like a CIC round table. It’s the best place.
Thanks for sharing. Thanks for the generosity. It’s amazing. We’ve reached the outer limit. Thanks for exploring with us. We’ve got space for more adventures on this starship, so invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes, rate us, say something awesome, and go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content. Mario, thanks again for sharing this time with us.
Important Links
- NFT Tech
- TDeFI
- Podcast – Mario Nawfal
- Bill Gross TED – YouTube
- Decentraland
- CryptoPunks
- TEDx – The Metaverse is Already Here
- Bored Apes
- Axie Infinity
- Polkadot
- Animoca
- OpenSea
- Binance
- Frogland
- Meebits
- BitClout
- Former OpenSea Exec Charged with NFT Insider Trading – Article
- filed a trademark for Vayner3 NFT consulting arm – Article
- @MarioNawfal – Twitter
- Spotify – Edge of NFT
- iTunes – Edge of NFT
About Mario Nawfal
Co-founder & CEO @ http://nfttech.com (Stock Ticker: NFT)
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